Mark’s Story

Mark is a married, 35-year-old realtor. His wife, Janet, is a pharmaceutical sales rep who spends several days each week on the road. Both report that their sex life was great until just a few years ago, and Mark is not sure what happened. He used to look forward to the days Janet was home because he knew the first thing they were going to do was hop in bed and make passionate love. Even after the birth of their first child, the two always made time late evenings and weekend mornings for lovemaking. But no longer. These days when being sexual with Janet, Mark struggles to reach orgasm. He’s even started faking orgasms, just to get things over with. What Mark can’t understand is why he’s ready, willing, and able when he logs on to his favorite porn sites—something he does regularly when Janet is on the road—but he can’t function when he’s got the real thing right there in front of him. Mark is quite clear in saying he is not “bored” with his wife, and he continues to find her “sexy, exciting, and arousing.”

Is Porn Ruining Sex?

Mark is suffering from Delayed Ejaculation (DE), a problem that is more common than most people realize. Symptoms of DE include: taking longer than normal to reach orgasm; only being able to reach orgasm via masturbation; and not being able to reach orgasm at all. At first Mark didn’t mind because “lasting longer” is generally viewed as a sign of virility. He chalked it up to maturing as a lover, thinking he was now better at pleasing Janet. Unfortunately, as he and many others have discovered, there really is such a thing as too much of a good thing.

As with all sexual dysfunctions, there are numerous possible causes of DE, including: physical illness/impairment; the use of SSRI-based antidepressants, which are known to delay and in many cases eliminate orgasm; psychological factors with stressors like financial worries or family dysfunction—all of which can mentally distract men during intercourse. But one increasingly documented cause of both delayed …

In David J. Ley’s recently published book, The Myth of Sex Addiction, Dr. Ley argues that the concept of sexual addiction is based on questionable research and subjective moral judgments. He believes that labeling problematic sexual behavior as addiction undermines the individual’s personal responsibility for that behavior.

He also believes that the sexual addiction treatment “industry” is driven by economic greed.

Sadly, sexual addiction is not a myth and the treatment “industry” is barely in its infancy. As a licensed sexual addiction specialist with over 20 years experience in the field of sex and intimacy, I have seen thousands of individuals whose sexual behaviors satisfy every criteria of addiction.

These individuals—both men and women—act on those sexual behaviors repeatedly and, once headed down that path, without the ability to stop. They also develop a tolerance to their sexual activities, most often causing them to engage in those behaviors for longer periods of time or to seek out more intensely arousing situations, images, etc.

To say that these people are not suffering from an addiction is to deny reality.

What is “Hypersexual Disorder”?

The American Psychiatric Association (APA), recognizing the increasing public and clinical acceptance of the concept of sexual addiction, has requested and received extensive Tier 1, peer reviewed research data, along with an exhaustive literature review (Shout out to Dr. Marty Kafka of Harvard!) toward its consideration of a potential DSM-5 Hypsersexuality Disorder diagnosis.

While “Hypersexual Disorder” may not be the ideal term for a problem that more accurately involves the lengthy search and pursuit of sexual and romantic intensity rather than just the sex act itself, the proposed criteria as written do point to problem patterns of excessive fantasy and urges that mirror most aspects of what we have come to know more commonly as “sexual addiction.”

Is Sex Addiction Real?

There will always be controversy – as there should be – when any form of inherently healthy human behavior such as eating, sleeping, or sex is clinically designated as pathological. And while the power to “label” must always be carefully wielded to avoid turning social, religious, or moral judgments into diagnoses (as was homosexuality in the DSM-I and DSM-II), equal care must be taken to not avoid researching and creating diagnostic criteria for healthy behaviors when they go awry due to underlying psychological deficits and trauma.

Pre-Internet sexual addiction research in the 1980s suggested that approximately 3 to 5 percent of the adult population struggled with some form of addictive sexual behavior. Those studied were a self-selected treatment group, mostly male, who complained of being “hooked” on magazine and video porn, multiple affairs, prostitution, old-fashioned phone sex, and similar behaviors.

More recent studies indicate that sexual addiction is both escalating and simultaneously becoming more evenly distributed among men and women. This escalation in problem sexual behavior appears to be directly related to the increasingly high-speed Internet access to both intensely stimulating graphic pornography and anonymous sexual partnering.

Today these connections are furnished not only through the use of home and laptop computers, but also via smart-phones and the related geo-locating mobile devices we now carry in our pockets and briefcases.

No Strings Attached

It’s likely that even before humans had permanent dwellings or owned property, men and women were seeking out anonymous sexual hook-ups – no strings attached (NSA) encounters to get off, get out, and get on with their day.

Until recently, gay men sought such encounters in public parks, restrooms and bathhouses, while straight men found them in singles bars, strip clubs, swingers clubs and brothels. Today, the Internet, social media, and the related proliferation of sex-locater smart-phone apps have rapidly, drastically, and permanently altered the anonymous sex landscape. And considering humanity’s spotty track record with impulsive and addictive pleasure seeking, the horizon is darkening in relation to sexual addiction, sexual compulsivity, anonymous infidelity and disease transmission as people mindlessly, albeit briefly, place their health and intimate lives in the hands of complete strangers.

Today’s geo-located, readily accessible anonymous sexual encounters, while intoxicating play for some, are already taking their toll on others, leading them into health, career, and relationship crises.

Prior to 1994, if you wanted to view pornography, you had to get dressed, get in your car, drive to a seedy shop in a bad part of town, and fork over hard-earned cash for an overpriced magazine – all the while hoping not to be seen by the neighbor’s teenage kid, your boss, the police, or your spouse.

Today, thanks to streaming video over the Internet and smart-phones, finding porn doesn’t even require getting out of bed. In the digital age, access to stimulating sexual imagery of every ilk imaginable is virtually unlimited – easily and instantly downloaded. And most often it’s free.

For the average person, porn provides a quick and convenient means to a pleasurable end, typically turned to when an emotional or a close physical connection is either not available or not desired. However, current research tells us that for approximately 5 to 8 percent of the adult population, porn use can evolve into an addictive behavior, quickly escalating from a pleasurable distraction to a behavioral compulsion that leads to depression, isolation, loneliness, shame, and negative life consequences.

For as long as men have viewed pornography, women have asked, “Why?” Now they may be asking, “Why not?”

While some women express concern about male pornography use, others are simply curious. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of women themselves are viewing pornography both with a partner and without.

Some women in committed relationships fear that a partner’s porn use may be indicative of relationship dissatisfaction or a desire to stray. But in reality, a man’s use of pornography most often has less to do with his partner directly (though it may affect them), and more to do with his own innate characteristics and desires. And today, increasing numbers of women are finding their own reasons to purchase, view and explore their own sexual fantasies through pornography.

Here are five things you may or may not know about sex and porn:

#1 Men are more visually stimulated than women.

A 2004 Center for Behavioral Neuroscience study confirmed a long-held belief that men are more stimulated by visual cues than women. Our amygdala, the area of the human brain that controls emotion and motivation, is more highly activated in men when viewing sexual images than women viewing the same content. Men are overall more attuned to visual imagery than women.

Today’s omnipresent fear that one’s personal identifying data (e.g., social security number or credit card information) may be vulnerable to hackers and identity theft has pushed millions of subscribers into the arms of “identity theft protection” companies like LifeLock.

But is anyone really paying attention to what will happen when the sexually explicit language and photos that are sent via the latest “friend finder” smart-phone app or sex website get hacked or otherwise exploited?

When “joining” sites like Ashley Madison or downloading apps like Blendr, participants are offered some measure of comfort via a click-it guarantee that personal information will be securely maintained. But somehow it seems off the radar to the same professionals and/or married individuals, who would never send their social security number online via an unsecured site, that when you sext and arrange app-based sexual hook-ups, every word and pic sent via these apps also resides in a far-away server. And that information lives there for a whole lot longer than the instant it takes to sext a potential hook-up.

There is never a dull moment in the sex-nology industry. If you don’t like what you see (or feel), just wait a few months and someone will invent a gadget or program to suit your every sexual taste and desire.

In addition to their sex-partner-seeking, geo-location abilities, smart phones are among the latest gadgets revolutionizing the rapidly evolving world of virtual sexuality. Just as video sales in the 80s, cable and satellite TV in the 90s, and Internet growth over the past decade have been in part fueled by porn, the sex industry is now actively involved in smart phone-based virtual sex!

Electronic hardware and software companies are also working together to evolve virtual male sex toys, some of which were shown at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. Without doubt there is a highly charged technological race toward making virtual sex more like the real deal – then finding the best way to market, sell and profit from what can be considered an entirely new world of “personal products.”

In some ways the holidays can be a set-up for feeling bad. Our media-reinforced expectations of a warm, loving family-driven holiday season are often challenged by very real feelings of loneliness and disappointment. Those also saddled with a history of addiction or other emotional problems may find themselves longing for tangible ways to escape the emotional tension that this period brings.

This next two weeks, perhaps more than at any other time of year, not only puts more emotional pressure on all of us, but also provides the unstructured time, endless food, candy and drink and intense family interaction, which can challenge the most health conscious and well balanced among us, For those men and women who struggle with love, relationship and sex addictions, this is relapse season.