At the least advantageous end of the spectrum, a man simply masturbates. In the best circumstances, women throw themselves at him. But in between these two extremes reside garden-variety marriages wherein the wife may complain about the husband’s sexual demand, and the man may seek lovers and/or prostitutes. A single man with sexual addiction can carry on with many partners, and no one, except those involved with him, would really care about his addiction. He is rarely bothered by that until the need for emotional intimacy (the whisper within) catches up with him. It’s only once the man gets married that his addiction becomes a problem in a social and familial context.

Therefore, the treatment for sexual addiction is a form of pseudo-redemptive window dressing in which no one, especially the addict himself, really believes. But what choices does the wife have? One potential “cure” is chemical or surgical castration—no man volunteers, not to mention the wronged wife would be deprived of sex anyway, a sort of cutting off your nose to spite your face. The second choice is to view the addiction as a time-limited condition, accept the man for who he is, and wait until his desires extinguish. Let’s stop pathologizing every human behavior, like male libido.