(Un)hidden: Sex Addiction in Men - The Struggle Behind the Behavior

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Sex addiction grips countless men in silence, yet few dare to speak its name. Beyond the surface behaviors lies a profound struggle with shame, disconnection, and unmet needs that began long before our first sexual experience.

I've personally walked this path and witnessed thousands of men caught in the same cycle over my twenty years of work in this field. What appears as hypersexuality often masks a desperate attempt to regulate overwhelming emotions and fill an ancient void. The compulsive pursuit of sexual experiences isn't about pleasure—it's about escape from loneliness, pain, and parts of ourselves we're afraid to face.

The distinction matters: desire flows naturally while compulsion controls. One brings life; the other depletes it. When sexual thoughts and behaviors begin interfering with relationships, work, and emotional health, we've crossed from natural desire into addiction territory. Society conditions men to believe that being hypersexual is normal—"boys will be boys"—making it harder to recognize when something has become harmful.

What drives this pattern? In my experience, sex addiction speaks to profound disconnections. It represents both a longing to return to the divine mother (the unconditional acceptance we may have never fully experienced) and a hunger for the blessing of the absent father (the healthy masculine guidance many never received). Without proper initiation into manhood, we remain emotional boys in men's bodies, using sex to soothe what can only be healed through grief, connection, and inner work.

Healing begins with dropping the shame and coming out of hiding. This isn't about being a bad person—it's about being a wounded person trying to cope. Breaking the silence starves addiction of its power. The journey requires brothers, mentors, and guides who can help navigate this challenging terrain.

Join us in The Gathering, our virtual men's support group, where we create space for these conversations. Because the answer isn't found in more sexual experiences but in understanding what your soul truly hungers for. You're not broken—you're wounded, and wounds can heal when given the right environment to do so.

The Gathering is my online men's group where we talk about the stuff most guys are afraid to admit — anger, shame, relationships, self-sabotage — and actually do something about it. This is where you stop pretending and start showing up for yourself, your relationships, and the man you know you're meant to be.

Ready to get real? Sign up now at https://www.manuncaved.com/the-gathering — and let’s start breaking the cycle together.

Need support? Our free recovery services and weekly support groups are here to help both individuals and families affected by addiction and mental health challenges. You don’t have to do this alone. Schedule a free, confidential call today and start the healing process for everyone involved.

https://www.manuncaved.com/

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey everybody, welcome back to another show of
man in Caves, and I am your host, as always, shane.
If this is your first time here, first of all, welcome and
thank you.
If you have been here before,thank you as well.
God, I can't believe it.
Alright, let's jump into.

(00:22):
Today.
We are going to dive into atopic that I can honestly say
from my own experience, doesn'tget talked enough about.
We are going to talk about sexaddiction and especially sex
addiction with men.
Now, this is something thatreally lands true for me, so I'm

(00:44):
going to talk about that andcome out of hiding in my own
experience.
So I want to say this If youlisten to this topic and this is
close to home you're not alone.
Seriously, there's so many menI have worked with in the last
20 years struggle withcompulsive sexual behaviors, but

(01:05):
because of the shame, the guiltor fear of judgment, it stays
hidden and, of course, whenthings stay hidden, it stays
powerful.
So today we are going to comeout of hiding and I thought the
only way to do that is godirectly to it.
So there will be no foreplay inthis episode.

(01:25):
So first let me set the stage alittle bit and kind of tell you
a little bit of my own journeyaround sex addiction in today's
episode.
So when I had got clean I hadcross-addicted to sex-love
codependency patterns, which isjust another manifestation, more

(01:46):
driven on the compulsivebehavior pattern, right.
So addiction lives in substanceabuse but also lives in
compulsive behavior patterns.
I've talked about this manytimes.
There's really only oneaddiction.
There's just differentmanifestations of addiction, but
the root origin and the rootcore is all the same that I have
found in all of themanifestations.

(02:08):
So when we talk about sexaddiction, of course we're not
going to say we're going to quitsex.
We're not going to say we'regoing to quit eating food we
have to have those.
But understanding thedifference is what we're going
to talk about today when itbecomes a compulsive behavior
pattern.
Now, when I got clean, I startedto act out sexually.

(02:32):
I was acting out in compulsivemasturbation and pornography and
that was a way that I couldalso mood alter and emotionally
regulate, that I could also moodalter and emotionally regulate
these emotions that werestarting to come up through,
because now I had nothing tohide behind.

(02:52):
I didn't have my drugs, Ididn't have other any substances
to hide behind Now all thestuff that I was repressing and
suppressing, depressing, itstarted to rise to the surface
and I didn't have enough toolsin the beginning, coping
strategies in the beginning todeal with this emotional
turbulence.
So that became my way toemotionally regulate.

(03:15):
I could use sex, I could usepornography and masturbation to
regulate that part.
So I wanted to set that and putthat in place, because we're
going to dive more into thistopic as we start to explore the
roots and the origins of that.
Now, before we begin, let's makedistinctions Desires and

(03:38):
compulsion.
Now, they may look the same onthe outside, but inside they can
feel completely different.
You know, desire is natural.
It rises like a wave full oflife, full of choice.
You feel it, you breathe withit and you can decide how to
dance with it.
But compulsion, compulsion isthis it grabs you by the throat.

(04:02):
It doesn't ask, it demands.
It's not about connection orjoy, it's actually about the
escape.
Now, what am I escaping from?
Well, for me, I was escapingfrom the loneliness, escaping
from pain, escaping from theparts of myself that I was

(04:22):
afraid to face.
See, desire flows, compulsion,controls.
When you're free, you learn toride the wave.
When you're trapped, the waverides you.
All right.

(04:50):
So let's clear something upfirst.
Sex addiction isn't just likingsex a lot.
It's when sexual thoughts,urges or compulsive behaviors
start to take over more than thedesire for sex, when they
interfere with yourrelationships, your work, your

(05:11):
emotional health and even yourability to be present health and
even your ability to be present.
Maybe it's seeking hookups,even when it feels empty
afterward.
Maybe it's chasing the nexthigh to avoid that loneliness,
that stress or pain.
See, it's not about pleasureanymore, it's about that
escaping.

(05:31):
Let's start to open this up alittle bit more.
You know, society teaches menthat being hypersexual is
actually normal.
Boys will be boys, right.
But when we grow up with thatmessage, it can become harder to
recognize when things havecrossed the line into something
unhealthy or even harmful evenharmful.

(05:53):
And for many men the roots gomuch, much deeper.
It goes into childhood trauma,emotional neglect, feeling
unseen, unworthy, unlovable.
Sex becomes a coping toemotionally regulate.
It's a way to self-medicatethat pain that we don't even

(06:14):
fully understand, that pain thatwe don't even fully understand,
that I didn't fully understandearly in my recovery, healing
journey.
So join me in today's episodewhere we're going to continue to
peel back the many layers ofsex addiction, and my hopes is
to reveal that it's not aboutthe actual sex itself, it's the

(06:36):
soul hunger underneath it.
See, this isn't about a badbehavior.
It is actually speaking more toa deep longing for connection.
It's a grasp for wholeness.
It's a grasp for the mother,the goddess, and for the father,
the king, we never fully had.

(06:57):
See, sex addiction isn't reallyabout the sex.
It's about the disconnectionthat we, as men, have undertaken
growing up from boys to men.
It's a speak to a loss, in arite of passage, if you will.
It's about trying to fill anancient void, a loss that

(07:17):
usually began long before ourfirst sexual experience.
Now, in the thousands of men Ihave worked with in the last 20
years and within my own journey,I have found its origins are
deeply rooted in earlyattachment wounds, emotional
neglect, abandonment and shame.
See, it's woven into thefabrics of our own survival, our

(07:40):
own trauma response, having toperform to people please and or
learn to hide ourself.
So I'm going to take a step backfor a second and look at Greek
mythology the goddesses.
Like Aphrodite, hera,persephone, these represented

(08:03):
different aspects of thefeminine.
Now, at the core of these mythsis a theme the longing to
reunite with the divine mother.
Now sex has become that vehiclefor some men.
But the real hunger is actuallyfor the goddess, for the

(08:24):
eternal embrace, for the lostfeelings of absolute belonging,
what we once knew in the womb.
So, at the deepest level, sexaddiction is a homesickness.
It's about returning to thewomb, the place of origin and

(08:46):
the rising of men Reborn throughthe fire of our own masculine
soul.
It's like this rising phoenix.
It's the resurrection of Jesusthat is dying and has to let go.
It's this rite of passage frombeing an irresponsible little
boy to a responsible man, andthat passage is a painful one.

(09:08):
It is a painful pursuit fromhaving to detach from the boy to
become the man.
It's the grieving process ofthat that we must grieve our own
childhood.
And when we don't grieve wereally stay stuck in our own
boyish, childish ways and westart to act out in our own

(09:33):
childish ways.
And sex addiction, as well asall other addiction processes,
are part of that.
It is the child stuck, that isnot moving through the rite of
passage, becomes impulsive,compulsive, reaches out
externally to fulfill theinternal void, because for the

(09:53):
child can't withstand the pain,cannot withstand the loneliness,
cannot withstand the anger orthe sadness.
So in order to do that and toself-regulate, they can either
self-medicate or reach out forsex in an attempt to fill that
void, to fill the love that wasmissing, to fill the validation

(10:16):
that was missing, to fill theworthiness that was missing in
the immortal goddess and theimmortal goddess.
Now, I know we've been reallytalking about the mother, but
there's another piece we rarelytalk about.
It's not just about thefeminine we lost, the emotional
neglect or abandonment from themother, the separation from the

(10:37):
womb, the Garden of Eden.
It's also about the loss of ahealthy masculine.
A lot of men out there that Ihave worked with, including
myself, haven't had a healthymasculine or a masculine figure
at all to guide us.
We cannot move into again thisrite of passage as little boys

(11:00):
yes, there's no elders, there'sno ritual around it, there's no
ritual around it.
Now, this could be due todivorced families.
This could be the man isworking all the time, or just
the legacies of emotional,absent men raising boys.
This loss reaches beyond ourown family system.

(11:21):
Now.
I've mentioned before my ownstory the abandonment of my
father.
My father is abandoned by hisfather, and on and on it goes.
So there was never a healthymasculine to guide any of the
men.
See, the masculine, therepresentation of the masculine,
is the protector within thefamily, the container, the

(11:41):
conscious presence, the one whosays you are safe, you are seen,
you are enough, especially tothe little boys, see, as the boy
soon recognizes that he toowill be a man one day.
So these lack of masculinefigures in men tend to have a

(12:02):
big impact on the little boythat is trying to move into this
next stage of development andthat sexual addiction, that
compulsive behavior pattern, isthe manifestation of the boy
that is stuck, the boy that isstunted.
See, because without thehealthy masculine we remain boys

(12:23):
in men's bodies.
We're still looking for amother to soothe us because
there was a father that neverinitiated us.

(12:45):
So now we're going to talk aboutsexual addiction from an
archetypal framework known asthe shadow.
Many have heard this word theshadow, the shadows that
disowned part of ourself that wekeep hidden in the dark.
This is why, when we talk aboutthe coming out of hiding, we
are coming out of hiding withour own shadows.
We're bringing our shadows tothe light.

(13:06):
Now an inside-out review manare powerful archetypes, but
when wounded and this is earlyattachment stuff, childhood
stuff that stays in the dark Nowa longing to return to the
mother.
Within the sexual addictionbehavior pattern is a desperate
hunger for the blessing of thefather.

(13:26):
And that wounded part, thatwounded lover, can become
addicted to the thrill ofconnection but is terrified of
true intimacy.
So I see this a lot played outwithin relationships.
I see this played out in myearly relationships as well,
where I want to be in theconnection.
So there's a desperate hungerto connect.

(13:47):
This is part of all of ourneeds connection, love,
acceptance, validation,belonging.
However, at the same time, thatfear of intimacy because of the
wounded lover, that archetypalwounded lover, so that boy who
wants the connection but is alsovery terrified of it as well.

(14:08):
Now, another shadow that playsitself out in sex addiction is
the addicted king.
And this one, one that seeks toconquer women through sexual
experiences, fantasies, tryingto fulfill their inner void with
outer conquest.
So you see how this one itbecomes.

(14:29):
So this one plays out in theconquering of these women to
have these sexual experiences,living the fantasies of trying
to fulfill that inner void butcannot show up responsibly for
that relationship to keep thewoman.
And so, as long as the shadowis ruling this man's life.

(14:49):
This man will remain split.
He will be endlessly searchingand never finding.
And when these shadows run theshow, the addiction thrives.
We don't chase sex because weare bad.
Addiction thrives.
We don't chase sex because weare bad.
We chase it because we'reexited from the inner garden and

(15:10):
trying to find our way back.
So if we're caught in thiscycle, what do you do?
Well, first, I'd like to saylet's drop the shame.
There is no shame in healing.
We're trying to overcome ourshame.
This isn't about being a badperson.
It's about being a person who'shurting and who's using sex to
feel okay.

(15:30):
Second, let's get real.
Let's name it, let's talk aboutit, whether it's with a
therapist or a support group orsomeone you trust.
Secrecy feeds the addiction.
Honesty starves it.
Third, heal the roots.
Do the shadow work.
It's not about stopping thebehavior.

(15:52):
We're not going to stop havingsex.
It's about healing theemotional wounds that are
underneath it, learning toregulate your emotions, build
real intimacy, sit withdiscomfort without needing to
numb it.
Now, healing is possible, butit's not a solo journey.
It requires brothers, mentors,guides.
But it's not a solo journey.

(16:12):
It requires brothers, mentors,guides.
It requires us to weep, to rage, to grieve and then to build
anew.
So I'd like to mention that Ihave a virtual online men's
support group called theGathering, where we talk about
this topic.
We talk about many topics.
As men, we sit there together.
We get to the root causes of alot of our shame, of our sexual

(16:35):
addiction, of our patterns.
We come out of hiding and, ifyou are interested, the link is
in the description of thisepisode.
Now the healing process isactivating of the archetypes,
these healthy, masculine withinus.
It's the king who governs withwisdom, the warrior who fights

(16:56):
for the soul, the lover whoconnects with true heart and the
magician that transforms all ofthis pain into gold.
Now, as mentioned, I have seenmany men turn their lives around
, men who thought they were toofar gone, men who thought they
were broken.
I was one of them.
I thought I was broken.

(17:17):
I thought that I could not healin any of these behaviors.
Here's the thing You're notbroken.
You're wounded, and wounds theycan heal.
So if this spoke to somethingdeep inside of you, know this
You're not broken, you're notalone.
You're simply being called tocome back home.

(17:40):
For the wounded man, theaddicted man, sex becomes a
desperate attempt to find heragain, to return to the immortal
embrace of the mother goddess.
Not in a literal sense, but inan emotionally spiritual sense.
The body searches for union,but what the soul is actually

(18:01):
craving is something much deeper.
It's a return to safety, tounconditional acceptance, to the
cosmic womb.
But the answer isn't in moresexual experiences.
The answer is in grievingGrieving what was lost, grieving
what was never received.
It's a reparenting of ourselveslearning to become the mother

(18:25):
and the father we needed.
It's in reconnecting to thedivine feminine, not through the
body of another, but throughthe body of our own soul.
It's the little boy inside theman who still aches for the
safety, the warmth, the absolutebelonging he once had, or maybe
never truly had.

(18:47):
Healing from sex addiction isn'tabout fighting yourself.
It's about understanding whatyou're truly longing for.
And once you start listening tothat hunger, once you start
honoring it instead of shamingit, you can begin to heal.
You can begin to come home, notto another woman, but to
yourself.
This has been man, uncaved.

(19:10):
My name is Shane.
If you enjoyed this episode,please share it, and for all my
men out there.
We need to come out of hiding.