Real life: my boyfriend has a sex addiction and it's disgusting

When Kim (28) met Jorik, she fell in love at first sight. But after a few months, she discovers that the man who is so sweet to her has a special lifestyle. He has a compulsion to insert his genitals into as many women as possible.

‘For the record: I have never invited anyone to my home on the first night, but everything about him made me weak. His stories about Cuba. The fact that he was actually a bit on the short side. The dimples in his cheeks. The beautiful teeth. The big talk and the stories he could tell with such conviction. Maybe you feel it right away when you fall in love with someone with a low self-esteem, but he acted like a little rascal of the nice kind and was very good with women. So there I went, blushing through the streets of Amsterdam. Next to him in the car. Giggling. Avoiding his mysterious gaze. 

How Jorik touched me during sex was something I had never felt with a man before. One moment tender, the next moment extremely rough. Hair-pulling-rough. You never knew exactly which way it was going, but everything felt like one fluid action. As if he had precisely planned what steps would follow. I think we had more sex in the first months than I had in the past three years. We couldn't keep our hands off each other. Sometimes five times in a day. Not at parties. I felt so feminine, free, and loved. It was wonderful. 

After two months, the bubble burst when I found out that he had slept with someone else after a night out. ‘This is separate from my love for you. I am a man, I sometimes struggle to behave.’ I bit my cheek and stayed. I hated him, but loved him. Less than a week later, it hit me when I received messages from someone named Hanna. ‘Good luck, he’s doing all of Amsterdam.’ When I confronted Jorik with this, he called her ‘a crazy, disturbed chick’. Everyone wanted to be with Jorik. I often thought that women were just jealous and wanted to stir things up. 

I have never felt like such a naive fool as I do now, but in the weeks that followed, the messages from women, the flings, and the ‘sorrys’ kept piling up. Meanwhile, I caught him several times while he was in the shower taking care of himself. Even after we had sex that morning. He wanted to change, he said. He had issues. He sometimes couldn't control himself, even though he wanted to. It was due to fear of commitment. Problems with his mother in the past, nonsense. He had actually never had sex with the same girl more than twice, I was his first woman with whom it felt different. He went into therapy, for us. 

The months that followed were quiet. I thought. Until that day when my ‘curious self’ found the folder with the photos on his laptop. Thousands of photos. Dirty photos. A number of women that could fill stadiums. My heart really broke when I even found photos of one of my colleagues. And then everything fell into place. His social isolation. The fact that he hardly has any friends. His mood swings throughout the day. The compulsive masturbation. 

My boyfriend has a sex addiction.

I confronted him and he cried like a baby. The therapy sessions have now been increased and Jorik is doing everything he can to work on himself. My friends all say that I should let him go, but I can't forget all our beautiful conversations, nice dates, and fun moments. I told him that I need time to heal and am not sure if I still want to be his girlfriend, but I also don't want to leave him, no matter how disgusting I find his behavior. I never expected to end up in such a situation but here I am, loving the man with issues who is now causing me harm…’

In this unusual time, we asked people to share their honest story. To avoid hurting others, the names of Kim and Jorik have been changed.