It is of the utmost importance to assess if your partner has a sex addiction so that he can get the attention and care he needs before embarking on a journey of deepening your intimacy.
If your partner has sex addiction and it isn’t addressed before starting to expand and deepen your intimacy then the road blocks you are going to encounter up ahead will likely be blamed on you and/or the intimacy.
Without recovery first, the necessary trust and safety cannot be established to support the up-leveling of your closeness.
I have experienced many years of frustration from not knowing this simple guideline.
Most therapists today do not know this either. So putting your trust in them can be tricky. Our culture is assimilating this knowledge, as we speak, gained from the discoveries of modern neuroscience relating to addiction merging with out dated sexuality.
In the past sexuality has hummed along in its silent toxic groove. Until neuroscientists, and others, said that sex can be addicting we really didn’t understand how much we have been programmed to use one another.
Its sad how it has taken something as destructive as porn addiction to wake us up to something that we have been really disappointed in for a very long time.
Women have silently and compassionately after two minute sex with the one we love say “that’s ok honey.”
But now people all over the world are finding out that we don’t have to sexually engage with each other this way any more. There is much much more to sex that we can experience with each other.
But, only if addiction is addressed first. Why? Because the addicted brain has changed to only want high-dopamine sex. It doesn’t register anything else. Even to the point of not wanting their partner sexually anymore at all! Even to the point of masturbating to porn so frequently that it leads to porn induced erectile dysfunction (ED).
Addiction is too stubborn of a problem to be healed only from a partners love, and loving sexual connection. It MUST be addressed by the partner that is addicted when they are ready and fully. Addiction is very fickle that way it must be healed only by the addict. In fact, trying to help them only confuses them by supporting the belief that they are the victim. This victim mentality can be the death of the relationship. Because the dynamic can not be set up where the non-addicted partner is the addicted partners “mother.” There is a feature specific to addiction where it is absolutely necessary for the addict to take complete responsibility for their behavior. If blame is allowed to be put on anyone else at all the addict won’t be able to help himself.
Once the addict has completed sex addiction recovery over a sufficient time span he and his support team will know when he is ready to begin engaging in intimacy. This is the perfect time to up-level intimacy into a richer, deeper experience for both partners!