Here are some general ways to know you might have crossed the line from healthy sexual interest to sexual addiction or compulsion:
1. You lie
For Parker, the sex addiction counselor, this is the No. 1 way you know you’ve crossed the line: when you make up stories to get sex.
“If you lie with women to get them to have sex with you, you’re a predator and an addict,” he says.
2. Sex consumes you
If your interest in sex runs your life, you have a problem, says Robert Weiss, a social worker and founder of the Sexual Recovery Institute. He says addicts “are always preoccupied with hitting on someone, or picking someone up, or getting home to look at porn before their spouse comes home.”
3. You’re “divorced, dead, fired or arrested”
If you continue your sexual activities even under threat of being “divorced, dead, fired or arrested,” you’re an addict, Parker says.
“They ignore the consequences,” Weiss adds. “They say, ‘I could really screw up myself here, but I’m going to continue to do it.’ “
4. You have an intense interest in pornography
“The pornography piece of this cannot be overstated,” Parker says. “Show me a guy who’s having sex with three women in one week, and I promise you he has a relationship with pornography.”
5. You want to stop and you can’t
Sexual addiction is defined by a loss of control, Weiss says.
“I was totally out of control. I tried to stop and I couldn’t,” Rogers says.
from CNN
John McDonough
