I’m just going to start by putting this all out there. I’ll be looking for a way to change my name after I hit send. I’ve worked myself into a depression that I seem stuck in. While I’ve stayed at home the last year to slow down and try to fix myself I really feel like I haven’t gotten anywhere.

The time has come and gone that I need to be further into some sort of progress than what I am.

I have to give a shortened version of the situation, so I’ll spare as much as possible without losing my point. I fear that I have a sexual addiction that is next to impossible to break. Now I’m not talking an addiction of having sex several times a day, but in a completely different manner. I’m married. I’ve been married twice and fortunately I’ve been lucky enough to find someone who will help me through this.

I wasn’t raised to be open in regards to sex. My parents didn’t openly talk about it and they were never inappropriate around us. However I remember masturbating a lot when I was a child. I remember the overwhelming urge and I’d leave the room to deal with it. I don’t know how I kept it a secret but I remember this from a very young age.

Unfortunately that isn’t quite all. I became sexually active not long after my first memory of masturbating. It was a consensual friend and I’m sure our parents were in the other room. We were sneaky kids apparently. We were both 5 or 6 and somehow we figured it out. Not long after that he passed away in a car accident. This incident is when I consider myself to have lost my virginity. I made love at 5 or 6! I never told my parents about it. Even typing it causes the blood to drain from my face.

I didn’t have sex again until I was 14. Still much too young. This time it wasn’t consensual on my behalf and his mother walked in before the act was done. She was a volatile woman and asked me if I was on birth control somehow unaware of my tears. She said nothing else and it dumbfounded me. He was my boyfriend, and happened to be a friend of my brothers. I feared that I was pregnant for months. I saw him once after that and it made me shake in my shoes for hours. My parents found out by reading a journal I kept, but I let them believe that it was mutual.

After this it was all downhill. Sex became a game, then it became something I got good at. Now it’s just another way that I enjoy knowing some people. My attraction to a person never seems to end and it’s such an imperial moment to know that I’ve caused that pleasure.

Briefly I’ll explain the first marriage ended because I found, met and fell in love with another man. I had cheated on my first husband numerous times with several different people. I can’t even explain how I ended up divorced without him knowing about any one of them, but that’s what happened. After we were divorced, we continued sleeping together and I became pregnant with my first child. (skip through the pregnancy where he wouldn’t touch me from months 3 to 9.5) But after that we were both very sexually in tune. We even made it through a few swingers nights and enjoyed the hell out of it. We stayed together for a good three years but again I wasn’t faithful and I ended the relationship. I still feel horrible for it and for his not knowing but our son is now 9 and it’s been too long for me to bring it back into light.
I was involved in some casual sexual experiences in between, but shortly after leaving the relationship with my ex-husband, I met who became my current husband.

Now I’m in my second marriage. I’ve talked to my husband about all of the above but no one else. I cheated on my second husband before we were married and again after we were married. When I say cheated, I mean full blown, second kind of life cheated. I’ve always managed to keep my two lives separate from each other. We attend marriage counseling (add in major marital problems here) and I see my own therapist to help us both get past everything.

“Hypersexual” is in the diagnosis but no one has ever talked to me about it. I feel like a totally selfish person and I don’t know how to get past this. I’m 10 months faithful now, but I’m deathly afraid that if I find work or start socializing again, I’ll come across another opportunity to cheat and I’ll give in to it. I want my marriage to work and I want to be a faithful wife. I don’t want my kids to grow knowing that their mom was a cheater. It’s like my brain doesn’t know how to say no when it comes time to making the decision. Is there anyone else out there like this? Does anyone else remember being sexual as a child? Is this normal?