Sex Addiction 101
“Sex Addiction Among Women Real and Growing”
Now that I have your attention, I’d like to say that I don’t believe that headline, which recently appeared online. At least I don’t believe that sex addiction among any group is “growing.” I do believe, however, that some women — and some men – are genuinely addicted to sex.
First, let’s address sexual addiction and then, I’ll end by saying why I don’t think the incidence of this addiction is “growing.” The latter is a somewhat less intriguing topic and if I wrote it about it first, you might stop reading now.
According to one description:
“Insatiable sexual hunger is not really a desire — an act of will — but rather a desperate need, a compulsion that is experienced as a craving. The need is pursued like a drug. Although sex addicts are enslaved to sex, it is far from their goal. Rather, the pursuit of sex is in service of a different goal — to dispel feelings of inadequacy, depression, anxiety, rage or other feelings that the sex addict experiences as unbearable.
“Like a drug addict or alcoholic, the sex addict relentlessly seeks satisfaction from an external source to palliate an internal pain. Modern technology, such as the internet, provides a new external source that sex addicts use in their quest for sex partners.”
Drugs, alcohol, food, and sexual activity all stimulate the dopamine receptors in the brain — the sites of memory and, more to the point, pleasure. The problem is that these receptors are insatiable little tykes. The more pleasure they get, the more they want. Leave them alone for a while and they’ll calm down, but stimulate the heck out of them and their response is, “I want more, much more, and I want it now.”
This poses an obvious problem for the possessor of these dopamine receptors
To cope with depression and anxiety, we humans have our techniques: those that we consider wholesome or relatively harmless such as tennis, hiking, playing Chopin on the piano for 12 consecutive hours, or reading a multitude of books aren’t deemed addictions. They’re called, neutrally, “coping mechanisms,” or, more positively, “hobbies,” or, even admiringly, “passions.”
WHEN COPING MECHANISMS TURN TO ADDICTIONS
By contrast, when people consume copious quantities of liquor, food, or drugs to numb their feelings of despair, fear, anxiety, and loneliness, these responses are called addictions. And for those of us who have powerful sex drives on an average day, at times of increased despondency, there’s nothing quite as distracting as a good — or better still, a great — orgasm.
As you’ve doubtless noticed, when you’re in the throes of sexual passion, you’re unlikely to become immersed in thoughts about making that next mortgage payment, getting into college, or whether Romney or Obama will be president in 2014. All those concerns recede into nothingness. During sex all that matters is the intensity of the exquisite ecstasy you’re feeling and giving, and the glorious burst of climax.
Alas, if you’re a sex addict, you don’t settle into a state of blissed-out exhaustion afterward. No such luck. Edward Mendelson, literary critic and editor of W.H. Auden’s works, analyzed the post-orgasmic melancholia described in the 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, in his book, The Things That Matter: What Seven Classic Novels Have To Say About the Stages of Life, as follows:
Charlotte Brontë understood that an unequal sexual relation between adults is necessarily an unloving one; she also seems to have sensed that sex is experienced differently—that is, produces different physical and emotional feelings—in unloving relations and loving ones. … Post coitum homo tristis —“After sex the human is sad”—is far truer about unloving relations than loving ones; if the union between two partners is limited to the sexual act, then loneliness inevitably follows it.
And that’s exactly the vortex of dejection and despair that envelop the psyche of the helpless sex addict. No sooner satisfied than empty. It’s the Chinese take-out syndrome of loveless sex. And sexual addiction is by definition loveless because it allows no time for love to develop. It allows no time for anything to develop except the bare essentials necessary for sexual intercourse.
It might appear that two sex addicts together would form the ideal couple. What could possibly go wrong? Only everything. Such erotic duos generate emotional conflagrations so intense that the Chicago fire of 1871, which killed at least 200, appears, by comparison, as trifling as the flicker of a single kitchen match. Unions of sex addicts are psychological tinderboxes destined to consume them in mutually assured destructive infernos. They’re fated to part, lest their lives descend into nothing beyond the simultaneously tantalizing and terrifying bonfires they never fail to ignite in each other, regardless of age. Hence such titles as Les Liaisons Dangereuses and Fatal Attraction.
The chase and the conquest are part of the addiction: while the pursuit is hot, the addict is distracted from cares and woes. But once the conquest climaxes in orgasm, the chase begins anew. The sexual addict will attach to anyone, from the postman to the butcher to the physician, to his or her nurse, to a friend, to anyone with the necessary physical equipment. If the answer is no (which it rarely is, because sex addicts invariably possess a bat-like radar for identifying willing accomplices) the addict moves on to greener pastures in search of — to mix a metaphor — fresh meat.
THEY’RE NOT JUST LURKING IN DARK ALLEYWAYS AND SEAMY HOTEL LOBBIES
The sex addict, whom you may imagine cruising bars or lounging about in seamy hotel lobbies, can and will turn any environment into his or her personal boudoir, from a church service to a birthday party to the Oval Office to a tennis court to a library to a walk in the park. Compulsive flirtation and suggestive double-entendres are always in play.
The sex addict isn’t interested in you, but in him- or herself and his or her single-minded effort not to feel the pain. You are to the sex addict what a fifth of whiskey is to an alcoholic: a means to an end. The sex addict has no more heartless attitude toward you than does the alcoholic toward his or her bottle: yes, your feelings will be trampled, but only because you’ve failed to recognize that you were in the grips of a sex addict. One way to know is if he or she tries to maneuver you into bed immediately after first meeting you.
You may actually think that the sex addict has found the love of his or her life. You’ll certainly be treated as if you were — that is, until the chase, the conquest, and the climax are over. Then, dear reader, you are as meaningful to the sex addict as that overflowing condom he’s just thrown in the trash, or the toilet paper she’s just flushed away with your heart.
A SEX ADDICT’S LOT IS NOT A HAPPY ONE
But as depressing as it is to have been used and discarded by a sex addict, it’s five gazillion times more demoralizing and anxiety-producing to be one. A sex addict’s life is one with virtually no introspection, no wish to face squarely and deal directly with the painful emotions the addiction is intended to numb — and which, by the way, all human beings feel. It’s the agony of the long-distance addict, criss-crossing the room, the office, the party, the town, the country, and the world in pursuit of the next conquest and the ever-more-stunningly penetrating orgasm.
Why do they do it? The large body of research tells us that a sex addict had — you know it’s coming — an emotionally distant, inattentive mother who was unable to focus on the emotional needs of her infant. The baby was never comforted when he or she cried or felt lonely, and so never heard such soothing words as, “You’re going to be fine.” Thus such children never learn to comfort themselves. When stressed and depressed, they’re unable to calm themselves from within and so they turn outward to others.
If they ever marry, it’s invariably to someone whose main focus is also elsewhere: either on his or her own work, or on home and family. Such spouses tend to be as inattentive to the real inner lives of their marital partners as were the sex addicts’ mothers, which is one reason the sex addict chose such a mate in the first place. Their spouses’ psyches operate on a different wavelength, or as we might say today, bandwidth, and they are able to live with a discreet sex addict with absolutely no awareness that they do. This arrangement can continue indefinitely until the sex addict’s compulsive behavior erupts into public scandal so serious that even an inattentive spouse is no longer able to ignore the truth (e.g., Hillary Clinton; Anne Sinclair, the wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn; Elin Nordegren, former wife of Tiger Woods; and the late Elizabeth Edwards).
For a momentary glimpse into the mind of a sexual addict, one need only read last Thursday’s Telegraph to see Monsieur Strauss-Kahn’s latest legal defense: concerning his sexual relations with ten different call girls at a Parisian swingers’ club, his attorney now claims DSK didn’t know he was sleeping with prostitutes because “they were all naked at the time.” Excuse me? This is a legal defense? Only if you have DSK for a client.
Getting back to the formative years of sex addicts’ lives, as the child becomes an adolescent, he or she discovers that in the sack, he or she doesn’t have to be alone. So that becomes the place where anxiety, depression, and loneliness are assuaged. As long as sex is being pursued or experienced, the comfort-seeking sex addict is able to have his or her painful feelings quelled.
But the more sexual experiences they have, the more they want. More than one lover in a day or evening are not unusual. Lunch hour becomes yet another chance for a temporarily soothing balm.
Aye, there’s the rub: every balm is temporary. A sex addict doesn’t want a relationship, he or she wants relief from unbearable tension, anxiety, loneliness, and/or depression. Saddest of all, sex addicts don’t realize this, because they’re so absorbed, indeed so riveted by their compulsive pursuit of the ever-more-intensely rapturous orgasm beckoning, always beckoning, from just beyond the horizon.
WHY I’M DOUBTFUL THAT SEX ADDICTION IS “ON THE RISE”
As to why I’m dubious that rates of sex addiction are soaring, it’s partly because I’m leery of statements made by people with doctorates in “sexual studies” who, by an amazing coincidence, also happen to own and operate clinics for — of all people — sexual addicts. They claim, whenever interviewed by the media, that sex addiction is on the rise.
Observations that coincide with the financial interests of the speakers are less than credible for another reason: if you’ve read anything written in any century earlier than the 21st, you’ll have noticed that the phenomena the doctors of sexology note with grave concern are not exactly what you’d call new.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616), for example, was extraordinarily insightful on this subject — and he wrote the following 14 lines without so much as a master’s degree, much less a doctorate, in sexual studies:
SONNET 129 (emphasis added)
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy’d no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow’d bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
We human beings, not unlike the birds and the bees, are hard-wired to enjoy sex. That’s why there are now seven billion of us. The problem of sex addiction afflicts no more than three percent of all people, even according to the “sexologists.”
IF WHILE READING THIS, YOU’VE ASKED YOURSELF, “AM I A SEX ADDICT?”
If you’re concerned enough to take an online test of whether you are, in fact, a sexual addict, beware of the website offering the test. If it’s one that also offers “treatment” for your “condition,” it’s highly likely that you’ll meet the self-dealing criteria and discover that — OMG! — you are a genuine sex addict. To you I say: caveat emptor.
These self-described experts in “sexology” have a product to sell: their own services. It’s in their interests to insist that sexual addiction is a growing menace to society, and to dream up “tests” with questions so inclusive that your five-year-old granddaughter could well qualify for their “therapy.”
Unless sex is all you crave from the moment you awaken until your last conscious thought, and unless your entire life is consumed by sexual pursuits to the exclusion of anything else except perhaps earning a living — and if even that, as well as your marriage, is in constant jeopardy because of your obsession with sex — you may not be a sex addict. If you think about sexual activity mainly in response to a stimulus — seeing, meeting, or being with someone with whom you think fleetingly, or not so fleetingly, of bedding down — you’re probably living with a far different addiction: to oxygen. What this means is that you’re still alive.
Sexual addiction is not the same as enjoying sex, including having sexual relations, fantasizing about having them, and taking matters into your own hands if the need arises when you’re alone. It means being hooked on it. If there’s only one website you can’t live without and it isn’t PJ Media, but rather a sex site, you might be a sex addict.
Sexual addiction is not based solely on what you think — unless that’s all you think — as much as on what you do and what motivates you to do it. If you think about sexual activities, but don’t compulsively act on those thoughts, you’re what’s known as human. If you’ve ever uttered the words to someone you find powerfully attractive, “You’re very appealing, but I’m happily married and I wouldn’t do that to my marriage or to my wife (or my husband),” you’re definitely not a sex addict. “No thanks” isn’t in their vocabularies.
Yes, there are sexual addicts and predators. Just ask any woman who’s been alone in a room with Dominque Strauss-Kahn. But by and large, not every flirt is a sex addict, and not every compliment you receive is intended as a prelude to ravishing you in the sack and then heading for the nearest exit before you can catch your breath.
Sometimes a compliment is just a compliment, a sigh is just a sigh, and, yes, a kiss is just a kiss.
–Belladonna Rogers
Sexuality is the deadliest power on the earth.
Actually organized religion is the deadlist. Note I did not mention belief in God. Only the power that eminates from various churches and the harm they do.
Actually, Communism/Socialism/Progressivism in the last 100 years have killed far more people than religion has ever been credited with killing.
Excellent biopsy of Obama. But, I don’t feel sorry for him. He can “handle it”.
If “Psychology Today” said it, it’s baloney. They’ve been a vested interest for over 50 years, creating one hysteria after another (restless leg, autism, asberger’s . . .), all growing fabulously — to the industry’s benefit.
And where does your animus toward Chinese takeout come from?
So Hillary is “. . . inattentive to the real inner lives of [others] . . .”.
My oh my! And she seems such a caring Liberal!
Off-beat subjects, Ms. Rogers, but always insightful.
pelaut: I love Chinese take-out! It’s just that…
Belladonna -
This was one of the most insightful articles I have read in a long time. I have read many an article describing the reasons for the rise in sexual addiction. I always attributed it to the eve- increasing stimuli that are wherever you go.
While the addiction of sexual addiction may not be growing, you will have to agree that casual sex (a form of unloving sex where friends feel used) is on the rise, and has been for the better part of the past half century.
And one last question; do sex addicts routinely look for sexual satisfaction with prostitutes, or does that not satisfy their urge? Must it be with a consenting individual, or does rape take care of their craving?
Again, great great article and I look forward to reading other articles of yours in the future.
Best!
ninety
“The sexual addict will attach to anyone, from the postman to the butcher to the physician, to his or her nurse, to a friend, to anyone with the necessary physical equipment. If the answer is no (which it rarely is, because sex addicts invariably possess a bat-like radar for identifying willing accomplices).”
Their bat like radar is a “spirit”. Like minded “spirits” find each other. Much like a drug addict can go into a strange city and find a source of drugs in half an hour. Most people don’t have that “spirit”!
Casual Sex is no more on the rise the past 50 years than the past 500 or past 5000.
We can read ancient pornography, sexual practices, and “free love” practiced thousands of years ago. The convents today are based on vestal virgins which were based on prostitutes practicing within churches, believing Sex brought us closer to God though the little death.
The followers of church and religion would have sex within church grounds, as sex was a divine act, uniting individuals with nature / god / and an integral part of life. This is how your ancestors lived and practiced religious beliefs thousands of years ago.
Over time, Sexual practices and beliefs have evolved ( or devolved depending on perspective) through the Puritanical movement(s), and swings like a pendulum from generation to generation. The roaring 20′s were highly sexualized, and then the 30′s and 40′s witnessed Sexual practices back into the closet, so to speak.
We tend to mythologize our ancestors, when reality is Sex was far more casual in our ancient and recent than we wish or want to believe.
In the end Sexual addiction is not rooted in itself, but as a reaction to an outside influence. If the pursuit of Sex becomes a Priority and disrupts healthy family life, its time to seek help and confront the issue that drives sexual, alcohol, drug, etc, abuse that unfortunately exist.
Quit slandering the Bride of Christ! The “Puritanical” movement you speak of dates back to Essene communities in Israel, and lifelong celibacy was promoted as a virtue by Christians from the beginning of the Church. Those not interested in celibacy were and are free to marry, but never to fornicate or commit adultery. Yes we saw sex as holy, because God made it so, which is why the marital act is to be given due reverence. However, do not dare conflate our attitude toward the holiness of sex with that of the pagans, for what the pagans call “holy” sex, we call sacrilege.
“Casual Sex is no more on the rise the past 50 years than the past 500 or past 5000.”
You simply can’t be this stupid and breathe unassisted. Almost half the children born in America today are born out of wedlock, almost three-quarters of Black children are born out of wedlock. That percentage was under 10% until the late ’60s.
I’m reasonably certain that 80-90% of the females I graduated from high school with in ’67 were virgins; it took all you could do to get a feel out of even the randier ones. By the time my bio-daughter graduated from high school in ’89, I doubt half her female classmates were virgins and I’d been hit on by a couple of her friends. By the time my step-daughter graduated from high-school in ’03, I doubt 10% of her female classmates were virgins and most of them considered oral sex little more intimate than a peck on the cheek.
Even though “the pill” had been available since the mid to late ’50s, the only way a woman still living at home could get it was by going to a doctor in her home town; that wasn’t happening! Or at least not much outside the big cities. By the mid to late ’60s there were coming to be free or private clinics and college health clinics where a woman could get birth control pills without the likelihood of her parents knowing about it. And then the floodgates opened. Girls who not long before acted like they had the only one and they were saving it for historical purposes started active exploration to determine which one fit it best.
After Wife v.1.0 and I split in ’87 and I re-joined the ranks of single people, I found my greatest problem with young, single women was my reserve and lack of outright sexual agression; if you didn’t buy them one Miller Lite and then throw them on a bed, they thought you didn’t like them. I got over it. At work I learned quickly that there were one Helluva lot of women who thought that the horizontal career move was the best ticket to money and power. And by the time I was in relatively high positions in government, there were lots of women around who’d trip you, beat you to the ground, and call a reporter on the way down.
I really don’t buy most of the addiction thing. Men are biologically programmed to have sex at any opportunity and only the constraints imposed by social order restrain that. Women used to have to fear pregnancy and the stigma and in some cases punishment or dispossession imposed by bastardy, but that’s all gone these days; there are plenty of brides in white with a baby on their hip as they walk down the aisle. Having had an adventure or two and known some adventurous women, I will go this far with the notion of addiction; if you get into the wild and crazy sex right out of porno movies, it will wreck your sex life with “normal” women whose idea of sex isn’t putting in a porno movie and saying “let’s do what they do.” That isn’t a good place to get yourself because women like that are nice places to visit but you really don’t want to live there.
Art, I’m sure you’re right about men being “biologically programmed to have sex at any opportunity,” but you left out one point: every time a man has sex, unless he prefers men, he’s having it with a woman. So doesn’t that tell you something about how women are biologically programmed? The main difference that I can tell is that women’s sex drives increase and decrease with their menses, but even so, at their lowest ebb, they’re still real interested. The effect isn’t from zero to 60 and back to zero. Based on conversations with my women friends, and my own experience, the monthly fluctuation is closer to between 50 and 75. Or higher, depending on the stimulus package.
It is said that “women need a reason, men need a place,” and I think that is still true but in a much different way. Until fairly recently, women bore almost all the consequences of sex outside marriage, and, well, most of the consequences for sex inside marriage, too. These days, other than actual childbirth, the consequences for men can be greater. If the woman doesn’t want a baby, she can abort it without so much as a faretheewell to the sperm donor. If she wants to keep the baby, the courts will give her a third or more of the man’s earnings until the child reaches majority and, if he’s well off, often much more in some states.
With the certainty of government or sperm donor supplied support, the woman gets the responsibility of the child’s welfare but there’s plenty of evidence that isn’t a great burden to lots of women. So, now the “reason” women need is that they just like sex or they like to use sex for power over men, or both. I’ve known lots of female “hunters” and while they can be fun, I found most of them to be very dangerous. Out in the World, predators don’t generally hunt other predators, and there’s a good reason for that; somebody always gets hurt.
Very wise, Art. And clearly explained, too. You busy tonight? (Just kidding.) You make excellent points and I can’t and won’t disagree.
Thank you for the kind words. These days Wife v.2.0 keeps the leash pretty tight. And anyway, I’ve gotten old and wise enough that Mr. Happy isn’t calling all the plays. He had a good run, though!
With the certainty of government…, the woman gets the responsibility of the child’s welfare…
You misspelled “control”, she gets the control of the child’s welfare. And the advantages of owning a child in the modern American culture of Make A Baby And Win A Prize. State governments are eager to grab the role of polygynous husband to millions of child-exploiting females.
@Micha – you misspelled polygamous.
@Art Chance.
Ummm ….I think Micha was using the word “polygynous”; and he spelled it correctly. (Polygamy can be in the form of polyandry or polygyny.)
Micha is not the idiot.
(…Then again, looking at his apparent swipe at Darwin, below, he may be an idiot!)
In human culture, women are the limiting factor in terms of how much sex will be had. Men will have as much as offered, so women, in offering it, decide how much will be had. 60 years ago in America, women, particularly the respectable sort of women you might actually want to bring home and introduce to mom and dad, basically refused to provide sex unless married or engaged. Because pretty much all respectable women acted this way, it seriously limited the amount of sex being had and placed certain demands on men.
When women stop doing this, the system falls apart, and rampant promiscuity results. If you want to see an extreme example of this, you can look at the gay community where, absent any women, under only a small fraction of men in committed relationships maintain full sexual fidelity. (See here: http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=IS04C02)
Men are biologically programmed to have sex at any opportunity…
False. However, I am willing to accept that this is true of you.
(Free advice: Don’t get drunk on too much Darwinism.)
Free advice is worth what one pays for it.
Micha – I’ll second your point about Darwin and dispute Anonymous disparaging comment earlier.
Don’t make assumptions without evidence.
My 83 year mother thought pretty much all of her high school friends were, like her, virgins on their wedding nights. It wasn’t until decades later she found she was in the minority by a large margin. There was always a lot more sex happening than public society was willing to admit. But pretending didn’t make it so.
Have things changes in our lifetimes. Yes but more in terms of openness than actual number of intimate events. Illegitimacy may be soaring but as part of a declining birth rate. Is it really that we’re falling into bed with strangers so much more or that marriage has lost so much value?
Admittedly I don’t have the evidence of a medical examination but I knew my friends and classmates pretty well. We only had one girl in my graduating class have to “go visit her aunt.” I doubt many of them of either gender were virgins by their wedding night, but sexual activity beyond furtive groping and fondling waited until after high school more often than not. By sophomore year in college, it was pretty much stop, drop, and roll, but the times they were a’changing.
Part of the reason why American men give women engagement rings is because, back in the day, while couples were supposed to wait until marriage, many actually consummated their relationship upon engagement. Since a woman’s “market value” plummeted upon loss of her virginity, she would be fine if she ended up marrying the man, but be SOL if he left her. Prior to the 1930′s, a woman could sue a man for breach of promise if he left her during the engagement, which offered her some protection. When these laws started getting struck down, men started providing an very expensive piece of jewelry to prove they weren’t just going to sleep with a girl and leave her.
@Meg – I always viewed the rock in that “collision avoidance device” as the opening bid. It was simply an announcement of what some other guy had to be willing and able to pay. Whoring isn’t the World’s oldest profession; marriage is.
Great points Art.
I would contend that our mixed messages from society – one part blaring out “Everybody is Doing IT”, another mainstreaming Porn, still another bashing it from the left as “against women”, religeous conservatives indicating to save until married, etc – have really confused the majority of people.
The article was about sex addicts, possibly caused by abuse or neglect, and to bring awareness to that, but also to avoid the fad of the moment. But it is up to us to find the path to solutions. Some of the following kernels may help our society get a better handle on sex, love, marriage, and children.
a) Professional Instruction – Sex (and Love) are the only things we do today that we do not receive Lessons in. Golf we go to lessons, we go to college to learn accounting, we learn basketball with a coach, skiing, reading, every job we do we are trained. But sex, it is the Playboy as the textbook alone in the dark of night. Yes, biology helps, but instruction might help with the message that sex was OK and healthy, also intimacy and caring are important. Possibly, we could learn to love, and to improve ourselves to be loved.
b) Sole partner or Poly – our society decrees mono relationships, but the media blares out “cheat”. Having partners outside of the relationship in itself need not be bad, often it indicates unbalanced needs or possibly changes in the relationship. Often the relationship is pretty healthy, there is a stable place for the kids, but it is just thrown away as it is a total deal breaker. I feel often the divorce was the poorer choice.
c) Let our religious beliefs be our guide. Society today too often tries to choke ones beliefs, instead it should let pretty free reign. It is the church that should decide about its stand on gay marriage, birth control, abortions, etc. ” The people can decide if that is for them and become members.
d) Remember on decisions “is it fair to all concerned”
Dysfunctional childhoods are nothing new. In fact, a solid nuclear family was a passing phase in the mid-20th century. If sexual addiction and all other psychological disturbances are on the rise, why don’t we look at the point in time when 2 incomes were required to run a household. Let’s look at the moment women needed a job, not as a stay at home mom, to be empowered and valued. Let’s look at the creation of Screw Magazine and Playboy. Let’s look at the moment when family and church receded. Then let’s do the math and see if the generation that grew up with all that has the same or different problems as earlier generations, and in what numbers.
a solid nuclear family is a hallmark of civilization.
an extended family, with grandparents alive and healthy- there’s an argument that for common people, that’s Puritan New England is the first place this is common. Prior to that, that’s what distinguished noble families from common families. Elderly nobles could provide cagey advice to advance the family fortunes. Peasants were those who had to make it up as they went along, saddled with disease, poor nutrition, and shoddy educations, and no built up “social/family capital.”
That the mid-twentieth century is the first era to have stable families is a terrible mis-reading of history.
Is a woman’s greatest asset a mans imagination?
Is a man’s greatest asset a woman’s imagnation?
Great article, create a problem, step right in to “help” but not remove the problem. Say war on poverty, war on hunger, war on drugs, do any of the poverty pimps really want to eliminate poverty??? It’s their meal ticket, sex is not the only addictive motivation when power over others can be acheived.
I need a drink…..
Issues discussed 40 years ago by Pope Paul in a papal encyclical here. And he turned out to be right.
Whoa!—Sonnet 129 makes sense now! I get it!
My closest friend from childhood has many of the characteristics you describe. She and her sister were sexually abused by their stepfather until their early teens. My friend married a workaholic fitness obsessed guy and for a while was consumed by her desire for the perfect family. When her marriage fell apart her attempts to deal with her anxiety and loneliness have been nothing short of devastating (to her friends and kids). She is on every dating website and when she is “on the hunt” she sees or hears nothing else. When she hit her mid-40s and could only get 2-3 “dates” a night, she added alcohol and prescription drugs to dull the pain. Just out of rehab for a second time, she is doing better resisting the substances but the sex addiction continues.
My intent is not to embarrass my friend or speak poorly of her. Just wanted to add that if the sex addict is someone you know and care about, it’s a tough road. No matter your relationship to the addict, if you cannot supply their next fix, their time and energy are elsewhere.
Just curious — why are you still friends with a substance-abusing sex addict? I have a feeling lying and cheating should probably be added into the list of things your friend is noted for. Are you addicted to feeling superior or something?
NanGee I am shocked at what a heartless and nasty question you’ve posed. I, for one, admire LeighB for maintaining a friendship through thick and thin. The idea that all there is to her friend is her addictions is absurd. Every addict is also a human being, often a sensitive and caring one. The one person an addict doesn’t care enough for is himself or herself. That doesn’t prevent addicts from being good friends to non-addicts. And it certainly doesn’t mean that the non-addict friend enjoys feeling superior to the addict. Sounds as if you’re projecting your own sorry values on LeighB.
Why are we still friends after 43 years? We formed a very strong bond in our 20s when we were both starting our careers and families. I don’t mind the question, being her friend is humbling. At one time I thought I could help her see herself in a more positive light and channel her energy in other ways. What has a hold on her is far bigger than me and I do what I can to offer support for making better choices. She has an incredible gift for storytelling and is a good sounding board. We had been friends for almost 30 years when the sex addiction took over her life. I wish I could do more to help.
“Like a drug addict or alcoholic, the sex addict relentlessly seeks satisfaction from an external source to palliate an internal pain.”
Well, I guess it’s better than heroin. I often wonder about those teachers you hear about in high schools that have sex with their students. Now, given my upbringing in Catholic schools, the only teachers we had to look at were very bitter and angry nuns. That probably did more to kill a teenager’s libido than anything else. If we had a sexy blond teacher trying to seduce us, well, it would have been like discovering plutonium. But it is hard to believe that these women are really predators and there are probably more of them out there only that you don’t hear about it because many teenage boys don’t mind it. Little do they know they are being used by a sex offender. It also shows a double standard in our country. If a male teacher did the same thing to the female students, he would be arrested, charged, and probably convicted of rape. If a female teacher does it, they are usually only given probation and a warning. Somehow that doesn’t seem right considering a predator is a predator, regardless of what sex they are.
A colleague of mine has two friends, one a man who was molested as a child and who has struggled with depression throughout his adult life. The other is a man who while a young man in high school had a sexual relationship with a female teacher. That man still views that sexual relationship as his “first love”. Both relationships were immoral, illegal, and predatory. Yet, they seem to have had different effects upon the victims.
Go figure!
There is a big difference between a child and a “young man” (I assume you mean the last two years of high school, 16-18 years old.)Sex between a late teen and adult is normal biologically and emotionally; anyone into adolescence is capable of falling in love, and I actually find it encouraging that he accepts his feeling were normal, rather than pathologising them to accept the view of American society at large or the law.
Frankly I don’t care what the law considers a sex offender; it’s whether it harms somebody or recklessly takes the risk of doing so. The state can attach a label like “statutory rapist” and put someone in prison but they can’t know the nature of an individual relationship between two human beings.
I am British and prefer the European approach to sexual initiation at this age (ages of consent 13-16 in the EU states, 14 the most common. Boys and girls are very different at that age, so a female teacher who has sex with, say, a 14/15 year old boy is not necessarily a predator. It certainly can be abusive in some particular cases, and maybe given the position of authority it could be grounds for dismissal as unprofessional conduct. But I find it unfair to send them to prison just because the boy is legally a minor when he is mature enough to consent. It’s their physical, emotional and neurological development that matters more to me, and based on all these adolescents are supposed to be sexual.
Many states in Europe, while having a 13 or 14 age of consent, prohibit “coercive” or “exploitative” relationships, in various terms, between a minor under 18 and somebody much older than them. The decision would be made by experienced judges after police and an expert interviewer speak to the minor involved. This is a far more sophisticated and responsible view than simply assuming the adult is a pervert and locking them up without regard to circumstances.
There are few arguments in favor of extending the age of “repression” if you will. The first big one is “extended neoteny” and the second really is “repression as a motor of civilization.” That’s even prior to sorting out how one expects young teenagers to financially support their young. I don’t know where you come from, but I can tell you how to sort high schools here: are there teen mums, or not? The college prep school will barely have dating, much less sexual fecundity and experimentation. The dropout factory where nobody has even bothered to learn to read? Babies, from wall to wall.
“Repression” stores up a lot of energy that gets turned into, I don’t know, lightbulbs, aeroplanes, tesla coils,windows computing systems… you know- all the great tools of civilization.
You can understand criminals who molest teenagers all day long. Just- stay on that side of the pond.
Over here, teenagers at good schools are just as likely to have sex as those at “sink” schools. They are simply more careful to use contraception and will usually abort if they do get pregnant so the baby won’t ruin their chances of college and a career. In fact they are more likely (and I was a straight A student so I would know) to pursue older men/women, usually in their twenties at 15-17 but sometimes even larger age gaps, because they are more mature and stable. With lower income people it tends to be sleazy and exploitive, like the cases of a concupiscent 40 year old offering a damaged teen girl a place to stay when she can’t stand her mum’s drunken outbursts any more then getting her pregnant and kicking her onto the street. Stories like this are quite frequent. The Dutch/Portuguese/German etc law recognises the difference between youth who are really consenting and youth who are being molested.
If preventing adolescents from having sex until a higher age is necessary as a motor of civilisation, why are scientific and technological advances coming at a greater pace than ever in history? Although the legal age for sex may have gone up on average since 1940, the average age of first sexual experience is around 17 now in the US and 15 in Europe, it was 19-21 back then. The culture was generally sex within marriage only- some people *did* get married at 13 but they were very much in the minority even in the poorest Southern states. It was not then illegal for a teacher to have sex with a 15 year old pupil in many US states but it would be seen as utterly shameful, with far more people believing it would carry a risk of eternal damnation to Hell. Now that’s a bigger motivator than a few years incarceration and struggling to find another job.
There are many reasons for the centuries of stagnation in the West. The fact many teenage mums existed prior to industrialisation isn’t one of them. Try low life expectancy, crippling disease, absolute monarchies, frequent bloody wars, lack of transport and communication links for the vast majority, dictatorial churches/ Islamic caliphate that allowed no progress in case it led to sin, etc.
And I will stay on this side of the pond, thank you very much. I’m not going near a country that considers 16 year olds who have sex with a 20 something “molested children” and thinks my 20 year old biochemistry student friend is too young to drink responsibly. Over here, we’ll likely be pushing ahead with voting at 16 and re-empowerment of youth in the next few decades.
And I don’t agree with teen pregnancy (at least before age 17-19 and with strong social support.) I don’t want 13 year olds pregnant, that’s for sure. But better contraceptive education and emphasis on responsibility means our teen birth rates (in ALL EU countries without exception) are much better than yours- and this with no recourse to a 17/18 age of consent except in Ireland and Malta, which is less than 2% of the continent.
“You can understand criminals who molest teenagers all day long.”
I think what he “understands”, Ari, is the enormous difference, biologically (both mental and physical), between an adolescent youth and a prepubescent child. A difference far more enormous than, say, between a 22 year-old and a 16 year-old.
“I don’t know where you come from…” I think Jay C said he was British (…so that would most likely be …Britain).
“…sort out high schools here …college preparatory [in Jay C's world, I guess, the equivalent would be the grammar school or sixth-form college]….barely have dating, sexual fecundity and experimentation …[versus]…the dropout factory [comprehensive school, Jay C?] …teen mums, babies from wall-to-wall.
Hmmmm, Ari; which would you guess had the greater problem with regard to dropouts, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases –Sweden, France, Germany, Britain …or the good ‘ole “repressive” USA? Care to guess? Would you guess that it’s worse in Europe?
“…light bulbs, aeroplanes, Tesla coils, Windows computing systems …you know all –the tools of civilization.” I’m not sure if those free-wheeling, swinging Eurotrash do know, Ari. Let’s see: the bessemer process (Henry Bessemer), the automobile (Daimler), radar, the jet engine (Frank Whittle), the super sonic transport (Concorde)….. (you know, Jay C, you guys really were more repressed back then, at least before the Concorde. Maybe he’s got a point there.)
“just stay on that side of the pond.” Nah, Jay C, come on over! I kind of doubt that European sensibilities will produce any more pedophiles, ephebophiles or teen moms than there are here right now.
Absolute age limits for legal consent in the 50 states keep the Courts and “experts” out of the bedroom, or classroom. The presumption of inability to consent before a certain age prevents detailed courtroom examinations of the lives and psyches of the participants in a sex act, aided by highly-paid and unqualified “experts”. Unlike the “sophisticated and responsible” view of the ultra-civilized Europeans (crock-alert!), the backward and repressive American view increases individual liberty by preventing judges and experts from parsing the emotional and psychological states of teenagers being preyed upon by older sexual predators. If you can’t do the time, coach, don’t do the 16 year old student in the shower.
No, it doesn’t increase individual liberty to be stopped from having sex by law due to your age. That is utter pernicious nonsense. It does not matter what you think of consent laws. The FACT is they reduce liberty because they assume 1) the minor cannot be trusted with freedom over their own body, and 2)they cannot have a sufficiently mature perspective to determine if they are being taken advantage of or not.
Now you can agree with the US laws and believe those statements are true. But you can’t say it increases liberty to have such laws. The very idea of them is that people under that age need the protection and control of the state irrespective of their wishes. There are two main theoretical conceptions of teenagers, the liberationist view and the child protection view. If you take the latter, it is because you believe that they need LESS liberty, as they are too immature to handle it/ too easily exploited by adults.
Oh and as for the laws avoiding detailed examinations of psyche etc? You know absolutely nothing of the system if you believe that. In England, the underage teen (13-15, our AOC is 16, <13 is prosecuted as straight rape) is frequently expected to see a counsellor, social services, a psychologist/psychiatrist etc. to assess their mental state, the effects of the sexual activity and their emotional maturity. The adult can also be assessed thoroughly for PSR- pre sentence reports. Both parties have their personal lives discussed, often in detail, before the court. Explicit details of the sexual relationship are asked for. A teacher friend of mine was the child-protection officer at a comprehensive, between US middle and high school (11-16). When an incident occurred, she sometimes got to sit back and read a thick personal file; Even though she had nothing to do with the legal system per se, and some girls did not want or receive special support in school she was allowed to read everything in confidence by Social Services. So judges, experts, police and even schoolteachers minutely parse the mental state of the youth.
The ONLY difference is- in much of Europe these evaluations decide whether the man is guilty or not- or woman, in a few cases. Stateside and in other jurisdictions with absolute age of consent, the youth is considered a victim automatically in law but the "parsing of mental states" has a hefty impact on sentencing.
I've heard this from "Theodore Dalrymple", writing in City Journal on the issue of drugs. He says personal liberty would be even further decreased if they were legalised as employers, colleges, insurance companies, pharmacies, banks etc. would introduce far more drug-testing and other measures. Of course, that is still more freedom than having the drugs confiscated against your will by the police, being punished and given a criminal record, and long prison terms for distribution. Just like the above, you can believe in continuing drug prohibition for various reasons, but you can't say that "legalising it takes our liberties away"!
Yes, those ‘mature’ 13-14 year olds- don’t come near my grand-daughter. Also, there is hardly any repression going on these days.
The United States of America is a nation the size of most of a continent, filled to the brim with all sorts of different groups with different mores. Some groups- families, churches, clans, tribes, schools, whatever- do better than others, materially and educationally. I live in Texas- a state bigger than France. Our house is in a section of town that sends to a high school with a 40% drop-out rate, and, as far as I can tell, a 100% teen pregnancy rate. Five miles away, there’s a school that’s in the top 100 in the nation- over 3,000 students, and not one single pregnant teenage girl. They have, obviously, very very very different approaches to teens energies.
The second notion- the rate of innovation- nonsense on stilts. I defer to Mark Steyn, and I don’t know how to link without those ridiculous little icons, so, please- google. The rate of innovation has slowed down considerably with the rise in casual fornication. I think the pop theory is that if you’re getting some, you don’t need to be displaying genius to get some.
I’m good with hard legal limits. I don’t care how understanding a psychologist is. Dr Judith Reisman has written extensively on how pedophiles corrupted the psychological institutions. You might not like her approach, but no one, as far as I’ve read, has ever challenged her research or findings on substance. They mostly call her an icky old biddy trying to take away their fun time toys. Since they define small children, infants and stopwatches as a fun time, I’m good with her outrage.
And, finally, European nations, as a whole, aren’t producing enough children to get to replacement rates. In America, the most conservative and religious states are the ones with the highest birth-rates. I don’t really care that a swedish girl can get so experienced that she’s got calluses on her innards, if she starts at 14, she’s washed-up, used up, and bored by 24, and likely, at best to have one child. That’s not a good recipe for social survival. If even the wildly gay columnist at the New York Times can comment about bored 24 year old socialites w
gotogo
okay, so well-born youth are expected to rein in their appetites while proles on the dole have children in their teens?
B/c that’s what I get out of British headlines. It’s not a pretty picture.
Repression worked very well for Britain. Lots of waiting until suitably grownup and situated, provided Britain with enough zip to conquer 1/4 the globe. And you gave it all away this century, following on Annie Besant’s enthusiasms.
And, again, any teenager still in high school participating in recreational sex is a fool being preyed upon by reprobates. Past high school, they ought to get married before having children. Those are two of the markers of people who are going to get out of poverty, versus the people who remain in poverty. The three separators are (1) a high school diploma (2) married before procreation and (3) hold a job for at least one year.
And honestly, it’s a fool’s errand, speaking to fools at all. A statistical majority of women have had sex with 1 or 2 people. This includes widows and remarriages. So we’re arguing the date that they commit to a man, versus the day a paper saying there is commitment.
A subset of women have sex with multiple partners. They are not, how do I put this, marriage material. The least likely to get married are also the most promiscuous, by some hair-raising margin.
People in the subsets least likely to marry, and least likely to remain faithful, write the bulk of most sex advice. It’s sort of like consulting Rachel Carson on real dangers to birds.
No, well-born youth and proles both have sex at relatively young ages, but as I said, the middle classes are less likely to get pregnant or continue with the pregnancy if they do. If you’re 15, living with five siblings and your mum in a publicly funded tower-block tenement, in an area almost devoid of jobs and you know getting pregnant will help you get your own place at 16 and have extra money to spend from the welfare, you won’t bother using contraception. If you are in a relationship at the same age and you and your boyfriend both want to follow the family tradition of masters level education and home ownership by 30, you don’t want to be restricting your options with a baby so you remember to take those little pills every morning. It isn’t a difficult concept and has little to do with repressive or permissive attitudes to sex.
As for Dr Reisman, her research includes highly unscientific concepts even while presenting all that neuroimagery to make herself look like the facts are on her side. That is why doctors of medicine, biology and psychology (her doctor title is not from an MD) reject her views. There was once a movement within psychology, regrettably, led by the likes of Richard Farson to say that paedophilia is okay and it is only the condemnation of Western society that makes children think they have been abused. Most psychologists now have little time for that, and I do not either. I was arguing for European age of consent laws (14-15), not abolition of the age.
Waiting until one is settled and independent for sex is a good ideal but it’s unjust in my eyes to use the law to try to enforce it. The legislation we have over this side offer sufficient protection to youth without classifying normal sexual behaviour as a felony. Better for society and families to respect and understand teenagers so they won’t feel that they have nobody who loves them (a major reason for adolescent births is wanting a baby to make up for emotional lacunae) and teach “abstinence plus” or ABC in high school: abstinence is best, be faithful, and last use a condom. The totally non-judgmental line is too far to the left, your line that all pre-college sex is wrong is too far to the right for me to be comfortable with. That’s my idea of a compromise.
Great insights Belladonna …
And they certainly match the experience I’ve had in knowing a sex addict. He added drugs and alcohol to the mix and the addictions spread thoughout his family. Very sad to watch.
F
Are you a stud
Or a slut
For bustin’ a nut?
Are you a cad
Or a whore
For wantin’ s’more?
Are you a freak
Or a goon
For cravin’ some poon?
Are you a skank
As a chick
For desirin’ some dick?
But wait! Look closer
At that stud or that whore
Look further, look deeper
Is that a genital sore?
This message brought to you by the GHFA (genital herpes foundation of America).
LOL…..thanks for making my morning Delia.
Excellent article Belladonna and I agree with your assessment of the “sex experts”. They have everything to gain and nothing to lose by promoting their businesses. A lot of the commenters on the article you referenced said essentially the same thing.
All that said, maybe the main reason that women are becoming more sexually active is because they have the financial means to do so. More and more successful women in our society are not dependent on a spouse or family for their financial support.
Wow, Belladonna, a Shakespeare sonnet? Great way to really hit home with the truth that sex addiction IS as old as mankind. Many have read 129 as an expression of Shakespeare’s disillusionment with his own wallowing in lust, and an attempt to come to grips with it. That is a personal response, which in the here and now is mostly what we’re concerned with. However, in a larger context of the country in which he lived, Henry VIII kept the entire kingdom in a constant uproar by pursuing, marrying and discarding 6 women, within living memory. (scholars agree several sonnets were written in 1598-99, altho not published until 1609, so Shkpr. was writing within 50 yrs of H.VIII’s death) Who knew ’til today when you pointed it out that H.VIII was a sex addict? Behaviors included: paranoia, feelings of depression and loneliness, and a terrible temper with a hair-trigger. Toward the end of his life, some have even called him psychotic.
I also doubt sex addiction is “on the rise”, but with a greater population it only makes sense that the 3% perhaps exhibiting this condition is growing exponentially. (there indeed are more sex addicts simply due to pop. growth, but not as a percentage of pop.)
I suggest that all this “rampant sex thing” is exacerbated by all of our multiplying rampant electrical communications gadgets.
[...no puns intended...]
I liked what the Presbyterian theologian Frederick Buechner once said: “Lust is the craving for salt of a man who dying of thirst.”
Dear Belladonna,
A few more thoughts. This subject totally has me fascinated when I really stop to think about it. What if men really DO think about sex — what’s the current urban legend? — every 7 seconds.* Does that make ALL men sex addicts? Surely one cannot think about sex that much and have any partic. woman in mind? Also, it’s been known forever that “giving into” a man’s sexual appetite before marriage will result in being dropped faster than the proverbial hot ‘tater. For guys it’s supposedly all about the chase.
My point here being that IF one subscribes to the theory that human brains stopped developing 50K yrs. ago (called “behavioral modernity”) and men are just trying to spread their genes as far & wide as possible, by current definition they are ALL sex addicts. What a ridiculous supposition!
* Pls. see parag. 5 in this article: http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/thinksex.asp
I have some personal experience here. I’m a recovering alcoholic, and I’ve participated in a 12-step program for sex addiction. I don’t disagree with the symptoms or characteristics of the sex addict. I really don’t know if the cause in my case was an inattentive mother. I do know that the depiction of relationships and marriage is correct. My addictions to alcohol and sex cost me 2 marriages. The one thing I would like to comment on is the issue of severity.
“Unless sex is all you crave from the moment you awaken until your last conscious thought, and unless your entire life is consumed by sexual pursuits to the exclusion of anything else except perhaps earning a living — and if even that, as well as your marriage, is in constant jeopardy because of your obsession with sex — you may not be a sex addict. ”
In the sex addiction 12-step group I was a part of, we didn’t use such an extreme definition. The basic line we used to define addiction was the pursuit of sex at the expense of normal life relationships, i.e., if the pursuit of sex was causing problems in the marriage, or in social or work life, then it had become an addiction.
In my case, the pursuit of alcohol and sex to blot out internal strife was not a constant, or usually an obsession. It was more occasional in nature, but still damaging. The result was not a single giant scandal that rocked my life, but an accumulation of missteps that led to a lack of trust from my friends and family. The final resolution was the same, though – the loss of those relationships.
My alcoholic life was the same way. I wasn’t constantly drunk and difficult, just occasionally and unpredictably drunk and difficult. The end result was the same – the loss of trust.
So, the point I’d like to make is that constant and overriding obsession is not necessary to the condition of an addiction requiring treatment. I agree with the SA (Sex Addiction) folks – all that’s required is that the attendant actions lead to damaging consequences.
I have stayed in the AA program, as alcohol was going to be a continual danger, not just to relationships, but to my life and other lives. Drunk driving was a continual issue. Once my marriage was over, though, I gave up on dealing with sex addiction. Since there were no relationships left to destroy, why interfere with something that gave me pleasure?
In both cases, there was in my experience a further descriptor of the addict that isn’t mentioned here. Even when I knew I was causing damage to myself and my relationships, I couldn’t stop myself. Once the compulsion was on me, I was going to finish the job, to achieve the drunkenness or the orgasm that would feed my need at the moment. There would be a moment of lucidity in which I’d make a conscious decision that my need was greater than my fear of consequences. AA and SA, in their 12-step programs, preach commitment to a higher power to deal with this moment. This can work. I’ve been off alcohol for 4 years now. If we ever find a drug that will allow the addict to deal with that moment, though, we’ll have the true cure for addiction.
I know I’m rambling a bit, but having been there, I thought I’d throw in my 2 cents.
as a chaste sex addict who has used porn and online cyber sex to fill the need i will explain something ..yes there is a radar for accomplices..and there is a lot of fun in persute..and a little depression after orgasm ..and your partner puts her cloths on and leaves..or in my case logs off ..
please excuse me if I think the focus on marketing this addiction .. is to drum up the revenue for treatment programs.
that said i engage in a silly form of self torture with my sex addiction ..as my taste to fill my addiction is for very beautiful women.. who i am in no position to seduce at this time..pursuit and conquest..and some sense of acheivement.. hookers offer no challenge..yuck
there is no rise in sexual addiction..the is a removal of most restrictions and more opportunity for the behavior to surface ..a behavior religions have spent thousand of years supressing..or only allowing in the wealthy .
is the moselem with 5 wives a sex addict in need of treatment ?
That’s actually one of the arguments in favor of the four wives allowed a Moslem. I read it when I was reading up on Afghanistan. The women have the protection of a marriage, and a provider, and the guy doesn’t have to go out for strange. This was followed by the paragraph specifying that the man cannot favor one wife over another, which means scheduling, and not particularly following his own appetites and inclinations.
I guess the analogy is: what if you want shrimp instead of fish or hamburger instead of cheeseburger, but it’s shrimp night, no matter what.
Which, if it’s anything like the group marriages that have shown up in American history- no love letters, no love sonnets- no actionable paper, iow, for strangers to find. Any true and private passion remains just that- private and seething, and not sanctified fully.
And, the kids have a sense of how the family plays out. It’s not equal, not ever. The highest survival rates for children are monogamous, married unions, while the worst mortality rates are polygamous unions. Also, wives having status, and keeping their pay, versus low status, tilling fields and not keeping their pay.
substance and behavior addiction are two different things ..i know i am prone to addictions so i do not touch drugs ..and kept myself to poor to afford drugs .. the self imposed poverty also stimied the sex addiction persuit ..so i turn to online gaming like wow and other games..and cybersex ..
now i am in the process of kicking my poverty ..i will be persueing my sexual cravings ..as i am not interested in getting married.. and there are plenty of women out there looking for just sex ..but still i have my tastes for very attractive women ..so the challenges is getting them and keeping them until they run off..
it is kind of interesting how quick a woman will back away when you turn from confident persuer with 1 thing on your mind.. to “nice guy looking for love”..you get the your a nice guy ..but ..speech..
Very profound article, very true. This sums up a sex addict woman I knew (and a very beautiful one at that) to a tee. It is quite remarkable. No I never slept with her, even though she tried to seduce me, along with everybody else. I couldn’t believe what she would get up to, and of course it’s all subject to diminishing returns like all addictions – in order to get the same fleeting thrills of sexual release, the sex had to become more daring and risky (sex in public places, the risk of getting caught or seen etc.), the men younger, that kind of thing. I got to know her very well in the time we worked together. The way she would trample over men and discard them, as you say, I had never seen anything like it. And she didn’t recognize what she was doing..
Such sex addiction in women is often associated with borderline personality disorder and this woman I knew is a classic case. And yes she had a distant mother who was aloof and removed.. I actually care for this woman deeply (the pain and loneliness is so raw and ‘out there’) and do not judge her at all, she got married and had two daughters (and at least one failed suicide attempt prior to her marriage), lost touch.. Yet of course, she is who she is and what will happen there, or has already happened, I can only guess at..
“If there’s only one website you can’t live without and it isn’t PJ Media, but rather a sex site, you might be a sex addict.”
I’m curious, but hypothetically what if Roger Simon announced tomorrow that PPJM was going to start running a new Page 3 style feature?
Food for thought.
The majority of these modern ‘addicts’ are nothing more than impulse slaves lacking any control over the most minor urges, thanks to a society that has taught that to deny an urge is to be repressed.
I’m sorry, friend, but you just don’t get it. There have been addicts of all kinds throughout time. It’s not a new invention, or a product of modern society. It’s a sickness that you are apparently incapable of understanding. You remind me of one of my ex-wives, who kept saying, “You only need to exercise a little self-control.” To a true addict, self-control is not an option – it’s a facility we simply lack.
Anonymous Male: I believe the majority of the readers here understand what you’ve written. IMHO, there was only one who, indeed, doesn’t get it.
“And if ever, by some unlucky chance, anything unpleasant should somehow happen, why, there’s always soma to give you a holiday from the facts. And there’s always soma to calm your anger, to reconcile you to your enemies, to make you patient and long-suffering. In the past you could only accomplish these things by making a great effort and after years of hard moral training. Now, you swallow two or three half-gramme tablets, and there you are. Anybody can be virtuous now. You can carry at least half your morality about in a bottle. Christianity without tears—that’s what soma is.”
Mustapha Mond in Huxley’s Brave New World
In Huxley’s dystopia the individual who is not addicted to sex and drugs is the social deviant. I wonder how many of us would have opted out of the carefree pleasure filled life offered and taken the harder route. Few I think.
As the youngest of 5, I sometimes feel like I did not get much attention or ‘mothering’ and now as an adult I deal with depression. I do tend to be obsessive with sex and repetitive video games. My wife complains that I expect too much sex, but “once a month, climb on and get off” IS depressing, unfulfilling, and unsatisfying. I am a great guy, husband, and provider for my family, but I also like sex.
I wish the article offered some suggestion for addicts. I don’t feel like I meet the criteria, but I have benefited from “Inner bonding” website and books. I just wish my wife had a libido, any libido, and any attraction and flirtation or seduction would probably save our marriage.
You already are using one successful strategy for addiction which is to substitute a non harmful addictive behaviour such as video games or exercise. AA I think works mostly this way as the group and literature become substitutes (along with coffee and smoking for some).
As for your marriage. I think it must be something she wants to change as well. A sexual relationship requires effort. Maybe counseling can help you both to find out what the problems are. I am not always a big fan of counseling but sometimes a third party can help get the discussion in the open.
I guess I wonder “what is normal?” or is this a chicken/egg exercise? Afterall, men are ‘supposed’ to pursue women, but what happens when wives stop being interested? Is the male libido supposed to shut down just because the woman’s focus and attention and energy becomes absorbed in raising kids?? Where does the man get any satisfaction from an unfulfilling career, can’t afford meaningful hobbies, just endless years of work until he can quietly crawl under the Forest Lawn? How is he to remain stoic, cheerful, and eager when co-workers use Victoria Secret bags as lunch boxes? At middle age, I find this life disappointing and would like to revive the romance of my marriage, but that requires a willing partner, who is “waiting until the kids are in college” to divorce me. Excuse me if I feel unloved and used. Maybe not addicted to sex, but definately needing love. And sex without love, even if married, is just as depressing and unfulfilling.
Curious, it occurs to me there are several issues (questions?) here to address. Are you really a sex addict? If so, you can be sure your wife knows, and as the article says, no one likes being a throwaway partner. Or perhaps this is as simple as mis-matched desire. It does happen, to many couples, esp. if they spend yrs. together. The same way one may always love a partner, but not necessarily always be IN love with them.
However, you also say you deal with depression. Is this a self-diagnosis, or something confirmed by a dr.? Are you on meds for this? Yet on the other hand, some of the things you say sound like negative self-talk that almost EVERYone experiences to a greater or lesser degree during the famed mid-life crisis. Which really isn’t a crisis, just humans coming to terms that maybe we won’t: be president, write the next blowout best seller, make millions of dollars, garner fame & attention as a celebrity — in short, that our lives are half over, and hey, what the heck have I done that’s anything special? Which I realize sounds hella depressing! But look at the other side. Realizing what truly is/isn’t within our grasp can be very liberating. Focusing on what we DO have, and CAN become really is an opportunity not to be missed.
You say you have an unfulfilling career. Did you chose it, or just stumble into it? Either way, why can’t you change it, if you feel that strongly? Life really is too short to be miserable. What, for you, defines a meaningful hobby that you feel is unaffordable? Collecting rare gold coins? A once-a-month private, chartered fishing trip to exotic locales? Safaris where one might unexpectedly pick up a diamond? I read as a hobby, and it costs me very little. I find it very meaningful, helpful, a destresser, and as a bonus I might find info applicable to help educate myself. Same descriptors for my love of gardening, with the addition of some exercise (and there’s something so basic & elemental about digging in the dirt to coax growing things). I also enjoy cooking and experimenting in the kitchen. Also pretty meaningful, as we all must eat to fuel the machine. Why not have it be as pleasant and pleasurable as possible? I’m one of those folks who sees making others happy this way as a good thing. Not that I’m suggesting my hobbies would work for you. But surely there’s SOMEthing you can muster up some interest in? Some of your depression may be your negative outlook. If your glass is always half empty … there’s no doubt, living as closely as a married couple w/children, your wife has picked up on that as well. Doesn’t do much to bring that spark back to life, even occasionally, if one’s partner is always down in the dumps. Worse, it sounds like you blame her for not flirting with and/or seducing you. Question: would you seduce you?
Why would you give a good g.d. if coworkers are using Victoria’s Secret bags to carry lunch? Who ARE these people? Young women, middle-aged men? Those looking to cause speculation/envy? (boy, they sure succeeded with you) Can’t you go find a lovely, tasteful camisole there for your wife that she could wear out under a jacket (something to make HER feel pretty/sexy) that might serve another purpose later that evening? Or silky, feminine robe that does NOT scream hooker? (I’ve found almost all men need a lesson on “buying lingerie for a woman”, but that’s another story.)
From the info you give, I don’t think you sound like a sex addict, just a disappointed mid-life man who doesn’t understand how he came to be where he is. Has your wife actually SAID she’s just waiting ’til the kids are in college to divorce you? If yes, well, you’ve got some serious thinking to do. Because you’re right, no one can (or should!) live without love. I’d rather be alone and lonely sometimes, than be with someone and lonely all the time.
Having said all this (and sorry, while I may be rambling, I don’t mean to lecture), I think think *spindok* is onto something. I think perhaps personal counseling just for you right now might be helpful, to help identify where you might be stuck. Therapists have no magic wands, tho. The best they can do is maybe help you see; then it’s up to you what you do with that. Only after you have some insight into yourself & your motivations would couples’ counseling be helpful. Of course, that’s IF your wife is interested. (btw, nowhere do you say — do you still love her?) Regardless, you do have options, and exploring them could point you in the right direction. My best to you on your journey!
Thanks for the rambling!
Yes, I should change my career, but feel like I can’t give up the income I make now. My favorite hobby is flying, which is so expensive I can’t do it. Second is conservative politics, but my job won’t let me run for office. Third is running, including marathons. No meds or drs for depression, can’t stand the stigma or getting on some govt watch list nonsense. I got the wife to counseling once, but she refuses any more, “it’s the first step to divorce” she says. Duh. She’ll wear something pretty, but nothing i buy her, and no lingerie in bed, nor make any attempt to stir the romance, no trips, weekends, etc. yes, she actually said that. Would I love me? Yes, I’m funny, a decent cook, good looking, good earning, a great shot, eagle scout, great dad, outdoorsman, conversationalist, and avid reader. I’m fun right up to the moment she says, “I’m tired, I’ll get you tomorrow” which never happens.
Yes, I’m negative about me and enjoying the slow burn of my mid-life crisis. And she could care less as long as the direct deposit shows up on time.
Curious, I’m sorry to hear these things. But a few more questions, if you can stand ‘em
What if you lost your current job tomorrow, thru no fault of your own? THEN what would you do/where would you go? This happened to me, and altho I didn’t “luv” my career, it was o.k. and I supported myself & 2 sons. Suddenly a merger made me redundant and after 6.5 yrs. I was let go. I ended up taking a job, any job, just trying to put food on the table. A dept. store clerk, for gawd’s sake. (no, not a “sales assoc.” — wth, does a title obscuring a cr@p job make it less miserable?) My b.f. at the time asked, “Well, what would you do if you could do anything?” I said, “Go back to school.” He said … “What’s stopping you?” He was right, I just didn’t wanna see it. (btw, that lovely b.f. and I have been together now for almost 10 yrs., married for 3.5) My point here is that change is scary, and many times we funky humans will throw any and all kinds of excuses at the wall to see what sticks. You know darn well if you wanna change, you can. But it’s up to you.
I still feel you could find other hobbies that could be meaningful but less $$. Another plus to maybe changing careers is that you could find a place where conserv. pltcs. WOULD be allowed — heaven knows we need all the help we can get.
You’re throwing up another wall re: drs, meds around depression. This I can confidently state (as this as what I returned to school for): there’s the blues, and then there’s depression. It’s a *chemical* problem, not that there’s just something you do/don’t do. I feel hence your wondering if you’re a sex addict has something to do with self-medicating. It doesn’t matter WHAT the drug of choice is; food, sex, booze, cigs, etc., they’re all a way of temporarily making us … well, not feel better (which would mean a positive, l/t change), but momentarily not so bad. I can’t speak to govn’t watch lists, but the stigma is, again, another stumbling block you’ve put in your own road. Oh, maybe not meds if you’re so totally against them (altho if it IS a chem. imbalance I don’t know how you’d have a good prognosis), but certainly talk therapy might help.
Now here’s an interesting insight on your wife. You got her to counseling once, but she declined going again, citing therapy as the “first step to divorce”. Yet she’s TOLD you straight-out when the kiddos are in college, she’s divorcing you? Wow, anyone can see the contradiction there. Forgot to ask: does she work outside the home? either way, is she socking away some $$ against the day when ye olde paycheck gets thrown outta da house? (or could she pick up the slack if you went another way work-wise?) Weird. Makes no sense, unless this was something said in anger during an argument. However, if that’s how she really feels, why would you put yourself thru yrs. of this FOR THE SAME END? Not saying keeping a family together is a bad thing, but there kinda must be some reason, some personal satisfaction, for you to stay?
It sounds most of all as if you two have gotten into … thee rut. Have you pointed out that ALL COUPLES, to maintain & strengthen their coupledom, MUST have some time alone together? I’ll bet the only communication is what’s called “information exchange”. What time? Where, when? Did you pick up ___? Is there any other comm.? Talking politics, for instance — the news of the day right now could certainly spark a lively conversation! (even if you’re both on the same side, so to speak
Ah, you said yes, you would love you. Forgive my forthrightness, but that’s not what I asked. Would you *seduce* you? ESP. when talking poss. sex addiction, that might be a more pertinent question. (altho I can’t be seduced w/o feeling, on some level, love — so I realize it’s a double-edged sword)
It sounds as if you’re a very admirable man, with many good qualities. Another ponderable: would you see the career as so blah if you had a diff. home life? Would the home life improve if you had a diff. career? (not that I’m suggesting you run out and change either/or — wherever you go, there you are) It just feels to me that there’s too much piled on. Frankly, you will have to shake things up, even if it’s only how you think about & respond to events/people in your life.
I ache for all the people living without love, and by extension, the physical expression of same. (altho I think we all hafta go thru it, at some time or other, to have empathy) Seriously, I think it’s going to be up to you to change or fix this. I realize you can’t do it alone within a relationship — the other person has to make *some* kind of effort. But if they don’t, it’s still up to you: do I continue to exist like this until the inevitable dirt nap, or live as close as I can to the life I want? I do wish you all the best. In my own way, I was in such a situation at one point in my life. It was hella hard to move on, scary, and financially not so stable, but I came out the other side. My life’s a long way from perfect, but it’s sure a lot easier to live now!
(maybe check out Dennis Prager’s book, “Happiness is a Serious Problem”)
Find a good lawyer and get rid of that horrible woman STAT.
She’s a human vampire.
Curious, I hope you will disregard the irresponsible comment by 1389. He’s never met you, you wife, has no idea what your family life is like with your children. Please pay him no mind.
If you ain’t gettin’ laid regularly, go get laid regularly. The got 80% of the money and 100% of the pu&&y; we need to level that.
Well, the orgasmic diet has made the rounds of women’s magazines, and they all say it works. It’s pretty much the same thing as dr perricone’s skin care regimen. I read the article in Glamour, and read one of Dr Perricone’s books at the same time. The OD book had a less expensive, less- complicated regimen: tons of fish oil supplements, multivitamin, blueberries, vitamin C–I’m messing that up- you might want to find a copy of the book. My skin totally cleared up, and I got pregnant. I throw in about 200% magnesium over a few doses in the evening- dinner and bedtime and snack, since somehow magnesium is part of cell mitotic spindles,and stops migraines and so on. With Vitamin D, which I think is maybe in fish oil?
Anyway- it can be sold as any other snake oil routine- skin clearer, weight loss, happiness, marital satisfaction. You don’t know that your wife hasn’t any drive. Maybe she doesn’t, and this fixes it.
And, maybe she doesn’t want to get closer to a depressed guy. You’re interested in conservative politics. There’s stuffing envelopes, or manning polling booths. You like flying- you don’t necessarily have to own the plane. Is there plane spotting? or time-shares? or being on a pit-crew? Even plane-spotting?
That’s what spouse’s dad would do- go to near the airport with his son, and they’d park, and he’d name the airplanes flying overhead. They’d talk about the engine sounds, and the shape of the planes, and what airlines flew what planes. It sounds dorky, but my friend’s husband did the same thing with his kids. And all the kids list it as their favorite thing they did with their dad. The dads were mechanics in the AF.
Do you say nice things to her? One a day? Or do you criticize? I can tell you how our family weekend is going to go, pretty much from the first words out of my husband’s mouth on Friday night. Spouse’s mother is very negative, and she hasn’t any clue in the world why people recoil from her.
He’s kind of a whack-job, but Dr Phil really does have a good, practical book on marriage. It’s very concrete, very specific. He’s not into social engineering, or behaving like psychologists…so, women stay women, men stay men, and apparently, people stay married. I’d recommend his book over Harville Hendrix.
I do hope you fix what ails your marriage, and your soul. It’s very easy to not do anything when you haven’t much hope. I would think any little step would make things better than you expected.
you know, your letter is really sad. I hope being able to write it all out, clearly, and to not be shamed for writing it, is a good first step for you.
I remember hearing a joke when the whole ‘sex addict’ thing came out.
” What is sex addiction? Are you serious? Who are these people………..and how do we meet them?”
May I provide an alternate here?
Love is a a gift from God. As men and women, we are created in God’s image (His Like-ness). God is Love.
Men and women were created for love in self-giving and self actualization.
Human love embraces the body, and the body also expresses spiritual love.
The use of sexuality as physical giving has its own truth and reaches its full meaning when it expresses the personal giving of man and woman even unto death. As with the whole of the person’s life, love is exposed to the frailty brought about by original sin, a frailty experienced today in many contexts marked by strong negative influences, at times deviant and traumatic.
Nevertheless, the Lord’s Redemption has made the positive practice of chastity into something that is really possible and a motive for joy, for those who have the vocation to marriage (before, in the time of preparation, and afterwards, in the course of married life).
“Really possible” are the operative words. I want to encourage all to remember that God has gifted us with sexuality. Considerations of physical love set aside from God has led to addiction, meaningless, fruitless relationships. With God, there is a communion between man and women in marriage and love open to life.
May God Truly Bless all of you.
I tend to agree with Art Chance’s final paragraph in his reply to Alex @6. I don’t think human nature has suddenly changed. What has changed is the opportunity, and to some extent need, to engage in non-marital sex. Until about the 18th century, men and women got married at really young ages, in the neighborhood of 12 to 14 years of age (adolescence is a product of modernity). Hence any sexual addiction a woman, or man, would have had (or potentially would have had) would have been satisfied with the person’s spouse. Also, the absence of contraception would have resulted in serial pregnancies which would have kept any female’s mind off sex (and may have actually disincentivized females from sexual addiction). For males, the grinding poverty of the times and the need to keep food on the table would have also acted to prevent any overt sexual addictions. (Most people in Europe were perpetually hungry; the economic historian Robert Fogel in an unpusblished paper observed that French peasants had enough food to work five hours, after that they ran out of steam; only the small percentage of the upper classes had enough to eat and they could and did indulge in sexual liasions; America did not have the problem of inadequate food.) Adding to the constraints of sexual addiction being manifested were societal constraints of Judaic and Christian morality, the difficulty of aborting a child and the stigma of having a child out of wedlock.
As the population has gotten wealthier in areas dominated by Western Civilization, we have seen many of the constraints fall away. People are marrying much later, and the whole period of adolescence becomes extremely difficult to handle. Then, there is not the grinding poverty, or the serial pregnancies, or the societal constraints and stigmas involved in non-marital sexual relations. In the 1950s or so, a reliable method of contraception was developed, and that meant any sexual addiction would not have ended up in an unwanted pregnancy, and if it did, Roe v. Wade eased the way to terminate the unwanted pregnancy. Of course, divorce laws probably have played a role in all this as well. With divorce laws resulting in females walking away from the marriage with a good chunk of change (rightfully or not), some men have gotten very wary of formally marrying, but they want sex and so do the women. Finally, only in modern times have woman’s wages become equal to men’s wages (if not equal, close to equal). In earlier times, a women with a child, or a woman known to be a loose woman would have reduced the woman’s prospect of marrying. Couple that with her inability to get a decent wage, she could have ended up impoverished. That’s a tremendous disincentive to exercise her sexual addiction. With a woman’s improved earning capacity, that is no longer that disincentive.
Of course, none of this is easily testable (so it might fail Popper’s test of falsifiability) but it provides an alternative avenue of research than one proposed by proprietor’s of sex clinics. Ms. Rogers is quite right to be very skeptical of people who have a monetary interest in pushing their pet ‘theories.’
Terrific article. As there exists something of a divide between myself and my wife as regards the ideal frequency of martial duties, I wondered if I was an addict. I think I can safely say that I’m merely an enthusiast. The old lyrics say it more succinctly: “I’m in the mood for love, simply because you’re near me.” And by jove, it only applies to my wife. What a lucky gal she is.