Recognizing Sex and Love Addiction
Sexually compulsive behavior interferes with healthy living and can result in significant stress to both the individual and the family or partner. When you have sexual compulsivity you may notice certain symptoms such as tolerance, craving, and withdrawal. Behaviors treated at A Center for Transformation include the following: compulsive masturbation, compulsive pornography use, affairs, multiple relationships, sex with prostitutes and escorts, use of massage parlors, anonymous sex, one-night stands, public sex, phone sex and/or sexting, internet sex (pornography, video cameras, cybersex, and chatting), compulsive use of dating apps (tinder, grindr, etc.), exhibitionism, voyeurism, and other unhealthy sexual behaviors.
The International Classification of diseases recognizes
Compulsive sexual behavior disorder
Compulsive sexual behavior disorder is characterized by a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behavior. Symptoms may include repetitive sexual activities becoming a central focus of the person’s life to the point of neglecting health and personal care or other interests, activities and responsibilities; numerous unsuccessful efforts to significantly reduce repetitive sexual behavior; and continued repetitive sexual behavior despite adverse consequences or deriving little or no satisfaction from it. The pattern of failure to control intense, sexual impulses or urges and resulting repetitive sexual behavior is manifested over an extended period of time (e.g., 6 months or more), and causes marked distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. Distress that is entirely related to moral judgments and disapproval about sexual impulses, urges, or behaviors is not sufficient to meet this requirement.
Characteristics of Sex and Love Addiction © 1990 The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc.
1. Having few healthy boundaries, we become sexually involved with and/or emotionally attached
to people without knowing them.
2. Fearing abandonment and loneliness, we stay in and return to painful, destructive
relationships, concealing our dependency needs from ourselves and others, growing more
isolated and alienated from friends and loved ones, ourselves, and God.
3. Fearing emotional and/or sexual deprivation, we compulsively pursue and involve ourselves in
one relationship after another, sometimes having more than one sexual or emotional liaison at
a time.
4. We confuse love with neediness, physical and sexual attraction, pity and/or the need to rescue
or be rescued.
5. We feel empty and incomplete when we are alone. Even though we fear intimacy and
commitment, we continually search for relationships and sexual contacts.
6. We sexualize stress, guilt, loneliness, anger, shame, fear and envy. We use sex or emotional
dependence as substitutes for nurturing care, and support.
7. We use sex and emotional involvement to manipulate and control others.
8. We become immobilized or seriously distracted by romantic or sexual obsessions or fantasies.
9. We avoid responsibility for ourselves by attaching ourselves to people who are emotionally
unavailable.
10. We stay enslaved to emotional dependency, romantic intrigue, or compulsive sexual activities.
11. To avoid feeling vulnerable, we may retreat from all intimate involvement, mistaking sexual and
emotional anorexia for recovery.
12. We assign magical qualities to others. We idealize and pursue them, then blame them for not
fulfilling our fantasies and expectations.