SINGAPORE: Online media giant AsiaOne.com on Tuesday published a series of articles focusing on sex addiction in Singapore, focusing mainly on women and their “addiction” and cravings for sex in Singapore. In detailed reports, the online newspaper focused on the “growing” need for some Singaporeans to need sex all the time. The reports discussed one woman, who lost her job, husband and child as a result of her “addiction.” In another, a man talks about having a meeting with a colleague, but ends up sexually assaulting her as a result. His defense attorney says his addiction to sex was the culprit and that medical assistance is needed to “cure” him, allaying the seriousness of the charges. For residents in Singapore, sex has become a hot topic of late, with reports of businessmen, and women, using sex in order to seal business deals in the country, using underage girls as sex workers to “feed their need.” But the question that analysts, observers, residents and even psychologists in the city-state say is missing from the reports is whether or not sex addiction is a true medical condition and if it is one that is a problem facing enough Singaporeans to make worthy of the “expose.” A few blocks from Singapore's business center, Yang Fuek sits in his office, listening to a patient discuss her struggle with depression. He waits patiently as she details how she feels down, not wanting to go to work, meet people and friends, and how “all I want to do is sleep.” Yang then talks about the future, goals and how to move forward with the young woman's life. He tells her that “depression is normal. We all struggle with the ups and downs of life.” For him, a psychiatrist of 17 years, “depression is one of the most common problems facing Singaporeans.” But what about sex addiction? “Sure, I get a few people who come in and complain that they want to have sex all the time and that this is ruining their life,” he told Bikyamasr.com, “but the reality is that for the vast majority of these people who claim sex addiction is that they are really depressed, or simply unhappy in their current relationship. They are not getting the sexual response they want from their partner, so they search elsewhere.” When shown the numerous reports in AsiaOne.com on Tuesday, Yang laughed them off as an “attempt to create an issue where one does not exist.” He pointed to the cases reported, arguing that they are simply “men and women who want an excuse to sleep with others. That's fine, but making it a medical problem is just not the case. In the majority of the medical world, and in psychology in particular, we understand that humans are sexual beings, but we live in societies and restraint is needed.” For him, and others in his profession, he said that using sex as a medical excuse for abusive behavior is nothing new, but should be examined closer. “Sex addiction is a relatively new concept. Media is pushing it more and more these days, but most of the time, if not all the time, there are other, more important factors that go into this behavior,” he argued. Ask Marlon Thomas, a British expatriate living in Singapore who is now recently divorced because his wife had had numerous affairs. “She said she was the victim of sex addiction, but now that she is again happily married, she told me recently that she doesn't go looking for new partners,” he admitted. “For me, it was just that we fell out of love and were no longer having sex, so she went elsewhere. It wasn't an addiction, it was unhappiness and a desire to be fulfilled. I understand it and am not angry anymore,” he told Bikyamasr.com. The AsiaOne.com reports go into detail about how the “affliction” affects people, putting them in precarious positions and affecting their family life and their work. But Yang, and other psychiatrists Bikyamasr.com spoke to, argued that sex addiction is a “creation of the media in order to sell and get readers. We believe there are numerous other factors that go into sexual desires and a need to go outside someone's current situation. So we must be weary of the reporting on this ‘disease' if we as a society want to understand sex.”
