[Resonance18]

I'm married for 4 years. I love my wife, always have, always will.
The problem is that I can't stop thinking and fantasizing about other women, or check out other women.
I know myself and sure 100% I won't cheat, even though I have the opportunities, but I can stop this obsessive thoughts. it happens every night, and sometimes it comes on our expense as a couple. My wife doesn't know it.

Is it addiction?

[Altered Moment]

Hard to say. Of course as men it is very common for us. They say the average male thinks about sex every thirty seconds.

I have a friend in a similar situation. He has never cheated on his wife and I don't think ever will. But he flirts all the time. Makes lude and crude sexual comments to women. He does not have an addictive personality at all but he just told me he thinks he is addicted to porn. And it is progressive. It has to become more graphic or violent to have the same effect. I think it is becoming a big problem for him.

When i was married I was very similar to you. I always thought of other women or some fantasy while having sex and in general. I never thought of it as an addiction. I learned later it was a fear of intimacy and fear of being totally present in the moment of sex. It seems we are hard wired differently though and we naturally are not as good at intimacy. Of course it affected our marriage because she could sense it and got jealous. At first we watched porn together and then later on she got very jealous and insecure about it and would get pissed. Even got jealous about masturbation because I must have been thinking about other women. So i don't really know. It could possibly say something about your satisfaction in the marriage. I think that was true in my case.

They say men are kind of hard-wired to not be monogamous (evolutionarily). It's definitely normal to be intrigued by other women (and to have a desired to mate/bone/do the horizontal mambo with them). But if you're not happy with your relationship then that's different I guess. But I would definitely say it's normal and not an addiction unless you are super-obsessed with porn or fantasizing or something, which is also relatively "normal" but maybe something you need to deal with by taking some sort of action like therapy.

Men are supposed to have a drive to want to to sleep with women they find attractive - that's millions of years of evolution telling us to spread our seed and pass on our genes as much as possible.

[Kendyll]

It doesn't sound healthy. Intrusive, obsessive thoughts that cause issues in your regular life can be an indication that you have a problem. Have you considered therapy?