Are you a sex addict?

Seriously... Being addicted to sex is just like being addicted to coke, cigs, booze. If it controls and runs/ruins your life, then you are addicted.

I got raped at 12 and had my first consenting sex at 14. It's safe to say I've been addicted since 16. I just can't stop.

Is anyone else fighting this addiction? If so, are you winning? If so, what are you doing to win? I'd really like to know.

I have certainly done stupid things for sex before but I think a lot of it was part and parcel of generally impulsive behavior as a whole. It didn't matter what it was: driving too fast, drinking too much, smoking too much pot, taking risks I shouldn't have, putting myself in deliberately dangerous situations, and of course looking for sex wherever I could find it. I recognize now that most of these things happened when I was in a manic state. About five years ago I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and it wasn't until recently that I really got some effective medications and treatment for it.

The worst thing is coming down from a manic high and realizing all the crazy, irrational, and totally self-destructive crap you've pulled. Shame and self-loathing doesn't begin to explain how you feel afterward.

I was molested when I was a young child and I'm sure that probably factors into the problem. But I don't feel like I am a sex addict as much as someone who seeks pleasure in all forms in very stupid ways from to time.

What works for me? Now that I'm being treated for my bipolar, I feel a million times better. As for the rest of it---therapy really does wonders. I know I'll probably have to do it for the rest of my life as a result of the childhood trauma and my illness, but I enjoy it and enjoy that it makes me feel better.

My advice to you is to make healthy choices for yourself and seek help and solace from safe methods.

Given your previous trauma you might want to see someone about your sex addiction, as I am sure it could be treated, if you feel it negatively effects your life.

I've never been a sex addict in the strictist sense, but as a voyeur my main sex act is watching sex, and I have been addicted to that in the past. After a bad breakup for a long time I was utterly addicted to porn and sex clubs to the point I retreated from all normal relationships and just focused on my voyeurism and masturbated probably 3 times a day everyday for about 2 years.

I'm still a voyeur, but now I have found a much better balance between that and real love and sexual relationships.

I don't know if I'm addicted in the technical sense, but I can never get enough. When I had a bf who wasn't into it, I bought myself a toy and used it several times a day. Then I up and left him for someone who was as into it as I was... though still sometimes I'm the one begging for it, or left hanging. I've never done anything I regret or consider stupid for sex though.
I've also never had any sexual trauma.

I think I'm addicted, I bug KyoTe about it to the point where he gets a little miffed, at least, I think he gets miffed. He certainly doesn't agree to having sex as often as I'd like. But, it's okay, I survive, barely.

I have had sexual trauma, I was raped when I was 10, and I think its probably the main reason I have more ... dark fantasies. Though, I don't think the sexual abuse contributed to my sexual addiction, I think I'm just addicted to sex with KyoTe.

I'm not sure if I'm a sex addict or not, I don't have sex that often, but when I DO have sex, I'm a little obsessive about it. Maybe not obsessive, more like infatuated.

It's ok to, you know, have feelings about it. Or not.

Way to break the vague-o-meter there.

Thank you.

lol

I feel It's a craving I adjust with stress, if so, is that a problem? To enjoy sex, but to feel it wasn't necessary after the act?

I think I might have sex addict tendencies. My boyfriend doesn't want sex like I do. We used to have sex alot more. When he doesn't have sex with me, it makes me feel rejected, unattractive, and I think that everytime we have sex it will be our last. The sex is about the only thing that makes me feel wanted/loved.

I do feel the urge on a daily basis, a gnawing hunger that won't stop. The only time I haven't felt it was just right after sex.

Allow me to throw a curveball into this and say that I'm not entirely convinced one can be addicted to sex. Addiction is a combination of physical and psychological compulsion that I'm not entirely sure can be met or matched by sex.

This isn't to say that jay_gurl's grievances aren't real, not at all. I just don't know if "addiction" is the right term of art to use.

Hello my name is Logos and I'm a fucking sex addict;........ now bend over !

The older I get, the worse it gets, also this is directly proportionate to not getting any, which seems to come with age. who wants to fuck some old guy? Right. Me neither
I've always wanted more sex than I could get, and when I was getting quite a bit, it was always just not enough, or not hot enough. Now I find myself interested in women from 18 to 50, and I only get grossed out occasionally while cruising the nastiest web sites on the planet.

Exactly.

I kinda used to be...but grew out of it maybe? Or just found someone I am content with. Well, I was more of a sex with different people addict. Now that I am happy with just one person, I've chilled out. But it used to be bad...It was all I'd do, all I could think about, if I didn't have sex for like, a day I'd get extremely anxious.

This is human nature, not sex addiction. Nothing hurts, humiliates, and shames us like being rejected for sex, especially by a long-term partner. Now, if the only acts that ever help you feel attractive and wanted are sexual, you might have some dings and dents in your psyche, but it's not sex addiction, as that is defined (or at least to the extent that the idea of sex addiction is defined at all).

Flossie, you have a broken heart, sweetheart, not an addiction to sex. Come and join the Girls Only Group and discover how not alone you are.

how is it not a physical and psychological thing? i would think it just as much a physical and psychological thing as smoking, for sure. i'm not trying to be snarky. i really want to understand your opinion.

but you get a physical and psychological response when you engage in sexual acts. so thats why i'm confused by what you're saying.

Only girls can have broken hearts?

To be fair, I'm not being entirely clear, since my conception of addiction is fuzzy. In my defense, psychology generally has a fuzzy conception of addiction; more specifically, it has several competing theories each of which explain some aspects of addiction better than others. And I should be clear, I've read books on addiction, I've had friends who were addicted, and I've spent time with people who were rehabbing from addiction, but I'm not a psychologist and as such my intuitions are only extending from my limited experience with psychology and experience, such as they are.

That being said, however you tend to define addiction, however, addiction to sex such as it is doesn't look like or follow the same patterns that other addictive behaviors do. It's common to hear of ritualistic behaviors common to addiction: in mild cases, the smoke after dinner, in worse cases, you'll get the clockwork 10 a.m. fix. You don't see that kind of ritualism with sex addiction.

Second, while addiction emerges out of a variety of different stimuli, the closest people come to sex addiction, where you really do see compulsive sexual behavior, seems to emerge out of narrow circumstances associated with prior physical or sexual trauma: abuse and neglect, rape, certain other circumstances. So while I may hear a variety of reasons why people develop eating disorders (fortunately, we've come a long way from the controlling mother theory of the 80's), the fact that compulsiveness ties narrowly to prior trauma with sex suggests that the sex is a symptom of a larger problem, not a problem in itself.

Third, it's really hard to quantify and appropriately gauge how much or what kind of sex really means you're compulsively addicted; this again departs from more classic chemical addictions, where you reliably have to have a certain amount of alcohol or nicotine or whatever in your system as a baseline. Sex three times a day could mean you're compulsive; it could also mean you're simply high libido in a society that frowns on high libidos.

Because of these departures, and in no small part because the DSM-IV, the diagnostic manual of psychology, doesn't recognize sex addiction, I tend to hedge my bets about whether you can really be addicted to sex in the same way you're addicted to alcohol. I was really hedging with jay_gurl not because I don't believe her about her compulsion, but because by her own admission it stems from an event that in any sense of the word would be horrifically traumatizing; the sex sounds like it's a symptom of a larger concern. Some of the other posts, honestly, just sound like high libidos or that they're in the throes of passion-stage love or that they're young and shot through with estrogen/testosterone, and the problem in those cases isn't the behavior in itself so much as their situation, individual choice in how to deal with that situation, and/or society's reaction to it.

Just to be clear, again, this is amateur diagnosis at best on my part, and I wouldn't want anyone to actually substitute my diagnosis for a trained professional, but it just strikes me that, however we attribute addictive behavior, sex addiction deviates far enough from it that I'm reluctant to call sex addictive.