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What is Sex Addiction?

Where to Start

It can feel impossible to know what to do when dealing with sexual addiction. This is true for both addicts and partners of sex addicts. The information on this page can help you take steps toward recovery, healing, and reconnection.

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How Can You Tell If You Are A Sex Addict? Sex addicts can deal with compulsive sexual behavior in any of these areas of sexuality:​

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  • Pornography

  • Isolated Fantasizing

  • Anonymous Sex​

  • Compulsive Fetish Behavior

  • Online Chatting/Texting

Things to Look for

  • Sexual secrets that have a lot of power or control over you.

  • Participating in sexual activity that you don’t want to participate in.

  • Repeatedly engaging in sexual activity that steps outside of your boundary system.

  • Replacing work and family responsibilities.

Ineffective approaches for sexual addiction

  • Resolutions, Oaths, And Promises

  • Geographic Cure

  • Getting Into A Relationship Or Marrying

  • Getting Out Of A Relationship Or Marriage

  • Finding A Drug To Cure The Addiction

  • Outgrowing The Addiction

  • Other Things That Don’t Work:

  • Worry

  • Self-pity

  • Rule-keeping (This does not refer to establishing healthy boundaries but rather to creating a rigid rule system that creates walls where boundaries should be)

Recognizing Sexual Addiction

To help determine whether or not you are a sexual addict ask yourself if…
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  • You ever thought you needed help for your sexual thinking or behavior?

  • You ever tried to stop or limit doing what you felt was wrong in your sexual behavior?

  • You resort to sex to escape, relieve anxiety, or because you can’t cope?

  • You feel guilt, remorse, or depression afterward?

  • It interferes with relations with your spouse?

  • An irresistible impulse arises when the other party makes overtures or sex is offered?

  • You keep going from one relationship/lover to another?

  • You feel the “right relationship” would help you stop lusting, masturbating, or being so promiscuous?

  • You have a destructive need – a desperate sexual or emotional need for someone?

  • Your effectiveness or concentration decreased as sex has become more compulsive?

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