How do you diagnose someone with sex addiction?

Dr. Stefanie Carnes: It can sometimes be overdiagnosed. Some people will think that just because they are struggling a little bit with pornography or they had an affair that they are potentially a sex addict. We look for specific criteria, though, to determine if someone is a sex addict.

We’re looking to determine if the person:

is continuing despite consequences,
has destroyed their relationships,
spends excessive amounts of time preoccupied with their behavior, and/or
has tried to stop the behavior and failed.

Sex addicts can even have psychological withdrawal symptoms from not being able to access the behavior. And they can build up tolerance as well. You can have people who are compulsively viewing pornography who have to use more and more to get the same effect.