lifeinus1960present.blogspot.com
This week sees the
release of Steve McQueen's film Shame, which focuses on sex addiction,
but what is it really like to be a sex addict? At the age of 27,
comedian Jeff Leach has slept with more than 300 women and wants to
confront his problem.
I am a ladies' man and to be honest a pretty successful one, sometimes sleeping with women at a rate of more than 10 a week, but now I am on a mission to change. I want to see if I can handle a committed relationship. I need to find out where I have been going wrong. Seeing every single woman as a potential sexual adventure makes me miserable, tires me out and leaves me feeling vacuous and shallow, and ultimately very lonely.
Now I am getting towards 30, my friends are settling down and I realise I cannot go on like this forever. It's said the average British man has had 13 sexual partners and women have had just seven. I am pretty much off the scale.
I am a ladies' man and to be honest a pretty successful one, sometimes sleeping with women at a rate of more than 10 a week, but now I am on a mission to change. I want to see if I can handle a committed relationship. I need to find out where I have been going wrong. Seeing every single woman as a potential sexual adventure makes me miserable, tires me out and leaves me feeling vacuous and shallow, and ultimately very lonely.
Now I am getting towards 30, my friends are settling down and I realise I cannot go on like this forever. It's said the average British man has had 13 sexual partners and women have had just seven. I am pretty much off the scale.
Jeff Leach regularly watches porn
The realisation I have had is that my attitude to sex is just
not normal. Having already conquered the majority of problematic aspects
of my existence pertaining to my addictive nature - my drink and drug
follies - this seems to be the final hurdle that needs to be faced. I don't want to die on my own and I also want to be a dad. To
find out more about myself, I spoke to ex-lovers to try to understand
why I can't be a one-woman man.
Sleeping with more than 300 women meant a lot of phone calls, emails, Facebook and Twitter messages. Ex-girlfriends, ex-lovers, ex-"one night stands" came back with positive messages of support and a genuine desire to help me with my journey. My ex-girlfriend Nicola did call me self-centred.
"You were very selfish, you made me very uncomfortable on many occasions. Jeff did what Jeff wanted to do," says Nicola.
Claire, who was my longest relationship, told me she was always afraid of running the risk of being hurt. "I didn't think you'd be able to be a good boyfriend. I didn't want to be in a relationship with you. I don't think I'd be able to satisfy you as a girlfriend and keep your attention. And also, if you cheated on me, it would destroy me," says Claire. That was upsetting. How many opportunities have I had like that in the past, where women have thought "rather than tell him that I like him to that extent, I'd rather push him away to protect myself?"
My ex-girlfriend - also called Clare - said that I failed to show a vulnerable side. I have a fear of being hurt like I was by my first love. But how do I allow myself to be vulnerable? By limiting my time with individual lovers, by seeing a girl for one night and then making her feel like she's my world and then not seeing her for two or three weeks, I am allowed to distance myself. When I went to see Paula Hall, a sexual and relationship psychotherapist, she explained the signs.
Sleeping with more than 300 women meant a lot of phone calls, emails, Facebook and Twitter messages. Ex-girlfriends, ex-lovers, ex-"one night stands" came back with positive messages of support and a genuine desire to help me with my journey. My ex-girlfriend Nicola did call me self-centred.
"You were very selfish, you made me very uncomfortable on many occasions. Jeff did what Jeff wanted to do," says Nicola.
Claire, who was my longest relationship, told me she was always afraid of running the risk of being hurt. "I didn't think you'd be able to be a good boyfriend. I didn't want to be in a relationship with you. I don't think I'd be able to satisfy you as a girlfriend and keep your attention. And also, if you cheated on me, it would destroy me," says Claire. That was upsetting. How many opportunities have I had like that in the past, where women have thought "rather than tell him that I like him to that extent, I'd rather push him away to protect myself?"
My ex-girlfriend - also called Clare - said that I failed to show a vulnerable side. I have a fear of being hurt like I was by my first love. But how do I allow myself to be vulnerable? By limiting my time with individual lovers, by seeing a girl for one night and then making her feel like she's my world and then not seeing her for two or three weeks, I am allowed to distance myself. When I went to see Paula Hall, a sexual and relationship psychotherapist, she explained the signs.
"Sex addiction is any sexual behaviour that feels out of control. If you are acting out in a sexual way and you don't really know what you are getting out of it any more, you don't really know why you're doing it, you're quite often regretting that you've done it again but you keep on doing it, then you are probably an addict.
"You have to learn to love yourself and live in your own company."
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