One of my dearest friends fell in love with a man I knew. He was my physical therapist. She hurt her shoulder so I gave her his number and suggested she see him because he had worked with me for several weeks with a sprain. I told her "You'll really like him. His office is attached to his cottage. He has an amazing Zen garden and a little Westie-dog who loves all his patients. He's a good guy."
My friend went for an appt. By the third appt. she was crazy about him. By the sixth or seventh appt. it was obvious to them both. There was chemistry. He told her that medical ethics prevented him from dating a patient. So she found a new physical therapist and they began dating.
He was on the face of things a man devoted to good health of both body and mind. He was good-looking, smart, friendly, nice to the 96 year old woman next door, and crazy in love with his little dog. His office was beautiful with a fireplace and Asian touches. His gardens were gorgeous.
I thought my friend would be safe.
He was a sex addict.
It took my friend nearly a year to discover this. In that year of not-knowing, he would do things that deeply upset her, say things which demeaned her, and often just shut her out. But always they patched things up and started again. I never asked her for details of what was happening--I don't pry--or maybe I could have helped her realize the true problem sooner. I just thought it was a rocky relationship.
Finally she used his password and she read his emails. For an entire month. All the emails setting up meetings, orgies, the works. He was and is a full-blown sex addict and on the surface he looks as safe as Dr. Oz.
When she told him what she had found, she gave him a choice: treatment, counseling/ or their relationship. He chose his addiction.
I think addictive disease simply generates addictive behavior. I heard it described in a TV show as a whack-a-mole game. You push one addiction down and another pops up.
So I think many people addicted to drugs will act out sexually, most especially if they have childhood sexual abuse in their history, or if they are narcissists who feel entitled to feeding their appetites. And this is in part why I and others here suggest with all our hearts that a person who is with an active addict back away for a good year from intimacy so to see what the addict is about. Recovery from addictive disease. Or jumping from one drug to another. My exrabf was a long-distance cyclist after he gave up drugs. He was a very very good cyclist. He won races. And he admits that he really just traded one addiction for another. (Then he crashed and was put on morphine and painkillers and that is an entirely separate story I have shared here).
I just cannot trust anyone with addictive disease who is not working a daily program of recovery, receiving long-term counseling, and doing service work with other addicts. The brain is, otherwise, just begging for some kind of escape.