What is addiction to sex or being obsessed with it? Maybe we have a lack of trust or understanding for exploring the “details” like often masturbation, sex with prostitutes, sexual massages, telephone sex, anonymous sexual dates and other methods of sexual behavior that occur during sexual obsession. The most often reproach of the persons who decided to receive treatment and their previous appointments with their practitioners weren’t successful, is the lack of training and information that would help them in solving their problems.
Addiction to sex or obsession with sex means sexual behavior that significantly affects the normal life of an individual. This behavior can affect a relationship, job, health and/or the psychological state of the individual. In spite of the unpleasant consequences of this sexual behavior, the person that is addicted to sex continues with the harmful behavior.
The persons addicted to sex solve their problems with sex and continue to practice it in spite of the risks.
Addiction to sex includes behavior development that can be defined as a habit. This habit can include sexual excitement linked with specific methods of stimulation (for example, pornography pictures) or emotional states (for example, loneliness, depression, stress).
The person can develop a habit of using sexual materials and experiences as a way to feel better. This way, the person avoids facing with his real problems (for example, work stress, relationship problems or a sexual dysfunction). He may also cause a state during which it is difficult or impossible to get excited by other methods.
Frequency Discoveries show that obsession with sex is very common at the adult age. Dr. Patrick Cornes had shown in his research from 1987 that 8% of grown men and 3% of grown women suffer from this problem.
When does this problem show? Sexual addiction has clear and recognizable models of behavior that usually occur during adolescence and childhood. The dysfunction is defined with harmful consequences of the sexual behavior on the actual person and incapability of stopping the behavior.
Understanding sexual addiction can be reached using a widely accepted definition, Criteria of the addiction dysfunction: 1. Maintaining a specific model of behavior during a longer period of time longer than it is intended 2. a constant desire for this behavior followed by one or two unsuccessful attempts for reducing or controlling the behavior 3. a lot of time spent for these activities or attempts for recovering from its effects 4. Often undertaking specific activities where persons are expected to fulfill certain social, working, academic or house duties. 5. Behavior persistency in spite of the awareness of permanent and repeated financial, physiological or physical problems the behavior influences.
The consequences
As sexual addiction is defined as a permanent example of harmful behavior with a raised number of harmful consequences, the consequences are often the things that lead to recognition of the problems. They are: • social consequences – depression and unrest are often because of the feel of shame, modesty and lack of self-esteem • physical – injuries caused by frequent various sexual rituals and a high risk of sexually spread diseases • legal – sexual crimes (voajerism, obscene behavior), loss of a good professional reputation or licenses caused by obscene behavior or sexual harassment • financial – the cost of pornography material, prostitute services, telephone/computer, loss of productivity, creativity and employment
Retraction, rationalization and excuses
Like alcoholics, drug abusers or gamblers, persons obsessed with sex develop typical defense mechanisms – retraction, rationalization and excuses for their behavior and they blame other people for causing their problems.
Various addictions
Various addictions can be present within persons addicted to sex and they specifically must be monitored. A patient must be thoroughly checked for uncovering addiction to alcohol or drugs, addiction to other persons, a feeding dysfunction, exaggerated exercise, money spending or gambling. These persons often change their addiction during treatment, for example, one female patient who was restraining from sexual activities gained 20 kg during the 90 days of treatment. Before the treatment begins it is necessary to check the presence of sexually spread diseases.
Diagnosis
Diagnosis and treatment may be estimated incorrectly if the patient is consistently denying the facts or if he is leaving out the information about the type, quantity and consequences of his sexual activities. An incorrect diagnosis can also be set because of the mood dysfunction side-effects that are influenced by shame and stress of living a double life.
Frequent sexual behavior that doesn’t include a partner with which the person is in a relationship may point to addiction to sex. However, it is important to know that addiction to sex is a group of symptoms and we cannot set a diagnosis for each one of them! But when sexual behavior of one of the partners has a negative influence on the relationship, attention must be paid towards him even if there is no word about sexual obsession. Couples often attempt to solve the problem by themselves. If they don’t succeed in doing so, it is recommended to contact an experienced psychotherapist with experience in the area of individual therapy, couple therapy and/or family therapy.
Treatment
There are several psychological and psychiatric methods used for treatment. The doctor’s role is to establish reality. Early therapies don’t depend a lot on the affects of sexual behavior on a relationship or child abuse but they are concentrated on setting the goal here and now. The beginning treatment goes through three major phases: • recognizing the problem and specific behavior that are the cause for the problematic and addictive case • behavior contract – a written definition of sexual behavior that has to be eliminated. The contracts usually include tasks that need to encourage the person to handle the problem • prevention of repeating – working on recognizing and reducing the experience samples including treating the sources of dangerous behavior, for example, learning to overcome stress, strengthening of emotional relations, solving financial difficulties and problems at work.
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