If a person masturbates a few times per week to porn and they have no moral obligations with it and it doesn’t interfere with their lives, then they’re fine. With sex addiction, each addict defines what their acting out looks like and what sexual sobriety means to them. I’ve met hundreds of sex addicts (as clients and in Sex Addicts Anonymous group meetings) and there is no singular unifying theme that connects all addicts – at least not in terms of how they like to act out sexually.
I’ve met other addicts who have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on sex workers, going further and further into debt to fund their compulsive behaviour. I know sex addicts who have knowingly had unprotected sex with people who had life threatening STI’s. For others, sex addiction could look like occasional flare ups of wanting to ‘use’ or ‘act out’ with sex workers only when they’re going through emotionally trying times (breakups, divorces, losing their jobs, death of a friend or family member, etc.). For some people, sex addiction looks like chronic masturbation to porn, where they don’t feel like they can function in society without climaxing at least seven times a day. Sexual addiction, just like any drug addiction, can have a sliding scale of symptoms – ranging in severity. But rather, I’m thinking ‘I have such a tornado of pain inside of myself that I either have to kill myself or compulsively act out to numb the pain.'”Ĭompulsive sexual behaviour is what sex addicts use to numb out their emotions, just like alcoholics often use staying drunk to avoid feeling their underlying difficult emotions. Or, as one SAA (Sex Addicts Anonymous) member once so eloquently put it in a meeting that I attended, “When I act out with sex workers, I’m not thinking to myself ‘Oh boy, this is going to be super fun!’. The way that I see it, sexual addiction is more about shame, isolation, adrenaline, and unworthiness than it is about chasing after sexual experiences.
I’d say the biggest thing that most people don’t understand about sexual addiction is that sex addiction isn’t about sex. So what is sex addiction, and why is it so frequently misunderstood? What Is Sexual Addiction? Some people say dismissive things like, “Well, if that’s what sex addiction is, then every guy I know is a sex addict.” As with many process addictions, sexual addiction is a commonly misunderstood one. Some people think that sex addiction isn’t a ‘real’ addiction. It can take years of spinning our wheels in the mud before we realize that we aren’t making any progress in a certain area of our lives. Don’t Trust Your ThoughtsĪs human beings we have a brilliant capacity for bullshitting ourselves. The more I listened to the stories of the people around me, the more I realized that I was in the right place. Sure, I’ve felt a deeply permeating sense of shame at the core of my being after compulsively acting out sexually.Īnd, if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve probably cumulatively spent weeks of my life watching porn, scanning sex ads, and frequenting massage parlours and sex workers in multiple countries. I mean, sure, I’d slept with countless women who I felt no emotional connection to. These people had real addictions… my problems felt so entry-level by comparison. Even though I was staring down at the floor, I could feel their eyes burning in to me.
The men and women seated around me, legs crossed and arms folded, draped over orange plastic chairs, would see right through me any second now. “My name is Jordan, and I’m a sex addict.”Īs soon as the words left my mouth, I felt like a total impostor.
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