I’ve known a number of sex addicts—some from meetings and some I’ve met elsewhere. The sex really gets in the way of their lives. All they think about is sex.
One guy masturbated all day long. He cock got raw. Several spent every waking hour looking at porn. Or maybe not every, but hours and hours. They avoided their wives and families and jobs. They preferred porn to anything else. Others, usually women, are love addicts. They are constantly falling in love and they will do anything to keep their lover happy—always at the expense of themselves.
Both men and women will haunt the bars. They are often alcoholics. But they’ll go home with whoever will take them at the end of the night. Sometimes they’ll have three or four different men in a day. Guys ogle the women quite openly and will try to pick them up.
Another type goes for affairs. One guy I knew had three affairs going at once. He’d be juggling his schedule like a mad man, making fifteen minutes for her here, on the way to the store and back. Some will engage in online affairs—falling in love over and over, a different woman every month, seeking some magic pill to make them feel better.
Almost all sex and love addicts have very low self esteem. They feel deeply unhappy about themselves. The don’t value themselves. They think they are scum, and so they run around having sex to make them feel powerful and desirable. It’s very seductive.
What, in theory, they all want is a stable relationship with one person, where they can be totally open and honest and thus achieve true intimacy. The goal is not to be hiding and sneaking and cheating on your spouse—cheating not by sex, but by intimacy. When you see someone else, you are stealing your soul from your spouse.
It is very difficult for these people to stop. They almost never feel ok about themselves, and that shame and self-despising makes it hard for them to trust anyone could really love them. I don’t think most people have any sympathy for sex or love addicts. First, it’s hard to believe it’s anything more than pure self-indulgence. Second, they don’t understand how the sex or love addict can’t control themselves. Third, it’s hard to imagine that a lack of self-worth and an inability to trust people or to be intimate would lead to this kind of behavior. It’s kind of like mental illness. You can’t be inside someone else’s head, so you can’t know what it’s like. I also think there’s an element of jealousy, because people imagine the sex addict running around getting all kinds of sex and that seems like something to admire. Secretly.
It’s a condition that starts early in life, usually bred by some kind of physical or emotional abuse. What ever it is, it makes the child feel like a failure as a human being. This persists throughout life and I suspect many people can control it, until some other stressor happens, and they start acting out these destructive behaviors.
I don’t think it’s something people should be skeptical about. Probably there are people saying, “I can’t help myself. I’m a sex addict,” as if that gives them permission to continue acting out. I believe a few people do this, especially when their spouse is a love addict, who will put up with anything to have hubby around. Or husband puts up with a wife acting out, and sometimes even helps her act out, like a pimp.
Most are miserable. They may not deserve your sympathy, but maybe they deserve understanding. They are accountable for their actions and it is a choice to engage in this behavior, but it is not something they would choose if they thought they had any other option, I don’t believe.
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