Men who are compulsive lovers

Press, 24 August 1988, Page 17

Men who are compulsive lovers

Modern Casanovas are addicted to sexual conquest according to a book just published in the U.S., reports CATHY LAWHON, NZPA-KRD.

Compulsive lovers — men addicted to the thrill of sexual conquest — are not possessed by some extraordinary love of women. Instead, their obsession arises from a profound emotional and spiritual vacuum, a shadowy sense of self that makes them seek definition in the constant stimulation of sex.

lifestyles are being attacked. “People think I’m making a . blanket argument for monogamy,” he says. "But I've made no moral judgments about what kind of sexuality is right. I don’t think there is one path of righteousness in sexual conduct as long as you’re getting fulfilment and perceiving and treating others in your life as people and not things. “I’m only arguing that some men haven’t chosen their sexuality. It’s been chosen for them. They cannot see their women as people with their own feelings or needs. They view women as things, just like a drug.” Peter Trachtenberg conducted in-depth interviews with 50 self-pro-fessed Casanova types in the course of writing his book. He solicited their views through personal

They need help, says Peter Trachtenberg, 35-year-old author of “The Casanova Complex: Compulsive Lovers and their Women” (Poseidon Press). He should know, because he is a self-pro-fessed “recovering Casanova,” a modern-day version of the 18th-century Italian adventurer of the same name whose memoirs included accounts of numerous love affairs. His concern and empathy for legions of Casanovas on the loose have raised some angry reactions. “It’s been satisfying to talk to professionals in the field who agree with the book’s premise and say it’s a useful book,” says Peter Trachtenberg who, until this effort, has focused his writing efforts on award-winning fiction. “But then it’s been interesting to see women who get angry and treat it as a joke. It’s somehow easier and more comforting to believe men who’ve walked out on them are rats rather than that they have a disorder. “This book undermines that nice comforting assumption, and women feel like I’m making excuses for rats.” Some men react with anger, too, feeling their

‘They cannot see women as people’

advertisements in newspapers and magazines. Some said they were happy and satisfied with their lifestyles. Others said they were not. They all said they did not know how to control their behaviour.

Conquest is so central to the identify of the Casanova type that even the threat of contracting Aids doesn’t slow him.

“It was interesting and frightening to interview the men in this book about how Aids has altered their sexual patterns,” he says. “They said things like, ‘I don’t pick up cheap girls,’ or ‘I don’t go with girls who have dirt under their fingernails.’ “There’s a sense of immunity and an inability to recognise consequences. It’s like a heroin addict who still shares a needle.” Ironically, that inability to curtail life-threatening behaviour and recognise risks might mean the Casanova complex ultimately will be recognised as a disorder, Peter Trachtenberg says. The disordered heartbreak junkie falls into one of six categories, according to the author: The Hitter: The predatory afficionado of the onenight stand. The Drifter: The man who loves without passion and leaves without regret. The Romantic: The man who falls in and out of love with dazzling rapidity. The Nester: The man who forms long and seemingly stable relationships, but leaves with little warning. The Juggler: The consummate manipulator who plays one lover against another. The Tomcat: The prototypical adulterer whose wife puts up with his chronic cheating because the price of knowledge can be the end of the

marriage. The Tomcat’s wife is not the only woman who indirectly aids and abets the Casanova, Peter Trachtenberg says. “I would say, at one point or another, almost any woman who is going through the normal route of selection will encounter a man like this. They are very persuasive and charming men, and they get around. “But there are women who are more drawn to these types. They are women who come from families that were abusive or incestuous. “They have no experience of receiving love because they always had to earn it and they yearn for what they didn’t get as children. But then they are attracted to partners who most resemble their inaccessible and withholding parents. “I call it a heartbreak tango.” The only recourse for such women, he says, is to recognise nothing they

can do will change the Casanova’s behaviour — the affliction cannot be cured by “the right woman.” Only his own experience and pain can do that.

Peter Trachtenberg says he thought he was cured once. After long sessions of therapy, he married a woman he describes as “brilliant, spirited, desirable.” But 18 months later, he left her for a neighbour he’d been seeing twice a week for three months. In his book, he describes the torment. “I was ashamed of being her husband — anyone’s husband. I couldn’t tell my wife about these feelings. I couldn’t discuss them with my therapist. “I tried to medicate my impulses with drugs and alcohol and soon got into the habit of downing a shot or snorting a line whenever I felt smothered by my wife or drawn too fiercely to another woman.” Now divorced, he des-

cribes himself as a “recovering Casanova.” But recovering does not mean total abstinence, as it might for a recovering alcoholic or drug addict. “I don’t believe I can safely have a one-night stand,” he says. “In my active addiction, relationships began in the bedroom and the next day I decided where to go from there.

“Now, I go through a period of dating and evaluation first. Relationships are built the other way around. It means evaluating relationships a lot more carefully and examining motives and maybe remaining celibate for some time. My goal is not necessarily to be married, but to be capable of being married.”

Casanovas who do not recognise their behaviour as a disorder are threatened both physically, from Aids, and emotionally, he says.

"Casanovas are at risk emotionally because they will never be able to remain in a relationship,” he says.

‘An inability to recoghise consequences’

“They will always leave or be unfaithful within a relationship. They will forever be isolated from the women in their lives. And they run the risk, which is most pathetic to me, of growing old gracelessly and desperately. “They become the man in his 60s cruising singles bars or putting personal ads in city newspapers. There’s a certain pathos in that.”