Addiction to pornography and sex may be defined as engaging in obsessive sexual thoughts or compulsive sexual behaviors despite the consequences they are causing in our lives.
In Sex Addicts Anonymous (p.3) we read the following expanded description: “Before coming to Sex Addicts Anonymous, many of us never knew that our problem had a name. All we knew was that we couldn’t control our sexual behavior. For most of us, sex was a consuming way of life. Although the details of our stories are different, our problem was the same. We were addicted to sexual behaviors that we returned to over and over — despite adverse consequences.
“Sex addiction affects the body, mind, and spirit. It is typically progressive — with the behavior and its consequences usually becoming more severe over time. We experience it as compulsion, which is an urge that is stronger than our will to resist, and as obsession, which is a mental preoccupation with sexual behavior and fantasies. In SAA, we call our addictive sexual behavior acting out.”