A true sex addict is no longer in control of his actions, like anyone suffering from an addiction or compulsive behaviour. Sex with strangers carries risk.
Sex with strangers is not a sign of sex addiction on its own. To consider it to be addictive, a certain behaviour criteria must be present.
When your behaviour prevents or suppresses some negative emotion, it becomes compulsive and you repeat the behaviour, despite negative consequences and your attempts to stop have failed.
For some sexaholics, their addiction shows itself through a compulsive need to have sex with strangers. The level of familiarity between sex partners can vary, and so can the methods of sexual contact.
Apart from the physical gratification of sex, which comes with a release of feel-good brain chemicals (but which helps the root of the addiction when out of control) you engage in compulsive sex with strangers and seek other mental stimulus as well. You may not be comfortable with intimacy on an emotional level, and having sex with a stranger allows you to keep your distance in an abstract sense. You may feel like you don’t deserve to be in a good relationship. Whatever the reason, you are perusing sex as an alternative or substitute to a real connection.
When you have sex with a stranger, it is an expression of independence, a thrill-seeking affair. If you are in relationships with this form of sex addiction, you risk losing that relationship or at the very least, weaken it by diverting your sexual attentions elsewhere rather than on your partner.
If you are a sex addict, you may favour the “traditional” method of seducing your partners in social settings such as bars. When you prefer sex clubs, sexual activity is more likely to occur frequently with prostitutes on payment for sex, seeing it as a form of power.
If you intend to have the option of cybersex and phone sex, which are also seen as types of compulsive stranger sex, no real sexual contact will occur. It will often be accompanied by masturbation.
Sex addiction
