What Happens Inside the Basement?
By Chris Jones
In my previous article, I introduced the Deceptive Sexuality and Trauma (DST) model and explained the core metaphor of the secret sexual basement, helping you to visualize the construction of a secret, hidden compartment of sexual or relational betrayal within the context of an intimate relationship.
The central idea was that this is not simply a sexual problem — it’s a two-part issue:
- The behaviours happening inside the basement (i.e. the sexual or relational behaviours).
- The behaviours used to hide and protect the basement (i.e. the patterns of deception and manipulation).
In this article, we’re going to take a closer look at the first part: what happens inside the basement. To understand these patterns more clearly, the DST model introduces the term CES: Compulsive-Entitled Sexuality.
What Is Compulsive-Entitled Sexuality?
As the name suggests, CES combines two potential driving factors that may underpin secretive or problematic sexual behaviour – compulsivity, and entitlement. Both can exist independently, but they often intertwine in various ways. Let’s examine each component in turn.
“C” – Compulsivity
Many people will already be familiar with the idea of compulsivity as a driving factor for unwanted or problematic sexual behaviours. They might also be familiar with the idea of “sex addiction” and will often use the two terms somewhat interchangeably. Indeed, when a person’s secret sexual behaviours are discovered, the first response is often to seek out sex addiction or compulsive sexual behaviour treatment — whether through therapy or support groups like 12-step fellowships.
In many cases that’s appropriate and will likely give helpful support to the individual but it’s important to recognise that compulsivity alone often isn’t the full story, which is why it’s important that we’re able to expand the concept further.
It’s also worth noting here that “sex addiction” isn’t officially recognised as a mental health diagnosis, whilst Compulsive Sexual Behaviour Disorder (CSBD) is recognized and listed in the World Health Organization’s ICD-11. We’ll start, therefore, with a look at the central characteristics of CSBD.
Key features include:
- A persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges
- Numerous unsuccessful efforts to significantly reduce the repetitive sexual behaviour
- Repetitive sexual activities becoming a central focus of the person’s life to the point of neglecting other interests and responsibilities
- Continued repetitive sexual behaviour despite adverse consequences or deriving little or no satisfaction from it
- Distress and/or significant impairment in other important areas of functioning
The key is that the behaviours are out of control in some sense. They’re having a negative impact on the person but he or she has been unable to reduce or stop them. From this, we can derive the following simple definition of compulsivity for our purposes:
“Sexual behaviour where the person lacks control or is unable to stop or resist engaging, despite negative consequences.”
As a brief aside, for something to be classed as an addiction (i.e. sex addiction in this case), it would require evidence of escalation – meaning the person engages in increasingly intense or risky behaviours to achieve the same effect. This is a somewhat controversial point in the field currently and is the focus of a lot of current research. What we can acknowledge here is that – at least anecdotally – a large proportion of clients will resonate strongly with the idea of escalation having been a part of the compulsive pattern.
“E” – Entitlement
Whereas compulsivity is defined by an inability to stop, entitlement speaks to an unwillingness to stop. This is a crucial distinction.
A very simple way of thinking about this would be:
- Compulsivity: “I don’t want to do this, but I can’t stop doing it.”
- Entitlement: “I want to do this, so I do it.”
Entitlement refers to the belief that one is deserving of certain rights or privileges. This can be both healthy and unhealthy but tends to become unhealthy when it involves the prioritization of the perceived rights (or desires) of the self at the expense of others around us.
We can define unhealthy entitlement in this model with regards to the deceptive sexual behaviours as:
“The prioritisation of personal sexual experience and gratification over the human rights of, or the harmful impacts on, others.”
There are different forms of entitlement that can be drivers or justifications for the hidden sexual behaviours that have occurred, such as:
- Socialised Entitlement: This can often be related to gender, power, or status. It might be conscious, but it might also be a subconscious assumed privilege that the person isn’t aware of. This also presents on a societal level as the normalization (and often implicit acceptance) of infidelity or secret sexual behaviours for men.
- Male sexual entitlement: Another way this can present is that a man may implicitly or explicitly believe it’s his partner’s “duty” (or perhaps women’s duty in general) to meet his sexual needs, as he defines them.
- Entitlement from Victimisation: If someone feels neglected, mistreated, or rejected (rightly or wrongly), they may begin to justify their behaviour. “I’m not being fulfilled here — so I’m entitled to go elsewhere.” That narrative can be both subtle and deeply entrenched and often directly relates to the male sexual entitlement mentioned above.
Why Both Compulsivity and Entitlement Matter
The concept of Compulsive-Entitled Sexuality allows us to expand beyond the narrow definition of compulsivity or sex addiction.
Whilst some individuals clearly meet the criteria for compulsivity, many others do not because they may have never seriously tried to stop (or reduce) the behaviours, they may not perceive any negative consequences from the behaviours (at least prior to discovery), or they may be operating from a belief system that justifies or normalizes what they’re doing.
They might also be able to stop the behaviours relatively easily after discovery which is often not going to be the case if something is truly compulsive or addictive. In such cases, the issue is often not that they couldn’t stop, but rather that they never really wanted to (or never felt that they should). This is where entitlement becomes so crucial to explore.
Many people in this situation won’t really identify with the compulsivity framework at all and may struggle to relate to addiction-based treatment approaches. This can lead to frustration, confusion, or a sense that the support being offered doesn’t really fit.
Sitting with the idea of entitlement can be uncomfortable but can ultimately be liberating if it leads to a more accurate understanding of how and why the behaviours developed, particularly in the absence of clear compulsive characteristics.
CES as a Hybrid Concept
It’s important to emphasise that CES is not an either/or framework — it’s a hybrid concept.
For many people, both forces are at play in different ways. A person might feel trapped in a cycle they feel they can’t control (compulsivity), whilst also justifying it with beliefs or assumptions about what they are entitled to (entitlement). Even in cases that lean heavily towards compulsivity, entitlement often plays a role in justifying the secrecy or normalising the behaviour (e.g. “this is just what men do”). In this kind of example, entitlement might be the foundation upon which the basement is built, and from which a compulsive pattern may have developed.
A Working Definition of CES
To summarise, here are some simple working definitions from the DST model:
- Compulsivity:
Sexual behaviour where the person lacks control or is unable to stop or resist engaging, despite negative consequences. - Entitlement:
The prioritisation of personal sexual experience and gratification over the human rights of, or the harmful impacts on, others.
Combined, Compulsive-Entitled Sexuality can therefore be defined as:
An inability and/or an unwillingness to control sexual urges or behaviours, even when they cause significant negative consequences for the self or others.
What’s Next?
In this article, we’ve explored what happens inside the secret sexual basement — the sexual or relational behaviours that violate relational fidelity and why we use the hybrid concept of Compulsive-Entitled Sexuality to identify them. In the next article, we’ll turn our attention to the second behavioural system – the behaviours used to hide and protect the basement itself.
If you’re interested in learning more or would like to explore support options, please feel free to get in touch.