My paraphilias

I am writing to get some advice, support and input from this forum. I am a 23 year old male and I am coming to realize that I have struggled with what I believe to be many paraphilias and a sexual addiction my whole life. I am married, but the full extent of my problems has recently come out to my wife and I'm afraid our marriage won't survive unless I can finally get a handle on my problems.

I have never written this all down before, and have only told my wife about it in bits and pieces so I'm sorry if it is overly long or less than organized. I may later make a post laying out how I think everything happened and developed but now I just need to lay my problems out and get some advice.

The reason things have reached a breaking point is my wife found out that I was talking to underage girls online. She had already known about my problems with pornography but not the full extend of my paraphilias. I think I have either hebephilia or more likely ephebophilia. I have never acted on these impulses in real life but I have had explicit conversations online with underage girls and I have downloaded some illegal porn. However, unlike most of the posts I seem to read on this forum, my problems have seemed to develop at a much later age, my attraction to younger and younger girls didn't start until I was well into my 20's.

However, now looking back at it and doing some research and honest appraisal I've had a number of paraphilias throughout my life at different times. At different times I believe I've had Frotteurism, Zoophilia, Somnaphilia, Voyeurism, Exhibitionism and perhaps Sadism. I have not acted on most of these compulsions/interests but I have on some... notably Frotteurism when I was in my early teens. I think I have a sexual addiction that is always making me search out a bigger and better high - and what seems to be my high is sexual behaviors that are taboo/unacceptable/illegal.

I'm curious if the people on this forum think that I have a sexual compulsion/addiction for taboo/unacceptable behaviors or is it possible that I have all of these Paraphilias?

The other important aspect to my sexual addiction is that I don't seem to have an interest in 'normal' sex. The only person I have ever had sex with is my wife. However, I am very rarely to orgasm from any kind of sex with her and generally just don't enjoy sex with her as much as I do masturbation and fantasies. I do want to point out that I don't think this is just a normal kind of 'freaky fantasies' situation because my sexual obsessions have led me to behaviors that I regret, am ashamed of and are dangerous/illegal. Again, what do people here think, do I just have a problem with regular sex and look to replace it, or do I have these paraphilias and that is why I don't enjoy regular sex?

I am trying to turn my life around and develop normal, healthy sexual behaviors. I'm afraid I won't be able to change because I have had problems with pornography addiction and paraphilias basically since I hit puberty. I have contacted a therapist I will be seeing on a weekly basis and found a local SA group that meets weekly. Does anyone have any other advice on what to do to make a major life change and start conquering these recurrent unhealthy thoughts and obsessions? I'd also appreciate any support or success stories, or people willing to share their experiences, I need all the help I can get.

Allofthem wrote:I'm curious if the people on this forum think that I have a sexual compulsion/addiction for taboo/unacceptable behaviors or is it possible that I have all of these Paraphilias?

From what I have read, paraphilias do tend to have a high rate of comorbidity, meaning that it's common to have more than one in the same individual. However, it is my understanding that for a paraphilia to be diagnosed you must have had recurrent fantasies about it in the past 6 months. So if you found zoophilia arousing a few years ago but no longer think much about, you technically don't have that paraphilia.

Allofthem wrote:I think I have a sexual addiction that is always making me search out a bigger and better high - and what seems to be my high is sexual behaviors that are taboo/unacceptable/illegal.

That's what I was going to say. It sounds like you might have some form of ephebophilia/hebophilia, and also that you have a paraphilia that makes you seek out all things taboo rather than a fixation with a particular thing as is often the case in other paraphilias. I don't think there is a name for this, but it seem to be common with sex/porn addictions, where you need more and more stimulation to get the same effect. There is a sexual addiction forum here as well, you could try posting there also.

Other than that, I'm not sure how to help. It's good you're taking steps to address this problem.

Allofthem wrote:I'm curious if the people on this forum think that I have a sexual compulsion/addiction for taboo/unacceptable behaviors or is it possible that I have all of these Paraphilias?

There is a paraphilia (don't know the name) where the person has an attraction to what is taboo/illegal/immoral.

The person start by being aroused to things that are a bit immoral, doing voyeurisms, froterisms, exhibitionism, then it reaches a point where the person get used to those things and moves to other topics that are even more taboo, then those topics lose their tabooinsess, he moves to even stronger topics and so on, till they end in the situation you are.

You seem to have this paraphilia, this paraphilia turn into a porn addiction to stronger and more illegal/taboo/immoral material.

About your other "paraphilias" when I was young I try homosexuality, heterosexuality, voyeurism, froterism, even humped my bed, does that makes me have a paraphilia for beds? Not really, I was just horny and wanted to know how would it feel doing those things, same reason I have looked at all kinds of porn out of curiosity to see what is like, doesn't mean I'm into that porn. All those things I look or did, gave me no arousal or very little arousal.

If you really had all the paraphilias that you mentioned, you would still have them now and they would be the main way for you to get aroused. Seems that is not the case with you, I would assume that you did all that out of pure teenager curiosity/horniness, or because you have a paraphilia for things that are taboo/immoral/illegal and that makes you do many paraphilic activities.

That's ^^ not necessarily true, I had multiple paraphilias as a kid that went away when I was about twelve.

Honestly, I can't formally diagnos you, and giving help is not my area of specialty, but i can tell you this. It is perfectly possible to have multiple paraphilias, I would know, I have 3. There is even something rare called unspecified paraphilia. I think I have that too.

I am pretty much drawn to anything morbid/dark, and I've never heard of morbidity being diagnosed as a para, so I guess that would fall under unspecified? I too am seeking answers, so any answers I can give, I'm happy to help anytime, though I'm not sure how helpful I really would be, as I'm not really trying to change anything about my paraphilias, more like trying to make peace with myself after being beaten down by society for years, and years, and, well, yeah.

Keep your face up, sometimes that's all we can do.

NF