What I want to try to do with this post is go over what I'm sort of self-diagnosing as a sex addiction, or just hyper-sexuality. I don't think I did the greatest job of really capturing the severity, but I wanted to touch on a few portions of my life that give me a sense that something isn't right. I also wanted to talk about some recent relationship issues it's caused with my SO. It's pretty long winded and I applaud anyone who reads it all. I've got some questions about other people's experience at the bottom of this post that I want to pose as a point of discussion, if you want to skip to that.
Sexual desire for me is an all day occurrence. I want sex all the time. I think about my desire for women as I stare at them every chance I get. Not getting it creates a physical anxiety coming out in the feeling of twisting in my stomach. I can reduce that feeling by masturbating to a degree and I masturbate more than anybody that I know by a long shot. If I don't have an orgasm regularly I get legitimately short in patience and I get a feeling of complete restlessness which I can very temporarily get relief from with hard physical exertion (running, hard cycling, rock climbing, exercising at home, etc).
I'm in a long-term (8 years and counting) relationship with a woman I love and sex is great when it happens(organically at least). In our first years together we lived a relatively relaxed lifestyle and we both worked the same hours (same business even, for years). Sex at that time was something that happened often for us, at least once every other day for years, sometimes even twice. It seemed like our "honeymoon phase" wouldn't end, even 5 years in. However, now we live two different lives nearly. I am at university 5 days per week and work on the weekends as well, while she works 6 night per week. This leaves us with barely two hours per night of time together where we're both quite tired before bed.
Now, normal couples can handle this, I'm sure. Sure it sucks not seeing each other, but we get to sleep together nearly every night, we get a couple hours of discussing our day, bantering or just relaxing watching a movie. We get all of the intimacy aspects of our relationship, albeit a little less and usually tired. Emotionally I feel connected and that things are good. By all accounts everything should be manageable, but we have sex maybe once every other week in the last year, and haven't in over a month now.
The problems have been coming up in droves more and more in the last few months. My wife and I have had fights about sex and it's infrequency. We fight because I bring up how I want to have sex more often and she responds with how she is physically turned off by how demanding I am on a daily basis. I find myself taking advantage of her body in little ways all day long. Touching her butt, making a point of grabbing her boobs when I hug her from behind (or any chance that I can), wanting to touch her vaginal just casually(which would be rejected, for obvious reasons and then I'd take offense to the rejection, making me more frustrated). I've also realized that I've done this nearly since we've met. I've always been allowed to be touchy-feely (minus the vagina touching at any given time), but now that we're in a point in our lives where all of that build up from being touchy isn't able to be released with consistent sex, its building a foundation of unhealthy behavior and thought patterns.
I'm saying all of this as a recent revelation (as of a couple of days ago even) as to how bad it's actually gotten. Through a long discussion the other night and some actual self-observation after a particularly bad tantrum which led to a fight where she ended up crying.
The actual actions of what I'm doing isn't even as bad as how I realize I found myself thinking about it. For a long time even she didn't really know why she never wanted to have sex, it was always the day's stress, tired, no time, wanted to go out. These excuses just made me even more frustrated and I got to the point where I justified all of the touching as a way of "still getting something if we're not having sex". I would touch her more and more thinking that I'm at least going to get something to think about while I masturbate. It gets worse in the way that we would get in to arguments where I would feel fully justified in making an argument that I'm having a physically and emotionally hard time dealing with not having sex. I would argue that she should be able to get herself horny or even just wet enough for me to have sex with her so that I can feel better. This sort of pity-sex has even happened once or twice, to disastrous emotional results for me and her. I would feel unsatisfied as the sex felt hollow. It didn't give me that euphoria that good quality sex would. Good sex would leave me feeling better emotionally that I've satisfied her and felt the release myself. The pity sex would end with her leaving bed as fast as possible and me feeling empty. This would leave me just as unsatisfied and wanting more yet again, which continued on in it's wicked cycle. I also felt myself justifying an ownership of her body. As if us being together made it her responsibility to take care of my hyper-sexuality and her body should just be there for me to use if I want it. This is really just a portion of what I was actually justifying to myself as being totally fine. It isn't though, and this is where I'm trying to correct unhealthy behavior before it destroys our relationship.
This is about when I start to think that I have a problem, after our last big fight and after some careful self-examination. I also start to think back and wonder how long I've felt that my wife's body is just mine as an object, and how I objectify nearly every woman that I see as a sex object. If anything it doesn't even just come down to objectifying, I find myself examining and judging people's bodies according to sexual qualities that I consider to be pleasurable. While a woman might be too overweight for my particular tastes I'll still stare her cleavage as if the rest of her is my type and she becomes walking cleavage.
I've always known I'm a sexual person. I think about it all the time. I stare at women everywhere I go, like I said, even if they aren't my actual physical preference. It's like I have a physical need to stare at anything remotely sexual: cleavage, butts in tight pants, trying to catch anything close to a skirt lifting up from a girl bending over, even frumpy loose clothing that I can catch hints of a girl's figure I can't help but stare at. This is always how it's been. It gets bad when I find myself getting excited while I drive and am approaching a high school or even middle school so that I can look at all the young girls in their fashionable tight and skimpy clothing. I enjoy looking at women, a lot. I know most guys do, but I do more than any other guy that I know.
When I start to also think that this is a problem is when I try to stop my staring. When I do, I have to completely focus on something when I'm walking/driving. I have to focus on the sidewalk in front of me, or a building down the road, and if a woman walks across my vision I have to find another focus point. I can still see women in my peripherals, though. When I know that there is a woman (especially when I can tell she is fully my type) I can feel a nearly physical pull to try to look at her. I even find myself not actually focusing and trying to keep my eyes straight while focusing peripherally to catch the form of a woman that is in my vision. When I force myself not to I get an actual feeling of anxiety in my stomach that I'm "missing out" on an opportunity to stare a woman. That anxiety is what freaks me out.
As for some questions for others on this thread who have concerns about behavior or how to deal with the constant desire:
Masturbation: The reason I'm even writing this is I just finished trying to find out whether I can still masturbate if I'm trying to fix some of this unhealthy behavior. All I got was crappy webMD style articles with facts of symptoms that are incredibly vague and unhelpful.
I know that I can keep my anxiety under control if I masturbate enough, but I find that it leaves me tired in a day. I'd love to hear other thoughts on whether this is just feeding the problem or if it's a way of managing the problem?
I should note that I'm in a poly-amorous relationship. My wife has had a boyfriend for a couple of years. I don't have any negative issues with this and it's been a positive experience for both of us(her schedule doesn't match up with his either so they don't even have sex often). What I've been wondering more and more lately, as this anxiety doesn't want to go away, is whether it's a good idea for me to find a sort of fuck buddy. I have no desire to find another emotional relationship as I'm content with being with just my wife. She has no problem with me getting a girlfriend as long as it's a healthy relationship and not me just fucking bar sluts. She's just worried that if I have someone to just bang all the time, it will just turn in to me being gone all of the time and our relationship would crumble eventually. If it were to happen, my "girlfriend" would have to be a permanent person that I would build a connection with, and not just a series of random hookups to put my dick in.
Has anyone had any positive/negative experience with finding another person who has a strong sex drive where you can both mutually enjoy sex together without needing a relationship? I feel like it's asking for something too specific, as if what I want isn't actually possible.
Aaaaaand I think that's it. I definitely want to bring some discussion to this topic as much as possible. Talking about my actual thoughts and feelings with my wife has been great, but I want to hear from others who feel the same as well.