Loneliness: one of the biggest drivers we see

I want to start with something I have found to be true across more than a decade of clinical work with men experiencing compulsive sexual behaviour, and that I do not think gets said clearly enough in the professional literature or anywhere else.

Loneliness is one of the biggest drivers we see.

Loneliness is one of the biggest drivers we see. Not always the only one, and not always the one that is named first. But underneath the shame, underneath the escalating behaviour, underneath the patterns that have become unmanageable, loneliness is almost always there.

I am not talking about the loneliness of simply being alone. Many of the men I work with are in relationships, some of them long ones. Some have active social lives, professional networks, families they see regularly. The loneliness I am describing is something more specific: the experience of not being truly known. Of performing a version of yourself that works for the world around you while the actual self, with its actual desires and struggles and fears, remains somewhere that no one is allowed to see.

That particular kind of loneliness is one of the most powerful activators of the alarm inside us I know. And the sexual behaviour, whatever form it takes, is almost always a response to it.

Why sex answers loneliness, temporarily

The reason sexual behaviour is such a consistent response to the loneliness I am describing is that it offers, briefly and reliably, something that feels like its opposite. The experience of being wanted. Of mattering to someone, even a stranger, even for a short time. Of being physically present with another person in a way that feels like contact.

This is not a delusion. The relief is real. The sense of connection, however temporary and however context-dependent, is real. I want to be clear about that because the clinical literature sometimes treats the sexual behaviour in isolation from what it is doing, as if it were simply a malfunction rather than a coherent response to a genuine human need.

The problem is not that sexual contact does not address loneliness. The problem is that it addresses it only in the moment, and that the particular kind of sexual contact that tends to develop in the context of compulsive patterns specifically avoids the conditions that would allow real connection to develop. Anonymous encounters. Transactional sex. Pornography. Chemsex. App scrolling at 2 AM. All of these provide the temporary relief of something that feels like connection without requiring the emotional exposure that genuine connection demands. And the genuine connection, the being truly known, is exactly what was missing.

The loop that results is one of the most self-defeating I see in clinical work. The loneliness drives behaviour that briefly relieves it, while systematically avoiding the only thing that would actually address it. And in the aftermath, the shame that follows the behaviour adds a new layer to the isolation: something else that cannot be spoken about, something else that separates the man from the people around him.

The specific texture of loneliness for different men

Loneliness is not one thing. It arrives differently depending on who you are and the particular shape of your life.

For gay and bisexual men, loneliness often has developmental roots that run very deep. Growing up without the ability to express or explore the full truth of your desire, without seeing relationships that look like yours, without the ordinary adolescent infrastructure of crushes and conversations and early relationships: these are not minor absences. They are gaps in the basic relational scaffolding that the capacity for genuine adult intimacy is built on. The loneliness that results is not just about the absence of people. It is about never having been fully known at the point in life when being known matters most for development.

For straight men, the loneliness I see most often operates inside existing structures. A long marriage that has become functional and companionable but no longer feels intimate. A professional life that is successful but that does not allow for any vulnerability or genuine self-disclosure. A social world of male friendships that operate almost entirely without emotional content. The man is surrounded by people and deeply, specifically alone.

For older men of any sexuality, the loneliness often has an additional dimension: the sense that this is how it will remain. The window for something different feels like it is closing, if it has not already closed. The resignation that can come with that is clinically significant because it removes the motivation for change. Why do the work if nothing can really be different?

What genuine connection requires

This is where the work becomes uncomfortable, because genuine connection requires exactly what compulsive sexual behaviour has been designed to avoid.

It requires being known. Not performing a version of yourself that is acceptable, but allowing another person access to the actual self: the struggles, the fears, the desire for connection that has been so carefully managed and concealed. That kind of exposure activates the alarm inside us in most of the men I work with. The defences are there for good reasons. They were built in response to experiences that made exposure feel dangerous.

The therapeutic work is not about dismantling those defences. It is about understanding why they are there and gradually, through repeated experiences of being seen without the anticipated rejection or judgment, creating new evidence about what exposure actually produces.

The group as the first experience of the opposite

The group programme we run is, in this specific sense, a loneliness intervention as much as it is a treatment for compulsive sexual behaviour.

Something specific happens in a room of men who are being honest about this territory with each other. The experience of recognising yourself in another man's account. The relief of not being alone in something that has felt like the most isolating possible experience. The sense, often described as arriving quite suddenly and unexpectedly, that these men know exactly what you are talking about without needing it to be explained.

That discovery does not resolve everything. But it changes what feels possible.

That experience is not incidental to the clinical work. It is central to it. The soothing system, which helps us calm down, feel safe, and feel connected, is the internal capacity that compulsive sexual behaviour has been substituting for, and it is activated through genuine connection. The group is the first available opportunity for many of these men to discover that such connection is possible without the behaviour, without the substances, without the apps. That discovery does not resolve everything. But it changes what feels possible. And changing what feels possible is where the work begins

For more on how the programme specifically addresses loneliness through the group, see When you realise you're not the only one: why group therapy works. For the broader loneliness pillar overview, see The loneliness behind compulsive sexual behaviour.

Information about applying to the programme is on the apply page.

Dr Michael Yates is an HCPC-registered Clinical Psychologist and Psychosexual Specialist. He is an EFS-ESSM Certified Psychosexologist and COSRT-registered Sex and Relationship Therapist.