Here’s something most men were never taught: the feeling of wanting sex and the feeling of being stressed, bored, lonely, or wound up are built from the same wiring. Faster heart. Shallow breath. Pressure in the pelvis. A sudden sense that you need to do something. When that feeling hits, most men have exactly one … Continued
Think back to junior high. Your body was running on a new set of instructions, and your mind couldn’t stop thinking about sex. You probably felt embarrassed about a lot of it, but nobody treated you like you were sick. Everyone understood it was puberty. Now fast forward. You’re 35 or 45 or 55, 65 … Continued
At some point, most men I work with asks a version of the same question: is this a kink or is this the pattern talking? He’s found himself drawn to something specific… a scenario, a dynamic, a type of content and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Is this just who he is … Continued
There’s a pattern almost every man I work with recognizes when I describe it. He acts. He feels shame. The shame is almost unbearable. To escape the shame, he reaches for the thing he’s ashamed of. Which generates more shame. Which generates another reach. This is the shame loop. And it is one of the … Continued
Some men can tell you exactly what’s wrong in their marriage and still find themselves pulling away the moment their partner tries to get closer. Not out of malice, and often not even consciously – it’s more like a reflex. Closeness arrives, and something in the body says not this, not now, not fully. This … Continued
Sexual shame in men has a particular quality: it tends to sit in the body quietly, like a stone that’s been there so long it no longer surprises you. You’ve made your accommodations around it. You’ve built your life at a slight angle to the truth. And you’ve gotten quite good at appearing fine. This … Continued
One of the things men describe most often — and most quietly — is escalation. The content that used to work doesn’t anymore. You find yourself looking at things you wouldn’t have touched five years ago. The category has drifted somewhere that makes you uncomfortable when you think about it clearly. You tell yourself it … Continued
The short answer is no — at least not in the United States, and not in the way most people mean it. “Sex addiction” does not appear in the DSM-5, the diagnostic manual used by American mental health clinicians. It was proposed for inclusion and rejected. That’s not a paperwork issue. It reflects genuine disagreement … Continued
You’ve probably already tried to stop. Maybe more than once. Maybe more times than you can count. You’ve done the streak, broken it, reset the counter, felt the crash, sworn it off again. You’ve deleted apps. Cleared history. Made the internal promise — this is the last time — with total sincerity and broken it … Continued
If you’ve been googling “porn addiction” at midnight, you’re not alone. But the label you land on matters more than most people realize — because the framework you use to understand the problem shapes every decision you make about what to do next. Here’s the problem with calling it an addiction. The addiction model was … Continued