Sexual addiction also affects women
According to sexologists, female sexual addiction remains a taboo subject. Between unbridled sexuality and genuine addiction, the nuance can be hard to grasp. Read on and find out more about this poorly understood disorder.
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“If I don’t get my sex dose, I can feel depressed,” says Stephanie, 32, single. Sex-addict or adventurous-minded 21st century woman? At a time when chatting, online dating websites and sex-toys have radically changed our sexual habits, you may be wondering where you stand. This is made all the more difficult by the taboo surrounding female sexual addiction. But there are ways you can know for sure and address your problem if necessary.
Signs of female sexual addiction
“Sexual addiction can cause suffering if you don’t get what you want,” says French psychoanalyst and sex therapist Catherine Blanc. Sex becomes an indispensable component of personal balance. Abstinence is therefore difficult and leads to great physical and psychological distress. “Patients seek to feed their addiction in a compulsive way. Sexuality is excessive and most often entirely cut off from love. This entails a certain kind of pleasure but also potentially negative consequences,” French psychiatrist and addiction specialist Michel Reynaud explains2.
This condition obviously affects the couple but may also have repercussions on health and the professional sphere. “I sometimes find myself attending wife-swapping parties late into the night and don’t feel all that great the day after,” Cecilia, 33, confesses. Others go so far as to renounce wearing condoms with the purpose of heightening sexual pleasure.
Narcissistic flaws and relationship issues
Women’s sexual pleasure has become trendy, even indispensable and many women go to great lengths to attain it. “Few women seek advice about sexual addiction,” says Catherine Blanc. It is undisputable that sexual addiction remains very much of a taboo among women, whereas male sexual addiction is far more easily identified and openly talked about. And yet when it comes to women’s addiction to sex, some important questions arise. As Catherine Blanc explains, “compulsive sexual behaviour stems from identity confusion. When sexual activity is scarce, self-image is low, as though an integral part of the woman’s being – the man – were missing.” More than the quest for orgasm and pleasure, what prevails is the desire to seduce and feel desirable.
For Pr Reynaud, “female hyper-sexuality is often symptomatic of relationship issues”. Sexual liberation or not, female sexual desire has more to do with affection, whereas it’s more common for men’s sexual drive to be entirely disconnected from feelings of love. This may also explain why professionally overactive women are more prone to sexual addiction than others. More often than not, sexual hyperactivity is characterised by a complex relationship with pleasure and difficulty in reaching orgasm, which is part of the reason for the relentless and never-ending quest for sexual satisfaction.
Female sexual addiction: what can be done about it?
Once again, morality has nothing to do with it. Sexologists agree on this point: sex as a positive experience, whether it’s unbridled or not, performed alone or in groups, with or without sex toys, should have an appeasing, reassuring and “re-narcissizing” quality to it. If it doesn’t, a problem needs to be fixed. “Sexual addiction can often set in after 40 or after divorce,” adds French sex therapist Brigitte Martel3. The narcissistic need to feel sexual desire in the man and to be reassured dominates everything else. Sexuality often serves as a way to repair damaged self-esteem.
Coming to terms with one’s past, confronting fears of ageing and solitude can be extremely helpful in breaking out of this addictive behaviour and awareness of the situation helps to move forward. In younger women, sexual addiction can manifest itself through the use of sex toys and the recurrence of one-night stands. “The man is treated like an object and frustration is very likely to be present,” says Brigitte Martel.
Sometimes, sexual addiction even leads to mismanaged feelings of aggressiveness, such as crude vocabulary and deviant sexual behaviour, both of which are unconsciously self-directed. “In order to break free from aggressiveness, start by identifying the person at whom it is really targeted,” the sex therapist advises. Only then is it possible to achieve a healthy kind of sexual aggressiveness as a tool for pleasure and an outlet for both lovers’ deepest desires.
1 - Catherine Blanc, "La sexualité des femmes n'est pas celle des magazines" La Martinière
2 - Michel Reynaud, "L'amour est une drogue douce en général" Robert Laffont
3 - Brigitte Martel, "Sexualité, amour et Gestalt" Interéditions
Copyright © 2009 Doctissimo
Posted 12.11.2010
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