My story

I had an epiphany about the shame I feel when relationships with women end — a deep sense that I am bad, unworthy, and that the loss is proof of it. It connected my pattern of abandonment to my mother, and felt like genuine news even though I’ve written about it many times before.

A sudden re-realization.

Another part of my mother’s abandonment of me, of my loss of safety.

Some of my thoughts about WHY I want the things I want.

My second mid-life crisis, in some greater detail.

Does sex addiction exist? Am I a sex addict? Was I a sex addict? Does it even matter what words I use to describe my experience?

A woman on the street reminds me of Jennifer, a woman I paid to suck my cock in her West Village apartment years ago, whose rough tongue and too-nice apartment and hedge fund boss I tried not to think too hard about.

Club magazine, Playboy, and Color Climax: a prepubescent education in escalation — and the discovery that porn’s real function was never to satisfy hunger, but to activate it.

Thinking someone could just explain away my compulsive sexual behavior was the first of many things I got wrong. The list of things I got wrong is long.

The feeling I fear most is the one I’ve spent years seeking out.