What should a man know before he dates a nymphomaniac?
With Clint Jahn & Olivia Bury. Listen to the podcast at How To Sex.
Most people do not understand nymphomania. It’s real, but it’s not a mythological magic power. Nor is a Satyriasis. There is a vast difference between a woman who enjoys sex and has a high sex drive and a nymphomaniac. When referring to a man with the same obsessive sexual compulsion, the correct term is: satyriasis.
Nymphomania is reserved for females.
The overarching behavioral term is hyper-sexuality. Let’s look at what Wikipedia has to say;
Hypersexuality is extremely frequent or suddenly-increased sexual urges or sexual activity. Hyper-sexuality is typically associated with lowered sexual inhibitions. Hyper-sexuality can be caused by some medical conditions or medications. Medical conditions such as bipolar disorders can give rise to hyper-sexuality, and alcohol and some drugs can affect social and sexual inhibitions in some people. A number of theoretical models have been used to explain or treat hyper-sexuality. The most common one, especially in the popular media, is the sexual addiction approach, but sexologists have not reached any consensus. Alternative explanations for the condition include compulsive and impulsive behavioral models.
The International Classification of Diseases of the World Health Organization includes Excessive Sexual Drive, which is divided into satyriasis for males and nymphomania for females, and Excessive Masturbation.
But perhaps those mythological characters are tools of fantasy by people who’ve become obsessed and driven by inner psychiatric conditions.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) considered and rejected a proposal to add sexual addiction to its list of psychiatric disorders, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). A proposal to include a diagnosis called hypersexual disorder, simply describing the symptom without implying any specific theory, is under consideration for inclusion in the appendix of the DSM, but not in the main list of official diagnoses. This means that the descriptives are not the illness, but manifested traits of the illness.
Some people call nymphomania ‘sex addiction’, because it can manifest as a destructive compulsion. These people will make unhealthy choices and engage in high risk behaviors to fulfill their desires, which are barely under control. In many ways it is similar to alcoholism, with the recklessness and shame and damage that goes along with that.
Okay, enough of the medical and psychological talk. Let’s talk about how to respond to a person whom you’re suspecting has a compulsive behavior.
C. R. Jahn was in a relationship with a college classmate.
It starts out absolutely thrilling. It can meet & surpass all of a virile 22 year old man’s fantasies; for a short while.
It is theoretically possible to have a healthy monogamous relationship with a nymphomaniac, as long as you engage in open honest communication about your mutual needs and expectations. You will be expected to have sexual relations with her at least three times a day and your cunnilingus skills need to be top tier, otherwise just forget about monogamy because that probably isn’t going to happen. Sorry.
I was engaged to a nymphomaniac for about a year and a half once. Everything was great for the first six month. but as soon as I started working over 40 hours a week, things went toxic and rapidly spiraled downhill. Like an alcoholic, they will lie and sneak and place blame on you for their mistakes.
I dated a few other nymphomaniacs. One was 100% loyal until I needed to leave the state for a few months. I do not blame her one bit. I expected it. It wasn’t her. It was her illness. She was the primary victim of a hideous and psychotic mental crisis.
Nymphomania is often the result of any of the following;
· long-term child sexual abuse and is frequently comorbid with
· borderline personality disorder,
· bipolar disorder, or
· addiction issues.
These are mentally ill or damaged people who struggle to maintain a facade of normalcy. Sometimes they have the willpower and fortitude to control their cravings. Usually, they end up destroying everything around them. Many of them end up losing their job, home, driver license, custody of their children, and any vestige of their reputation.
Bipolar Disorder can happen to anyone, at any stage of life, and the onset is most frequent in young adults.
Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a complex psychiatric condition marked by intense emotional reactivity, unstable relationships, and impulsivity. One manifestation of this impulsivity can be hypersexuality, a behavior characterized by a significantly increased interest in or engagement with sexual activity. A high occurance of BPD is observed in teens who were sexually abused at a young age. Some believe it is the one chronic mental ‘illness’ that a predator can inflict on a victim. It is also associated with post-traumatic stress from sexual abuse.
The Sex is perhaps great, but it should not be your primary objective. When your entire life revolves around satisfying your sexual urges you are going to make unhealthy decisions. Most of us know better than to engage in sexual relations with coworkers, neighbors, your partner’s friends, or random strangers. Often a nymphomaniac will not make these distinctions. A lot depends on their willpower and mental stability. Some have it under control, many do not.
A lot of women are wrongfully accused of being nymphomaniacs due to being openly sex positive and unashamed of it. Other women mistakenly self-identify as nymphomaniacs because they love sex. True nymphomania is an illness which negatively impacts their life. Fortunately, it is also somewhat rare. If a girl has never had public sex in front of strangers or had anonymous sex with a man she did not know, she probably is not a nymphomaniac. The girls I knew would think nothing of participating in a spontaneous gangbang or fucking someone’s dog, laughing the whole time like it was a big joke. In retrospect, I feel sorry for these women.
Famous Nymphs
Sir Laurence Olivier and his wife, Vivien Leigh, were Hollywood Royalty. They appeared to have it all; talent, beauty, status, awards, recognition. They were the top of the A-list.
Unfortunately, Vivien Leigh suffered from bipolar disorder, then known as being manic-depressive. Her costars often had difficulty working with her due to her manic episodes which created a great deal of tension on the set.
Vivien’s greatest fear were the bouts of depression. She was terrified of becoming suicidal. At some point, she came to the conclusion that the only way to prevent the depression was to have a great deal of sex. As long as she could continue to achieve release through sex she could keep the depression at bay.
In the brain, a sexual orgasm triggers the release of a chemical called dopamine. It’s a natural mood-enhancing part of being a healthy person. The other related chemicals in the brain are serotonin and norepinephrine. These are self-balancing in a healthy person, but can become radically imbalanced in a mood disorder. Sex can give a short term spike of contentment to a person suffering severe clinical depression. But a bipolar person can also be at the other extreme, having so much dopamine and feeling a rush similar to a cocaine trip. It’s beyond euphoric. The person will tell you they’ve never felt better. They will often lack all self-awareness and resent any suggestion that they need help, or need to change their behavior. Bipolar Disorder affects men and women in relatively equal numbers.
Vivian’s husband, Olivier, did his best but he has been quoted later, as saying, “You know, she was a nymphomaniac. And I’m a premature ejaculator. Not a good match-up.” In order for their marriage to continue, Olivier stood back while Vivien took on many lovers to help her condition.
Sadly, their arrangement took its toll and they ended their 20 year marriage in 1960. Vivien Leigh, the legendary star of stage and film, was branded a nymphomaniac, a derogatory word meaning sex addict. This brought her more condemnation than sympathy or real help.
In 1950, after a party at Director George Cukor’s home in the Hollywood Hills, all the celebs present entertained illicit passion for a price.
In a biography, “Reframing Vivien Leigh”, the author notes that Ms. Leigh had every social disease known to mankind at the time. Her list of conquests go from Robert Taylor thru Peter Finch.
To read her story is to be inspired with pity and terror. She fought a lifelong battle with bipolar. Evidence of her delicate condition surfaced long before that incident. An open secret throughout British and American film circles.
Actress Sarah Miles became a very close friend to Olivier, after his divorce from Vivian. Decades later, Miles described a crisis she later had to confide to Olivier.
Sarah says she got a chance to see Vivien’s seething jealousy and sexual appetite for young men up close in 1963 when she landed a bit part in "The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone" starring Leigh, then 48, and 24-year-old Tinsel Town hunk Warren Beatty.
When womanizing Beatty spied 20-year-old Sarah in her sex kitten leather costume, Beatty began firting with Sarah.
Suddenly Sarah found Vivien’s “vixen eyes glued to either Warren or me all day. It was obvious to me they were having an affair,” she recalls. “I found Vivien to be a distinctly brittle, dark and jealous woman.” Miles, says Olivier finally admitted Leigh was a nut job in 1963, when she was in a play he was directing in London’s old Vic theatre.
One morning, Sarah was looking exhausted when she arrived on set; and confessed to Olivier that she was having to deal with her young actress roommate, who was “a manic-depressive, schizophrenic nymphomaniac” and kept her up with mobs of men parading through their apartment.
“Well, well, what a coincidence,” Olivier said and told her, “Vivien had been diagnosed with exactly the same three conditions.“ The more we compared notes, the closer we became, for we both shared the utter despair, the unimaginable frustration and hopelessness of wrestling with such pitiable creatures.”
A Confession
Now let’s hear from a woman in recovery from her mental illness and resulting nymphomaniac behavior.
Olivia Bury tells us her personal story of coping and recovery.
I’ve been diagnosed for 5 years with Bipolar Type 1, the kind that has longer and deeper cycles with mania and even psychosis.
As someone with Bipolar 1, I have extreme difficulty recognizing when I'm in the thick of an episode. The disorder pretty much takes all my judgement, self-awareness, and general clarity from me and smashes it. It's why I rely rather heavily on friends, family, and professionals to help me recognize my prodromal symptoms so I can get help early.
The mania is often the most destructive aspect to my illness as it starts by giving me a false sense of wellbeing. Slowly, my energy builds and I find myself spending several nights at a time awake investing myself in learning new topics such as mathematics, physics, or technology to an obsessive degree. I feel oppressed by my medication and quickly stop taking it to get higher. I begin writing music and creating art that in these moments I honestly believe are revolutionary.
I exercise excessively with my intense energy and find myself rolling in euphoria. My budgets and finances are trashed as I take to getting piercing, tattoos, clothes, raves, alcohol, and drugs. I immerse myself in what I call ‘carnal rage’. My ultimate goal is to burn bright and fast by indulging almost any vice there is. Hyper-sexuality leaves me a hungry nymphomaniac, where I wake in the mornings with one or many people in my bed. Often times I wake up not even knowing where I am or how I got there with several strangers.
I stop going to work, and my random untold absences often lead to my getting fired which only serves to worsen my finances. As I crawl towards psychosis, I end up getting more irritable and chaotic. The world slows down while I speed up and I find myself frustrated with those that can't keep up. I am extremely vulnerable to being taken advantage of and pick up the most unsavory individuals that upon my return to stability torture me. I end up back in the realms of paranoia and delusion. I become a god or some escaped experimental subject or soldier on a mission to save the world. I am hunted by cults and evil scientists. I am swallowed by chaos, euphoria, irritation, and delusions of grandeur paired with magical thinking.
Porn Industry Exploits
Some people are fully aware of their disorder and behavior, but seek to direct it for their own benefit. Taylor & Tatiana Russo were interviewed for a publicity campaign in their pornography ventures.
The two talked about the driving hyper-sexuality which keeps them in the sex industry.
Taylor explains; “I shoot some fetish content for my boyfriend who owns a bondage company. Regardless of that, I always feel like a virgin about to get deflowered before every shoot. When I shoot with my sister, it's not about trying to compete against her. If that was the case, I would have just continued shooting on my own. “
Tatiana added; “I like doing things for shock value. She does whatever comes to her head at the moment. Once we made the decision to work together, we might as well do the best that we can. Teamwork! I mainly hope that our bipolar mood swings manage to hit the ‘get along’ mark, because those are the moments that we forget about morals and just go with the flow.”
When asked; “How did you arrive to the decision that making adult movies was the right choice for you?”
Taylor chuckled; “Ha, I'm a nymphomaniac. I’m narcissistic, love fucking, money. Seems to make sense to me.”
Satyriasis, or male counterparts of Nymphomaniacs
Now, to put the issue in an accurate context, let’s be clear. Men can also suffer conditions that manifest hyper-sexuality. Let’s hear from a man who wishes to remain anonymous.
Yes, I am, but I have slowed down somewhat in my older age. But for 42 years I was diagnosed with so many errant conditions, until I came to the happy diagnosis of hyper-sexuality.
I am male. I am not a mythical beast. I have been called an addict but, unlike the perception of a kind of sex addict ending up beaten and on the streets, a punk sub, I functioned. I was a participant - a wise and sly and manipulative director - in my hyper-sexuality.
I operated for the majority of my life in a manic state. A few of the people dealing with bipolar brain issues will become understood as ‘unipolar’. I happen to be one of those. No bipolar crap, as I have never been depressed; and I was seen as driven, happy, kind, witty, very smart, fun to be with, sympathetic, never overbearing, emphatic, even.
I subjected myself to psychiatry during all of those years. Manic Depressive was my first diagnosis, I think. I saw the same shrink for those first 12 years and we waited and waited and waited from the ‘depression’ to come; but it never did.
I lived a controlled manic existence; I felt the tightness and grip in my body, the need of release or death every hour, but I, well, stumbled upon a solution, or solutions, early and satisfied the urgency of my needs with no need for recourse to dangerous sexual practices.
By “dangerous” sexual practices, I don’t mean to imply that my appetites did not escalate into needs that furthered my homosexual & bisexual encounters. I do not know of anyone who is hypersexual who is not bisexual, usually beginning at a very young age. My needs escalated into multiple partners, Dom & Sub relationships and forays into bloody sadomasochist roles. I was Traveling through the U S and Europe to full-scale orgies.
If there is a spot of narcissism in hyper-sexuality, for me it was staying in shape, not so much to remain being attractive but in order to maintain the strength and stamina to enjoy eight to ten orgasms a day. Masturbation could not satisfy me, not at all. I needed others. There is the magic word, need.
I don’t believe in satyrs and nymph fantasies. I’m not ever certain than ‘mania’ is an illness any more than having the drive, and all that is entrenched in that word; to be successful, is an illness.
Some in the dark arts of psychiatry are uncertain that hyper-sexuality is an illness. Some in the dark arts of human sexuality are unable to pinpoint what is normal, what is a normal sexual drive, how many orgasms do normal men and women have in one day or one week!
A married couple, or two partners in a monogamous relationship? After two years of commitment, do they really only have sex three times in one week? That sounds monstrous to me. Sick and unsound.
Don’t think that we do not fall in love. Don’t think for one minute that we don’t appreciate higher, less base qualities in others. We simply have needs more urgent than discussions of 19th-century French literature.
Another questioner asked what it felt like to be hyper-sexual. My answer would be that it either feels how you want it to feel or, maybe, it feels like any life task in which you fail or succeed. More the latter, I guess. If you cannot earn enough money to feed your family I am guessing that you would feel that you have failed a task that you needed to succeed; and I suppose that you would feel some anxiety and sadness and a failure. So it is with hyper-sexuality - a singular life task of great need and if you are able to satisfy that need then you win, you are not a failure.
This society has no interest in male hyper-sexuality; but rather has a fascination with female hyper-sexuality: the nymphomaniac. Those failed whores who fuck their way into a bloody gutter because, well, that’s what happens to whores, right? The female porn models that grow old and advise younger women to stay away from porn because it destroys your heart. They are our public whores. Hypersexual males - we satyrs - are looked upon as lucky! Just a man who gets a lot of pussy.
I also think that the ‘what does it feel like to be hypersexual’, questioner, may have wanted to know about the sex. A little titillation, maybe. The sex? It is good, it fulfills needs. Of course the sex is good. Unshackled.
"Bipolar folks will understand, I'm sure. Will others? It's hard to know. Some will be inclined to want to understand. Others will think I'm making this up and I'm rationalizing bad behavior. What I really want, though, is to change the way psychiatry and psychology and society see this behavior."
Clarity on the Bipolar diagnosis
Diagnosing a mood disorder is based on a person’s departure from their own baseline behavior. It’s not based on whether it fits into a cultural or societal norm of the masses. If a person is always a sex fiend, It’s just a behavioral observation; a personality feature. But when a person who used to be reserved and discreet, becomes uninhibited, compulsive, and manifesting insatiable & risky behavior, It’s clear that they are ‘not themselves.’ That’s completely separate from the issue of whether they fit in with our societal expectations. They don’t fit in with their own established norms.
A bipolar person can be very persuasive and rationalize everything. They are truly the last person to know that they have a crisis.
A woman responded the account of the hypersexual man we just heard from.
I read this answer when it was first posted and sobbed. I cried because the majority of the post is dead-on . It's taken me a month to be able to address this question, and I can't, or won't fully explain everything that's happened in my life, but I am the female version of this person.
I wasn't diagnosed until pretty recently. I am 40-something. Yes, I needed intense connections with other people on every level: intellectually and spiritually, but especially sexually.
Hyper-sexuality is definitely about a different kind of intense connection, but it is definitely about the sex, too. Different bodies. Different needs. A different kind of fulfillment, or not. This behavior started in college; I held onto my cherished virginity until then. That was truly difficult.
The need to connect, to be stimulated by someone, is ever-present. A pattern emerged; serial monogamy. Onto the next long-term boyfriend. I would exhaust him, in every sense of the word, or find another who could try to be all things, all the time, to be several men at once.
But even during a relationship, pursuit of other men, their pursuit of me, or preferably, all of the above, was wonderfully explosive. Enough sex, seemingly. Then not. Never, ever enough.
The hyper-sexuality happens during the manic stage. If you're manic and you were seeking sex, the end of that relationship doesn't really affect you. The downside is, when a relationship goes awry, and he's someone more long term, or someone you were more attached to, it can trigger a depressive episode. And then, one of two things: Depression leading to complete avoidance of sex, or depression leading to sex to fuck away your depression. Sort of like the famed actress Vivian Leigh, who fucked random men as a desperate means of avoiding suicidal despair.
Guess which one is worse. The tailspin can be swift and the depression profound and prolonged. And living just seems like an impossibility, sometimes for months. How people survive this is beyond me. How I lived through this; I don't even know. I self-medicated and should be dead several times over. Street drugs, including booze.
To answer the question, why are bipolar people hypersexual? I guess the best analogy would be "Why do people eat?" It's biological and not something you can control. You just have a need; your body tells you what it needs, and you respond. Sometimes there are obsessive Compulsive manifestations, like over-eaters, going on spending sprees, workaholics, and other behaviors.
Fast forward some years to modern times and post-diagnosis: taking a few different kinds of meds. One of these meds impairs your memory, the other two deaden your libido. It's like I still have the drive but maybe not the impulsiveness to act out because the mania is controlled.
Not a controlled substance, but a substance that controls.
And then there’s the possible side effects of the psychotropic drugs that my doctor’s had me try. Eventually I found a combo that I’m content with, but it’s taken a lot of effort, patience, and teamwork. I need a competent healthcare and counseling team, and a supportive circle of friends and family, who provide the feedback that I and my medical team can rely on.
For people who see an opportunity for a great fuck with a hypersexual; Please look in the mirror first. If you’re going to exploit someone whose illness puts their life in danger; You might be a more pathetic person than they are. And they have an illness to blame. You don’t. Go pay a hooker for cheap sex, because at least the hooker has a business model.
If you’ve found yourself in what’s becoming more clearly an unhealthy sexual hookup, Offer your partner the most valuable gift you can offer. Your honest perspective and deepest caring assistance, if they will avail themselves of your offer. Trust me, sex will become even more fulfilling, when a hypersexual regains full control of their sex drive.