Women who say sex addiction has ruined their lives
As it’s recognised as a genuine condition by the World Health Organisation, meet ... .
KATE Wilkinson is a psychologist and a respectable mother of three, who can be found most mornings doing the school run wearing neat capri pants and Birkenstock shoes.
What few would ever guess, however, is that this demure, willowy brunette has also been diagnosed with sex addiction. After years of therapy kate, 39, and her partner John, 40, also a recovering sex addict, feel they have their habit under control and have been in a happy, faithful relationship for three years.
inevitably, the subject of sex addiction will prompt the usual sniggers and bar-room jokes, particularly when it affects women. A woman, who is addicted to sex? since when is that seen as a problem, or even a medical condition worthy of diagnosis and treatment?
After all, she’s not hurting anyone — quite the opposite, some would say — and is never likely to be short of a ‘fix’. But kate insists that it’s no laughing matter. she says her addiction — which affects 4 per cent of the population, according to the Royal College of
Psychiatrists, a quarter of them female — has left her depressed and anxious, and led her into dangerous situations risking her physical and sexual health.
‘Female sex addiction is not as it is usually portrayed — glamorous, predatory women going out seducing men. Instead it can be something that has a hugely negative impact on day-to-day life,’ says Kate, who lives in a market town in West Sussex.
‘I’m addicted to the feelings of connection, and anxiety relief, that can come from sexual encounters, and it’s a big problem for me when I can’t experience that.
‘From a young age I realised that experiencing sexual pleasure relaxed me and made me feel good in a way nothing else did.
‘Without it I couldn’t function — work, shop, cook, concentrate — as I became so preoccupied by compulsive thoughts. For years I used sex as a coping mechanism.’
In July the World Health Organisation formally recognised sex addiction as a mental health condition, a move that could lead to treatment being made available on the NHS.
According to WHO, compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is defined as an inability to control intense sexual urges, despite often deriving no pleasure from them.
Although the NHS has yet to offer free treatment similar to that available to alcoholics and drug abusers, the health service acknowledges that ‘some relationship experts believe people can become addicted to the “high” experienced during sex and sexual activity’.
Meanwhile, relationship counselling charity Relate describes sex addiction more broadly as any sexual activity that feels ‘out of control’, whether that be sex with a partner, use of pornography, or extreme behaviours like visiting prostitutes.
ASeNSe of being ‘out of control’ is all too familiar to Kate, who lost her virginity in her late teens. Her earliest recollection of sexual desire having a negative impact on her life was when she was single and studying for a master’s degree, aged 21, at Nottingham University.
An orgasm became her form of stress relief — but it also became a self-perpetuating problem, one which would sound familiar to any substance addict: ‘The more it happened, the greater my desire became and the more I craved it,’ Kate explains. As a result of these cravings, Kate says she has had about 30 lovers over the past two decades — many of them brief flings.
She was married for five years, from age 29 to 34, and had three children with her husband. But Kate’s insatiable sexual appetite eventually drove her and her husband apart.
While he was happy with a ‘weekends only’ arrangement, Kate felt that she ‘needed’ to make love several times a day.
‘He thought that I was too demanding,’ says Kate.
‘The more distant we became, the more I needed intimacy to get a sense of reassurance from him, and the less likely he was to give it to me. It had a huge impact on my self-esteem.
‘Towards the end, when we were living together but barely speaking, let alone making love, I started meeting men I’d connected with on dating sites. I couldn’t stay in a marriage with no intimacy and we separated by mutual agreement.’
After their separation, Kate began taking more risks with the people she met online, such as going back to the homes of virtual strangers on first dates.
Stripped of the cover that had been afforded by her marriage, it was at this stage that she recognised her sexual appetite was excessive, even dangerous, and that she could not control it even when acting on her desires might put her at risk.
Aged 35, Kate went to see her GP who referred her for therapy. This means-tested assistance was part-funded by the NHS, leaving her to pay a £40 top-up fee per session.
Given her work and training in psychology, it is perhaps surprising that it took Kate so long to identify her own problem. ‘I didn’t recognise that I was a sex addict while I was in a good relationship because I was always faithful, I never went out sleeping with lots of men,’ says Kate.
‘However, after my marriage broke down I grew worried about all the one-night stands I was having and why I felt I needed them. Although it was only ever while my children were staying with their father, they always left me feeling guilty, anxious and out of control.’
With the help of her therapist, Kate realised that anxiety and her drive for perfection — she put herself under enormous pressure professionally — were at the root of her addiction.
‘Sex addiction is a complex psychological issue, wrapped up in self-esteem and anxiety, a psychological disorder like any other,’ she says.
‘Anxiety had been an issue for many years for me but the pressure to be the perfect mum had heightened it and, although I know many women go off sex at this stage in their lives, the only way I knew to ease my worries was through sex.
‘Making treatment for sex addiction available on the NHS would be a great thing because it has such a devastating impact on so many people’s lives. If I hadn’t been able to afford to pay for my therapy and get my addiction under control I don’t think I would have been capable of having another functional relationship.’
Kate met John, who works in sales, by chance in a pub. In a startling coincidence, it turned out that he too was a recovering sex addict. It was several weeks before John confided that he had been treated for sex addiction, which had led to him cheating on his ex-wife, and was now in recovery.
It was two months before the couple, worried about ‘spoiling their friendship by introducing something with negative connotations for each of them’, consummated their relationship.
Unlike drug and alcohol addiction, it is not necessary, or even recommended, for recovering sex addicts to abstain from sex completely. Most treatments focus instead on helping them to develop a healthier approach to it.
Having lived together for the past couple of years, Kate and John’s sex drives appear happily matched and they make love twice a day, more often on weekends when her children are with their dad.
‘We both need the physical connection of sex and to feel
I was too ashamed to confide in friends
wanted — for us it’s the only way to get real emotional satisfaction — and my therapist has told me that’s fine, if we’re both using it in a similar way,’ says Kate.
Counsellor Paula Hall has treated hundreds of sex addicts over the past 15 years, and is the author of the book Understanding And Treating Sex Addiction.
She says women often find it much harder than men to seek help for this awkward problem.
‘There is stigma and shame attached — overtly sexual women are still condemned as sluts, while men are merely womanisers,’ says Paula, who practises at the Laurel Centres in Central London and Leamington Spa.
‘It’s particularly challenging if you’re a mother: male sex addicts won’t feel judged as fathers, but women who admit to having lots of partners might worry that social services will come knocking at their doors.’ In the throes of her own sex addiction, this, at least, was something that mum-ofthree Rebecca Barker, 37, did not have to worry about, as the recipient of her