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Sexual Addiction
If you are reading this then you are likely to be concerned about yourself
or about someone you are close to. Those who have experienced
obsessive compulsive urges to continue to pursue a level of sexual
behavior that is unsatisfying and leaves deep feelings of shame and fear
of discovery will have asked themselves the first question. Those who
have been involved, as a partner, parent, friend or family member, with a
person who has problems with seemingly uncontrollable sexual
behaviour will have asked the second question.
What we call Sex Addiction can involve a wide variety of practices and
can be conducted by men, women or homosexual people. In some cases
it involves criminal activity, and for both the person behaving in this way
and those close to them, the fear is always with them that the behaviour
be discovered, will escalate to a criminal act, will destroy their reputation
and real relationships, or will lead to them or those close to them
contracting disease. The addict may have trouble with just one unwanted
sort of behavior, sometimes with many, both sexual and non-sexual.
Many sex addicts admit having had an excessive interest in sex for as
long as they can remember, saying that unhealthy use of sex has been a
progressive process. Often it will have begun with an addiction to
masturbation, pornography in books and magazines, pornographic
videos, and latterly with internet pornography, casual sexual affairs and
use of prostitution. Sometimes it begins within a relationship with
another sexually addicted person, sometimes with masturbation to
release stress, or with soft porn use but however it begins, as years pass
it can have progressed to increasingly dangerous behaviors.
The addict’s sexual preoccupations can occupy all their waking hours
and acting on their compulsions takes up most of their energy. It is a
rollercoaster increasing in speed and intensity involving sexual patterns
of behavior (or rituals) usually leading to increasingly and dangerously
‘acting out’ of their sexual addictions and fantasies. Acting out may
involve flirting inappropriately, using books and films, surfing the
internet for pornography, prostitutes, or driving to places where sexually
arousing events are taking place such as voyeurism and dogging.
Ask yourself and answer truthfully these twelve questions which will help
assess if you may have a problem with sexual addiction.
1. Are you leading a double life by keeping secrets about your sexual
or romantic activities from those important to you?
2. Have you been driven by your needs to have sex in ways, places or
situations or with people you (or someone like you) would not
normally choose?
3. Do you find yourself buying books and magazines containing stuff
of a sexual nature and looking for sexually arousing articles or
scenes in newspapers, magazines, or other media?
4. Do your fantasies, romantic or sexual, interfere with your normal
thinking process or interfere with your relationships or prevent you
from facing problems?
5. Do you frequently want to get away from a sex partner after having
sex? Do you frequently feel remorse, shame, or guilt after a sexual
encounter?
6. Do you feel that you may be physically different from other people,
or feel shame about your body or your sexuality, such that you
avoid looking at or touching your body or engaging in sexual
relationships? Do you fear that you have no sexual feelings or that
you are asexual?
7. Do you find that your behaviour means that every new relationship
follows the same destructive patterns which prompted you to leave
the last relationship?
8. Do you find you seek novelty in that you need more variety and
frequency of sexual and romantic activities than previously to
bring the same levels of excitement and relief?
9. Have you behaved in such a way as to have been arrested or have
put yourself in danger of being arrested because of your practices
of voyeurism, exhibitionism, prostitution, sex with minors,
indecent phone calls, etc.?
10. Do you find that your pursuit of sexual or romantic relationships
interfere with your spiritual beliefs or development?
11.Do your sexual activities include the risk, threat, or reality of
disease, pregnancy, coercion, or violence?
12. Has your sexual or romantic behaviour ever left you feeling
hopeless, desperate alienated from others, or suicidal?
If you answered yes to more than one of these questions then you don’t
need anyone else to tell you that you are justified in having a concern.
Seek help now from a counsellor, from a doctor, your spiritual advisor or
from a sex addicts anonymous organization.
Below are twelve step details from Sex Addicts Anonymous which is a
religiously based organisation. If you have no God you may choose, for
the present, to admit “your belief in the innate goodness of humanity in
mind and spirit” instead. You may find the twelve steps and twelve
traditions useful in understanding where you are and where you could
be. Even after personal counseling some clients find they need the
support of ongoing meetings with others who are fighting their demons.
See www.saa-recovery.org and www.sauk.org . Note that these are
religious based organizations.
** Pleas see also the Addiction to Alcohol and Drugs section of our
website for further help and information.
The first is with regard to the helplessness and feelings of being out of
control often felt by the addict. Often, it is found that the addict, as a
child, had a strict or unloving upbringing where they were subject to
critical judgment and little constructive praise. One or both parents may
have been prudish and judgmental of others, and this may have led a
repressed sexual life for themselves. As a result of this, the addict as a
child may have developed a secret place in their head where they were
free to act as they wished – their own secret, safe place free from control,
repression and judgment.
The second idea develops from this and is that the usual benign
fantasies of adolescence are not left behind. The addict becomes all
powerful in their own heads, but they may have difficulty in forming good
emotional relationships. With puberty this difficulty is reinforced, and
they are often unable to ‘explore their sexuality’ with others of their own
age and development, often taking on the outward prudishness of their
parent while secretly desiring a more active sexual existence, an
existence which becomes fuelled by pornography and the instant
gratification of masturbation.
In adult life the addict may be in a loving and sexual relationship and yet
continue with their addiction. Indeed, under the pressures of day to day
problems within their relationship, they may find themselves turning
more and more to using their sexual addiction of choice. At these times,
in their minds, their partner may take on some of the hated attributes of
the judgmental controlling parent and be seen as the reason the addict
needs to seek sexual gratification elsewhere. If the partner’s perceived
behaviour is interpreted as criticism of the addict’s sexual performance
the addiction assumes a different dimension. The benefit of
masturbation, viewing pornography, casual affairs or the use of
prostitutes to the addict is that they feel they are in control. They choose
the place, the time and the secretiveness of it, and they can decide when
to begin, how long it lasts and when it is to end. The only one who judges
the performance is the addict themselves, and at the time it is always
‘perfect in the performance’, even though it usually leads to regret and
shame thereafter. It always has the element of being done in spite of the
‘retained image’ of the critical parent and is always accompanied by the
fear of discovery by the critical parent, and their reproach of the addict’s
weakness, yet again!