Sexual Addiction… in Progress

The recently released film Girl in Progress is on the surface a coming of age story about Ansiedad, a sixteen-year-old girl who develops a plan—based on the clichés of young adult literature—for growing up quickly. A more interesting character in the film is the girl’s mother, Grace, portrayed by Eva Mendez.

On the one hand, Grace is an immigrant single mom trying desperately to make her way in the world while providing for an ungrateful daughter. On the other hand, she’s an archetype for sexual and romantic addiction among women, looking for love in all the wrong places, at all the wrong times, with all the wrong men, despite the emotional and psychological damage this behavior causes to both her and her daughter.

Though Girl in Progress is not likely to become a cornerstone of modern American cinema (early reviews have been mixed, at best), it at least serves as a reminder that sexual addiction is not an entirely male phenomenon, even though media portrayals of sexual addiction focus almost exclusively on men.

The fact is, between 8 and 12 percent of those currently seeking treatment for sexual addiction are women, and we are likely to see those numbers increase as clinicians gain diagnostic clarity.

Just Go to a Meeting!

Sex addicts, like many individuals in early recovery, are often highly resistant to the idea of attending 12-step meetings. And, like all addicts, they often have clever and insightful but typically unproductive reasons for not going.

Some examples include: “That’s where the really sick people go, right, not people like me?” or “I can’t talk openly to a bunch of strangers. What will they think of me?” or “What if someone sees me there and tells someone I know?”

And it’s not like the urban or online sex addict is limited in terms of sex and relationship addiction 12-step meetings, as today numerous groups can be found both in-vivo on and the Internet—each with a slightly different focus and population (SA, SLAA, SCA, SRA, SAA, etc.). Yet for a variety of reasons, mainly fear of the unknown, attending therapy often seems a more palatable option than going to a 12-step recovery meeting. So be it.

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.

Tech-Connect

These days, virtually everyone owns a computer, smart-phone, or mobile device. Digital interaction is an integral part of our everyday routine. We check emails and texts, update our Facebook page, fire off a tweet or two, and then finish our morning coffee. Digital interconnectivity provides endless new opportunities to support our very human need for community and social interaction.

Innovations like Facebook, with over 500 million users, and Twitter, with over 300 million users, now allow real-time interactions with an increasingly wider and more diverse group of people. Best of all, friends and family too distant for regular contact just a few years ago can now be intimately folded into our lives. We make friends, we share our experiences, we celebrate, and we commiserate – one world, a growing interactive community.

For partners, spouses, and families separated for long periods of time by work or military service, the tech-connect boom is a godsend. Couples, children, and parents are now able to bond long-distance in real time, sharing a growing child’s latest milestone, and even engaging in visual intimacy via the webcams now routinely incorporated into computers and smart-phones.

And those not yet in a committed relationship can put technology to good use when home or traveling via e-dating, establishing and growing budding relationships with less of a focus on who lives where.

Studies universally suggest that somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of people in committed relationships sexually cheat on their spouse or significant other. Of course, in today’s world of chat rooms, webcams, instant messaging, and instant pornography, the concept of cheating is somewhat malleable and easier to deny than in the past, when cheating meant actual live physical contact.

That said, after working with hundreds of betrayed spouses and their ultimately remorseful mates, the answer to the question of what defines infidelity remains as clear to me today as it was when Monica Lewinsky first stored away that stained blue dress. Infidelity is the breaking of trust caused by keeping secrets in an intimate partnership.

In other words, with sexual infidelity, it’s more than the cheating itself or any specific sexual act that causes the deepest pain to a betrayed spouse or partner. It’s the betrayal of relationship trust caused by consistent lying that causes intimacy to crack wide open.

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.