Is Sex Addiction Real?

I was sitting in a pizza shop over drinks and fresh mozzarella with a new friend when my story came up. It is not often I am asked so directly, what happened? She was genuinely interested, as our conversations leading up to this question were about my move, job change, and other getting-to-know each other novelties. And naturally, a late 30s woman who picks up and moves to a new town, new job, without knowing a soul, has a story she could tell.

I am used to the hard pauses I take before I share even a superficial layer of my story. I am used to assessing the person’s emotional capacity to receive details beyond anything superficial. But even after a cocktail or two, my hard pause, and sharing the swift plot twist that includes almost a decade of multi-layered infidelity, I am still not entirely used to the question that has, on occasion, followed.

Is sex addiction real?

My new friend was well-meaning and genuinely curious. My hard pause continued as she shared a socially and culturally based perspective on pornography and men cheating on their wives. It happens all the time, perspective. But I could feel the shift in my body and energy. The mozzarella and cocktail no longer tasted like I was on a veranda in southern Italy. I was teleported in the span of 30 seconds to the inpatient stay, to the manipulation, to the lying. To the phone call with the practitioner that all but told me to run from the behaviors my ex husband was choosing, despite his marriage ending. And I asked God, as I swallowed my last bite, what should I reply to this question? What can I say to one soul, whose perspective is curious but otherwise jaded by a society we all live and breath in daily? What can I say, that would be both compassionate and impactful, and representative of the life we as partners have survived?

I could say that sex addiction, in my experience, is very much a spectrum with vast differences in the compulsive behaviors that manifest. That sex addiction isn’t just watching porn. That an entire lifestyle evolves and revolves around behaviors that will continue in spite of adverse consequences. That in spite of losing a job, losing a marriage, losing an entire family, their self dignity and worth, the behaviors continue to roar on at a volume so loud, the brain registers the need for nothing else, but the next high.

I could say that in some cases, sex addiction has nothing to do with sex, and everything to do with trauma.

I could say that living a life of sex addiction is it’s own reality. We, the outsiders, do not exist as humans in this reality. We are fictional characters. Objects, really. Communication, daily routine, “adulting” as we say, is on the back burner. We, the actual reality, are the bread crumbs. The after-thought.

I could say that I believe what manifested in my story was consistent with a diagnosis of sex addiction…and then some. The “then some” wasn’t for me to diagnose. And a bonus diagnosis would not have saved my marriage.

I could say that what happens when one is married to addiction, the devastation of their choices and the aftermath of the consequences, is life-altering.

I could say that the day my chains as a spouse of sex addiction hit the floor, and I walked free, I never looked back.

I could say that my faith grew more in those chains, and in the surviving of those chains, than it would have beyond any measure.

I could say that we all can use to hold a little space and compassion for the things we do not understand. For what we assume is just the way it is, is actually someone’s lived reality, and so much more.

I didn’t say any of this in that conversation in the pizza shop.

I did tell her the readers digest of my lived experiences.

I did tell her there are specialists, facilities, and treatment models, fighting at the front lines of sexual addiction.

And I noticed a subtle change in her energy. A subtle implication this question came from somewhere deep. A questioning. A longing, perhaps, for understanding. And this may have just been how I experienced it; a survivor with the hope that each time my story has a chance to be told, it is for purpose. For awareness. For redemption. For a single moment that my story perhaps mirrors another humans silent battle.