Am I addicted to sex?

Are you addicted to sex? So says the headline to a newspaper article yesterday.

I don’t’ often feel sorry for celebrities for a variety of reasons but I do feel a little concern and empathy for Tiger Woods right now. And whilst we are on the subject of sex addiction, I also feel a little sorry for another celebrity. As soon as sex addiction is mentioned, there is the ubiquitous referral to one Russell Brand. He’s probably not bothered by this. Such is his ego, he might even be quite proud of it. However, I think it is slightly lazy journalism – clichéd and contrived. Talking about sex, talking about an excessive desire for sex? Let’s roll out Russell.

Back to Tiger though. According to this article, he is currently residing at some sex clinic in the USA in a bid to save his marriage. Apparently, he will be there for six weeks for the pricey sum of £40K, where he will learn to control his sexual urges, identify ways of setting sexual boundaries and ultimately will culminate in a story-telling exercise with his wife, where he discloses everything and talks in explicit detail about the sexual acts that he has been engaged in with a range of nubile young women. (Whoops, there I go making assumptions. Maybe some of the women that he was fucking weren’t nubile young women at all. Maybe some of them might have been considerably older than Tiger).
How fucking humiliating!
How fucking contrived!
How unenlightened!

I’m sorry if I sound like a broken record but surely this article and the news items associated with Tiger’s indiscretions are wholly based on a societal conformity to sexual attitudes? Furthermore, such items are probably written as a reminder for the rest of us to conform too.

I don’t think I am even going to go into the arena of discussing sex addiction. As far as I can see, it is quite simple. If an addiction of any sort impacts on other important aspects of your life to the detriment of all of these, then one probably has a problem. But there is a huge difference between addiction and a genuine desire to actively pursue an area of life that can bring so much joy, equilibrium and purpose to your life. Obviously, there are people in the world who have problems with sex. There are people who are abusive, who consider inappropriate sex with minors, who literally want to fuck around with absolutely everything they see without considering the health consequences for themselves and others. In some ways, these people may be addicted to sex. They may need to consider their problem and do something about it.
However, these people are a world apart from people like Tiger who have realised that they like dangling their bits around for the mere enjoyment of quality sex.

I appreciate that I am over-simplifying this but it really strikes me as being a problem in itself. It has to come down to expectations and norms and, quite frankly, our unenlightened attitude to sex.
‘We’ think Tiger has a problem because he has been playing away from home and has been indulging in sex. ‘We’ don’t seem to be able to accept the fact that sex is a vital part of our lives and that expressing that desire simply happens from time to time and there really isn’t a damn thing that you can do about it other than to follow your instinct and fuck away to your heart’s content.

Obviously, all of this has to be tempered with commitments and concerns for other people but even this isn’t as simple as it sounds.

Like me, Tiger should consider the fact that he is in a committed relationship where papers have been signed and monogamy has been agreed. Like me, Tiger should consider or have considered the consequences of discovery. Like me, Tiger probably changed his attitude and beliefs around sex. Like me, Tiger may have just moved on a little in life and holds slightly different values to the ones that he held a decade ago.

It’s so bloody easy for people to point fingers and ridicule a man for being caught with his trousers down but nobody lives in other peoples’ relationships other than the two people involved and we cannot make assumptions based on some sort of societal expectation of sex and monogamy and desires and needs.

And even then it is not that simple.

There is an assumption that people only play away because there is something missing from their primary relationship. Often, this is probably the case but it doesn’t have to be so. I’m not completely convinced that my ‘indiscretions’ were ‘caused’ by problems with my relationship though retrospectively, they certainly could have been. I hope that when my lover fucks another woman, it doesn’t mean that he is unfulfilled by his relationship with me. Similarly, Tiger Woods may have been perfectly content with his wife but his instinctive drive kicked into gear when he feasted his eyes of someone that he simply felt a sexual attraction for.
This in itself is worth a stand alone essay for it strikes me that this is a classic example of where, as individuals within a societal agreed framework, we constantly play down and try to suppress the instinctual part of our brains.
Tiger used his instinct. He’s renowned for being able to do that. He instinctively picked up a stick as a youngster and banged a ball around with phenomenal accuracy towards a hole in the ground. His talent, commitment and ultimate success was borne from this instinct. He practiced, developed and moulded his ability based on this instinct.

It appears that what he has done with his sexual appetite is act instinctively. He ignored the intellectual thing to do. He drove away the worries of being caught out. He deterred his mind away from the logic and just got on with following his instinct.
Society doesn’t like that, does it?

Shouldn’t we all try and act a little more instinctively? Is this then to be categorised as an addiction?
Obviously, if we all moved completely to instinctual behaviour, then there would be potential disorganisation, fractures and anarchy but that is an extreme. There has to be a middle ground and sometimes it is not a comfortable thing to find because it is based on so many factors that are often in conflict with one another.

In a perfect existence, Tiger should be able to go to his wife, just as I should be able to go to my husband or my lover and simply say – “I need this”. I need to have sex with someone else. I would like to have sex with someone else. Furthermore, it isn’t just the sex that I want. I feel a bond, a tie, a love for another person. That’s life. That is how it is. It doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to have a negative impact on our relationship.
But this rarely happens. Even when you do have that honesty and openness with another person, it isn’t as simple as that because there is always a dark and a light side in everyone and everything.

My lover may choose to have sex with another person. Part of me really likes that idea. It really turns me on. I want him to be sexually fulfilled. As I stated previously, just because he may want to have sex with a person other than me, doesn’t mean that it should have a negative impact on our relationship. Just because he wants sex with another, it doesn’t have to mean that he is tired or bored with his sexual relationship with me. On the contrary, it could actually enhance our own sexual life.
However, there is also a part of me that doesn’t want him to because there is an inkling of fear that it could drive us apart or make significant changes to our relationship. If there was a complete guarantee that this wouldn’t happen, then I could be completely content. But there is no guarantee and nor should there be. Guarantees are meaningless if we consider that life is a continuum that should not be set in stone and allowed to stagnate. Everything is moveable including the most solid and committed relationships, and until we accept that as the truth, then we will be continually bombarded with the fear and destructiveness of our darker side.

Let’s just return to poor Tiger.
There he is, stuck in a clinic, unable to have any sex for the duration of his stay. According to Russell Brand, his reading material is scrutinised for sexual innuendos or connotations. All feasible sexual stimuli are removed, and short of chopping off his hands, he is actively discouraged from letting Lucy and Rita free on his dick. No masturbation allowed!

Treating this sexual addiction is, in my mind, slightly barking up the wrong tree.
I don’t think that Tiger is a sex addict just as I don’t think I am either.

He just likes sex. I just like sex.

I don’t feel a need to book into the nearest sex clinic to temper my desire. Quite frankly, I would be quite indignant if anyone suggested that this was what was required to save my marriage or control my desires. I don’t bloody well want my desires controlled by anyone other than myself. It is up to me to control or certainly temper my desires but it is also up to me, sometimes, to express my desires and do something about them. If I want to think about sex, if I want to have a wank, if I want to fuck my man, then that is what I should be able to do without been seen as some sort of sexual deviant.

As far as Tiger Woods is concerned, he doesn’t need to be treated for sexual addiction. Blimey, there are so many in society who are completely fucked by their inability to address their sexuality that we appear to have got this all topsy turvy once more. I would much rather see the establishment of Sex Clinics for the Frigid. We should be encouraging people to express themselves sexually not suppressing it.

Tiger has a wife, who in my humble opinion, looks pretty fuckable. He may love her and want to fuck her but he also has this strong instinct and opportunity, by the nature of being such an iconic figure, that means that he would like to fuck other people. The numbers of women that he had sex with is almost an irrelevance. He was just following his instinct. Does that really need treatment?
Okay, it might need for him to be honest and open but like me, that probably wasn’t a possibility because what Tiger and I have been doing is deemed to be immoral and plain wrong by others, which essentially negates the ability to be truthful.
If Tiger was being completely honest with himself, I don’t think he would see his sexual appetite as wrong. He is clearly booked into this clinic to try and save his marriage because he has reverted back to the expectations of a simplified, existence of monogamy. He’s also probably booked in to save his sport endorsement contracts. And why is this the case? Because we cannot accept sexuality in other people let alone ourselves. The man from Nike apparently has to say no because that is what we expect him to do.

As for me, well I continue to strive to be honest with myself at the very least.
Going back to the headline – am I addicted to sex? Well, sometimes I think that I probably am in so far that I now feel a need as well as a desire for sex but should that be classified as an addiction? One could argue that my need and desire for sex with a particular person does impact on other areas of my life but is that my fault? Is it my fault that I cannot be honest and open about these needs that consequently mean that I think about it more frequently out of frustration at not being able to do something about it? Is that addiction? I don’t think so. And as I said, it is actually up to me how I manage this.

Others might say that I have a problem, that my need and desire for sex is abnormally high, that my inability to be monogamous is something that I should deal with. I would simply say that such people were not very enlightened in either the realities of sex or life.

As for monogamy, well I must say once more that it is a hard one to cope with, to understand or even aspire to but I don’t necessarily feel that it is unachievable. There are many people who live both monogamous and sexually fulfilled lives. They are possibly the lucky ones. I just hope that they are honest with one another and that they enjoy real sexual enlightenment in their monogamy.

As for sex – well, if I am a sexual addict, then bring it on!
After a week of non-penetrative sex, I am certainly temporarily addicted to it. There was nothing that was going to stop me from having sex with my lover yesterday. Perhaps we are both addicted to sex, or maybe we are gloriously and proudly addicted to having sex with one another. If sexual addiction is this then I will happily sign up as an addict.
If sexual addiction means that I can lie in bed for four hours, with us both still wanting to fuck one another as we reluctantly leave the duvet behind, then that is the type of addiction that I want. If knowing one another and our bodies so well means that he knows the exact time I need his fingers to thrust towards my cervix and I know the perfect time to grab his cock, then I contentedly accept my addiction. If, after fucking for so long, there is still a desire to fuck all through the night, then I am indeed an addict.

Only I am not an addict. I am not a nymphomaniac and he is not a sexual deviant. We are just two people who have thankfully found one another and within that we have found a truly expressive and wonderful connection that enables us to enjoy our sexuality as frequently and in so many forms as possible. There are no boundaries and the exploration of one another and each other’s sexuality is completely open and frank. Our desire to look separately and together at porn is a positive thing. His desire to fuck another and be honest about it is absolutely right. Our shared fantasies or thoughts about sharing our sexuality with other people are perfectly normal.
Neither of us are addicts – we are just honest and it seems to me that Tiger Woods wouldn’t be in this situation if he, and we, could all just be a little more honest and, quite frankly, a little more educated about the positive aspects of sexuality.

Isn’t it about time that we did not run articles such as the one I read yesterday, asking questions about addiction to sex and instead consider the far more damaging issue of people being unable to talk, act and consider the sexual aspect of themselves? That would be a far more enlightened approach to life.