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Sex & Love Addiction

Sex Addiction
Sex Addiction is ironically a lonely, painful disease that destroys families, careers, relationships, creates legal problems, health problems and adversely affects the lives of the thousands who are compulsive or avoidant in their pursuit of Love and Sex.
Sex Addiction has its roots in trauma and abuse. Children growing up in rigid, emotionally disengaged families learn how to keep secrets and learn how not to express or share their feelings. They also learn not to trust others, which inhibits their ability to connect and adequately bond. This loss of intimacy in childhood is at the heart of sexual addiction. People are instinctively social creatures and without healthy social engagement, they can become anxious, fearful, angry, depressed, irritable and acquire low self-esteem.
The euphoria of finding a new relationship, hooking up for the night with a new partner or viewing pornography on the internet can help to temporarily soothe those painful unwanted feelings.
Sex Addiction is an intimacy disorder far more than just a lack of morals. The combination of trauma and fear that occurs early in life along with shaming messages about sexuality for a child growing up in a rigid or disengaged family tends to be the perfect setup for the making of a sex addict.
Assessment Criteria for Sex Addiction
(answer yes or no)
  1. Recurrent failure to resist sexual impulses to engage in specific sexual behavior?
  2. Frequent engaging in those behaviors to a greater extent or over a longer period of time than intended?
  3. Persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to stop, reduce, or control behavior?
  4. Inordinate time spent obtaining sex, being sexual, or recovering from sexual experiences?
  5. Feeling preoccupied with sexual behavior and/or preparatory activities?
  6. Frequent engagement in the behavior takes significant time away from obligations: occupational, academic, domestic, or social?
  7. Continuation of the behavior despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent social, financial, psychological or physical problem that is caused or exacerbated by the behavior. For instance, risk of STDs, loss of a partner or marital problems, loss of rights to be with children, abortions/ unwanted pregnancies, career problems, risking arrest?
  8. More frequency or intensity of behavior is needed over time to obtain the desired result or a diminished effect results even though continuing the same level of acting out? (building up tolerance)
  9. Deliberately giving up or limiting social, occupational, or recreational activities to keep time open for sexual acting out?
  10. Distress, anxiety, restlessness, or irritability if unable to engage in the behavior (having withdrawal symptoms)?
If you score 3 of the above 10, sex addiction is considered present. Most sex addicts score 5, while over 50% score 7.
-- Assessment Criteria Material from research by Patrick Carnes, Ph.D.
For more information on Sex Addiction, please check out:
Websites
Books
  • Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sex Addiction by Patrick Carnes
  • Facing the Shadow by Patrick Carnes
  • Sexual Anorexia by Patrick Carnes
  • 101 Freedom Exercises by Doug Weiss
  • Wild At Heart by John Eldredge
  • Don't Call it Love: Recovery from Sex Addiction by Patrick Carnes
  • Sex and Love Addiction Treatment and Recovery by Eric Griffin-Shelley
  • Oversexed and Under Loved: A Recovery Guide to Sex Addiction by Douglas Rubin
  • The Betrayal Bond by Patrick Carnes
  • Women, Sex and Addiction by Charlotte Kasl
  • Cruise Control: Understanding Sex Addiction in Gay Men by Robert Weiss, LCSW
  • Silently Seduced, When Parents Make Their Children Partners by Dr Ken Adams
  • Untangling the Web: Sex, Porn, and Fantasy Obsession in the Internet Age by Robert Weiss and Jennifer Schneider
Love Addiction
There is a distinction between Sex Addiction and Love Addiction. Love Addiction has more to do with a compulsive pattern of creating love relationships with specific person(s). For the Love Addict, the relationship, the person, and sex with the person, is all part of the allure. In addition the obsession can be focused on the fantasy of a relationship and the Love Addict mistakes this fantasy for love. While some of same elements are found in a healthy love relationship, love addicts have difficulty finding lasting and fulfilling love relationships. As a result they are compelled to keep seeking satisfaction in the next relationship, but find it unsatisfying, demanding and empty.
Love addicts usually feel they can't live without the other person and their whole existence depends on being in that relationship. The Love Addict's obsession with their relationship or fantasy of having a relationship keeps them in a very unstable emotional state.
Love addiction doesn't always look the same in any two people. For some Love Addicts they may have several love relationships going on at the same time with different people. Other Love Addicts may have a series of monogamous relationships, leaving each when the initial high of being in love wears off. However, they immediately move on to the next person as a way of securing that euphoric love high. Love addicts may also be married or in a long-term relationship, but continue to create new secret relationships or even rekindle affairs with former lovers.
Sex Addiction and Love Addiction can also co-exist in a person. The common denominator is the obsession and the core belief they are essentially flawed. The objectives of a Sex Addict and Love Addict are often in conflict, which creates an even deeper state of internal chaos.
For more information on Love Addiction, please check out:
Books
  • Facing Love Addiction by Pia Mellody
  • Leaving the Enchanted Forest, The Path from Relationship Addiction to Intimacy by Stephanie Covington and Liana Beckett
  • Is it Love or is it Addiction by Brenda Schaeffer
  • Women, Sex and Addiction by Charlotte Kasl
  • Women who Love too Much by Robin Norwood
  • Finally Getting it Right — From Addictive Love to the Real Thing by Howard Halpern
  • Addiction to Love: Overcoming obsession and dependency in relationships by Susan Peabody
  • How to Break your Addiction to a Person by Howard Halpern
  • Escape from Intimacy — Untangling the Love Addictions: Sex, Romance, Relationships by Anne Wilson-Schaef
  • Help! I'm in love with a Narcissist by Steven Carter and Julia Sokol
Websites
sex love addiction