Sex Addiction

The Tiger Woods scandal and others brought the issue of sex addiction into public light. Is sex and addiction or is it just harder from some people to achieve sexual satisfaction that others? Are some people better at going without sex than others and why? What do people think about sex addiction and how it relates to polyamory? How does sex addiction affect polyamorous relationships? Does polyamory have an effect on sex addiction?
 
poly is about love. Lots of people are poly without the sex addiction.... hell some people are poly without sex..

There is also a love addiction as well. So maybe that applied...

Is everyone in non-monogamy addicted to love/sex/etc... no.. but I would hazard a guess some are.
 
That was an interesting read. I wonder if it would be worth starting a different thread on love addiction. After reading about it, I'm trying to figure out what it would be like to not be addicted to love. Love seems like food to me. You can live without sex but not without love, I think - but maybe that's just my impression because I'm addicted. When I think about food addiction, though, it involves things like comfort-eating and over-eating instead of just eating enough to be healthy. How would you figure out what amount of love you need to be health and when you are overusing it?
 
You can live without either. Having neither might drive you insane,but you don't need either to survive.

Well, I guess a simple example woud be. When you break up with someone do you feel the immediate urge to fill that gap of love and infatuation. Or can you take time to adjust and be on your own. If you HAVE to fill the whole, you could be addicted to love.

Thatsmy take anyways.
 
You can live without either. Having neither might drive you insane,but you don't need either to survive.

Well, I guess a simple example woud be. When you break up with someone do you feel the immediate urge to fill that gap of love and infatuation. Or can you take time to adjust and be on your own. If you HAVE to fill the whole, you could be addicted to love.

Thatsmy take anyways.
Love comes in so many different forms. If you read the wikipedia page on love addiction, it even gets into things like when you are obsessed with the love of your children or believing in finding a "true soulmate." Apparently, you only have a healthy level of interest in love if you occasionally seek companionship with others and keep a fair amount of distance from them. That seems like a cold way to live to me, so I must be a love addict.

I'm going to venture out on a limb and say that love-addiction isn't really a problem any more than health-addiction is. I.e. it's not bad to always want to be healthy - it only becomes a problem when you get obsessed with it and can't just accept common health problems and health risks, etc. I think it's good to bring love into everything you do and I can only see it becoming a problem if you become strikingly depressed or panic when you experience moments where love is lacking in your daily life. If you are able to sufficiently love yourself, you are less dependent on constant love from others, even if you're still getting a steady supply of (self) love. This is my opinion, anyway.
 
There is also a love addiction as well.

Actual, real love is not addictive, though it is enormously precious--precious beyond measure, and infinitely pleasurable.

Romantic attachments can be addictive, but they are not real, actual love when they are addictive. They are pseudo-love, a cheap counterfeit, a poor knock-off.

Real love is entirely liberatory, the very opposite of addiction.:):p

To the extent that a culture's people treat love as scarce, a substance to be guarded and dribbled out in teaspoonfulls, those people will be love-starved and confused about love's true nature -- and thus vulnerable to "love addiction" (which is never love).
 
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I'm going to venture out on a limb and say that love-addiction isn't really a problem any more than health-addiction is.

The way I see it, folks labelled as "love addicts" are people with a gaping hole in their heart centers. They feel and behave like "hungry ghosts" because they are deeply wounded by not having been properly loved during some crucial moments in their human development. They do have a problem, alright. They are starved, and don't know how to nourish themselves or be nourished by others.


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In his book Thoughts Without a Thinker, Mark Epstein paints a picture connecting these two viewpoints:

The Hungry Ghosts are probably the most vividly drawn metaphors in the Wheel of Life. Phantomlike creatures with withered limbs, grossly bloated bellies, and long thin necks, the Hungry Ghosts in many ways represent a fusion of rage and desire. Tormented by unfulfilled cravings and insatiably demanding of impossible satisfactions, the Hungry Ghosts are searching for gratification for old unfulfilled needs whose time has passed. They are beings who have uncovered a terrible emptiness within themselves, who cannot see the impossibility of correcting something that has already happened. Their ghostlike state represents their attachment to the past.[1]

He goes on to illustrate with a modern example:

A recent patient of mine, for example, an accomplished teacher of French literature named Tara, personified the predicament of a Hungry Ghost. Describing a long succession of relationships with other academics at the top of their fields, Tara repeatedly developed an impassioned relationship with one such man, while involved with another. Invariably, she kept the man she was actually living with at bay. She would quickly and critically uncover all of his faults, lose interest in him sexually, and essentially prevent him from touching her, either physically or emotionally. At the same time, she would begin to fantasize about the next luminary to enter her life...She remembered an unhappy and critical mother who had rarely touched her as a child...was searching insatiably for the kind of nourishment she had once needed, but that was now inappropriate to who she was as an adult woman.[2]

From the Wikipedia article on "Hungry Ghost": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungry_ghost
 
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Actual, real love is not addictive, though it is enormously precious--precious beyond measure, and infinitely pleasurable.

Romantic attachments can be addictive, but they are not real, actual love when they are addictive. They are pseudo-love, a cheap counterfeit, a poor knock-off.

Real love is entirely liberatory, the very opposite of addiction.:):p

To the extent that a culture's people treat love as scarce, a substance to be guarded and dribbled out in teaspoonfulls, those people will be love-starved and confused about love's true nature -- and thus vulnerable to "love addiction" (which is never love).
I liked this post very much, especially the comment that love is entirely liberatory and thus the opposite of addiction. It's a really good point, considering how many addictions are probably fueled by a deep longing for love that goes unfulfilled.

Your second post about the hungry ghosts went a bit far, however, imo. I feel that there is something good about feeling desire and the challenge to solve the problem it poses. Someone told me recently that what people ultimately long for is to merge with God, the ultimate source of love. Whether you believe this or want to call it "God" or something else, I think the point is that we're always hungry for more love, to go further with love, etc. It is just the nature of life-energy, I think, to want to keep progressing toward greater goodness and love. Certainly you can be grateful and joyful for the love you have and have had, but surely it's also good to go forth and multiply it (to use a cliched expression) and to feel a hunger/desire to do that.
 
Your second post about the hungry ghosts went a bit far, however, imo. I feel that there is something good about feeling desire and the challenge to solve the problem it poses.

As do I! Although I'm a "Buddhist" (of some sort)..., a practitioner of the Way of Buddha Dharma, I'm the first to insist that desire is not our enemy. It is our friend on the Way -- provided we're practicing the Way, which celebrates all wholesome desires while warning of the unwholesome ones -- and providing a practice path to transform all desires into wholesomeness.:)

Someone told me recently that what people ultimately long for is to merge with God, the ultimate source of love. Whether you believe this or want to call it "God" or something else, I think the point is that we're always hungry for more love, to go further with love, etc. It is just the nature of life-energy, I think, to want to keep progressing toward greater goodness and love. Certainly you can be grateful and joyful for the love you have and have had, but surely it's also good to go forth and multiply it (to use a cliched expression) and to feel a hunger/desire to do that.

I'm a naturalistic and non-theistic mystic. "God," to me, is a problematic concept and word -- because I know that, ultimately, the entire Cosmos is the body of ... well, the unspeakable (about which love is its essence). If there is nothing which is not "God" (ech!) -- the Divine -- then "God" becomes quite a confusing and confused word.

That said, my spiritual life is much influenced by Sufi poetry: Rumi, Kabir, Hafiz.... God, to me, is a sort of concealing metaphor. I'd rather surrender to and awaken into the real world than to fall for God.:D:p

Buddhist author, Mark Epstein, has written a delighful and wise book called "Open To Desire,"
http://www.amazon.com/Open-Desire-Embracing-LifeInsights-Psychotherapy/dp/1592401082
in which he shows that desire is, indeed, the friend of the practitioner of Dharma--, and any authentic spiritual path. One should never attempt to crush or run from desire. That would be running from or crushing our precious humanity.

Our already whole hearts want to realize their own true nature, as and/or within unselfish desire. If our desires are generous and kind desires, toward ourselves and all others, all of existence, then we can celebrate these desires as the infinite and unending path of neverending awakening. (I don't believe there is an endpoint. "Enlightenment" is what the universe does, unendingly. And each of us are continuous with that, not separate from it.)
 
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I'm a naturalistic and non-theistic mystic. "God," to me, is a problematic concept and word -- because I know that, ultimately, the entire Cosmos is the body of ... well, the unspeakable (about which love is its essence). If there is nothing which is not "God" (ech!) -- the Divine -- then "God" becomes quite a confusing and confused word.

It's good to hear someone struggling with divinity because they believe that there is some truth to be achieved in not simply going along with what someone else(s) have established. Personally, I can embrace atheism, buddhism, and "God" at the same time because they are all parts of the same integrated creative power to me, albeit with different forms of consciousness. I think people get so caught up in the conflict of competing truths that they ignore that truth moves a little further with each moment of enlightenment gained by understanding something new. "God" may be a confusing word because it ultimately refers to the creative power that everything evolves from and through, but creative power itself is a simple core concept, imo. Anyway, I think this is getting off topic maybe, but I have enjoyed the theological exchange.
 
Personally, I think adherence to the three historically connected primary monotheistic traditions, with its punative and authoritarian "God," makes authentic spirituality extremely difficult to maneuver. That's why I'm a non-theist, and prefer direct mystical practice and inquiry.

And that's as theological as I will ever get! I'm quite done with it beyond that point.
 
The way I see it, folks labelled as "love addicts" are people with a gaping hole in their heart centers. They feel and behave like "hungry ghosts" because they are deeply wounded by not having been properly loved during some crucial moments in their human development. They do have a problem, alright. They are starved, and don't know how to nourish themselves or be nourished by others.

It occurs to me that they are really addicted to their idea of what love is, not love itself.
 
It occurs to me that they are really addicted to their idea of what love is, not love itself.

Well, shit... Who among us are not overly attached to our ideas about love? Let these cast the first stone.:p

Love is an ocean.

Bla, bla, blah....:eek:

... Anyway, I suppose us little babies in such vastness require our training wheels. And that's okay. Who wants to drown in "the ocean"?

How tender the Ocean? we ask.

More tender than you can imagine, She replies.




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Kabir:


I talk to my inner lover,
and I say, why such rush?

We sense that there is some sort of spirit
that loves birds and animals and the ants -
perhaps the same one who gave a radiance to you in your mother's womb.

Is it logical you would be walking around entirely orphaned now?
The truth is you turned away yourself,
And decided to go into the dark alone.

Now you are tangled up in others, and have forgotten what you once knew,
and that's why everything you do has some weird failure in it.

Kabir says:

Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think... while you are alive.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten --that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.

So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!

Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
 
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Personally, I think adherence to the three historically connected primary monotheistic traditions, with its punative and authoritarian "God," makes authentic spirituality extremely difficult to maneuver. That's why I'm a non-theist, and prefer direct mystical practice and inquiry.

And that's as theological as I will ever get! I'm quite done with it beyond that point.
I seem to be unique among people who have rejected monotheism in that I have been able to re-discover it as a source of insight more meaningful than before I rejected it. Of course it was never pushed on me the way it seems to have been pushed on many people who vehemently reject and resent it.
 
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