What causes a sex addiction?

Psychology today offers this:

In the situation of love addicts, often their own growth and development were thwarted earlier in life. Similarly, many sex addicts report some type of abuse or neglect as children and see themselves as damaged. Their parents are often sex addicts themselves.
Stress also encourages compulsive sexual behavior by feeding the addict's need for withdrawal and fantasy.

What are some symptoms of sex addiction?

The behaviors of sex addicts, according to Medicinenet.com, include:

* Compulsive masturbation (self-stimulation) * Multiple affairs (extra-marital affairs) * Multiple or anonymous sexual partners and/or one-night stands * Consistent use of pornography * Unsafe sex * Phone or computer sex (cybersex) * Prostitution or use of prostitutes * Exhibitionism * Obsessive dating through personal ads * Voyeurism (watching others) and/or stalking * Sexual harassment * Molestation/rape

Sex Addiction can involve a wide variety of practices. Sometimes an addict has trouble with just one unwanted behavior, sometimes with many. A large number of sex addicts say their unhealthy use of sex has been a progressive process. It may have started with an addiction to masturbation, pornography (either printed or electronic), or a relationship, but over the years progressed to increasingly dangerous behaviors.

The essence of all addiction is the addicts' experience of powerlessness over a compulsive behavior, resulting in their lives becoming unmanageable. The addict is out of control and experiences tremendous shame, pain and self-loathing. The addict may wish to stop --- yet repeatedly fails to do so. The unmanageability of addicts' lives can be seen in the consequences they suffer: losing relationships, difficulties with work, arrests, financial troubles, a loss of interest in things not sexual, low self-esteem and despair.

Sexual preoccupation takes up tremendous amounts of energy. As this increases for the sex addict, a pattern of behavior (or rituals) follows, which usually leads to acting out (for some it is flirting, searching the net for pornography, or driving to the park.) When the acting out happens, there is a denial of feelings usually followed by despair and shame or a feeling of hopelessness and confusion.

There is often a stark difference in affect between the period when one is experimenting with a behavior and that point when the adverse consequence becomes evident. On one side, that feeling impotence mixed with excitement is overwhelming, while on the other side, remorseful penitence is hardly uplifting. This bit is true of addictive behavior, where repetitive actions are aimed at achieving a desired uplifting effect in spite of the obvious negative consequences for the individual. Sexual addition in young people, though not uniformly catastrophic, is an ideal example which exposes individuals to the risk of reliving a sweet-better experience over and over again, with reproductive tract infection, unwanted pregnancies, sexual and drug abuse potent risks. Although there is hardly any uniformity in our knowledge of this essential issue, but there are areas that are no longer grey; sacred facts you might call them.
1. The adolescent and teenage age is a period of adventure and sometimes of dangerous experimentation. For some it might be difficult to differentiate "growing up" from abnormal development. What maybe be taken as an addiction is just an overzealous expression of a biological tendency. But if young people can become addicted to drugs and poor eating habits, sexual addiction is no exception and we should be vigilant. The notion that sex addition in young is a vague entity is unwise.

2. Do not mistake fun for appropriateness. In term of human behavior, what we enjoy is often hidden from realistic appraisal because we do not want to stop doing it. This addiction is initially pleasurable, but not too long