One of the most pervasive lies that plagues the mind of a female sex and love addict is that sexual addiction is a man’s issue. This lie isn’t helped by the fact that most literature and resources available for treatment of sex addiction target men. While some resources have adapted to broaden their scope to treat women as well, what I often notice is that the content itself does not change. Instead of tailoring the message to women, the assumption is that women are helped by the exact same process as men.
Undoubtedly, there are many resources available to both men and women that are effective to each. 12 Step meetings are a prime example. But in my work with female sex addicts, I’ve discovered some major differences between men and women and their approach to healing from sex and love addiction.
Women’s emotions are significantly involved in sex and love addiction.
For women with sex and love addiction, the drive is not purely physical. Women’s emotions are key. According to Louann Brizendine’s book The Female Brain*, in order to orgasm, a woman must be emotionally stimulated as well as physically stimulated. Research has shown that pornographers are now targeting female audiences not by immediately showing pornographic images, but instead by drawing women into chat rooms as a gateway to pornography, as women are more drawn to the intimate relationship aspect than physical body parts. This makes sense, as love or romance addiction shows that the physical sexual act is not the only driving factor behind a woman’s acting out.
Women tend to be more relational than men.
Women are drawn to relational aspects of sexuality. Creators of pornography have learned from romance novels and soap operas that women are aroused by the full extent of a romantic encounter, not just the sex act itself. This is why chat rooms can be so appealing for women, as it involves the development of a relationship. Chatting, which can begin innocently but become increasingly sexual over time, creates intense (and false) intimacy with a stranger online, which can then lure her into sexual intimacies online or in person.
Female sexuality has been objectified and misused.
Trauma repetition involves reenacting traumatic experiences from childhood in your adult years as an attempt to rewrite the outcome. This often happens outside of conscious awareness and can lead you to wonder why you have a string of abusive sexual relationships or are drawn to certain content in pornography. Women may view pornographic images of being abused or aggressively treated as a way of repeating their own trauma, either through past sexual abuse or through institutional sexism and objectification of women's bodies in our culture that imply women have less value simply because of their gender.
Power dynamics are an interesting factor that can influence women’s sexual behaviors. Due to past events in a woman’s life, she may crave power in a significant way from men, particularly if she was taken advantage of as a young child by a male authority figure that had power over her. This can lead to seeking out a certain type of man or activity that will seek to give her more power or control than she had as a child.
Women experience greater shame about sexual desire and sexuality.
Women experience a particular shame surrounding the issue of sexual addiction. Strict morality and its messages about sex have led to negative identity statements that women use to characterize their sexual desire, such as “I am a whore” or “I am dirty.” Double standards about sexually active men in comparison to women contribute to these negative self-statements. Marnie Ferree, in her book No Stones*, comments that women are often in a double bind, as “sex is bad and dirty” is juxtaposed with the message that she needs to be sexual in order to be loved.
This is especially (and unfortunately) pervasive in the American church. Messages about sex commonly given by churches emphasizing abstinence include that sex is wrong or bad. Healthy discussions about sex and sexuality are rare in churches, with a focus on abstinence serving to silence or ignore any genuine and honest exploration of healthy sexuality.
Women find it difficult to compartmentalize triggers.
While in treatment for addiction, men are often encouraged to share specific details of their acting out behaviors, which can include lists of pornographic websites they have visited, massage parlors they have frequented, strip clubs they have attended, or even triggers found in movies or TV shows. What I discovered in my work with women in groups was that discussing this type of information to a great level of detail actually led to more triggers for the women involved in the group. Suddenly, they had a longer list of potential methods of acting out through certain websites or locations. My theory for why this particular aspect of sexual addiction treatment was so different for women was due to difficulty shutting off or compartmentalizing their memories of this type of information, which leads to it infiltrating their thoughts unexpectedly.
The truth is, men and women are different. What is also true is that each individual woman who comes in my door is different from one another. While the statements above are generalizations that may not apply to every women I see, it is important to keep in mind that there are differences between the way men and women experience sex and love addiction, and these need to be taken into account as you pursue healing.