I Have A Sexual Disorder, Not A Fetish

\*Just a warning, some of this content may be triggering\*

I hope this is the appropriate place for this post. Mainly, I want to share my experience here because when I first started going through this I really did think I was alone or that there was something incredibly wrong with me. I hope this might help someone.

I have a sexual disorder and I thought it was just a fetish

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When I was younger, I had a series of experiences only months apart from each other that resulted in “compounded” trauma between the ages of 9 to 14. In early adulthood, my behavior sexually became very impulsive and manifested as Severe Promiscuity. This behavior was not a drive for sexual gratification, it was recreating my experiences to try to reconcile the relationship between my mind, heart, and body.

It was at the age of 14 that the fantasies first started. I can recognize now that this was a form of escapism to take my head out of my body.

As I got older I started frequenting online chat rooms, meeting strangers online, traveling to sleep with people, and abusing various substances. I began having no regard for my safety or my life.

In my early 20s, I experienced a drug overdose, being discovered by my parents. I enrolled in addiction counseling. From here, I entered a rehab program and graduated. I moved out of my parent’s home and got my first apartment while working full time. To all appearances, I was a contributing member of society. I took all the suggestions given to me to maintain my sobriety and didn’t understand why I still felt so shattered and DEAD inside.

I had been watching so much porn, calling in sick to work, and canceling plans with friends and family. I had started watching porn and visiting online chatrooms at work. I never told anyone about these behaviors, or how I would masturbate for hours at a time. How I felt like I had no control over myself or the things I was doing. And the whole time, it was the same fantasy playing in my mind over and over and over for 8 years. I couldn’t escape it. It didn’t matter what porn I watched, who I slept with, who I chatted with online, how stimulated I was – I could not climax without thinking about the fantasy.

It had now become intrusive to the point that I felt so ashamed of myself for not having the will to break free from this thing in my own mind. I had mood swings, periods of severe anxiety, and periods of just giving up and giving in to the desires I had – and that felt the worst of all. I felt weak after a “bender”.

I met someone I didn’t expect to meet and fell in love for the first time. What honestly felt like the first time I have ever truly loved someone. One day, they held my hand and my whole body felt like it was shaking with fear. I excused myself and went to the bathroom to breathe through a panic attack. I knew it was a trauma response, and it was such a small act of intimacy between us that triggered it.

I didn’t know what to do, I felt backed into a corner. I had no more excuses for my behavior and finally admitted to this person I had had experiences with trauma and there were things I could not heal. I felt hopeless and like I didn’t know what to do anymore. This person introduced me to someone who would go on to help me immensely in my healing process, and I will forever be grateful for that.

I received my diagnosis as a Sex Addict. This addiction existed long before drugs and alcohol and persisted with the absence of drugs and alcohol. I did a lot of work on myself during that time, and with much support and guidance, my mental and emotional health improved. I worked to define what sexual sobriety looked like for me (it may look different for others) and felt at peace with myself.

When I had “relapses” into my sexual addiction, I now had a way to recover. I felt hopeful. There was no more porn, no more multiple partners, and no more online chat rooms.

Still, the fantasy persisted. I still hadn’t discussed it, I had hoped it would just go away as I worked towards undoing my emotional knots. I fell back into impulsively masturbating periodically throughout my 20’s. My thoughts turned back to now what I know is suicidal ideation. The pain of what I was doing was now outweighing the benefit to the point that I wanted to end my life.

The intrusiveness of the fantasy, my inability to make it go away or stop, left me again feeling hopeless and useless.

I had been looking for a solution, something – anything – to fix me.

Then I found this word, Paraphilia.

I read about a man who would receive TERRIBLE haircuts from his mother as a child as a form of humiliation and discipline for bad behavior. As an adult, he became a hairdresser and received sexual gratification from cutting men’s hair.

Not my fantasy, but it was the closest thing I could relate to. Marked by intrusive thoughts that had become increasingly distressful to the point of driving me to suicide, finding this elated me. There was a name for the thing I had been grappling with for then over 10 years.

I looked up treatment for Paraphellia and the only recommended treatment found to be effective was thinking of something else right before the moment of climax.

I felt like I was genuinely fucked.

I couldn’t masturbate without spiraling down a deep dark hole (pun intended) of despair and compulsive behavior. I couldn’t use porn, erotic fiction, online chatrooms, pornographic imagery, phone sex, sexting, or people to help me fix this.

After some time, I started seeing that my obsession with my obsession (the fantasy) revolved around my own sexual gratification. If I could just fix this, I could be normal, and I could climax and get off the way I actually want to when I wanted to (which was constantly).

Something in me shifted, I felt like I had been SO SELFISH in my thinking around sex.

I made a decision to only have sex with someone if I genuinely felt like I loved them. I told prospective romantic partners I was not ready to have sex. We could go see a movie, go for dinners or walks, spend time listening to music, and do other activities together.

Some of them were understanding and some I never saw again after expressing this boundary around sex.

As I felt more comfortable with myself within romantic relationships, I began focusing more on sexually pleasing my partners. I didn’t care anymore if I got off or not because those experiences weren’t about me anymore. They were about Us sharing each other. Emotional intimacy was what I was now seeking to cultivate. Sex would just be an expression of the love we had for each other instead of it being the physical and mechanical exchange of bodily fluids.

I had moments of intense fear, where I would withdraw and recede into myself. I could see this was a trauma response and had the tools to pull myself out. I began feeling forgiveness for myself, I would no longer chastise myself for my thoughts or my feelings around sex but instead understood this was a long and winding road to heal and recover.

Most recently, I moved cities and began a relationship with someone I fell deeply in love with. We shared everything, and I even told them about what I had struggled with for now over 15 years. Our sex life was amazing and I would climax without even a thought of the intrusive fantasy. I would climax thinking of my partner, feeling fully present to my experiences in mind and body.

When I masturbated, the fantasy would return.

I am not afraid of my sexuality anymore, I do not feel ashamed to be who I am. I now experience freedom in my own mind I never thought I would.

I don’t think it’s gone forever, I honestly believe a neuro pathway had been created and is wedged into my brain until the day I die. I think over time and with persistence, I have healed to the point that this freedom is now a result of the work I have put in.

If I could do anything differently, I would have been honest so much sooner about what I was experiencing and would have sought professional help.

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par·a·phil·i·a/ˌperəˈfilēə/

1. a condition characterized by abnormal sexual desires, typically involving extreme or dangerous activities.

“Paraphilias are **persistent and recurrent sexual interests, urges, fantasies, or behaviors of marked intensity involving objects, activities, or even situations that are atypical in nature.** ”

fet·ish/ˈfediSH/

1. 1.a form of sexual desire in which gratification is linked to an abnormal degree to a particular object, item of clothing, part of the body, etc.

” If someone has a *fetish*, they have an unusually strong liking or need for a particular object or activity, as a way of getting sexual pleasure. ”

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In case anyone was curious, my fantasy involved body morphing.

TL;DR: I do not have a fetish, I have a sexual disorder.

Edit: Someone asked a really great question in the comments of what the difference between a fetish and a paraphelia was, I’ll include this here too:

“Fetishes are nontraditional sexual interests or behaviors (kinks) that are, for a particular individual, a deep and abiding (and possibly even necessary) element of sexual arousal and activity. Paraphilias are fetishes that have escalated in ways that have resulted in negative life consequences.

A kink, a fetish, and a paraphilia can involve the same behavior, but the role that behavior plays and the effects it has can be very different depending on the person. Consider as an analogy the difference between a casual drinker, a heavy drinker, and an alcoholic. The basic behavior, consuming alcohol, is the same, but the underpinnings, impact, and long-term effects are quite different depending on the person. Moreover, it is only when the behavior is taken to an extreme that results in negative life consequences that its viewed as a disorder. For instance, the DSM-5 says that for a kink or fetish to qualify as a paraphilic disorder, the arousal pattern/behavior must create significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.”

Source: https://psychcentral.com/blog/kinks-fetishes-paraphilias-treating-issues-with-non-traditional-sexuality#4