Ending the Addictive Cycle: Sex Addiction and Sex Anorexia

For the sex addict, anorexia can offer a sense of control, but through continued isolation, the addict’s emotional health suffers, making him more vulnerable to the addiction.

Since New Year’s Eve, Steve has left his house exactly seven times, and left his couch as little as humanly possible. While others have tended to describe him as a social person, even outgoing, these last four months he’s been a hermit. He wouldn’t call what’s happening agoraphobia; he’s not afraid to leave his home. He just doesn’t want to. The motivation to leave is completely and utterly gone. He doesn’t want to be touched, called, messaged or invited anywhere. This would all be worrying if he had the motivation to feel worried—though if he did, he’d worry about what he knows will come next: the cravings.

He’s currently experiencing a phase known by sex addicts as anorexia. It’s not about food or restricted eating, although it does, for Steve, affect appetite; he has none. Because sexual addiction—really any addiction—is about the dopamine chase, a neurotransmitter that affects motivation and reward response in the brain, it’s fairly safe to assume he’s presently low on dopamine. He has experienced depression—linked to low dopamine—since he was a teenager, and right now, Steve’s depressed. Still, everything has its end, and with addiction, ends tend to repeat into oblivion.

There is the wasting, feeless, nothing of anorexia—taken from the Greek, lack of longing. And then there is the sharp edge, the crushing fevered weight and pull of need—need everything, need it now, even if it hurts. The safe in-betweens seem too dim, too unreal to matter.

What Is Sexual Anorexia?

Kelly McDaniel writes in Ready to Heal: Women Facing Love, Sex, and Relationship Addiction, “Sexual anorexia is an extreme aversion to closeness, and sexual addiction is an objectification of the other person that makes closeness impossible.” The bottom line is that sexual addiction is an intimacy disorder; sex addicts cannot emotionally connect. They conflate the intensity of physical contact with the realness of emotional intimacy. We all need human connection, and because theirs is never fulfilled, sex addicts seek and seek and seek and never seem to get enough. Sexual anorexia is the underside of the coin of sexual addiction, when the addict turns his behaviors in on himself (“acting-in” instead of acting out).

A sexual anorexic may:

• Harbor inflexible, judgmental attitudes about sex

• Have fears about sex (such as fears of STIs or fears of assault)

• Experience shame or self-hatred after sex

• Attempt to avoid sex through the use of self-destructive behaviors (such as never leaving the house)

• Experience self-doubt and distorted self-image

• Experience sexual “binging” episodes

For the addict, anorexia can offer a sense of control, but through continued isolation, the addict’s emotional health suffers, making him or her more vulnerable to the addiction. For some, the cycle of sexual addiction and sexual anorexia comes alongside other compulsive behaviors such as overeating, hoarding, workaholism and overspending—all behaviors unconsciously designed to keep others further than arms-length. At the root of these addictions, there is the need to isolate, to preserve the self—though, paradoxically, through self-destructive means.

Abuse and Sexual Addiction Often Linked

When attempting to understand why such self-destructive behavior exists in sex addicts, and what creates such intimacy disorders, researchers and mental health professionals often come across histories of trauma in the lives of sex addicts. It is not hard to understand why a person who has been harmed by a trusted other may develop problems with physical and emotional intimacy. The physical, emotional and/or sexual abuse and neglect of children wreak havoc on their lives, and one way we see this happening is through a tendency toward addiction.

There Is Hope for Sexual Addiction and Sexual Anorexia

The light at the end of this very bleak tunnel, and there is one, is that there is hope for recovery for sex addicts and sexual anorexics. It takes work and a willingness to get to the bottom of the addiction: whatever created the intimacy problem in the first place. But with this work and willingness, many people have found freedom from the cravings, motivation to thrive out of the black hole of anorexia. You do not have to remain powerless to addiction; 12-step groups, recovery centers, books, recovered addicts, sponsors, guides and mentors are available. Look online or step into a meeting today.