The Perfect Storm: What To Do When Your Compulsive Sexual Behavior Leads To Disaster
Sneaking around and lying to your partner about where you’ve been and who you’ve been spending time with? If your sexual behavior has gone beyond your committed relationship and you find yourself unable or unwilling to give up this compulsivity, you may be on the road to disaster in more ways than one.
What’s the worst that can happen when you continue compulsive sexual behavior? The question may better be posed as: Do you really want to find out?
For some who have been engaged in compulsive sexual behavior for a long time, they don’t need to wonder what the worst is that could happen. More likely than not they’ve already spiraled downward and are living with the serious negative consequences of such self-destructive behavior.
Sexual Compulsivity Defined
Let’s first define sexual compulsivity, so that there’s no mistaking what it is and what it isn’t. Treatment professionals define sexual compulsivity as a progressive intimacy disorder in which the person is unable to control sexual impulses and/or actions. While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) doesn’t yet recognize sexual compulsivity as a disorder, the fact is that it remains a very real, and potentially very serious, problem for approximately three to six percent of American adults.
In fact, the National Council on Sex Addiction and Compulsivity says that sexual addiction is “engaging in persistent and escalating patterns of sexual behavior acted out despite increasing negative consequences to self and others.”
One way of looking at the downward spiral of continued sexual compulsivity is using the analogy of the perfect storm. When all the conditions are present, the result is an overwhelmingly destructive force that threatens to seriously damage or wipe out everything – and everyone – in its path. That sexual compulsivity is a human disorder or problem only makes the issue more poignant. The destruction that often accompanies it is no less heartbreaking than a natural disaster.
What Led Up to Your Current Situation
Maybe you’re looking at your life right now and wondering what led you to be in your current situation. Was it boredom, looking for a little spice in your sexual life that you didn’t get with your intimate partner in a committed relationship?
Were you trying to numb yourself, to avoid pain, to forget some bad experience that happened in your past? Were you abused as a child or sexually exploited by others? According to the Mayo Clinic, about 80 percent of those with sexual compulsivity have been abused either sexually or emotionally. Even if you were neglected as a child, this could have led to your sexual compulsivity as an adult.
Are you one of those individuals with a larger-than-most sexual appetite? Did you start off just looking at porn and it graduated to doing more than just looking? Was there a point where you thought it might be fun or interesting or exciting to get involved with phone sex? Did you escalate from there into paying for a prostitute?
Think back to when you first started your compulsive sexual behavior. Consider the increasing number of risks you began to take along the way. These include having unsafe sex, engaging in multiple, even reckless, sexual encounters, having a number of extra-marital affairs.
Are you also using drugs and alcohol? Did you know that a substantial number of people in rehab for drug and alcohol addiction have co-occurring sexual compulsivity? Drug use is also common among many individuals who engage in compulsive sexual behavior because they believe it heightens sexual experience and helps them overcome their inhibitions.
Maybe you’ve begun prostituting yourself – either to pay for your drug addiction or because you feel you can’t get enough sex.
How Bad Is It?
What’s the status of your life today? Have you lost your job because of your sexual compulsivity? Did your spouse or partner leave or ask you to leave because of your refusal to give up extra-marital affairs or other evidence of compulsive sexual behavior? What is the effect on your children? Do you even know how damaging your sexual behavior has been on your relationship with them?
Are you now infected with HIV/AIDS or hepatitis C as a result of having unsafe sex with multiple partners and/or intravenous drug use?
What is the financial cost of your compulsive sexual behavior? Has it, along with addiction to drugs or alcohol, caused you to drain your bank accounts, borrow money that you can’t pay back, spend far beyond your means, lose your house to foreclosure, go into bankruptcy?
The downward spiral of any addiction, including compulsive sexual behavior, is progressive and unstoppable without professional treatment. The reality is that you won’t stop just because you tell yourself and others that you will. You may mean it when you say the words, but you simply can’t go through with what it takes to overcome such behavior on your own.
You need help. But the good news is that there is treatment available, and it is treatment that has proven effective in helping individuals overcome compulsive sexual behavior.
What’s Involved in Treatment for Compulsive Sexual Behavior
You have options when it comes to getting treatment for compulsive sexual behavior. First, look for a treatment facility that’s certified and specializes in treating compulsive sexual addiction. If you have dual-diagnosis, that is, you have an addiction to drugs or alcohol as well as sexual compulsivity, look for a facility that can treat both concurrently.
The first step in treatment for compulsive sexual behavior is committing to a treatment program. You have to learn about the disorder and learn coping mechanisms so that you will, once you leave treatment, be able to control your behavior and positively associate sex with relationships. Unlike addiction to drugs or alcohol, the goal isn’t complete abstinence. Sex is a part of life, and normal relationships between committed partners usually involve sexual activity of a consensual nature.
What works best is probably a residential treatment facility where you’ll remain for a specified period of time, undergo individual and group therapy, participate in 12-step support groups, and possibly receive psychiatric medication, if warranted for your needs.
At the Center for Sexual Recovery at The Ranch (CSR), near Nashville, Tennessee, the type of therapy for compulsive sexual behavior is highly focused and individualized. In gender-separate groups, you will be able to focus on issues related to unexplored sex, intimacy and relationship. In addition, structured, confidential and specialized activities will help you get rid of the burden of shame, guilt and secrecy, assist you in learning new relapse prevention methods, and help you establish a foundation for long-term sobriety. Note that in this context, sobriety means being able to engage in healthy sexual behavior.
Some individuals who have suffered from childhood physical and/or sexual trauma may benefit from trauma treatment groups and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy.
Individual psychotherapy seeks to help individuals overcome feelings of low self-esteem, loneliness and depression – which often contribute to sexual compulsivity.
Family treatment is also important so that the loved ones of the individual with compulsive sexual behavior can develop new coping strategies and learn how to change their own behaviors within the family dynamic.
Another treatment alternative is intensive, short-term outpatient sexual addiction treatment. Such a program, available in many parts of the country in accredited facilities, provides a structured and focused multi-dimensional process that’s designed to help patients quit their problem patterns of sexual behavior and give them (and their families) direction and hope for a healthier future. One of these programs is the Sexual Recovery Institute in Los Angeles.
Recovery from Sexual Compulsivity
Following treatment to overcome compulsive sexual behavior or sexual addiction, in order to further strengthen your ability to maintain a healthy lifestyle, you should continue to attend and participate in 12-step support groups. There are a number of them available throughout the country and include such groups as Sex Addicts Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, Sexaholics Anonymous, Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, and Sexual Recovery Anonymous.
Partners of sex addicts can find help in 12-step groups such as S-Anon Family Groups (the family group component of Sexaholics Anonymous), and Co-Dependents of Sex Addicts (CoSA).
A 12-step group that was developed to help sex addicts and their partners is Recovering Couples Anonymous. All couples, married, non-married, gay and straight are welcome. RCA helps members with issues of commitment, intimacy and mutual recovery and focuses on improving the relationship with the significant other.
Keep in mind that it is possible to achieve a state of recovery but that recovery is a day-by-day ongoing process – for the rest of your life. It isn’t something that you somehow miraculously attain and then just go on about your daily routine. That’s just asking for trouble – and relapse right back into your old self-destructive compulsive sexual behavior.
By concentrating on the 12-step philosophy of “one day at a time,” you can concentrate on the present and not on the future.
Still in a Quandary – Worrying About What to Do?
By now you may be thinking that you don’t really have a problem with sexual compulsivity. That’s called denial. If you’ve experienced serious negative consequences as a result of your sexual behavior and continue doing just what you have been, you will not only not get better on your own — you’ll also continue to spiral downward. It will only get worse – unless you seek professional help.
The time to look in the mirror is now. Take the time to examine what’s behind your compulsive sexual behavior. You may have some inkling of what started it or you may be completely unaware. But if you recognize that there is a problem, if you admit to yourself that this isn’t the way you should be living and honestly want to change, then you have the opportunity to do so.
No, it won’t be easy. There will be times when you’ll want to quit treatment and go back to the way things were before. But once you’ve begun treatment, you will start to learn more about what motivates you to keep doing these same self-destructive behaviors. You’ll gain insight into what bothers you – even if it’s been hidden for many years, buried under a mountain of repressed thoughts, drowned in alcohol or numbed with drugs – and begin to find a way out of this morass.
You do need a h2 support system to help you in your goal of healthy and responsible sexual behavior. After treatment, once you’re back home and returned to your normal life, you’ll inevitably come smack up against situations that cause you to want to relapse. You may not think you’re capable of overcoming the urges, but with the support and encouragement of your family and 12-step groups, you have more of a likelihood of being able to do so.
The important thing to remember is that you can change – if you want to. It doesn’t matter what happened in the past. You can learn how to overcome it and deal with it. Of course, none of this will happen overnight. Depending on the complexity of your compulsive sexual behavior and whether or not you also have another co-occurring addiction such as drug, alcohol, gambling, workaholism or eating disorder, it may take several months to a year of therapy to get a firm foundation in recovery.
As with any type of treatment for addiction, treatment for compulsive sexual behavior is not a one-size-fits-all program. Some individuals will require more or less treatment than others. Some will need repeated rehab, particularly if they have other addictions of a long-term duration.
The outlook for those who recognize there is a problem, seek help to overcome it, commit to the treatment program, and work their recovery through active participation in 12-step groups is much more favorable than those who only half-heartedly try. It takes dedication, perseverance, and hard work. But the result can be a priceless gift.
When you’ve found yourself in the perfect storm and your compulsive sexual behavior has led you to disaster, there’s a safe harbor for you if you choose and commit to treatment.