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.