The recognised criteria are about control and consequences, not about frequency, partners or preferences. Have you repeatedly tried to reduce the behaviour and failed, has it kept going despite real damage to your life, and has that run for six months or more. Distress that comes only from believing your sexuality is wrong does not count, by the definition's own wording.
The criteria that actually exist
There is one recognised diagnosis here and it's worth reading properly, because almost everything else you'll find online is somebody's belief system with clinical vocabulary borrowed over it.
Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder is [code 6C72 in the World Health Organization's ICD-11](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html). It describes a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour, over a period of six months or more, with several features that have to be present:
- **Sexual activity becomes a central focus of your life**, to the point where health, personal care, other interests, and responsibilities get neglected.
- **You've made numerous unsuccessful efforts to significantly reduce** the behaviour.
- **You continue despite adverse consequences**, or despite getting little or no satisfaction from it any more.
- **There is marked distress or significant impairment** in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning.
Where it sits in the manual is deliberate and worth knowing. The people who wrote it placed it under impulse control disorders rather than alongside substance use and gambling, and explained why: ["a relatively conservative position has been recommended, recognizing that we do not yet have definitive information on whether the processes involved in the development and maintenance of the disorder are equivalent to those observed in substance use disorders, gambling and gaming."](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5775124/)
Meanwhile "sex addiction", the phrase almost everyone searches, isn't a diagnosis at all. A review in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law puts it bluntly: ["the concept of a sexual addiction is not included in the DSM-5, either as a diagnosis or an emerging measure and model."](https://jaapl.org/content/50/4/552)
What is deliberately not in the criteria
This is the part that gets left out of nearly every quiz on the internet, and it's the part that protects you.
**Frequency isn't in there.** No number of partners, no number of times a week, no threshold. Two people can behave identically and only one of them has lost control.
**Preference isn't in there.** What you're into is not the diagnosis.
**Orientation isn't in there either**, and there's large-sample evidence behind that rather than just good manners. 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.
**And moral distress on its own doesn't qualify.** The entry states 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 meet the requirement, and that people with high sexual interest who don't have impaired control and aren't being harmed should not be diagnosed.
If you were raised to believe your desires make you filthy, that belief can produce genuine suffering. It is not this condition, and treating it as this condition sends you to the wrong help for years.
The self-check
Eight questions. No score, because a number would just give you something to argue with, and no label, because nobody on a webpage can give you one anyway.
- Have you set yourself limits on this behaviour and broken them, more than once?
- Has it cost you something real? Money, a job, a relationship, your health, your safety.
- Has it kept going after the consequences arrived, rather than stopping when they did?
- Do you spend a large share of your week either doing it, planning it, or recovering from it?
- Has it crowded out things you used to care about, including basic self care?
- Do you do it even when you no longer particularly enjoy it?
- Do you use it to change how you feel rather than because you want to?
- Has any of this been true for six months or more?
Then the separating question, which does most of the work: **if nobody had ever told you this behaviour was shameful, would any of the answers above change?**
If the answer is that everything on the list evaporates once you take the shame out, you're likely looking at a belief problem rather than a control problem. If the costs stay exactly where they were, that's a different picture.
Where the other definitions come from
You'll meet at least three competing definitions of what "out of control" means, and it helps to know whose they are.
**A fellowship's.** Sex Addicts Anonymous deliberately doesn't set one, holding that ["it is necessary for each member to define his or her own abstinence."](https://saa-recovery.org/our-program/sobriety/) Sexaholics Anonymous does the opposite, publishing a fixed definition under which sober means no sex outside marriage, no masturbation for anyone, and marriage means [a marriage between a man and a woman](https://www.sa.org/). Those are two utterly different tests. Neither is a diagnosis.
**A church's or a family's.** Sometimes useful as a guide to the life you want. Never a clinical measure, and the ICD-11 exclusion exists precisely because so many people arrive at services carrying one.
**A partner's.** Their threshold is legitimate information about your relationship, and it isn't the same question as whether you have a disorder. Both can matter at once and conflating them helps nobody.
**A commercial service's.** Be especially careful here. Anyone whose assessment concludes that you need their programme has an interest in your answer.
If the answers point to yes
You don't need a diagnosis to act, and waiting for one is a way of not starting.
Write down the specific behaviours you're calling out of control, in your own words rather than anyone else's, and put two obstacles in front of them today. That's the whole opening move, and [how to stop compulsive sexual behaviour](/guides/sex/how-to-stop-compulsive-sexual-behaviour) walks through it. The practical closing of routes is in [cutting off access: apps, cash and contacts](/guides/sex/cutting-off-access-apps-cash-and-contacts).
Then get a proper assessment if you want one. That's a clinician, not a quiz, and in the UK you should check who you're paying: psychotherapist and counsellor are not protected titles, so ask which Accredited Register they're on and look them up yourself.
For scale, the same 42-country study found 4.8% of participants were at high risk of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder and that ["only 14% of individuals with CSBD have ever sought treatment"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37352095/). Most people in this position never ask anyone.
If the answers point to shame rather than control
Take that seriously too. It isn't nothing, and it isn't fixed by a blocker.
What it usually needs is someone qualified who won't treat your sexuality as the illness. Ask a prospective therapist directly how they work with orientation and with sexual behaviour in general, and if the answer makes you feel smaller, keep looking. A service that leaves you dirtier than you arrived is telling you about itself.
Common questions
**How many partners is too many?** There's no number in the criteria and there never was one. The question is whether you can stop when you decide to and what it's costing you. Some of the writing in this field treats number of partners as a harm in itself, which is a moral position dressed as a clinical one.
**Is sex addiction a real diagnosis?** Not in the DSM-5, which excluded it deliberately. What is recognised is compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in ICD-11, filed under impulse control disorders because the field doesn't yet know whether it works the way a substance disorder does.
**I feel disgusted with myself but nothing has gone wrong. Do I have a problem?** Possibly not the one you think. If you can stop when you decide to and there's no damage you can name, what you're describing may be the belief rather than the behaviour. That deserves help, just a different kind.
**Can a GP diagnose this?** A GP is a reasonable first stop, particularly because low mood, anxiety and some prescribed medications are relevant here, but there's no dedicated NHS pathway for compulsive sexual behaviour and most people end up in private services. Check credentials carefully before paying.
**What if my partner thinks it's a problem and I don't?** Those are two separate questions and both are real. Whether it meets a clinical definition, and whether it's damaging your relationship, can have different answers. Deal with them separately rather than using one to dismiss the other.
Sources
- [ICD-11 compulsive sexual behaviour disorder entry](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html). The full criteria, and the exclusion for distress arising only from moral disapproval.
- [Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in the ICD-11, World Psychiatry](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5775124/). Why the diagnosis sits under impulse control disorders rather than with the addictions.
- [Nassif et al., Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law](https://jaapl.org/content/50/4/552). Sexual addiction is not in the DSM-5 as a diagnosis or an emerging model.
- [Compulsive sexual behaviour disorder in 42 countries, Journal of Behavioral Addictions](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37352095/). High-risk prevalence, treatment seeking, and the absence of orientation-based differences.
