Write down what you want your sex life to be, in the same concrete detail you used for what you stopped. Most people can list their bottom line in ninety seconds and go blank when asked what they're aiming at, and that blank is what makes month six so difficult. A life defined only by absence is very hard to stay in.
Stopping is half a definition
The early work is all subtraction. Accounts deleted, routes closed, hours emptied. That's necessary and it has an expiry date, because nobody sustains a life whose organising principle is a list of things they are not doing.
Sex Addicts Anonymous builds the answer into its own structure. Alongside the inner circle of behaviours you're abstaining from and the middle circle of what leads there, there's an outer circle: [healthy behaviours that enhance your life and your recovery](https://saa-recovery.org/our-program/sobriety/). Most people write the first two carefully and leave the third vague, and the third is the one that eventually holds the whole thing up.
So the exercise is to make the outer circle as specific as the inner one. Not "have a healthy relationship". Something you could do this month and know whether you'd done it.
Writing it down
Take an hour. Paper. Four questions.
**What do I actually want sex to be for?** Connection, pleasure, intimacy, play, comfort, being known. Notice the difference between these and what it's been for, which for most people reading this has been regulating a feeling.
**Who do I want to be in it?** Present rather than absent. Honest rather than managing a story. Someone who can say what they want and hear no. Write it as behaviour, not as adjectives.
**What am I no longer willing to have in it?** Secrecy, coercion of any kind, anything that requires lying to somebody. This is different from your bottom line, which is about compulsion. This is about ethics, and it's yours to set.
**What does the rest of the life around it look like?** Sleep, friendship, work you don't hate, something you're good at, people who know you. Sex is not a standalone system, and a life with nothing else in it puts an impossible amount of weight on it.
Then read it to one person. Same rule as the bottom line: a definition only you know about is one you'll quietly renegotiate.
Telling a chosen sex life from a compulsive one
Not by the content, and not by frequency. The useful tests are about control and cost, which is exactly where the recognised criteria sit. Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is defined by [failure to control the behaviour, its becoming the central focus of your life, continuing despite adverse consequences, and repeated unsuccessful efforts to reduce it](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html).
So the practical questions are these. Can I choose not to, today, without a fight? Does anyone have to be lied to for this to happen? Is it costing me something I care about? Am I present for it, or somewhere else? Would I be all right if it didn't happen this week?
And the counterweight, which matters just as much in this direction: the same entry is explicit that distress ["entirely related to moral judgments and disapproval about sexual impulses, urges, or behaviours is not sufficient"](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html) to constitute the disorder. Wanting things is not relapse. A sex life you'd be embarrassed to describe to your parents is not automatically a problem.
Orientation isn't a variable here either. A study across 42 countries and 82,243 people found ["no sexual-orientation-based differences"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37352095/) in levels of compulsive sexual behaviour. If any part of your plan is built on treating your orientation as the thing to manage, that part came from somewhere else.
Abstinence as a tool rather than a destination
The fellowships genuinely disagree about what long-term sobriety means, and the disagreement is not a detail.
SAA holds that ["it is necessary for each member to define his or her own abstinence"](https://saa-recovery.org/our-program/sobriety/), so a member's definition can and does change as their life does. Sexaholics Anonymous publishes a fixed definition under which sobriety means no sex outside [a marriage between a man and a woman](https://www.sa.org/) and no masturbation for anyone, permanently. Those are different destinations, not different routes to the same one. [SAA, SA and SLAA, how they differ](/guides/sex/saa-sa-and-slaa-how-they-differ) sets out what each asks.
You get to pick. What you shouldn't do is drift into a permanent restriction you never chose, because it was easier than deciding, and then discover in year two that you've built a life you don't want and have no way of leaving without calling it a relapse.
Reviewing your bottom line is normal and it isn't cheating. Do it deliberately, in daylight, with your sponsor or your therapist, and not during an urge. That last clause is the whole safeguard.
The specific questions people get stuck on
**Masturbation.** Fellowships split hard on this. The honest position is that it depends whether it reliably pulls you back toward the pattern you left. For some people it's a middle-circle behaviour and belongs on the list. For others, adopting somebody else's rule about it mostly imports a shame problem they didn't have. Decide it on evidence from your own life.
**Fantasy.** You cannot make yourself stop having thoughts, and trying is a good way to spend a year thinking about nothing else. The workable distinction is between a thought that arrives and a sequence you deliberately maintain and elaborate. The second one is usually a middle-circle behaviour and it's worth logging.
**Dating apps.** If they were part of the route, treat them as inner or middle circle for a good while. If they weren't, they're a tool with a design that rewards compulsive checking, so use them deliberately and with limits rather than at midnight.
**New relationships.** Going slower than feels natural is usually right, mostly because the early intensity of a new relationship is very good at impersonating recovery. On when to tell somebody: they need anything that affects them, meaning health, money, and anything ongoing, and they need it before it affects them. The rest is yours to share when you choose, and a third date is not a tribunal.
**Sex within an existing relationship after disclosure.** It gets tangled up with trust for a while, and the trust work unlocks it rather than the other way round. Pushing for sex as evidence that things are fine is one of the more common ways this goes backwards. [Repairing a relationship after betrayal](/guides/sex/repairing-a-relationship-after-betrayal) covers the pace.
Sex that isn't doing a job
The thing you're building toward, if you want it in one line, is sex that isn't employed to manage a feeling.
That means having other ways to handle the feelings it used to manage. Boredom needs something to do. Loneliness needs people, plural, and not only a partner. Anxiety needs sleep, movement, and often somebody to talk to. Anger needs a place to go. If sex is still the only lever in the house, it will keep being pulled for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting it, and [mapping the cycle before acting out](/guides/sex/mapping-the-cycle-before-acting-out) is where you find out which feeling it's been doing.
It also means being present, which is the part people are least prepared for. Turning up fully to something you spent years being absent from can feel exposing rather than pleasurable at first. Slowing down and talking during it does more than any technique, and it improves with repetition rather than with resolve.
When to bring help back in
Some sensible triggers rather than a rule: if your bottom line has quietly stopped meaning anything, if the middle circle has crept back without a decision, if a new relationship is running at an intensity that reminds you of something, or if you're avoiding one particular person's questions.
Get support that won't treat your sexuality as the disorder. An international expert panel opposed approaches that ["increase the experience of discrimination, stigma, and moral incongruence"](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11214846/), which is a fair standard to hold any service to, and in the UK check the Accredited Register of anyone you pay, since these titles aren't protected.
If it ever goes darker than frustration, Samaritans is 116 123, free, any hour. In England, 111 and option 2 reaches urgent mental health support.
Common questions
**Can I have a normal sex life after compulsive sexual behaviour?** Most people are aiming at something better described as chosen than normal. The measure isn't frequency or content, it's whether you can decide freely, whether anybody has to be deceived, and whether it's costing you things you care about.
**Do I have to be abstinent forever?** That depends entirely on which definition you've signed up to, and the fellowships disagree sharply about it. What matters is that you choose the destination deliberately rather than drifting into a permanent restriction by default.
**How do I know if I'm relapsing or just wanting sex?** Wanting is not relapse. Look at your own middle circle instead: whether the run-up behaviours have returned, whether secrecy has crept back in, and whether you could choose not to today without a fight.
**When should I tell a new partner about my history?** Anything affecting them, meaning health, money and anything ongoing, comes before it can affect them. The rest is yours, and you can share it when there's enough trust to hold it. You do not owe a full account to somebody you've met twice.
**What if I don't know what I want my sex life to be?** Very common, particularly if the compulsive version started young. Write the ethics first, since those are usually clearer: no secrecy, no coercion, nobody lied to. The rest tends to fill in as the rest of your life does.
Sources
- [SAA on sobriety](https://saa-recovery.org/our-program/sobriety/). Member-defined abstinence, and the outer circle of behaviours that enhance life and recovery.
- [ICD-11 compulsive sexual behaviour disorder entry](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html). The criteria based on impaired control and harm, and the exclusion for distress arising only from moral disapproval.
- [Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in 42 countries, Journal of Behavioral Addictions](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37352095/). No sexual-orientation-based differences in levels of compulsive sexual behaviour.
- [Assessment and treatment of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder, Sexual Medicine Reviews](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11214846/). Expert panel opposition to approaches that increase stigma and moral incongruence.
