Sexual Addiction
* Some History
* How it Starts
* Some Characteristics of Sex Addiction
* Different Forms of Sex Addiction
* Sex and Love Addiction
* Sex Addiction and the Internet
* What Happens Without Help
* If You Are Serious About Starting to Get Help
* If You Are a Spouse or Partner of a Sex Addict
* Sexual Addiction Self test
At Elijah Counselling we deal with many types of addiction but primarily we specialize in sexual addiction in all its’ forms. Here are some of the more usual forms of sexual addiction:
While at some time in their lives some people who are not sex addicts may engage in one or more of the behaviours listed below, it becomes sexual addiction when the person no longer has the power of choice to stop the behaviour.
• Compulsive masturbation--accompanied by mental images or thoughts about sex, or while viewing sexual images on the TV, computer screen, mobile phone, or while looking at pornographic publications (or even while looking at non-sexual material, such as underwear or swimwear advertisements in junk mail or magazines).
• Anonymous sex with multiple partners, “one night stands” picked up at bars, or sex with strangers in parks or restrooms, or sex in any number of anonymous situations, where sex is the object and no relationship is established with the person.
• Multiple affairs outside a committed relationship, or serial relationships (one after the other).
• Compulsive sex with prostitutes--this can be with female or male prostitutes or transvestites (transvestites are usually men dressed as sexy women) at their place of business or dispatched to your location or picked up on the street.
• Frequent patronizing of topless bars, modelling studios, sexually-oriented tanning salons, adult bookstores or sexual massage establishments.
• Habitual exhibitionism--exposing one’s private body parts to unsuspecting onlookers, either directly (by removing or opening clothing) or indirectly through skimpy or revealing clothing. An example is the man who sits in his car with his fly unzipped and begins masturbating when someone appealing to him walks by.
• Habitual voyeurism--the so-called “peeping Tom,” who finds sexual excitement in forbidden secret looks into other people’s privacy. Examples are: looking into a neighbour’s bathroom or bedroom window in hopes of seeing someone disrobed, peering up shorts or skirts on the sly either directly or using photographic or video equipment to do so, or looking through strategically placed holes in restroom walls.
• Inappropriate sexual touching--touching someone for sexual excitement in a manner that attempts to appear accidental, such as “accidentally” brushing up against another person’s breast or genitals in a crowd.
• Repeated sexual abuse of children--an adult who engages children in sexual activity, or an older child who engages much younger children sexually.
• Episodes of rape--forcing another person to be sexual against his or her will, like the obvious assaultive rape by strangers one hears about in the media, or the more subtle form perpetrated by someone known to the victim.
• Secretive cross-dressing may be part of the behaviour (i.e. men dressing as women). This may be partial as in underwear only where the feel of the material is particularly arousing and provides the fantasy imagery for masturbation
Some History
As a condition, sexual addiction has been around apparently going back as far as we have recorded history. However, it has only been in the last two or three decades that a clearer understanding of it is being reached and inroads begun into effectively treating it.
In the late 1970’s psychologist and researcher, Patrick Carnes, Ph.D., was instrumental in the initial identification and treatment of sexual addiction as a condition. He is also responsible for getting accurate information about it into the hands of professionals, as well as the public through numerous national lectures and educational TV appearances in the USA, and in recent years, by answering questions about it in an AOL chat room on the Internet. Among the books he has written on the subject are: Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction; and Don’t Call It Love: Recovery from Sexual Addiction. Both are excellent sources for learning in more detail about sexual addiction.
Dr. Carnes describes how sexually addicted individuals have become addicted to the neuro-chemical changes that take place in the body during sexual behaviour, much as a drug addict becomes hooked on the effects of smoking “crack” cocaine or “shooting” heroin. This is not to say that expressing ourselves as sexual beings, an intensely pleasurable, life-enhancing experience for the majority of the population, is an inherently addictive reality. As Carnes states, “Contrary to enjoying sex as a self-affirming source of physical pleasure, the sex addict has learned to rely on sex for comfort from pain, for nurturing or relief from stress”, comparable to the alcoholic’s purposeful use of alcohol.
Statistics on sexual addiction are extremely difficult to obtain. Estimates vary widely from 8 to 10% of males to 50+% with much lower figures for women where romantic fantasy addiction is much higher.
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How it Starts
Masturbation can be a normal and natural part of childhood, but for the lonely, abused or rejected child, it can become a regular sedative to medicate the inner pain of loneliness and isolation. Later, someone’s pornography collection discovered at home, or discarded porn magazines retrieved from a dumpster may be found to heighten the feelings of masturbating. A life-long pattern of masturbating to pornographic images is often set into motion. Gradually sex becomes a replacement for other things, a convenient act to turn to in times of any kind of need, from escaping boredom to feeling anxious, to being able to go to sleep at night.
Alternatively, a child may be introduced to sex in inappropriate ways. Instead of the normal sexual experimentation that often takes place out of curiosity between similar aged children at some point growing up, an adult introduces and uses the child for sex instead of another adult for his or her sexual pleasure. On the other hand, the person introducing the child to sexual experiences may be another child who is five or more years older, an older cousin, babysitter, etc., where the sexual experience does not feel mutual. In these experiences, there often is a combination of natural curiosity, newfound pleasurable feelings, and the feelings of fear or shame. Threats made by the older person to gain the child’s cooperation or to prevent the child from telling anyone about it, increases feelings of fear and shame.
A pattern of seeking out similar experiences throughout the person’s life where there is a combination of sexual pleasure and fear or shame is common. When the child grows up he or she may become aroused by sex in high-risk situations that unconsciously generate fear, or in secretive circumstances feed on shame. He or she becomes addicted to seeking these highs.
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Some Characteristics of Sex Addiction
The sex is shameful. The addict feels shame about what he or she is doing, or more accurately, about what he or she has done. Usually this occurs immediately after engaging in sex acts that violate some of the person’s standards. Alternatively, the shame may be denied by rationalizing it as “normal for a man”, or “she wanted it”, or by acting out again right away so the shame is exchanged for pleasure. Thus a married man may feel remorse after having sex with his best friend’s wife, rationalize that his friend wasn’t sexually satisfying her, avoid going to bed with his own wife afterward by staying up and then masturbating while watching a movie on the sex channel.
The sex is secret. As the disease progresses the sex addict more and more comes to live a double life--perhaps well known, respected and admired in his visible life but secretly engaging regularly in sexual acts that would be shocking to those who know and love him. So a sexually addicted minister could be revered on Sunday morning for preaching on the sinfulness of adultery and fornication and then engage in those behaviours himself at a brothel or adult bookstore on Monday afternoon, having told the church staff or his family a lie about his whereabouts. A gay man might tell his relationship partner that he is going to visit a friend but goes to a park to ‘cruise’ for anonymous sex instead.
The sexual behaviour is abusive. It violates someone else’s choice or exceeds their understanding. For example, a man who manipulates or coerces his date into being sexual with him, or the woman in a partially unbuttoned blouse that bends down toward an unsuspecting male co-worker and “accidentally” exposes her whole breast. Other examples are the man who seeks out crowded shopping centres so he can meander among the throng to “cop a feel”, or men and women who manipulate the trust of children and abuse their power over them by tricking them into performing sexual acts with them. The teacher who becomes sexual with a student, or the neighbour who hires a boy to mow the lawn and then invites the child inside and lures him into sex exemplifies this. The sex may also be abusive to the sex addict, such as masturbating to the point of physical injury or cutting or pinching oneself for sexual arousal.
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Different Forms of Sex Addiction
Sexual addiction can take many different forms. The addict may be addicted primarily to a particular behaviour, such as sex with a prostitute, but generally uses a variety of sexual behaviours. For example, consider the salesperson that might watch the dancers at a topless bar over a business lunch, or have sex with a prostitute from an escort service in his hotel room one night while on a business trip. Once home, have sex with the spouse while fantasizing about the sexual massage he got last month, and then masturbate while viewing pornographic images on the Internet at one a.m. two days later. The list of the forms of sexual addiction can be exhaustive, and increases with the addicts’ need to find new ways of finding sexual thrills.
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Sex and Love Addiction
A distinction exists between sex addiction and love addiction. The latter has to do with an addictive pattern of establishing love relationships with specific people, where the person and the relationship, as well as sex with the person, are all part of the appeal to the addict. While these same elements are normal in a healthy love relationship, sex and love addicts can never find fulfilment and permanence in any of the love relationships they begin. Instead, they keep seeking satisfaction in another relationship, only to find it empty, demanding, or anxiety provoking.
Sex and love addicts may have several love relationships with different people going on at the same time, or they may pass serially from one to the next, leaving each when the initial “love high” wears off. Or they may have a major love relationship, such as a marriage, complete with home, children and other signs of permanence, but keep returning periodically to one or more former relationships, or create secret relationships with new people.
Sex addiction, by contrast, usually is a preoccupation with sexual arousal and sexual release which often has little to do with who the person is and requires no relationship. For the sex addict, he or she gets the charge from the ‘image’. The charge could come from the stranger spotted in a car or on a street corner, from stimulating body parts, an erotic picture, or the addict’s own fantasy.
Then there are many who exhibit the characteristics of both a sex addict and a sex and love addict. Regardless of how it manifests, the addiction progresses in much the same way, always leaving a trail of problems and losses. Similarly, the solution to whatever form the addiction takes, and the work required to change the behaviour is quite similar.
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Sex Addiction and the Internet
The Internet has become the newest, most rapidly growing form of sexual acting out for many sex addicts today. Many sex addicts have added computer sex to their repertoire, as it fills a need for “more, easier, and better.” For the cybersex addict, increasing amounts of time are spent “surfing”, downloading, creating files, masturbating, reading information posted on sexual bulletin boards, exchanging sexual information live with others in sexual chat rooms or via web cameras, or directing their own live sex shows on interactive sites. In short, looking for what is new and better than last time.
The Internet just happens to provide many of the things sex addicts seek, all in one place: isolation, secrecy, fantasy material, endless variety, around-the-clock availability, instant accessibility, and a rapid means of returning, at low or no cost. (The cost factor can change, however, if the sex addict keeps charging pay-for-view services on the internet, such as live interaction with performers who follow the customer’s instructions for engaging in all kinds of prescribed sex acts that the customer can watch and masturbate to).
Since one of the characteristics of sexual addiction is that it is progressive (i.e. that is, the habitual behaviours progressively become more frequent, varied, and extreme, with more frequent and extreme consequences) sex addicts on the Internet often experience a rapid progression of their addiction. The new sexual thrills lead to spending huge amounts of time, moving more quickly into more extreme behaviours, taking greater risks, and more frequently caught. Thus, internet sex is the “crack cocaine” of sex addiction. Actually, the accelerated progression of the sex addict’s problem via the internet can turn into a blessing, since it can move the addict into the consequences, and hence recovery, more quickly than otherwise might be the case.
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What Happens Without Help
The likely outcome of untreated sexual addiction is the progression to more frequent and/or extreme acting out behaviour. It rarely gets better on its’ own although sometimes the addiction seems to be under control. This is common, however the addict is merely engaging in one of the common traits of the disease process in which he/she switches from sexual release to the control of it. This phase is sometimes associated with switching addictions. For example work addiction or alcoholism may increase to compensate for the reduced gratification achieved through sexual acting out. What usually happens however is the control phase inevitably breaks down over time, whether in an hour, a week, a month or a year or five years, and the addict is back in the same behaviour pattern despite promising themselves and/or others never to do it again.
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If You Are Serious about Starting to Get Help
If you have related to the information presented in the foregoing and would like to know about professional help available, click Treatment Options. Alternatively, if you would like to check out for yourself if you fit some of the criteria of sex addiction, click Self Test. If you would like more information about our recovery program click In Sight. If you would like to know about other recovery programs for sex addicts that may be available, click here. You will probably find answers to your questions by reading these sections carefully. If you still have a question after a thorough search around our site, you may email us or call us on (03) 9779 3516 in Vermont, Melbourne.
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If You Are a Spouse or Partner of a Sex Addict
If you are in relationship with someone you think is sexually addicted, your efforts to help may be actually adding to the problem rather than achieving the results you desire. Sex addicts usually wind up in relationships with partners who unconsciously fit right into the addictive patterns. Some examples are, the sex addict keeps on returning repeatedly to the sexually addictive behaviours, and the partner accepts what is going on. The partner overlooks clues that would suggest something is wrong. The partner can threaten to leave but does not (or leaves and returns when the addict promises to change, only to learn later that the addict did not stop). The partner takes responsibility for trying to control the addict’s behaviour. None of these strategies work, and actually add to the problem.
What the partner has to realize is that she or he needs help too in order to get out of her or his own addictive habits. The partner will need to learn how to stop enabling the sex addict and how to focus on them self, and how to take stands or draw boundaries that actually work. If you would like to learn more about the process partner’s experience, and what to do about the situation, click Co-sex Addiction or Co-dependency. You will probably find answers to your questions by reading these sections carefully. If you still have a question after a thorough search around our site, you may email us or call us at (03) 9779 3516 in Vermont, Melbourne.