When I begin therapy with a new client struggling with sex addiction, they often explain that the reason they act out (have repeated affairs, masturbate to pornography, hire prostitutes, or incessantly flirt with women, etc.) is that they have a high sex drive. This is frequently used as the excuse for why they cheat, why they use porn, or why they flirt (either in person or online). It makes sense that this is a common and appealing way to explain behavior that gets someone into trouble – “I just have a really high sex drive.” But the truth is, at least in my 25 years of working with hundreds of men with sex addiction, this is never what’s actually going on.
What is High Sex Drive?
Sex drive, or libido, varies from person to person and usually, at least for men, wanes as we age. But there is no standard or “normal” sex drive and no clinical definition of what high sex drive is. Some men are naturally hornier than others. It’s very common in the context of male / female relationships that the man wants to have sex more often than his female partner. This is normal and does not mean the man has an abnormally high sex drive.
What is Sex Addiction?
Sex addiction is sometimes called hypersexuality and, more recently, compulsive sexual behavior. Though not always the case, people with sex addictions usually will experience some of the following: repeated failed attempts to stop or reduce the frequency of the behavior; over time the behavior happens more frequently or with greater intensity; spending more and more time either thinking about the behavior or engaging in the behavior; and the sexual behavior creates problems in one or more area of their lives – financial problems, legal problems, relationship problems, or problems at work.
What is often confusing about sexual addiction is that it can take many different forms depending on the addict. For some, the sexual addiction is in the form of compulsive and problematic use of pornography. For others, the addiction takes the form of repeated affairs or hiring prostitutes. There’s a wide range of sexual behaviors that can be sex addictions, but the common defining features are that the person feels badly about what they do or that it causes problems in their life.
Sex Addiction Impacts Perception of Sex Drive
High sex drive does not cause sex addiction. In fact, sex addiction often causes men to believe that they have a higher-than-normal sex drive. For example, most of my clients whose sex addiction involves porn find that over time they look at porn and masturbate more frequently, sometimes up to many times per day. They start to believe that they have an organic, physiological need to have multiple orgasms per day. When they are finally able to stop looking at porn and reduce the frequency of their masturbating, they find that they do not, in fact, have a drive to orgasm this often. Through their addiction, they had trained themselves to think this is what they needed.
Usually, after someone has been in recovery from their sex addition for a few weeks or months, they will tell me they now have returned to a more natural sex drive and realize how warped their libidos were when they were active in their addictions.
Men with sex addictions generally find that they objectify and sexualize women. This is often presented as evidence that they have a high sex drive. Again, when the addictive sexual behavior is removed, these men usually notice a dramatic reduction in their objectification and sexualization of women.
The only way to really know if you have a higher-than-normal sex drive is to remove the compulsive sexual behavior. Only then can you see what your organic physiological libido is.
For more information, visit my Sex Addiction Counseling page.
Feel free to contact me with any questions.