Can you control your sexual behavior, or do you go overboard? Sexaholic behavior is when a person cannot follow through on their decision to stop or control their sexual behavior. Addicts may or may not do extreme things. It may be socially acceptable behavior but an addict cannot stay stopped or control their behavior when attempting to manage it. Yes, most of us have a sex instinct, but an addict is driven by it. Can you control that natural instinct like your other instincts, or not? For the real sexaholic, there is no human power that can keep them in check, inside or out.
Try setting a realistic, healthy goal for yourself. Or try to stop all together. Try everything to stay in control—work out, get a good shrink, get good religion, etc. If the obsessions won’t go away or you can’t keep yourself together, if you keep crossing lines in the sand, you’re behaving like a sexaholic.
For reasons we do not fully grasp, sexaholics have lost their power of choice with lust. Our so-called willpower becomes nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against lust temptation.
Some members of our fellowship found the following test helpful in deciding that we are sexaholics:
- Have you ever thought you needed help for your sexual thinking or behavior?
- That you’d be better off if you didn’t keep “giving in”?
- That sex or stimuli are controlling you?
- Have you ever tried to stop or limit doing what you felt was wrong in your sexual behavior?
- Do you resort to sex to escape, relieve anxiety, or because you can’t cope?
- Do you feel guilt, remorse or depression afterward?
- Has your pursuit of sex become more compulsive?
- Does it interfere with relations with your spouse?
- Do you have to resort to images or memories during sex?
- Does an irresistible impulse arise when the other party makes the overtures or sex is offered?
- Do you keep going from one “relationship” or lover to another?
- Do you feel the “right relationship” would help you stop lusting, masturbating, or being so promiscuous?
- Do you have a destructive need—a desperate sexual or emotional need for someone?
- Does pursuit of sex make you careless for yourself or the welfare of your family or others?
- Has your effectiveness or concentration decreased as sex has become more compulsive?
- Do you lose time from work for it?
- Do you turn to a lower environment when pursuing sex?
- Do you want to get away from the sex partner as soon as possible after the act?
- Although your spouse is sexually compatible, do you still masturbate or have sex with others?
- Have you ever been arrested for a sex-related offense?