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Sex addiction means you repeatedly participate in sexual activity that causes detrimental effects on your relationships, job, and self-esteem. It can also increase one’s risk of unplanned pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases. Anyone can have a sex addiction, regardless of gender, sexuality, or relationship status. 

But do you know what is right about this addiction? Sex addiction treatment is achievable. Yes, a dedicated therapist can help individuals understand and manage their sexual compulsions. Some individuals also benefit from medication and support groups. If you are seeking help for sexual addiction, you can contact or visit SEXTREATMENT.net. However, we have compiled all the necessary information to help you overcome this problematic sexual addiction.

A successful sexual addiction recovery program will include at least a few of the following components:

If you’re struggling with sexual addiction, you may have been trying to fill a void inside of you with sex. Sex was never going to fill that void because sex is only physical. It doesn’t make you feel whole. That’s where the real problem lies.

When you are addicted to something, you tend to hold onto the past and think about everything you did wrong. But if you really want sex addiction treatment, you must let go of those old feelings and move forward.

You are not perfect; thus, you must forgive yourself for being human. You’ve done some bad things. And you’ll probably continue to do them. But you don’t need to beat yourself up over them.

Sexuality is a beautiful thing. It should be celebrated. There are many ways to express sexuality without getting caught up in addictive behaviors. You can masturbate, engage in oral sex, use toys, watch porn, read erotica, or just enjoy intimacy with your partner.

It’s hard to change anything about yourself if you don’t know who you are. So before you try to change anything about yourself, you need to figure out who you are. What makes you happy? What are your values? What do you believe in? Who are your friends? How do you spend your time? These are all questions you need to answer before changing anything about yourself or making an appointment for sexual addiction recovery.

Your environment influences everything you do. If you hang around people constantly doing drugs, watching porn, and drinking alcohol, you’re likely to follow their lead. So it’s essential to surround yourself with people whose lives are free from sexual addictions. Find people who are positive role models for you.

Note: Regardless of all the things discussed above, if you are unable to stop yourself, you can contact us. At SEXTREATMENT.net, we will provide a complete solution. Making a commitment to a sex addiction recovery program requires that you make a choice about how to view your future. You can choose a better life, but it takes commitment and hard work.

The DSM-5 (the diagnostic bible of the therapeutic community) states that there are two conditions necessary for the diagnosis of a sexual masochism “disorder” to be present.  

1. The individual experiences sexual arousal in response to fantasies urges or behavior involving extreme pain, humiliation, bondage, or torture. 
2. The person experiences DISTRESS or DYSFUNCTION in significant areas of his life because of these sexual fantasies, urges, or behaviors. 

Light “BDSM” or “S&M” is quite common among people who enjoy active, related sex lives.  Forms of masochism between consulting adults are NOT classified as “disorders” by the DSM-5.  A diagnosis of a problematic occurrence of persistent and unrelenting fantasies, urges, or behaviors involving pain, suffering or humiliation ONLY occurs when the following criteria are met: 

• “Recurrent intense fantasies urges or behaviors involving real acts of receiving extreme physical pain, torture, or humiliation for sexual arousal. 
• Present for at least six months. 
• Results in significant impairment or DISTRESS in daily life (relationships, occupational, or social functioning).” 

If the person is not experiencing anxiety, guilt, shame, or other negative feelings related to his/her masochistic sexual desire it is considered a sexual “interest” (KINK), NOT a disorder. 

Sexual Masochism and the BDSM Subculture 

People who present with sexual masochism have an erotic interest in power discrepancy.  The term for these types of relationships is Bondage Discipline Sadism and Masochism (BDSM).  Sexual masochists usually prefer to play the submissive (bottom) role, and very often play different roles with different partners.  BDSM is still marginalized and shamed, although, in recent years, practitioners of BDSM have become more accepted as being in a subculture, or alternative lifestyle choice, and KINK people are NOT considered as sexual “deviants”. 

Part of sex addiction treatment may involve the exploration of if, and how, the person’s “kink” could be integrated into an overall healthy lifestyle. 

Within the BDSM subculture, professionals, called dominatrixes, are hired to physically and verbally abuse paying male clients with sexually masochistic fantasies and desires.  A dominatrix will rarely have intercourse with her client but instead uses control and humiliation to enable the client to achieve sexual satisfaction.  An experience with a dominatrix may result in the person achieving a therapeutic response – a psychological revitalization through pain and humiliation, mastery over past trauma, and may find alternatives to impotence or sexual repression. 

Prevalence of Sexual Masochism 

Fantasies related to sexual masochism are fairly common.  Many, if not most, sexually active adults enjoy being bitten or scratched during consensual sexual activity. Only a small percentage of men with sexually masochistic fantasies or urges go to see a therapist.  Of those, even a smaller percentage report a desire to stop.  Besides distress or dysfunction, there is no way to differentiate pathological masochistic fantasies from non-pathological fantasies, urges, or behaviors. Because there is such shame and stigma about what people perceive to be their “deviant” fantasies, people who are distressed about these behaviors are unlikely to seek help.

Thirty years ago, Patrick Carnes, Ph.D. published the seminal book “Out of the Shadows – Understanding Sex Addiction”.  

This is the book that literally put the term “sex addiction” on the map.  Since then, a veritable cottage industry has grown up around “sex addiction treatment”.  But the term “sex addiction” has been challenged and there’s still controversy brewing about whether sex can be addictive.  The ongoing controversy also involves nomenclature – Is it “sex addiction”, “compulsive sexual behavior”, out-of-control sexual behavior”, or what?  Is it “hypersexuality”, “Don Juanism”, is it an “impulsive control disorder” a compulsion, an addiction? A “sexual behavior problem”? What’s the difference? 

Or is it just men behaving badly? “Boys will be boys”. 

Some theorists/writers content that “sex addiction” is a label – a stigmatizing label that puts a moral judgment on any sexual behavior that doesn’t conform to heteronormative standards, of sex somehow only being “healthy” in a context of a long-term (heterosexual) monogamous pair-bonding.  The cultural value system in industrialized societies vies for: a balanced, stable lifestyle, with only relational sex being deemed “healthy”. 

Sex addiction therapy tries to promote a “balanced lifestyle”.  But isn’t that a moralist value?  One wonders what the world would be like if the “obsessive”, lifestyle of people like Mother Theresa, Paul Gaugin, Mapplethorpe, Samuel Coleridge, and James Joyce had put a damper on their incredible achievements in human civilization. 

Underlying the contemporary discourse on “sexual addiction recovery” is an implied set of conservative values.  I was trained in sex addiction treatment by Patrick Carnes.  At the time I had been researching, writing, and presenting about healthy BDSM.  When I asked him what he thought, he categorically said that BDSM was “sick” — an addiction that required “treatment. 

These are all socio-cultural values and should be identified as such and not couched in the language of “healthy” recovery. 

Typical sex addiction therapists (CSATs) and 12-step sexual recovery programs zero in on stopping sexual behaviors and avoiding “triggers”.  I disagree with this approach.  The message is “Avoid anything sexual” “Avoid anything that might be arousing.” and “Don’t have sex for the first six months of your sexual addiction recovery”.  My model helps clients face and manage sexual stimuli.  I try to guide my clients toward having a thriving sexual life. 

Nobody ever learned anything about themselves through avoidance. CSATs and sex 12-step programs encourage people to be erotically avoidant.  Avoidance is never a sustainable outcome.  I love chocolate.  The more I think about not having chocolate, the more chocolate I eat. 

Being erotically avoidant makes for a life of deprivation.  It’s like putting yourself on an all-beansprouts diet.  How long can that be sustained?  Isn’t it a more helpful metaphor to visualize your erotic life as being at a delicious banquette where you can MINDFULLY and non-compulsively enjoy the many different tastes and smells of the food?  Once you’re in a sex-positive sexual recovery process, and you learn, in therapy, to identify, recognize and accept your own “erotic template”, you can enjoy and savor the miracle of owning your own sexuality. 

Sex addiction is about many things.  It’s a complex phenomenon that defies understanding from any one perspective. It has biological, chemical, neurological, psychological, medical, emotional, sociopolitical, economic and spiritual underpinnings. 

What is addiction, really? Is it not a sign – a signal – a symptom — of emotional distress?  Addiction is a language that must be decoded.  It is a plight that must be understood.  It is an ill-fated struggle to alleviate misery through sexual experiences or substance use. Addiction is any persistent behavior in which a person feels compelled to persist in regardless of its negative impact on his life and the life of others. 

Sex addicts are individuals who value their relationships, self-esteem, and personal integrity less than they value the short-term gratification of their needs in the moment. 

For the sex addict, sexual excitement has the power to make the painful tolerable. It is a tonic for unsettling feelings of emptiness; a prescription for the treatment of boredom and a sense of inadequacy.  Boredom is rooted in a fundamental disconnect from the self. When we have nothing to occupy our minds, painful memories, vexing anxieties, “dis-ease” result in the spiritual stupor we call boredom.  Boredom is by far the least tolerable mental state for the sex addict. 

Anxiety, boredom, and “ennui” are immediately gone with sexual acting out, only to be replaced by nagging and persistent feelings of shame, guilt and remorse. 

Buddhist cosmology, as part of the wheel of life, depicts the existence of “hungry ghosts”.  These are beings with tiny necks, tiny mouths and extended, large bellies.  This is the domain of addiction – always looking for something outside of oneself to satisfy an insatiable longing for contentment and fulfillment. Sex addicts spend their time in life as hungry ghosts. The frustration inherent in addiction is about never being able to get enough of what “almost’ works. 

But the object – the substance or the sexual experience – that we look towards doesn’t address our deeper needs. Addicts don’t really know what they need – until they enter a process of sex addiction recovery. 

Sex addiction treatment needs to address what relief the sex addict hopes to find in his sexual behaviors.  He uses compulsive sexual behaviors as a strategy to achieve “homeostats” – or a sense of (fraudulent) inner balance and calm. 

Sex addiction really has nothing to do with sex. Sex addiction treatment that only focuses on eliminating unwanted sexual behaviors is, in my opinion, superficial and doesn’t address the underlying dynamics that fuel compulsion.  The actual sexual acting out is like the periscope on a submarine.  If you only address the cracks in the periscope, you overlook that there may be serious problems with the submarine. 

Compulsive sexual behavior (also known as sex addiction) is an unhealthy preoccupation with sexual thoughts, fantasies, urges, and behaviors. You experience these behaviors as difficult to control, you experience distress about them, and/or they negatively impact your ability to function in significant areas of your life (in your intimate relationships or your work/school performance). 

Activities that are enjoyable for some people (masturbation, cybersex, occasional viewing of pornography, multiple sex partners, BDSM activities) become a major focus in the lives of sex addicts. They’re experienced as out of your control and are disruptive and harmful to yourself and others. They may be considered compulsive sexual behaviors. 

Sex addiction takes an enormous toll on your self-esteem, self-respect, significant relationships, and career/achievements. Hobbies/activities that you used to enjoy somehow fall by the wayside. Duplicity in your primary relationship affects your ability to build and sustain a satisfying long-term relationship with an intimate partner. Continued sexual acting out may change the landscape of your “arousal template” so that only deviant sex turns you on. You may not be as available to your children as you would like to be. Some sex addicts compulsively spend large sums of money on paid porn sites, professional dominatrixes, or paid escorts—money that could be spent on the upkeep and well-being of your family.  Certain sexual behaviors are illegal (such as exhibitionism or pedophilia) and may result in problems with the law. 

When to Get Help 

Indications that you may be suffering from compulsive sexual behaviors (CSB) include: 

• You have continuous and intense sexual urges, thoughts, fantasies, and behaviors that take up a disproportionate amount of your time and that you experience as being out of your control. 
• You feel compelled to engage in certain sexual behaviors which temporarily provide relief but about which you feel guilt/shame/regret. 

• You’ve been unsuccessful in stopping or curtailing problematic sexual behaviors despite significant negative consequences. 
• You “self-medicate” unwanted negative internal experiences such as depression, anxiety, or loneliness with compulsive sexual behaviors. 
• It’s difficult for you to establish and maintain stable, satisfying relationships. 

Compulsive sexual behaviors tend to escalate over time, so try to seek help when you ask yourself these questions: 

• Can you manage your sexual urges and impulses? 

• Are you distressed about your sexual fantasies and behaviors? 
• Is your sexual behavior hurting yourself or your relationships? 
• Are you ashamed of your sexual fantasies and behaviors? Do you often think “What if they found out?” 

There is hope

Especially since the advent of the Internet only 30 years ago, hundreds of thousands of individuals have sought and received help to get free from compulsive sexual behaviors. You are not alone.

You may be feeling “taken over” by sexual acting out. Perhaps you feel that sex is your master rather than your slave. Rather than enjoying a robust sex life –one that contributes to your overall sense of well-being, divorced from secrecy and shame and in-line with your core values, you feel imprisoned by behaviors that ultimately damage your self-worth and self-respect. Isn’t that why you came to treatment in the first place?

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Introduction

I am writing this blog for people whose sexual behaviors, thoughts and fantasies have run amok to the point where they’ve started to contradict their values and undermine the achievement of their personal goals like academic achievement, job security, close relationships, physical and emotional health, intimate sexuality with a partner, spending time with children, erosion of interest in hobbies and recreation or religious/spiritual involvement. The most devastating consequence of sex addiction may very well be the impact on the person’s inner life – shame, loss of self-esteem, loss of self-respect, loneliness, etc.

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