This article is by Dorothy C. Hayden on May 17, 2016 on PsychCentral
Does sex bring you connection or shame…
Brian is an investment banker in his early forties. In graduate school, he first began to visit prostitutes, spend money on phone sex, masturbate compulsively and spend as much as five to 10 hours a day looking at Internet porn. When sexually acting out, he would feel that someone had turned on his brain for the first time. On the net, he would suddenly feel alive. He had energy and felt the euphoria that sexual immersion seductively provides. His mind slowed down; he didn’t need to keep moving.
Since his teens, he had masturbated nearly every night before going to sleep and sometimes once or twice during the day as well. He was shy in school and dated infrequently, partly from his feelings of inadequacy — from the persistent inability to concentrate, multiple failures, disapproval from parents, teachers and peers and the subsequent demoralization that contributed to low self-esteem.
College had been difficult for him. Complex mathematical formulations from his economics courses were tape-recorded while he fantasized about looking under the shirt of the girl who sat next to him. He was chronically late to classes, his dorm was messy and his clothes were disheveled. He seemed to live in another world.