ABSTRACT
Travis was such a talented basketball player that, when he was in high school, his family had moved to another city just so he could attend a prep school that was home to a powerhouse sports program and a legendary coach. It paid off, and he was offered a scholarship for one of the best college basketball teams in the country. Now, midway through his senior year, facing almost certain draft into the professional league, he decided to come to therapy. At first, he was vague about his reason for coming in, talking about his uncertainty regarding the future and a few other stressors, but as he let his story unspool, he revealed the real reason. As a superstar athlete, one girl after another came after him, starting in his freshman year of high school when he was just 14. He slept with many of them, sometimes more than one a weekend. He didn’t even have to try to get girls in bed; they all approached him. By the time he had neared the end of his college experience, he had had sex with dozens of young women, more than he could remember. Despite this, he had never been in a real relationship for longer than a month and saw no prospect of making this happen. As he looked down the road, he saw himself wealthy, well known, and all alone. “As soon as I have sex with them,” he said, referring to the girls around him, “I completely lose all interest and I can’t change that.” Then he added a powerful line: “Sex has ruined me.”
