What Role Do The Mistresses Play In the Tiger Woods Scandal?

When a famous person is known to have been involved in a sex scandal, more often than not the public will blame that individual–particularly if he’s male.  However, what many fail to realize, is that “the other woman” can be just as much to blame.

This isn’t to say that they are always to blame, but it’s important to understand both sides of the relationship.  More specifically, women can be sex addicts as well as men. Recent research tells us, perhaps surprisingly, that:

• One in 3 visitors to porn sites are women
• 9.4 million women access porn web sites each month
• 13% of women who view pornography  admit to looking at pornography at work

Women who engage in some of the very same anonymous or impulsive sexual behavior as male sex addicts most often don’t consider themselves to have a sexual problem. In other words, they don’t see themselves as ’sex addicts’ and in fact resent the term when applied. Women who act out sexually more often frame their eventual problems as being relationship or intimacy problems-’love addiction’  rather than ’sex addiction.’ Much of this has to do with what we call women in our culture who have a lot of sex versus what we call men. For a woman it’s shameful; for a man it’s a badge of pride.

Not suprisingly many female sex addicts are disparaging and devaluing toward men, much as male sex addicts see women more as objects than as people. More than 50% of women in treatment for sexual addiction have some history of being sexually abused themselves, which makes it even easier to distance their sexual acts from the men they use. Part of being a sex addict is distancing yourself from the emotional content and context of the people you have sex with. That’s how you can keep doing it and not feel bad.

Here at the Sexual Recovery Institute we have been providing specific treatment to female sex addicts for many years now, and it is a growing population in our work. We see women separately from the men altogether and this is hard for them because female sex addicts tend to bond more with men than with women and not just sexually.

Our upcoming January Two-Week Intensive Program, for women only, specifically focuses on a woman’s need to bond with other women in a safe and supportive environment. CLICK HERE to contact us about enrollment.