Rob Weiss
LCSW, CSAT-S
Clinical Social Worker/Therapist
Beverly Hills, California, USA
Answers questions in Sex Addiction
What I do
Robert Weiss LCSW, CSAT-S is Founding Director of The Sexual Recovery Institute - Los Angeles, a <a href=
My story
A UCLA MSW graduate and trained under the direction of Dr. Patrick Carnes, Mr. Weiss is a former board member and committee chair of The National Council for Sexual Addiction and Compulsivity and has lectured for The UCLA Neuro-Psychiatric Institute, The American Association of Sex Educators and Therapists The National Association of Social Work and in Washington DC at The NIH (National Institutes of Health), among many others. He provides clinical training for numerous multi-addiction treatment centers, among which are Pine Grove, The Gentle Path Program, Sierra Tucson, The Life Healing Center and The Meadows. Media appearances in the past year include The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Dateline NBC and CNN. Past appearances also include 20/20 and ABC World News Tonight. Mr. Weiss is the featured therapist in “Hypersexuality” a 90-minute Discovery Channel program about Sexual Addiction filmed by the BBC.
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Answered Questions(6)
Infidelity Should Only Be Revealed in a Therapeutic, Supportive Setting
I have cheated on my wife many times in the past but an STD scare a few months ago convinced me that I need to change my ways. She has never caught me in my indiscretions. I have been working with my pastor in counseling sessions to try to improve myself and he says that my behaviors are driven by some sort of compulsion. He says I need to tell my wife what I’ve done or I will continue to repeat the mistakes of my past. I am worried that I will be causing her pain for no reason and putting my marriage, which I really want to save, in jeopardy for no good reason.
Read answer →Husband on Webcam - Is It Cheating?
I found that my husband has been participating in regular webcam sessions with performers that he pays to take their clothes off. I feel quite betrayed but he says that it’s totally meaningless, that I am overreacting and that it’s just a harmless outlet for him and that it is something that most guys do. I don’t know what to think but the fact that he was using a credit card that I didn’t even know about to pay for his thrills makes me wonder how much he is still not telling me. I feel like he has been cheating on me and it’s hard for me to even look at him across the dinner table anymore. Am I overreacting? But even if I am, how can I change the way I feel?
Read answer →Dangers of violent porn?
I look at porn on the internet pretty much every day. I don’t have a girlfriend so it is my only way to get off at the moment. I don’t really have a problem with this, but I am a little worried about how the porn could affect me. For the last while, regular porn hasn’t really been very exciting to me. I am always heading towards sites that show more violent or humiliating and degrading pictures and movies. Sometimes the things that I watch make me feel a little disgusted with myself after the fact, but when I start looking at porn again the next time these are the kinds of sites I just seem to head back to time and time again. Do you think that this kind of porn can affect me in some way? I do find myself fantasizing in real life by putting women I know in the kinds of scenes I have been watching. But I know that I am a good person and I would never act like that really. How can I not be excited by what gets me excited? It seems like something I have no control over?
Read answer →Compulsively Fantasizing About Sex
How can I have a normal life in recovery from sex addiction when so many ‘normal’ things in life are triggers that can lead to my acting out? I am a 38 year old gay man and have been a sex addict for as long as I can remember, but only started calling what I am and how I act sex addiction about a year ago, after things became too painfully clear and with the help of some therapy. Anyway, I am currently trying to maintain celibacy as a stage of recovery. I hope to one day have an emotionally connected relationship but I don’t think I am quite there yet. I just can’t seem to resist temptation. My therapist told me that I should try to stay away from things that got me thinking about acting out, but how can I do that when things like smelling some guy’s cologne on the bus, or seeing a magazine ad for deodorant or heaven forbid, going to the gym can leave me compulsively fantasizing for hours, almost to the point that if I don’t act out on my fantasies I can’t even function normally at work, that’s how bad it is. So what do I do? I am trying so hard to get a handle on this, but at this point it seems like my two alternatives in life are either to become a total hermit and avoid any contact with humanity, or to continue on as I was, which wasn’t so hot either.
Read answer →Porn addiction
I’ve got a real problem with internet porn. I used to think it was no big deal but now that I’m in danger of losing my job and my marriage, I’ve got to concede otherwise. I need to cut this garbage out of my life. I’ve tried on my own and I keep going back to it so I know I need some kind of help but I also can’t imagine telling anyone about my problem. I’m a father of 3 teenaged girls and a fairly respected church going member of a small and close-knit community. Because of my job and because I can’t tell anyone about my problem, I can’t go anywhere else to get help and there’s no way I can talk to anyone local about it. I think the only thing worse than living this way would be living this way and having everyone around me know how I spend my days. I will masturbate to internet porn 3 or 4 times a day, almost every day. I do it at work every afternoon and late at night in my office at home, behind a locked door. I used to be a very well thought of at work but I now spend so much work time surfing for porn that the quality of my work has really suffered and I think I’m actually in danger of losing my job. I was even caught masturbating at work once, by one of the cleaners, but he didn’t to my knowledge, say anything about it. My wife and I used to have a great sex life but now I have difficulty performing with her and avoid sex. I think she knows what I do late at night but she prefers to turn a blind eye to it, I think. I think she may blame herself, even, for my lack of interest. Needless to say, our marriage isn’t what it once was and she has started asking me if we need to try a separation. I am too ashamed to tell her the truth. I am also very ashamed at some of the stuff that I look at online. I can’t avoid the internet as I need to use it for work but as soon as I’m online the urges become irresistible and I can’t exactly put on anti-porn software on a work computer. How can I control myself so that I can’t get past this addiction before it costs me everything – even though I can’t see anyone for help?
Read answer →Cheating Husband
I just left my husband after finding some texts on his phone from another woman. He eventually confessed to cheating but I didn’t really need his confession as he has cheated on me so many times in the past I am beyond believing his lies anymore. He says he loves me and the other women don’t mean anything to him beyond sex and I think I do believe this. He says he thinks he’s got a sex addiction and that he is willing to go and get help for it if only I will come back to him. How can I know if he really has a sex addiction problem and that he’ll be able to get help and change?
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