Addiction

I've been on here before, some of you know my story. I'm curious as to if anyone thinks sex addiction exists or what it really is... here is why - I am wife #4. I'm 44, my husband is 51. He got married the first time when he was 20 and she was 18, had been dating 2 years prior. They were married for 10 years. No cheating, they just grew up and grew apart. He DID have a pot smoking habit and when he stopped that, he got involved in one of those non-denominational, speaking in tongue intense churches... she wasn't on board so they split. A year after that he met a woman at church and literally thought God put her in his life and married her 2 years later. They stayed married for 4 years before she drove him out (how he stayed that long I have no clue, I have met this woman, she is one of those women who is sickeningly sweet to you while getting a dig in at the same time). He left the church at the same time. Within a couple of months he was hanging out at bars, having one night stands, and came across #3. They quickly moved in together and got married 10 days after the divorce from 2 was final. She was an alcoholic and he was not happy with her since she never wanted to do anything with him (no shared interests), so he cheated on her within the first year. Instead of splitting, they decided to swing. When I asked how he could watch his wife have sex with another man, after all this is a man who gets jealous if another man looks at me twice, he said it was because he really didn't care about her, he didn't love her so he didn't care what she was doing. This went on for 5 years. They even went to swinger conventions in the Caribbean. When he had told me about all of this - AFTER we had been married - I was upset, I felt deceived and I started to spiral, I began to search for things online and I found old email accounts and ebay accounts etc. I found all this stuff about orgies and her with other women and how much he loved watching it and on and on. The visuals in my head were torture, but that's another story... So at some point they decided to stop and she said she'd get help for the drinking. He came home one day and caught her in bed with some guy. He left and that was the end of that marriage. He said that along with breaking their agreement to stop the swinging stuff, she never did anything to stop the drinking. And he really didn't care enough about her to stay. Harsh. After her there were more bar scenes, lots of one night stands again, a long term girlfriend he claims he didn't cheat on, and then in between her (the LTGF) and me there were a bunch more one night stand and "casual sex" girlfriends. One of the things he said to me early in our relationship was that sex was important to him. And he really was pretty physical at first until we found an emotional connection which he claims he never really has felt before (he claims sex now is so much more intense because he is emotionally connected to me) Anyway, when he first told me about his past and I freaked, we went to counseling and the therapist tried to label him a sex addict. She said he had a raging sex addiction. Huh? Granted, yea, he had ALOT of reckless sex for a period of time between #2 and me, but a sex addict? He doesn't watch porn, he doesn't constantly talk about sex, he hasn't cheated on me (married 3 years now), I don't even catch him looking at other pretty women when we are out somewhere. We have a pretty healthy sex life. So what was up with this therapist's diagnosis? I can see that maybe he was sowing his wild oats a bit late in life because he had gotten married at an early age. And I don't agree with what he did with wife #3, in fact in turns my stomach to think about it. But I wouldn't say he was a sex addict...

Put the internet to work for you. via Personal Recipe 2629979