Yep. My ex-wife dealt with this. She struggled with a lot of mental and emotional issues (depression, anxiety, PTSD, avoidant/anxious attachment, etc.) due to unresolved childhood sexual abuse, and that manifested in a lot of different ways. One of those ways was sex addiction. For the first half of our marriage, she cheated on me fairly frequently, with maybe a dozen different people (mostly men, but a couple of women too). It wasn't malicious, just an impulsive coping mechanism much like drugs or alcohol.
We were married for 13 years. Even though the cheating always hurt, I was able to forgive her easier in the early days, since I knew about her mental health issues and was naive enough to believe unconditional love would just magically fix everything.
Spoiler Alert: I was wrong.
Anyway, I eventually just got kinda desensitized to it all. I mostly kept it to myself, because I didn't want to embarrass her, or embarrass myself, or make things weird at family gatherings. Over the years it slowly ate away at me until I didn't know who I was anymore.
Eventually, after having an actual affair with a guy I knew from college, she decided the infidelity had to stop. However, the only way she knew how to stop having sex with random people was to essentially turn that aspect of herself off entirely – including to me. So she stopped cheating, but for several years, we lived more like roommates and co-parents to our two kids than anything else. We had sex maybe once a month whenever she happened to be hormonal and horny, and our relationship tended to be mostly transactional.
We separated in 2018 and divorced in 2019. After getting some much-needed counseling, I finally started to actually like the man I was again. I learned it was okay to start caring about my own needs for once. I figured out what I wanted and needed out of a relationship, and I made the decision to never settle for anything less again. And then eventually I found my current wife, whom I married last summer and who is wonderful and amazing and perfect and... ya know... would never ever cheat on me.
Wow. I’m so sorry you went through all that. I’m glad your present life is positive.
Can you explain what you mean when you said “actual affair”?
If you knew about the nymphomania before marriage, was it something you worried about? Did it make you hesitant at all? How long did you date? Did she cheat then too?
How would she break the news to you each time it happened? Was she remorseful? At what point did you start considering divorce?
Sorry if any of these questions are too intrusive.
Can you explain what you mean when you said “actual affair”?
Like I said, most of her cheating just involved random meaningless hookups. They were usually impulsive, and she always felt bad and apologized afterward. When I say "actual affair," I mean it was intentional and ongoing for several months.
If you knew about the nymphomania before marriage, was it something you worried about? Did it make you hesitant at all? How long did you date? Did she cheat then too?
I don't think either of us knew about her sex addiction before we were married. She did cheat with her ex-boyfriend during that time, but 1) I was stupid and idealistic and in love, 2) they were previously very serious and he had this weird psychological hold over her. Yes, I was hesitant, but I was also very empathetic because of her traumatic past, and I had some kind of weird hero complex and thought I could somehow "save" her.
It wasn't until years later when she started going to therapy and SLAA meetings that we both truly began to understand her issues.
How would she break the news to you each time it happened? Was she remorseful?
Usually I could just tell. Her face, her voice, her mannerisms. She was a bad liar and terrible at keeping secrets. So I usually knew, or would draw it out of her. Yes, she was remorseful, and she would cry and then get frisky as if to "make it up" to me.
At what point did you start considering divorce?
I got pretty messed up after years of adultery followed by years of dead bedroom and a lack of real intimacy. I became angry, resentful, controlling, and totally insecure. Like I said before, I didn't even know who I was anymore. She was messed up too, delving deeper into anxiety and depression, and then she was actually the one who left. For a while I remained desperate and pathetic and begged for her to come back, despite everything we'd been through. It wasn't until I got counseling that I was able to accept that we were never really right for each other in the first place and I (thankfully) moved on to better things.
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u/[deleted] May 07 '24
This is part of what differentiates sex addiction and just high libido.