Like any other addiction , sex and love addiction is a way of managing and containing profound emotional pain. The more an individual uses compulsive sexual behaviour to escape from reality, the more intolerable that reality is likely to become. A self-destructive cycle is set up, in which the need to escape increases in proportion to the chaos and shame of the individual’s life.
Emotions run deep and your current patterns of behaviour may be rooted in childhood relationships, insecurities or low self-esteem. Often, the addiction is only the outward symptom of complex emotional disorders that need to be rebalanced.
Sex and Love addiction can be based on a desire for acceptance, attention or a sense of being valued by another person. Sex (particularly casual or anonymous sex) might be sought as a substitute for a loving relationship – an attempt to achieve a level of intimacy that the person finds difficult to achieve within normal relationships.
Sex and Love addiction can be characterised by the use of pornography, repeated affairs, internet chat, cybersex, multiple partners, interest in sex shops and sexual paraphernalia, prostitution and group sex. The distinction between curiosity and addiction rests on the impact within your life. Not everyone who has an affair suffers from sex or love addiction…but someone who has repeated affairs and repeated relationship breakdowns is clearly suffering from a negative response to intimacy.
In this instance of pornography, for instance, an inability to have an intimate relationship without the use of pornography, or to be accessing of considering materials for a large proportion of the time, or to be accessing materials despite the fact that this is upsetting to your partner, has a negative impact and should be addressed.
