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  • 10 Signs You’re a Sex Addict

    By Brian Whitney

    Reposted from an article published by www.thefix.com in 02/10/15

    Is sex starting to become a real problem for you?

    Take a look at our list for some warning signs you might want to look out for.

    So, you like to have sex. Good for you. Sex is the best. But lately there have been some problems in your life because of your sexual habits. Maybe you really love your wife, but she dumped you after catching you having sex with the babysitter. Perhaps, you were doing great at your job, but you got fired after getting caught in your office beating off to porn. Maybe you’re starting to wonder if you have some sort of a problem. Or maybe, like me, you knew you had a problem all along, and thought the most important thing was to not let anyone ever find out.

    It took me a long time to admit I was a sex addict. It isn’t an easy thing to do. I could deal with being a playboy, a hedonist, maybe even a freak, but a sex addict? Not me. It took about 20 years, two divorces, the loss of jobs and homes before I admitted it.

    When I was in the process of getting my second divorce, I was seeing a therapist. He was cool enough. He was funny. We got each other on a certain level, which sometimes is all you can ask for when you pay someone to talk to you about your problems.

    I got along with him well enough that I decided to do something new: I was going to be honest. This time I wasn’t going to pay someone to sit there and listen to me lie.

    I told him about how I was having affairs, how I couldn’t stop. How everything I did was designed to either get me laid or indulge my kinks, and my kinks were getting more extreme by the day. No matter what went on in my life, no matter how fucked up it got, no matter what I lost it didn’t matter; I couldn’t, or maybe wouldn’t, stop. The most important thing to me in the world, by far, was sex and all the adrenaline and anxiety that came with it.

    I told him what had been going on. First, I lost my job because I was having affairs with so many people at work. Then, my wife tossed me out of the house because I was screwing around with so many people at places outside of work. I wound up living with a woman that I couldn’t stand, but that would do anything I wanted sexually, no matter how deviant my demands were—I was cheating on her, too.

    When I got done relating what my wreck of a life was all about, he looked at me and said, “Well the thing is, most guys would want to do what you do. I mean, what guy wouldn’t?” My misery was this guy’s fantasy—it wasn’t the first time.

    That is the thing about sex. If you’re getting a lot of it, you don’t have a problem, right?  I mean seriously, you’re getting laid all the time and complaining about it?

    So many people get all worked up about the sex addict thing. “How can anyone be addicted to sex?” Don’t get hooked on semantics. Who cares what you call your problem? I don’t. Call it sexual compulsion if it makes you feel better. By acting out with sex, you are dosing your brain with dopamine and other chemicals that excite, distract, and otherwise cover up the underlying distress or emptiness that is making you suffer.

    Below is a list of 10 signs that could mean you are a sex addict. I did all 10 of the things on this list in all of my relationships. I was often accused by women of being a selfish, lying asshole, or a total freak, and I was both of those things, but no one ever asked me if I might actually have a problem.

    I write this list as a heterosexual man, though, this can also apply to women and LGBT individuals.

    If you have none of the things on the list, good job. Go screw with impunity. If you have between one and three of these, check yourself and figure out what is going on, if you have more than three, you need to find someone to talk to, and you should probably do it soon.

    You live a double life

    This one is tricky. Maybe you just cheat all the time, and lie about where you are, and how you spend your money. That, in itself, doesn’t make you an addict. But, if you have sexual secrets that you refuse to share with anyone, or if somehow you figure out ways to spend Christmas with two different women (done it) then something is way, way off. Sex and your sexual proclivities are private, but if your whole life is going to go down the tubes if people know what you are REALLY up to, and you have to lie to everyone constantly just to stay afloat, then you have at least the beginnings of a problem.

    You exploit others for sex

    You’re probably a good guy. You are kind to kids and animals, you cried when you watched The Lion King. When your girlfriend talks about her feelings you listen—I mean you really do.

    But when it comes to sex, you could care less about people. They are just objects to use to get off, or toys to play with. You don’t care what happens to them when you are done with them, and you will do anything to get them to do what you want.

    Your life is constantly in crisis

    Because sex is your number one priority, everything else is always totally messed up. When you are at work, you spend the majority of your time trying to get your boss to fuck you, once you succeed, you try to get that cute temp to meet you out for drinks. Once you start banging her, you try for the woman in the cubicle across from yours.

    If you manage to stay employed, you are constantly broke, and you get two credit cards your wife doesn’t know about so you can keep up the appearances you need to with your girlfriends.

    Everything from school, to work, to money, is secondary to feeding your addiction.

    You’re preoccupied with sex

    I don’t mean this in a “Wow, look at that chick’s ass!” kind of way. I mean, you can’t concentrate on anything for more than 10 minutes without going back into your place of fantasy. Or if you aren’t fantasizing, you are planning your next move. And if you aren’t planning your next move, you are having sex. Which then makes you feel ashamed, so to combat that you go right back into fantasy.

    You have sex without regard to potential consequences

    You’re out of control. Your wife is upstairs and you are banging her best friend on the couch. It isn’t enough to have sex with a co-worker; you have to do it on your boss’s desk. You just spent your mortgage payment at the strip club, or you just gave your credit card number to your dominatrix.

    If you are doing things that are going to screw you over in the future, and you KNOW they are going to screw you over in the future, then your sex life has crossed the line and is now officially a problem.

    Your kink needs to be fed more and more

    Some people are into some odd stuff, some aren’t. There is a myriad of different things that people do to get off with, and whether or not you like to be tied up, or walk your girlfriend on a leash isn’t the issue. What is the issue, is if the kink you have becomes your whole scene, and you need to go deeper and deeper into the world to get off? What can start off as fun, can wind up as something deeply destructive down the road.

    You masturbate all the time

    And I do mean all the time. You do it in the morning, you do it on your lunch break, and you do it before you go to sleep. I would sometimes even masturbate right after sex—with my partner passed out next to me. It’s just a sign that there are some issues, not a judgment. Do what you do. But if you have some of these other signs and you are beating off 20 to 30 times a week, then you’re a sex addict.

    Your relationships are always messed up

    The key word here is “always.” I always knew my relationships would end because I did something insane related to sex. It was just a matter of time before I would do something totally off the charts, get caught at it, and have to move on. It wasn’t like I learned a lesson. It was a lifestyle. This isn’t “Oh, I got caught cheating and my girlfriend dumped me.” It is that you are always cheating; you know you’re going to get caught, and you can’t stop.

    You feel powerless

    You can’t stop acting out. You try to stop, but you lose everything. Little by little, you lose everything. You keep on going until it’s all gone, until you are lying in a corner in the fetal position, until you feel like dying. Try not to get here. Go talk to someone you trust.

    You hate yourself

    Who knows, you could always be a sociopath. But, if you aren’t, and you are going through life hurting other people and destroying yourself, you are going to start disliking yourself quite a bit. I know I did. And the worst part—I was so sure, so entirely sure, that if I told anyone who I was, and the things that I did, they would hate me, too.

    If after reading this you think you might be a sex addict, talk to someone you trust. If you don’t have someone you trust, talk to a professional. It isn’t easy to get help, unless you live in an urban area, you aren’t going to find someone that has any sort of specialization in it. But that isn’t a reason, or an excuse, to keep acting this way.

    Brian Whitney is an author, a ghostwriter, and a frequent contributor to theFix.com. His book Raping the Gods was published in the Spring of 2015.

     

  • Is boredom a gateway to relapse?

    manhattan_bridge_post_versionIt’s late in the day on a Saturday. Time slows down. Nothing seems interesting on TV, just reruns of Criminal Minds, another PGA tournament with a splash of MMA Kickboxing. There is a feeling of yearning, but for what? This is boredom. We tell ourselves that we are bored! But what exactly does this mean to us?

    One meaning we give to our boredom is that the TV show we are watching is not interesting. Another meaning might be that the classes we are taking are not teaching what we need to know. Or we wish we lived in a condo instead of this house in the suburbs that needs the lawn to be mowed. In other words, we look to something external to blame. Sound familiar? Boredom is not trivial. It is out of boredom that some people turn to drugs, gambling, over-eating, sex and alcohol abuse.

    Boredom, when chronic, is very stressful and has serious consequences for an addict. For example, we might be waiting for a response from a job interview. The time it takes seems eternally long. Feelings of irritability and anxiety set in. This is where we start to feel stressed. It seems as though the solution is to blame the HR department of this company (that we are very interested in working for), for their ineptitude. Is anger and resentment lurking around the corner?

    Another example might be that boredom would cause someone to lose interest while driving and getting injured because of the lack of attention. How many times have you been driving, become bored with the road and switch into some sort of fantasy, losing your focus on the road and bang! The car in front of you is at a dead stop. My guess is that a good number of traffic accidents are caused this way.

    We are blaming the boredom on something external, like the TV, the HR department or the jerk in the car in front of you. Perhaps it is not. Perhaps boredom is internal in nature. Psychological scientist John Eastwood of York University (Ontario, Canada) and colleagues at the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo wanted to create a precise definition of boredom, one that can be applied across a variety of theoretical frameworks. Their article, was published in Perspectives on Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, and the website, ScienceDaily, quotes from the article:

    “Drawing from research across many areas of psychological science and neuroscience, John Eastwood and his colleague[s] define boredom as an aversive state of wanting, but being unable, to engage in satisfying activity.”

    This wanting has a dangerous similarity to the craving of substances experienced by addicts during the withdrawal stage. In other words, if a recovering addict finds themselves bored, they are on the very slippery slope of wanting. Here are some additional analogies:

    • Addicts have difficulty paying attention to their internal thoughts and feelings. They have difficulty focusing on the external or environmental information required for participating in a satisfying activity. Eastman uses these characteristics to define boredom
    • Some addicts are aware of the fact that they have difficulty paying attention. Yes, this is another characteristic of boredom.
    • Addicts tend to blame and/or believe that the environment is responsible for their aversive state. Again, this is a characteristic of a person entrenched in boredom.

    The point is that research indicates that there is a relationship between boredom and lack of attention to what is happening inside and outside of ourselves. But, there is no concrete research linking boredom to addiction or relapse. However, it may be worthwhile to refocus our attention to what we are thinking, feeling and/or to the stimuli in the environment instead of simply chalking it up to being bored. Maybe we can focus by completing 90 meetings in 90 days.

    There is also the concept of embracing boredom. As the Buddhists put it; boredom is a form of impatience. Therefore patience is an antidote. There is nothing that is intrinsically boring. There are examples of prisoners of war, sitting in complete isolation, who are able to focus their minds and find interesting things to prevent boredom. Does this sound like Step Eleven?

    And then we can think about what they say about the weather in Minneapolis:

    Wait, in five minutes things will change.