Warning: This post contains erotic imagery and may not be suitable for work environments.
Sometimes, to be a woman over 50 is to feel invisible. It’s walking into a bar or restaurant and no longer being on the receiving end of an admiring glance. It’s feeling like people on the street are looking past you, as if you aren’t even there. Ask a middle-aged woman, and she might say these slights have whittled away at her self-confidence, tricking her into believing the best years are behind her.
We live in a culture that often equates beauty and energy with youth. But we’d like to turn that way of thinking on its head. We believe women can be smart and sassy, beautiful and confident ― and that they can continue to shake things up in the world around them ― whether they’re 50 or 75 or 100.
With that idea in mind, Huff/Post50 photographed 11 very sexy women between the ages of 48 and 67. A few are cancer survivors. A few are grandmothers. A few are single and a few are married. But what they all have in common is that not one is a shrinking violet. They feel better about themselves today than they ever have. We asked each woman to wear whatever makes them feel sexy, and to talk about what being sexy means to them now compared to when they were, say, 21. The resulting photos are stunning ― and entirely un-retouched.
For more images from the photo shoots click through our gallery of outtakes!
Jake Paul is “deeply” in the love with his new girlfriend, Olympic speed-skater Jutta Leerdam.
The YouTuber-turned-boxer — who went public with the romance on Instagram last month — gushed over the world champion speed skater and her body while on the latest installment of his brother Logan’s “Impaulsive” podcast this week.
“Jutta is such an amazing woman and like, she reminds me so much of mom,” Paul said. “She’s so sweet and cooking and she amazes me for how mature she is, how emotionally intelligent she is, how good she is at communicating, how good she is at loving, the list goes on and on and on.”
Paul added that it’s “sexy as f–k” that he and Leerdam, who stands at 6-foot, are the same height.
The 26-year-old Paul went on to compliment his girlfriend’s figure.
“There’s more woman, and she’s so curvy, has the nicest body in the f–kin’ world, and I’m obsessed with her,” he said, adding, “Basically, I get more woman.”
Jutta Leerdam and Jake Paul in April 2023.Instagram/Jutta Leerdam
Paul admitted that Leerdam is like no one else he’s dated.
“She’s like the purest soul I’ve ever met out of anyone.”
The Internet personality and his ex-girlfriend, model Julia Rose, split in late 2022 after dating on-and-off for years.
“Her smile, her eyes, her laugh just like, give me life on a daily basis and I’ve never met anyone like her,” Paul said of Leerdam. “And she’s only 24 and she’s already such an incredible, determined, smart, hard-working, loyal, trustworthy person … and every f–king adjective that exists.”
Jake Paul on his brother Logan’s “Impaulsive” podcast in May 2023.YouTube/Logan PaulJake Paul and Jutta Leerdam in April 2023.Instagram/Jake Paul
Warning: This post contains erotic imagery and may not be suitable for work environments.
Sometimes, to be a woman over 50 is to feel invisible. It’s walking into a bar or restaurant and no longer being on the receiving end of an admiring glance. It’s feeling like people on the street are looking past you, as if you aren’t even there. Ask a middle-aged woman, and she might say these slights have whittled away at her self-confidence, tricking her into believing the best years are behind her.
We live in a culture that often equates beauty and energy with youth. But we’d like to turn that way of thinking on its head. We believe women can be smart and sassy, beautiful and confident ― and that they can continue to shake things up in the world around them ― whether they’re 50 or 75 or 100.
With that idea in mind, Huff/Post50 photographed 11 very sexy women between the ages of 48 and 67. A few are cancer survivors. A few are grandmothers. A few are single and a few are married. But what they all have in common is that not one is a shrinking violet. They feel better about themselves today than they ever have. We asked each woman to wear whatever makes them feel sexy, and to talk about what being sexy means to them now compared to when they were, say, 21. The resulting photos are stunning ― and entirely un-retouched.
For more images from the photo shoots click through our gallery of outtakes!
If you weren’t already on the Padma Lakshmi train, now’s the time to join it. The author and Top Chef host recently joined the likes of Martha Stewart and Megan Fox as a 2023 Sports Illustrated Swim model, and just this week joined my style-inspo board thanks to a slinky, sexy dress that speaks to two of the year’s biggest trends.
When Lakshmi walked the 2023 Moth Ball red carpet in New York City, our InStyle Slack channel blew up. Her metallic slip dress looked like it had melted onto her body, hanging perfectly while reflecting the light of the cameras. In a year where metallics have dominated — from bags and ballgowns to shoes — we were amazed we hadn’t considered pairing the shiny style with another 2023 top trend: the ever-versatile slip dress. To help you get Lakshmi’s practical but still super-sexy look, we found eight similar styles from shopper-favorite retailers, with metallic slip dresses starting at just $14.
Amazon has two great options for those wanting to try out the look for less, with both coming in under $25. Original Kimono’s length — which hits just above the knee — and looser fit make this pick incredibly versatile, pairing just as well with strappy heels for a night out as it would with a pair of chunky loafers and leather jacket. This pick boasts more than 1,700 five-star ratings, with shoppers describing it as “beautiful and so comfortable.” And for a more occasional dress, The Drop’s Zayne Slip is a must, which features a small slide slit and all-over sequins.
If, like Lakshmi, you’re wanting to combine these two styles in a more elegant manner, look no further than Norma Kamali’s Maria Satin Gown. This dress drapes beautifully, with a soft cowl neck and trumpet skirt that grazes the floor. One shopper who bought this dress for a wedding called the dress “perfect” and “comfortable,” adding that on top of how many compliments they received, they were “shocked” to learn it was machine washable (personally, I’m sold).
Metallics can be intimidating, but when Padma Lakshmi combined silver with a closet-staple slip dress, it introduced me to a world of practical but still totally chic ways to wear one of the year’s top trends. Explore more Lakshmi-inspired slip dresses below.
Andie MacDowell opened up about aging to People yesterday as she attended the Cannes Film Festival, telling the mag that men shouldn’t be the only ones who have all the fun in their twilight years.
“I like all the terms we use for older men,” she said. “I want to hold onto those terms. I want to be debonair. Why not? What a beautiful term.”
The “Groundhog Day” actress added that as a society, “we’ve been brainwashed” into thinking that men age like a fine wine while women don’t.
MacDowell wore a breezy dress and ankle-tie wedges on her trip to Cannes.SplashNews.comThe model stopped coloring her hair during the pandemic, letting her silver roots shine.andiemacdowell/Instagram
MacDowell continued that “it’s a psychological thing that we’ve bought into because we’ve been fed it for so long,” elaborating that women “don’t allow ourselves to feel good about ourselves and we even perceive [older men] as sexy, because we’ve been taught this.”
MacDowell has definitely embraced her grays, sharing in 2021 that she was “loving” her “silver fox” look.
She rocked a chic travel look while arriving in France earlier this week.TheImageDirect.comThe actress – pictured here at a 1987 event – was known for her brunette curls.Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images
For more Page Six Style …
Although the “Four Weddings and a Funeral” actress originally said she wasn’t sure if she’d go back to dyeing her hair, she ultimately stuck with silver.
“I felt that I would be happier,” she said in 2022. “And I am happier. I really like it.”
While the former model admitted that she “was struggling” with getting older at one point in the new interview, she’s now “much more comfortable” in her own skin.
“I love being an older woman,” she shared. “I really enjoy it. And it doesn’t feel less sexy.”
On Saturday, Lizzo performed at the 2023 BottleRock Napa Valley music festival in California wearing a black leather bodysuit covered in fringe and neon green details crisscrossed with lace designs, with a zipper up the front. The suit had wide legs and a halter neckline, and featured a belt covered in silver grommets and hardware that cinched at the waist.
Lizzo left her hair down in a silky curtain and was wearing large silver hoop earrings and a few small rings. Her makeup was simple aside from an eyeshadow design in darker green and silver.
Steve Jennings//Getty Images
Lizzo has been on her Special Tour and stopped in for day two of the festival at the annual Napa Valley concert weekend. She was joined on stage with her backup dancers in matching black vinyl outfits.
Jim Bennett//Getty Images
In an interview with Vanity Fair in October 2022, Lizzo talked about the conscious choices she makes about her wardrobe when performing despite the criticism she has occasionally received from trolls over her outfits being “sexual.”
“When it’s sexual, it’s mine,” she said. “When it’s sexualized, someone is doing it to me or taking it from me. Black women are hypersexualized all the time, and masculinized simultaneously. Because of the structure of racism, if you’re thinner and lighter, or your features are narrow, you’re closer to being a woman.”
She added that her on stage outfits are essentially dance uniforms that make it easier to move with her back up dancers.
Our columnist recommends six dreamy new romance novels.
This summer I’m thinking about the “ever” part of “happily ever after.” An impossible span, considering that none of us are immortal. Romance novels are often scorned for being unrealistic — too many coincidences, too much wish fulfillment — but the most fantastical thing about the genre is how it thumbs its nose at time.
Allow me to explain using six of this summer’s new books.
First up is KD Casey’s home run of a romance, DIAMOND RING (Carina Press, e-book, $4.99). Alex Angelides and Jake Fischer are ex-teammates and ex-lovers; they found each other and lost a championship, and now they’re playing together again at the tattered end of their careers, hoping for one last chance at anything.
Michael Chabon once called baseball “nothing but a great slow contraption for getting you to pay attention to the cadence of a summer day.” That’s the Y.A. version; Casey’s book offers the wearier adult perspective: “Some things you can’t fight. Like time or baseball.” In the blink of a reader’s eye, our leads go from fresh-faced rookies to creaky veterans, and fresh fights become long-cherished grudges.
It knocked the wind out of me. Time is the enemy here, a thief who roughs you up and then jams its hands in your pockets to steal your valuables: youth, strength, achievement. But a romance anticipates its own triumph. In this genre, no matter how much our leads have lost, there’s always something wonderful ahead.
Like any Cinderella story, Adriana Herrera’s historical novel AN ISLAND PRINCESS STARTS A SCANDAL (Canary Street Press, 368 pp., paperback, $18.99) begins with a countdown clock. The Venezuelan heiress Manuela del Carmen Caceres Galvan has a few brief weeks to live her best Sapphic life in Paris before she must marry a dull man she does not love. She has mortgaged her future to support her spendthrift parents, but she’s determined to live as passionately as she can in this too-brief patch of the present.
Instead of a fairy godmother, Manuela finds a duchess, Cora, who flaunts her business acumen in banks and railway companies — for her, time is money. She lavishes both on Manuela, purchasing a strategic piece of coastline from her in exchange for not only a pile of cash, but also entree into the Paris lesbian community. With one heroine shackled to her past, and the other facing a lonely future, Herrera’s romance stands elegantly balanced on the singular moment when change is possible.
Romance’s anticipation is doubly true in historical fiction, where we know what’s coming for the world as well as for the characters. This adds urgency to questions like, Should Manuela’s land become a section of European-owned railroad track, or the woman-supporting art colony she and her grandmother planned to build? We know historical novels reflect the time of their writing as much as the time in which they’re set, and we usually take that to mean putting modern thoughts into historical heads. But what if it also means taking useful lessons from specific moments in the past? What if we — the collective we — had chosen community over capitalism, or a more authentic happiness over the tracks laid out for us by someone else?
Next up: a pair of vampire romances that could not be more different — except that both use the unreal longevity of supernatural creatures to reflect on the meaning of mortal life.
Piper J. Drake’s new paranormal, WINGS ONCE CURSED & BOUND (Sourcebook Casablanca, 304 pp., paperback, $16.99), is the story of a Thai bird-princess dancer — Peeraphan, or Punch for short — trapped in a pair of cursed shoes, and the ancient vampire, Bennett, who’s trying to break the curse.
Bennett is a wonderfully stodgy, formal vampire with a question of classic heroic angst: How do you let yourself love someone you know is going to die? He thinks of himself as immune to time in a way that Peeraphan isn’t, but that’s not true. Bennett is longer-lived, but dead in daytime. His life span is endless but interrupted, a prolonged nocturnal stutter. Peeraphan’s time is all her own — so who is really time’s victim here?
If Drake’s book is modern and action-centered, like Red Bull and vodka, Samara Breger’s stunning A LONG TIME DEAD (Bywater Books, 412 pp., paperback, $23.95) recalls a vintage wine miraculously salvaged from a shipwreck. It’s also the best Sapphic vampire book since Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 classic, “Carmilla.”
The Victorian sex worker Poppy Cavendish wakes in a cobwebbed manor to find herself a creature out of a nightmare: Her only companion, Roisin, is a traumatized, stern vampire who has firm rules about drinking from humans (never) and sleeping with Poppy (also never, she protests a little too vehemently). Poppy misses drinking ale, she misses her human friends, she misses sex — and, slowly, she learns the reasons behind what Roisin has done, and what kind of monsters really come out at night.
I had to keep putting down “A Long Time Dead” to yell about how sublime and funny it was, to dwell on the way the sleekly poetic style melted down into brutal abstraction when Poppy’s bloodlust took over.
Roisin’s anguish is the reversed image of Bennett’s: “What vital 21-year-old immortal would tie herself to the bony ghost woman that time forgot?” Vampire bodies might not decay, but time still sinks in its teeth; vampire memories here are moth-riddled, undependable things. Time makes immortals parasites upon the human world, dependents and exiles both.
Poppy and Roisin are not the only couple out of sync. Emma Barry’s FUNNY GUY (Montlake, 271 pp., paperback, $16.99), a take on comedic and romantic timing, features a city planner and an improv comedian whose pop-star ex just turned his shortcomings into a hit single.
Sam has a chip on his shoulder and a tendency toward impulsive mistakes; it has made him a star but also kept his childhood scars on full display. His best friend, Bree, is cautious and hesitant, dragging her feet when it comes to telling Sam anything: that she’s in love with him; that she has been offered a spectacular new job in another city.
The problem isn’t reconciling two sets of feelings. No, our couple struggle with finding a shared rhythm, a sense of pace for their relationship that doesn’t feel glacial by Sam’s standards or reckless by Bree’s. It’s a tug of war that would be hard for a less adept writer to pull off, but Barry’s work has always thrived on this kind of interplay. She seems to be feeling her way to a new kind of structure here, one that’s organic and messy but still generates a vital catharsis.
Speaking of new things, I’m delighted to showcase one of the year’s most charming experiments: Felicia Davin’s THE SCANDALOUS LETTERS OF V AND J (Etymon Press, e-book, $6.99). An art student and a disinherited dilettante in 19th-century Paris remake themselves, encounter sinister magical artifacts and have some of the thirstiest sex imaginable. V discovers how to use writing to persuade and compel, while J’s paintings can entrance or even transform the objects and people they depict. Gender is transcendable; bodies are fluid; art is truth, lies, a trap and an escape all at once.
It’s an epistolary novel, with our engaging young leads’ letters and diaries unspooling for our pleasure. It was also serialized, free, with daily snippets emailed out for months. Reading this way felt intimate, transgressive, like I’d started receiving someone else’s much sexier mail by accident — even as it denied the reader total voyeurism by cheekily excising the many erotic doodles J uses to tease and titillate V.
Among romance fans, the phrase “revolutionizing the romance genre” has all the heft of Mardi Gras beads — a cheap accolade thrown round the neck of someone yelling “woo!” on a tabletop while us regulars hunch over the bar and sip our trope cocktails in peace. But many romances also lock main characters’ bodies into a strict and permanent perfectibility; that’s why they give Regency dukes abs from the age of gym memberships and why couples’ cameos in late-series books often feel weirdly static and staged. Davin’s book feels genuinely, shockingly rebellious in its insistence on the beauty of transformation. If overhyped books are plastic necklaces, this serial is a string of natural pearls, each a luminous gem on its own but even more exquisite in sequence.
It’s a love story and a fantasy and a meditation on social power’s uses and abuses. And by its refusal to succumb to mundane physical laws, it underscores one of romance’s greatest magics: It allows us to escape time. Not forever, no. But for long enough.
We live in a golden age of video games. And it's not just because of the plethora of phenomenal games being made, the ever-growing number of players getting into the hobby, the several television and movie adaptations that are actually good, and the growing financial power of video games as a business. No. It's partially because I can now go into Ulta and buy Xbox-themed nail polish, an Animal Crossing eyeshadow palette, and a Sonic the Hedgehog mud mask, all while smelling like Princess Peach.
Video game collaborations with beauty brands are all around us, bridging the gap between the stereotypical gamer and demographics who were previously overlooked. As someone who enjoys the challenge of perfecting my skincare routine almost as much as I enjoy taking down a From Soft boss, I love trying them out and seeing for myself which ones are actually worth the money. As such, I leapt at the opportunity to try out Lush's new Super Mario Bros. line and leave some feedback. After a month of using six different products, I've finally reached a conclusion on which ones left me saying, "mama mia!" and which ones were a bit more, "mama mia…" So, letsago!
Princess Peach Shower Jelly
Though Lush's official website clearly states this product is made with sweet orange oil, fresh peach infusion, grapefruit, seaweed, and several other natural ingredients, two words are all you truly need to understand this shower jelly's scent and overall vibe: pink Starburst. As a pink Starburst girl myself, I was over the moon about this soap and its quality. The presentation is fun, the look and feel of it is so playful, and just a little bit of the Jell-O-like substance goes a long way. Its scent is sweet, citrusy, and flirty but doesn't run into the problem of smelling strong, sugary, or artificial. In summation, I felt like Margot Robbie's Barbie using it, and who doesn't want that?
While Lush could have simply repurposed their Peachy bath bomb or gone with a basic peach-scented soap, I am so glad they went beyond that for gaming's most iconic princess. You can tell they wanted to embody her rather than take the easy route, and I'm very happy to be able to channel that energy for myself.
Overall rating: 5/5 freshly baked cakes
Princess Peach's note to Mario in Super Mario 64.
Bowser Shower Jelly
I am delighted to report that the Bowser shower jelly is also fantastic. It's actually so fantastic that I've yet to decide if I prefer this soap or Peach's more, so I've taken to rotating between the two depending on my mood. Whereas the Peach jelly, quite appropriately, makes me feel like a princess, the Bowser jelly makes me feel powerful--and perhaps a bit sexy, too?? While I originally thought it a bit strange to make this soap as sensual smelling as it is, I suppose "powerful and weirdly sexy" is an appropriate ode to Bowser and his most recent voice actor, Jack Black. But enough about my numerous, odd crushes.
The Bowser shower jelly has a bit of spice and bite to it that stems from its hypnotic combination of cinnamon, anise, cloves, orange oil, and patchouli oil. While I wish it lingered on the skin a bit longer (personally I recommend following it up with one of my favorite Lush lotions, Pansy or Karma Cream, to help with longevity), the initial scent is alluring and cozy, a perfect just-before-bed product. The formula is also fairly hydrating, and I give it props for being a decidedly gender neutral scent--everyone deserves to feel like the King of Koopas after a glass of mulled wine.
Overall rating: 5/5 hearty Bowser laughs
Question Block 2 In 1 Bath Bomb
So to address the most burning question, pun absolutely not intended: No, I don't think this bath bomb looks like pee. Now, maybe if I had a bigger tub and the bomb were more diluted, that'd be a different story. As it stands now, however, the idea that anyone would find it pee-colored just makes me concerned for their overall hydration. That said, I still didn't find the bomb all that aesthetically pleasing. Gold is an iffy color to shoot for with beauty products, and while there was no shortage of glitter, shimmer, and shine to the product, it didn't feel "luxe" so much as it felt like strange, mustard-colored dishwater. On top of that, both the yellow pigment and glitter will stick to your body, so I wouldn't recommend using this if you have any events coming up in which you can't show up looking like a sallow Edward Cullen.
A picture of Edward Cullen aka you after this bath bomb.
Unfortunately, this is not where my criticism stops. This bath bomb is huge, and while that sounds like a plus, it simply makes for more material to crumble off and break. Though Lush did a genuinely fantastic job packaging everything, the bath bomb didn't stand a chance against less-than-delicate delivery people and came to me in several pieces. This also ruined the biggest selling point of the nearly $20 bath bomb, which is the surprise soap in the middle. Rather than waiting for the block to slowly dissolve and reveal one of its six mystery colors and the power-up inside, I ended up awkwardly shoveling fragments of the bomb into the tub and placing my Fire Flower soap to the side. I will give the Question Block bath bomb some credit for being hydrating and a cool gimmick, but as a major Lush bath bomb enthusiast, it just didn't cut it for me.
Overall rating: One sad mama mia
Gold Coin Soap
Out of everything included in the Lush x Super Mario Bros. collaboration, the Gold Coin soap feels, by far, like the safest choice--like the one product I could easily recommend to anyone because the chances of them enjoying it are pretty high. While it didn't blow me away as much as the jellies, this bar is still an incredibly solid product with a lovely butterscotch scent and a good bit of lather and longevity to it. It could be a bit more moisturizing, sure, but it still met my established expectations for how your everyday bar soap feels.
However, this kind of "averageness" is also its downfall--there's not much that sets this bar apart from many other bar soaps or anything that makes it feel uniquely Mario, other than its shape. But even that critique isn't too much of a knock at it--every good collaboration needs that one easy-to-love product that offers a fun twist on an established favorite.
Overall rating: 4/5 weird Toad noises
Mario Shower Gel
Out of all the products I received, this one was easily the one I was most hesitant to use. I actually ended up texting my friend who used to work at Lush about the soap's unique scent, and was shocked when they assured me that their Coca-Cola scented products were actually wildly popular and beloved by many--that they smelled a bit better on and were actually not as over-the-top as they might seem. With that knowledge in mind, I committed to the bit and decided to smother myself in the candy apple red gel and embrace the sweet-yet-warm fragrance of Coke--or Pepsi, if you're more into that.
I'll give the gel a few things: It smells like Coca-Cola, the scent lasts, the gel has a nice color and consistency, and I think picking a sort of blue-jeans, American classic scent was a really inspired choice for our blue-collar hero Mario. That said, smelling like soda just wasn't it for me. I went to bed feeling like I had just come home from a bar where someone spilled their rum and Coke on me, and that's not typically the before-bed vibe I go for. If you are the type of person who would eagerly purchase a Dr. Pepper Lip Smacker, or enjoys more one-of-a-kind scents, I suspect you might like this gel and be pleased with just how long that dark soda smell lasts.
Overall rating: 3/5 "Letsago"s
Luigi Shower Gel
Once again we have another case of "this scent was not made for me." While the Luigi shower gel advertises itself as green apple-scented, all I could smell upon using it was freshly mowed grass. I suppose there was something a bit refreshing to the soap--a slight, springtime fruitiness that redeemed it a little, buried beneath the bits of torn up lawn. But for the most part, I just felt like my allergies were about to go haywire.
Luigi's infamous stare down.
This one gets a few points for its Gooigi-inspired color and actually remembering Luigi exists, but I would have been a lot more impressed if the apple scent had come through a bit more.
Overall rating: 2/5 drive-by death stares
The products discussed here were independently chosen by our editors. GameSpot may get a share of the revenue if you buy anything featured on our site.
The vacuum cleaner is laid out like a snake on the living room floor – an image of domesticity I will come to remember as representing the unravelling of that home. I have always loved this room for its large, south-facing windows that could bring warmth to my face even on the coldest of winter days, but the summer sun today is suffocating. It is one of those mornings when the leaves are perfectly bright and the sky clear light blue. The outside world is beautiful, but mine seems to be breaking apart.
Just moments earlier, I was arguing with my partner about the division of household labour. Frustratingly, I have fallen into a stereotype – vacuuming around him while he’s on his phone. But this morning is different. He asks me to sit with him on the sofa; he wants to tell me something big, something personal. I leave the vacuum cleaner on the floor.
I sit beside him, listening quietly, holding his hand as he explains that he’s been addicted to watching porn since he was a teenager. His behaviour is out of his control, he says, and he’s been hiding this from me throughout our whole relationship. At this point, we’d been living together for nearly nine years.
I feel sorry for him. The word “addiction” instantly makes me think of struggle and suffering. Indeed, my initial reaction is one of empathy – that perhaps he has simply suffered in a society that has forced on him a disconnected understanding of sex and masculinity. It’s so unfair that he’s experiencing this, I tell him. What makes him feel like his relationship with pornography is out of control?
“The frequency, the compulsions that draw me to viewing it,” he says. Porn has never really interested me, and he knows that – is that why he felt he couldn’t tell me until now? Perhaps.
The conversation seems to go on for hours, as if time were being dragged through thick sediment. He speaks about his insecurities; I tell him my deepest and darkest vulnerabilities. It feels like the most open conversation we’ve had in years. Later, I find out that nothing he’s told me here is true.
The next morning, the vacuum cleaner is still unravelled on the floor. There’s a sickly feeling rising from my belly. I didn’t sleep much last night, kept awake by questions: how did he manage to keep this secret from me for so long? Was there anything else he hadn’t told me?
There is – so much more. Again, we’re sitting on the sofa. I’m holding his hand, although less quietly this time. My tears seem almost cartoonish. He’s not only addicted to porn, he tells me, but addicted to sex. He has been seeking sex elsewhere, online and physically, for years. I never knew a thing.
The pain is immediate and brutal. I’m hit by all the cliches of shock at once: punched in the stomach, the carpet ripped from underneath me. It is almost impossible to understand the lengths he has gone to to keep this from me. And why he even agreed to pursue a monogamous relationship.
He tries to describe his addiction as an uncontrollable desire, compulsive behaviour that has an overbearing hold on his life. “You know the movie Shame?” he asks. Yes. I remember the Steve McQueen film which stars Michael Fassbender as a man desperately hiding his addiction to sex and porn, behaviours that have taken a destructive hold on his life. “That’s what it’s like.”
But Fassbender’s character was single, I think. For a moment I catch myself wondering: is he just using the term addiction to excuse bad behaviour?
I decide to end the relationship almost immediately.
WWe’d met in our early 20s – both young, haphazardly trying to seek out our direction in the world. I had dreams of moving abroad to reconnect with my family, and I had hoped my work would take me there. He had his mind set on developing his craft in England, so we built a life together in the UK. I knew it wasn’t perfect, but I was almost trapped in the assumption that our relationship would last.
Both of us had admitted to cheating on one another about a year into the relationship, and after that I knew I could never judge other people’s mistakes. We made up, as couples often do after a brief fling, agreeing on monogamy and honesty. What I didn’t realise, obviously, was that he had kept up sexual relationships with women from before we had even met. I know this only because I asked him directly, after pleading for the truth one Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks after the first revelation. Why he wanted to share all this then, I don’t know – maybe it was healing, repentance, or maybe he just felt he had nothing to lose.
I know now that what he told me then was still not the full truth. New information would be leaked out in dribs and drabs. I still have the note on my phone with a list of questions – it’s there, tucked among shopping lists and music and film recommendations. Who were these women you had relationships with? When did you realise you had a “problem”? Was it always consensual? When did the webcam chatrooms start? When did it become physical? Did any of this happen while I was around? Why did you continue this relationship if you knew you were doing something wrong?
Throughout those years we were together, he had managed to have sexual relationships with other women, both one-offs and longer term, without me suspecting a thing. I lived in ignorance, not knowing that he’d brought women back to the home we shared, that he’d been sexting other women while I was asleep next to him. The reason he didn’t post pictures of us together online was because he used social media to connect with women and wanted to appear single. He admitted to cyberflashing someone he worked with – a violation that will be illegal in the UK’s proposed online safety bill. I don’t know who she is, but I hope she’s OK and has been able to seek support for this harassment.
About a week after the discovery – which is known by partners of sex addicts in support groups as D-day – I’m packing my mugs into boxes. I get the tape stuck around my finger and can’t get it off. I see myself now, fallen to the ground, surrounded by half-packed boxes. My body hurts from crying. I have never felt emotion so physically before.
It will take weeks, months even, to fully come to terms with what has happened. I feel so foolish for not knowing what he has been doing. Therapy and conversations with friends will help me understand that he has deceived everyone, that there’s no way I could have known what he has hidden from me so well.
There’s no doubt that compulsive sexual behaviour can be destructive, isolating and all-encompassing for the person involved, with a severe impact on their physical and mental health. But in trying to research and understand what sex addiction is, I found little information or discourse surrounding the experience of partners – people who, like me, had just discovered their loved one was effectively living a double life. It can be life-changing for them, too. A study from 2012 found such partners experienced stress, anxiety, depression, inability to trust and loss of self-esteem, and struggled to enjoy sex and romance. Another study, back in 2006, of women married to sexually addicted men, found that after learning of their husband’s serial infidelity, many felt the acute stress and anxiety characteristic of post-traumatic stress disorder.
My mind was having to process a nine-year betrayal. My close friends dropped everything to reach me at my lowest moments; my family helped unpack the boxes in my new flat and cleaned up when I couldn’t. I even got a pet goldfish to help me feel less alone.
But it was a long struggle. The fabric of what I had understood to be my life and this relationship was, in fact, not all true. I had lost a relationship, a partner, a friend. But I had lost memories, too – happy moments now tainted with deceit. My ability to trust myself and other people was gone. I couldn’t work out what was real or not. It was frightening and debilitating to be constantly questioning my own judgment.
It was all so confusing. In those first weeks, I couldn’t be angry at him. His addiction was to blame, society was to blame. Even I was to blame. Maybe I wasn’t sexy enough, open enough, wasn’t there enough. Maybe I had done something wrong.
The anger would come later – anger at his behaviour that constituted harassment, at the way he had risked my sexual health, at the years of manipulation, when I would blame myself for the months of sexlessness and lack of attention.
For so long, my sexuality had been lost, irrelevant. We would sometimes go weeks, months even, without having sex; at times it felt more like a friendship than anything else. I blamed myself, and as time went on I lost confidence in myself and my body. One day, as summer approached during the first lockdown, he had forwarded me an email about a sexual awakening course and told me to go on it. I paid £150 for weekly sessions and meditations on how to reconnect with my sexuality. But things between us remained the same and, trapped in self-doubt, I felt the fault was mine. He did nothing to help me think otherwise. And whenever I thought about leaving him, he would shower me with adoration and I’d find a way to forget my hurt.
In the weeks after the breakup, I needed answers. I began to go down internet rabbit holes in an obsessive desire to understand sex addiction and what had happened to this relationship. I came across online support communities for partners of sex addicts seeking advice and comfort, and joined groups on Facebook where, each day, hundreds of people would share story after story of betrayal.
These groups are largely made up of women in heterosexual, monogamous relationships describing scenarios of gaslighting, lies and severe mental health consequences. One woman found hundreds of sexually explicit images on her partner’s phone a year into their relationship. Another had been with her husband for seven years before she discovered he’d been having affairs; she’d been suspicious, questioned him, but was berated for being jealous and not trusting him. Another had contracted an STI through her partner’s cheating.
It made for incredibly distressing reading. Many of these women decide to end their relationships immediately, others after a period of months or years. I learned that many try to support their partner through addiction. There are groups based on the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. The term “acting out” is used when the addict turns to porn or sex again. Some go to specialist sex therapists, others to couples therapy. Those who end the relationship use these groups not for support as a sex addict’s partner, but for comfort – comfort in knowing it is possible to trust again and to regain your self-esteem. I learned that I had gone through betrayal trauma – and that it is OK to focus on healing myself, not my partner.
“I want to put it out there for women that it’s really quite common,” says Eleanor, who discovered her boyfriend had been seeking sex elsewhere after they’d been together for a year. “I remember the feeling of being very, very alone. Just complete disillusionment.”
The couple were abroad for new year when Eleanor received a message from a woman in her friendship circle who said she had been sleeping with Eleanor’s partner, with screenshots of their conversations. “I remember just feeling that my world crashed,” she says.
Eleanor’s partner believed he was a sex addict and that this was causing him to seek out sex with other women. He agreed to go to counselling, so she continued the relationship, until she came across more infidelity and lies. “It made me feel that I’m not going to be enough for anyone,” she says. “And undoing that has been the hardest bit of work I’ve had to do.”
As sex and relationship psychotherapist Paula Hall, author of Sex Addiction: The Partner’s Perspective, puts it, it’s the degree of “hiddenness” that makes this discovery so painful for partners. “It is such a shock because they have absolutely no idea what has been going on for so long – and when you find out you don’t really know the person closest to you, you end up not trusting the ground that you walk on,” she says. “When there’s an affair, usually it’s a symptom of a problem within a relationship. But not with this.”
Sasha believes she completely changed after discovering her husband of almost 30 years had been seeking sex outside the relationship for at least two-thirds of that time, eventually owning up to his behaviour as a sex and porn addict. “I was the most trusting person, but I don’t trust anybody now. I have always been a very secure and confident woman; I’m not any more. I think these men destroy women,” she says.
It was only in the past eight years that Sasha noticed what she felt to be excessive porn use. “I’d wake up and find him masturbating in bed, and I would pretend I wasn’t awake,” she says. “I always had this sneaking suspicion, once I started to notice the porn, that there was more. Then I found a pack of condoms – he’d had a vasectomy when our youngest was one, so I was like: ‘What the hell is he doing with condoms?’ I believed he was faithful and wouldn’t hide anything from me. But after all this, I started becoming obsessive and searching everything.”
Unbeknown to Sasha, her husband had been seeking counselling for porn and sex addiction. He eventually revealed to her that he had had an affair with a woman at work, then that he had regularly frequented massage parlours to have sex with women. What hurt the most, she says, was when she worked out he’d visited a massage parlour while they were on a family holiday with their children and when she was away visiting her mother, who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
She learned about her husband’s secret life about a year ago, and has decided to stay with him for the time being at least – as many partners do. She says: “To a certain extent I have come to terms with what has happened. I try to make myself live in the moment, but it’s hard. When it’s really bad, I’ll go for a walk or a ride, and just crank up really good music and sing and scream in the car – that helps me a lot.”
But the pain is still raw, and the betrayal – especially the sexual nature of it – leaves deep wounds. “My grandson was four months old when I found out, and I swear it was the thing that saved me, because I would have been gone,” Sasha says. When I ask why discovering a partner is a sex addict leaves such a lasting pain, she says something that speaks directly to my own experience: “It’s so personal, so raw. It’s almost like you’re standing there naked in front of people. And they’re critiquing you and comparing you.”
Eleanor has not been in a romantic relationship since her discovery, six years ago. “I think I just completely separated sex and love,” she says. “I miss romantic entanglements now and I’m probably ready to have another, but it would be really hard to trust someone.”
Partners can be left with feelings of inadequacy, empty of trust. But there is also a burning, uncomfortable question: was the term sex addiction just an excuse?
“If you want to be someone who goes off and has a lot of sex, more power to your elbow – just don’t do it while lying to someone in a relationship,” Eleanor says. “When you say it’s an addiction, what you are saying to your partner is: ‘It’s not really me.’ The more we pathologise normal human behaviours that are bad, the less we take responsibility.”
Indeed, there are still differing views on whether this behaviour can even be classed as an addiction. The term itself is complex, and the interpretations of it are clouded in shame and societal pressures. A 2017 open letter from three sex-positive US not-for-profit groups – the Center for Positive Sexuality, the Alternative Sexualities Health Research Alliance and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom – suggested that to refer to someone as being addicted to sex or porn implies that their drives or interests are “normal” or “not normal”, which can unfairly demonise or stigmatise their practices. Researchers also noted that religious and moral disapproval has contributed to perceptions of what constitutes porn addiction, sometimes shaming what is “normal” behaviour.
Sex addiction was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), used widely in the US, in 1994, because the clinical components that define an addiction, such as withdrawal or risk of death through overdose, had never been observed.
Some research has claimed there’s no evidence that hypersexuality is a disorder like an addiction, with one author from a 2013 UCLA study stating that it “does not appear to explain brain responses to sexual images any more than just having a high libido”. On the other hand, in 2014, researchers at Cambridge concluded that viewing pornography does trigger brain activity similar to that triggered by drugs in the brains of addicts.
“Addiction itself is a controversial domain of research,” says Joshua Grubbs, associate professor at Bowling Green State University’s Department of Psychology. “But at the public-facing level, there is a very basic agreement among scientists that, as with a lot of these substances, people can become addicted to them in the sense that they cannot stop using them, and there are consequences associated with not being able to stop.”
Scientists have so far landed on a clear clinical definition only when it comes to compulsive sexual behaviour. In 2019 it was characterised by the World Health Organization as “a persistent pattern of failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges resulting in repetitive sexual behaviour”. In 2018, scientists had argued that there was “growing evidence” that compulsive sexual behaviour disorder was an “important clinical problem with potentially serious consequences if left untreated”.
“When someone comes to me and says: ‘I have a sex addiction – I need help,’ what I understand them to be saying is: ‘I feel like I can’t stop this behaviour, and it’s causing me problems,’” Grubbs says. “Now, is that a true addiction? Is that a compulsive behaviour disorder? These are all important debates for a scientist to have. But from a practical perspective, I don’t think they carry much weight. When someone says: ‘I have an addiction,’ they’re telling me they feel out of control.”
What many therapists do agree on is that this behaviour is deeply rooted. It becomes a coping mechanism, widely believed to relate to an early emotional or physical trauma, neglect, depression or anxiety. Paula Hall says the addiction is linked to how sex makes you feel rather than the act itself. It’s the escape. “For some people, there is also a desperate need for constant validation. But often it’s a way of escaping life, a life that is just not being managed very well.”
It may say something about the age we live in that the number of people seeking help for sex addiction has increased in recent years. Though Grubbs doesn’t have clear figures, he says the number of referrals he’s received for sex addiction therapy has risen, while Hall, who runs the Laurel Centre for sex and porn addiction therapy in the UK, says she had a 50% increase in referrals during Covid-19 lockdowns.
The lack of a clear definition of what constitutes a sex addiction or sexually compulsive behaviour may have contributed to this rise. It’s allowed for self-diagnosis, blurring the lines between what could be a disorder and people simply choosing to seek out sex or porn regularly. “There is some speculation that people are using the term sex addiction to avoid accepting responsibility for doing sexually gratifying things that other people have a problem with,” Grubbs says. Experts do of course insist on the need to distinguish nonconsensual behaviour from classifications of sex addiction, as Hall told the Guardian in 2018: “It absolutely in no way excuses the offending and is a completely separate issue.”
So it feels especially sinister and dangerous when terms such as illness and disorder are adopted to excuse bad behaviour. Tiger Woods cheats on his wife? He’s a sex addict. James Franco is accused of inappropriate behaviour and admits to sleeping with his students? He’s a sex addict. And, most harrowingly, Harvey Weinstein, after sexually assaulting and raping women for decades, publicly checks into a rehab centre for sex addiction.
“It strikes me as someone looking for a reason that people should not be angry at them for the things they choose to do,” Grubbs says. But that is to discount the experiences of those who bear the consequences.
The sun feels softer, the warmth of the room less suffocating. It is now hours after the first revelations began to crack my version of reality. Each minute brings some relief, with the understanding that I could not feel worse than I did just before. I sit quietly, feeling empty of tears. I look at the man beside me and have difficulty seeing my partner, the person I’ve shared so much of my life with. It is someone else, a stranger. He is someone I don’t want to know.
For a long time I struggle with my ex’s claim that he is a sex addict. I swing back and forth between believing fully in this disorder and thinking he adopted the idea of an addiction to avoid scrutiny or blame. If he does indeed believe he has a problem, I hope he’s seeking help. More than anything, I hope no one else has had to be on the other side of it.
I settle on this understanding: whether or not it is framed as addiction, decisions were made in order to deceive me, and that knowledge is painful to this day.
I cannot be more grateful for therapy, but mostly for friends and family, the people who made me dinner, dropped off packages of chocolate and bath bombs, always listened openly and sensitively; for the hugs, the late-night texts checking in. Time heals, but time with loved ones makes it bearable.
Sasha tells me: “I felt like my world was crumbling – but we’re strong, and we can get through this.” I know that to be true.
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