Sex addicts are extremely lonely people. Some are isolated and awkward socially, while others seem to have friends and a very active social world. The former may not circulate and talk much with others at work. They may not go out with friends, be married/partnered or date.If they are partnered or married, they seldom share much information with their significant other. They can’t wait to get home to watch porn for most of the evening or take breaks in the bathroom at home or work with a smart phone and pornography. The alienation of massage parlors, prostitutes and anonymous hook-ups only further their loneliness.
The apparently sociable sex addict may have friends, attend parties, flirt with and tease everyone at the office while being married with kids or in a long-term partnership. But both look for opportunities to escape into their own small world of isolating sexual behaviors. When with other people they may be only partially present. They appear to be distracted and dissociated. It’s called “being in the bubble” or off in a sexual fantasy. They do everything to avoid true intimacy while feeling isolated, alone and extremely needy.
Sex addiction is not about sex. It is about using the excitement and danger of sexually acting out to numb the pain and loneliness of an intimacy deficit. It is a substitute for deep intimate connection. Like a drug, sex is reliable in what it delivers. It is a high intensity gratification that numbs the emotional pain of depression, anxiety, unresolved childhood and severe adult trauma as well as the everyday stressors of work, family or being alone.
Sex addicts are usually not aware of how fearful they are of intimate relationships. As a child they report feeling abandoned, ignored, discounted or invisible. Their childhood may have looked “normal” to everyone, including themselves. But their connection with adults was lacking, inadequate or inappropriate. Thus they adopt a way of relating that is based on fear and avoidance of true intimacy. Only through recovery can sex addicts begin to have the courage to know themselves as well as another person.
All sex addicts have secret lives that include their acting-out behaviors, be it pornography, one-night stands, hook-ups, affairs, encounters with prostitutes or just watching others in public places for the purpose of sexual objectification and fantasy building. The sex addict, when in this acting out mode has an alternate persona. Some addicts describe this as “a totally different/other personality.” They often describe their personality as “two people: the good self who is honest, dependable, hardworking, family oriented and the dark self who is dangerous, risk oriented and highly sexual in unconventional, dangerous ways.” The dark self inhabits the secret life, while the good self inhabits the world of work, family, friends and integrity. The dark self lives in a secret world of fantasy and acting out in ways that don’t integrate with the values of the good/ideal self.