why I don't buy into the concept of "sex addiction"

[topaz]

.... is that it always seems to get promoted by people like this guy:

"Anyone who is married to Christie Brinkley and has to masturbate at all is probably a sex addict," said Doug Weiss, a licensed psychologist and the executive director of the Heart to Heart Counseling Center in Colorado. ... "The fact that a man would spend money on women who are probably less beautiful and less wonderful than his own wife is often an indication of a sex addiction," said Weiss, who has not treated Cook or Brinkley.

Really!  Having to masturbate at all makes you a sex addict?  And does that only apply to men who are married to supermodels, or is it forgivable to resort to the sin of onanism if you have the misfortune to be married to an actual human being?

Kudos to ABC News for managing to find the person who must be the most sexually neurotic and immature soi-disant "sex counsellor" in the country for a sound bite on why people masturbate.  Is Lou Wildmon no longer returning their calls or something?

Comments

[keyne.livejournal.com]

That piece is so wrong on so many levels it's hard to know where to start :}

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

What you said. Yikes.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

Oh, I could totally figure out where to start, I just didn't feel like taking the time to do a proper deconstruction. There's reams of material there, though.

(heh, heh. reams.)

[awfief.livejournal.com]

Since when is "spending money on women" sex addiction anyway? ;)

I wonder what this guy does when a woman comes to him with the problem that her husband's libido is larger than hers.

In fact, that a sex counselor uses a word like "beautiful" instead of talking in relative terms like "whether or not he finds his wife/other women attractive" is a serious problem.

People use "addiction" wrongly. It's not enough to just be a biological or psychological urge-bordering-on-need/need; it has to be that AND have a negative impact on the person's life.

For instance, if someone psychologically *has* to drink 5 drinks per night (1 drink each hour for 5 hours), but it does not affect their quality of life, that's not addiction. They may have slightly worse health and less money overall, but it has to seriously interfere with their lives if it's an addiction.

So if you have the biological *necessity* to masturbate before you go to bed at night, it's not actually *an addiction* unless it's interfering with the quality of your life or endangering others.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I have no doubt that a lot of this, like his emphasis on "beautiful", is directly attributable to his own hangups about sex and relationships.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I believe that sex addiction is real... but i'm pretty sure that ain't it.

[antoniseb.livejournal.com]

Having been previously married to Christie Brinkley, I have to agree with Doug Weiss. He really knows his stuff... I guess he was previously married to Christie Brinkley too.

No, No wait! I was never married to Christie Brinkley. I must have just imagined it... and I'm sure my imagination was better than real life could have ever been.

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

I saw "Colorado" and wondered if he was in Colorado Springs... sure enough, he is. I think everything you need to know about Doug Weiss is right here on the promo page for his book (http://www.sexaddict.com/Ch101.html).

What amazing crap these people torture themselves and each other with.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I am shocked -- shocked I say -- to learn that Doug Weiss is himself a recovering sex addict! What are the odds?

[jacflash.livejournal.com]

...and a nutball Christian, too. Shocking!

Doug Weiss is no jerk-off!

[alanhamilton.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with the idea of sex addiction. I know people whose sex addiction does interfere with their lives.

But I have a problem with Doug Weiss's "anyone who is willing to spend money – thousands of dollars in Cook's case – to achieve sexual arousal without the help of their supermodel wife, probably doesn't have a healthy relationship with sex."

It's astoundingly sex-negative and, as keyne wrote, wrong on so many levels. I'm certainly glad I didn't grow up in his home or the sex-negative people around him! And I'm sorry for everyone who has gotten bad advice from him.

Peter Cook may well be a sex addict, but not because he spends a paltry portion of his millions on porn ($3000 would be a *lot* for me, but I don't think it is a lot for him), because he has sex online (anyone looked at xtube.com?), or because he has had an affair with an 18-year-old woman (what are the statistics for the number of men who do, I wonder). I can certainly believe that someone thinks that an affair is grounds for a divorce, but I certainly don't consider the little that was mentioned in the article to be grounds for saying that someone is a sex addict.

[malefica-v.livejournal.com]

That opening sentence makes the presumption that Christie Brinkley is there for sex on demand. Grr. "Attractive" does not equal "open 24 hours" nor even "likely to be in the mood."

[sine.livejournal.com]

oh, for fuck's sake! (no pun intended) would he be a sex addict if he had been masturbating to porn while married to a non-model? because.... oh, grrrrrr. someone go thwap that man on the nose with a rolled-up copy of penthouse.

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

someone go thwap that man on the nose with a rolled-up copy of penthouse.

But that would potentially set back his own recovery from sex addiction! It would be WRONG and EVIL and BAD and KINDA HOT.

[innerdoggie.livejournal.com]

Even the commenters on ABC thought this was dumb.

You could certainly marry somebody that society has decided is the Most Beautiful in the World, but you just don't find them attractive. Or marry somebody that you were very attractive to, but the sex you have with them is very disappointing, or even upsetting.

You could also just be a jerk who needs to sneak around in order to have sex, or pay people money, and somebody richer than you who doesn't need your money doesn't do it for you.

I think I'm an atheist about sex addiction, just like I'm an atheist about Freudian psychoanalysis.

[kcatalyst.livejournal.com]

In my next life, I'm coming back as a supermodel.

I totally want to be someone where when a relationship goes south, total strangers are willing to go on frickin' ABC news to declare that anyone who would screw me over must have deep psychological issues.

[naiad.livejournal.com]

I just read an article stating that downloading porn regularly is a sign of sex addiction, especially if it's downloaded in the background and perhaps never even looked at.

Huh?

Anyway, I guess that means many, many of my friends are sex addicts. Yay!

[qwrrty.livejournal.com]

I agree. Yay for regular porn downloaders! Whatever would we do without them?