Am I a Sex Addict?

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I remember thinking when the last of Tiger Woods’ mistresses crawled out of the woodwork that all men are sex addicts. Why couldn’t they just keep their pants zipped? Claiming the moral high ground, I told my husband that we would never behave like men.


Turns out, I was wrong. Sex addiction is not strictly a male problem. In fact, up to 12 per cent of sex addicts are women. And one of them is Gayatri S. She divorced her husband after eight years of marriage and battled feelings of inadequacy. “I was lonely and depressed and felt very unattractive,” she says. The 35-year-old banker struggled for a year, before she became sexually intimate with a colleague. “He made me feel desirable. His attention was what I needed at the time.” But he was transferred to another branch four months later, and their meetings became less frequent. Meanwhile, another male colleague realised that Gayatri was available for sex, and soon she was inviting him over to her house. “I enjoy being with him. And I keep seeing my former colleague too,” she says. But why did she start this chain of events in the first place? “It was better than crying and feeling ugly,” says Gayatri. “Having sex made me happy. I feel good waiting for either one of them to come home.”

Gayatri may not suspect it, but sexologist Dr Rajiv Anand believes she’s suffering from sex addiction. “For women, sex is linked with self-esteem, so a sexual encounter can be a morale booster or confidence shaker,” he says. “Such cases are common with women, whose spirits can be lifted on being found physically desirable by a man.”

The problem also occurs when a woman, starved of love and attention, seeks to compensate through sex. “A single episode is fine, but when a woman tries to have sex every time she is feeling low, it is a case of sex addiction,” says psychiatrist Dr Prakash Shintre.


Looking for solutions
Sex addiction is more psychological than physical. Since women are expected to be monogamous and demure about sex, addicts cannot reconcile to firstly, wanting sex, and secondly, getting it from more than one person. It is possible to cure sex addiction, but, as is the case with other addictions, a person faces withdrawal symptoms. “The treatment is psychology-based,” says Dr Shintre. “She has to learn that sex is only a temporary outlet for her frustration; it is never a permanent solution.”