If You Want Me, Maybe I’ll Want Me Too
Hypersexuality, Dysmorphia, and the Body I Don’t Recognize
There have been times in my life when I’ve used sex like a weapon. Not against anyone else—against myself. Against the mirror. Against the parts of me I couldn’t bear to see.
Because when I felt the most disconnected from my body, I didn’t disappear. I got louder. Hotter. Hungrier. I wanted to be seen, wanted, devoured. I wanted people to look at me and want what I couldn’t even stand to look at.
It didn’t come from confidence. It came from desperation. If you could want this body—this one I hated, this one I barely believed was real—maybe I’d feel something other than disgust. Maybe I could trick myself into thinking I was sexy, instead of broken.
That’s the thing no one tells you about hypersexuality: it doesn’t always look like fun. Sometimes it looks like begging. Sometimes it looks like putting your body in places your mind hasn’t caught up to. Sometimes it’s less about pleasure and more about proof.
Sex as Control, Sex as Distraction
When you struggle with body dysmorphia, you lose your sense of control over how you’re perceived—by others and by yourself. Hypersexuality becomes a weird kind of solution. If I control the attention, maybe I can control the narrative. If I’m choosing to show skin, choosing to be touched, choosing to seduce—then maybe I’m not a victim of my reflection anymore.
It’s backwards, but it makes sense when you’re in it. Sex becomes a way to assert power: You’ll look at me on my terms.
Except it rarely stays that simple. Because it’s hard to feel empowered when you’re dissociating mid-scene. When you’re curating an experience you can’t even fully feel. When you’re chasing validation you don’t believe, even as you’re swallowing it whole.
The Body as Object, Not Home
I’ve used sex to avoid my body just as often as I’ve used it to reclaim it. If I’m playing a role—hot, wanted, submissive, insatiable—then I don’t have to sit with the uncomfortable reality of how foreign my body feels to me. Especially post-surgery. Especially in recovery. Especially when my size is changing but my brain hasn’t caught up.
Being sexual became a way to stay ahead of the discomfort. Like, If I’m the one offering myself, then no one gets to notice before I do. No one gets to reject me before I make myself useful.
The truth is, for many people, hypersexuality is a trauma response. It’s a way to numb. A way to override the shame. According to therapist and sex educator Dr. Lexx Brown-James, “Hypersexual behavior is often less about a desire for sex and more about managing internal distress.” [source]
That landed hard when I read it. Because I wasn’t always chasing connection. I was chasing escape. Chasing anything that would make me feel less trapped in this skin I couldn’t trust.
So... Is It Bad?
Not inherently. Sexuality isn’t the enemy here. Desire isn’t shameful. But when it becomes compulsive—when it’s the only way we know how to feel worthy, or visible, or okay—it can start to mask pain instead of help us move through it.
The problem isn’t the sex. It’s what the sex is standing in for.
And even that doesn’t make me wrong. It just makes me someone still figuring it out.
I Still Want to Be Wanted
Even now—deep in recovery, learning to be kinder to my body—there are days I still want to be used. I still want to be looked at. I still crave the rush of being chosen, desired, devoured.
But I’m learning to notice why. To ask, Do I want this because it feels good—or because I don’t feel good and I need to disappear into someone else’s want?
Sometimes the answer is complicated. Sometimes I say yes anyway. But I don’t abandon myself to it the way I used to. And that’s a start.
Because the truth is, I still have moments where I think, If you want me, maybe I’ll want me too. But I’m working on wanting me first.
