Certified Gottman Method Couples Therapist · AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist · Practicing Therapy Since 1988
Individual Therapy for Sex and Porn Addiction in Washington
Online Sex Therapy for Out-Of-Control Sexual Behavior Throughout Washington State
Specialized Sex Therapy in Washington
Your partner found something you never wanted them to see.
Maybe it was messages with someone you’d been meeting for sex, charges for pornography or cam sites, or a hookup app you’d told them you deleted months ago.
Now your partner wants answers. How long has this been happening? What else have you hidden? Why did you keep doing it when you knew what it could mean for your relationship?
You’re trying to explain, but sometimes you don’t understand your own decisions well enough to give them an answer.
You may have promised to stop before. Maybe you meant it every time. You deleted accounts, avoided certain websites, or convinced yourself that you could keep your sexual behavior under control.
But eventually you started again.
Your partner remembers those promises, too. Now even when you’re telling the truth, they have reasons to question what you say.
You can see how much you’ve hurt them. They may be crying, furious, or asking questions that make you want to disappear. Sometimes you become defensive because you feel accused of being someone you don’t believe you are. Other times, you apologize repeatedly because you genuinely don’t know what else to say.
And you’re scared they’re going to leave.
You may also be struggling with feelings about the sexual behavior itself. Perhaps you enjoyed the attention, excitement, or escape it offered. Maybe looking at porn was how you relaxed after work, or communicating with someone outside your relationship made you feel attractive and wanted.
Those experiences can be difficult to reconcile with how much you care about your partner.
You might have spent months thinking about your next opportunity to watch porn, checking messages at work, arranging time alone, or finding ways to conceal what you were doing. Now you see how much time and attention you’ve taken away from your relationship.
Perhaps your partner hasn’t discovered everything. You’re afraid another disclosure will end the relationship, but you also know that continuing to hide things may cause more damage.
You may feel ashamed of your decisions, scared by how far things have gone, or unsure whether you can change before you lose someone you love.
And if your partner is willing to give the relationship another chance, you’re facing a question you haven’t been able to answer for yourself: What’s going to be different this time?
You want to become someone your partner has good reasons to trust again. You want to understand why you kept making decisions that jeopardized your relationship, stop repeating them, and know that the commitments you make now are ones you can follow through on.
How I Help You Change Sexual Behavior That’s Damaging Your Relationship
By the time people contact me, their sexual behavior may have already caused serious damage to their relationship. Their partner may have discovered hidden messages, pornography use, or sexual encounters, and previous promises to stop haven’t lasted.
I’ve been a therapist since 1988, and I’m both an AASECT-certified sex therapist and a certified Gottman Method couples therapist. I bring specialized knowledge of human sexuality and relationships to situations where repeated sexual behavior, dishonesty, and broken agreements have made it difficult for partners to trust each other.
Sometimes someone genuinely wants to preserve their relationship but hasn’t understood why they keep making decisions that threaten it. They may have overlooked sexual dissatisfaction, difficulties discussing intimacy, or the role that attention, excitement, or emotional relief plays in their decisions.
I also understand that sexual behavior outside a relationship doesn’t always have the same explanation. Someone might pursue sexual attention because they feel unwanted, while someone else may enjoy the excitement of a secret encounter even when they feel loved and sexually satisfied by their partner.
My experience in sex therapy and infidelity recovery helps me consider these differences while keeping both your sexual behavior and the harm caused by dishonesty or broken agreements in view.
What I Can Help You Address in Sex Therapy
1. You can begin trusting yourself to follow through on decisions about sex and pornography.
In sex therapy, we’ll look at why previous attempts to change your sexual behavior haven’t lasted and identify opportunities to make different choices before changing course becomes especially difficult.
Together, we’ll develop a plan for those moments and examine what happens when you put it into practice, including what needs to change when something doesn’t go as expected.
You can begin building confidence in your ability to keep the commitments you make to yourself. Being home alone, having an unexpected free evening, or experiencing a strong sexual urge doesn’t have to mean repeating a behavior you’ve decided to stop. You can begin collecting evidence from your own experience that you’re capable of making different choices.
2. You can get your time and attention back instead of organizing your life around sexual behavior.
In sex therapy, we’ll examine how much time and attention sexual behavior has been taking from other parts of your life. That includes time spent anticipating the next opportunity, arranging your schedule, concealing what happened, or worrying about being discovered.
I’ll help you understand why certain situations make sexual thoughts particularly difficult to set aside. We’ll work on recognizing when you’re beginning to organize your time around the behavior and identifying what would help you make a different decision.
You can spend an evening alone doing what you intended, concentrate on work without repeatedly checking a site or app, and enjoy time with people you care about without thinking about when you’ll next have an opportunity for sexual activity. You can regain time and mental energy for the parts of your life you’ve been neglecting.
3. You can understand what you’re seeking from sexual behavior and find other ways to meet those needs.
In therapy, we’ll explore what you’re getting from sexual behavior that you haven’t been able to find elsewhere. It might be relief from stress, excitement, feeling wanted, or something you haven’t recognized yet.
I’ll help you understand what you’re feeling and wanting in those situations, including needs you’ve struggled to express or satisfy in other parts of your life. We’ll explore how you can meet those needs more directly, without repeatedly engaging in sexual behavior that conflicts with your intentions or creates unwanted consequences.
You can begin responding to loneliness, stress, rejection, boredom, or a desire for excitement in ways that genuinely address what you’re missing. You can have more choices about how to spend your time and meet your needs, rather than repeatedly turning to sexual activity and regretting it afterward.
4. You can stop organizing your life around secrets and begin earning back your partner’s trust.
If your sexual behavior has involved dishonesty or broken agreements, I’ll help you understand what taking responsibility requires. We’ll examine what makes honesty difficult, including fear of your partner’s reaction, shame about your choices, or the temptation to minimize what happened.
I’ll help you prepare for difficult conversations and learn how to answer questions truthfully, acknowledge the harm you’ve caused, and avoid making promises you aren’t prepared to keep. We’ll also discuss what consistent behavior and accountability can look like over time, recognizing that your partner may need considerable time before they feel comfortable trusting you again.
You can stop deleting conversations, concealing charges, inventing explanations, or worrying about what might happen if your partner picks up your phone. Instead, you can begin living more honestly and giving your partner reasons to believe what you say. You can feel better about how you’re treating the people who matter to you, even while rebuilding trust remains difficult.
5. You can enjoy your sexuality without feeling ashamed of your desires or afraid of losing control.
As an AASECT-certified sex therapist, I’ll help you examine your sexual desires and preferences without assuming that frequent sex, pornography, masturbation, or consensual sexual interests are inherently unhealthy.
We’ll distinguish between sexual desires you enjoy, behaviors you’ve decided you want to change, and feelings of shame or discomfort that may come from judgments you’ve learned about sexuality. We’ll also explore how to pursue sexual pleasure in ways that respect your values, your boundaries, and any agreements you’ve made with a partner.
If you’re partnered, we can address difficulties discussing sex, differences in desire, and concerns about intimacy. When appropriate and with your agreement, your partner may participate in some sessions.
You can feel more comfortable with your sexuality while becoming more confident in your ability to make deliberate choices. You can enjoy sexual pleasure without treating every desire as a problem, and make decisions about your behavior without repeatedly violating your own boundaries or relationship agreements.
What to Expect in Sex Therapy for Porn and Sex Addiction
Understand Your Sexual Behavior So You Can Change It
In our first sessions, I’ll ask about your sexual history, the behaviors you’re concerned about, and how they’ve affected your life. We’ll discuss what you’ve already tried to change, what happened when you tried, and what you want to be different.
I’ll also want to understand what makes the behavior so compelling for you. Maybe you’ve noticed that certain feelings or situations make it harder to resist a certain behavior. Or perhaps you keep making the same decisions even when you know exactly what the consequences could be.
I’ll help you examine what happens before, during, and after those experiences, including the choices you make long before you engage in the behavior. We’ll also explore your sexual desires, relationships, and experiences with sex to understand what may be contributing to the difficulty you’ve had changing.
My experience as an AASECT-certified sex therapist helps me recognize when sexual habits, emotional difficulties, relationship concerns, or conflicts about sexuality need different kinds of attention. That means our work can focus on what’s relevant to your situation rather than relying on the same advice you’ve already tried.
Make Changes That Work for You
Once we understand more about what’s happening, I’ll help you address the difficulties that have made changing your behavior so challenging.
That might involve working through shame that makes you reluctant to be honest, learning how to handle strong feelings without immediately turning to sexual activity, or addressing sexual dissatisfaction and relationship difficulties you’ve been avoiding.
We’ll also identify opportunities to make different decisions before you reach the point where you typically return to the behavior. I’ll work with you on how to respond in those situations, and we’ll discuss what happens when you try those changes outside our sessions.
When something doesn’t go as planned, we’ll examine why. Rather than simply asking you to try harder, I’ll help you understand what happened and what needs to change in our approach.
Sex Therapy for LGBTQIA+ Adults and People in Open Relationships
I have extensive experience working with LGBTQIA+ clients and people in open, polyamorous, and other consensually non-monogamous relationships.
I don’t assume that having multiple sexual partners, enjoying casual sex, using hookup apps, or having unconventional sexual interests means your sexual behavior is unhealthy.
What I want to understand is whether you’re able to make decisions about your sexual activity that are consistent with your intentions, your values, and the agreements you’ve made with partners.
If you’ve broken relationship agreements, we can address that honestly without treating your relationship structure or sexual identity as the problem.
Sex Therapy for Neurodivergent Adults
I’m an autistic therapist who also trains other mental health professionals in working with neurodivergent clients. My teaching includes autism and sexuality, ADHD and executive functioning, sexual and gender diversity, and adapting therapy to neurodivergent people’s needs.
If you’re autistic or have ADHD, I’ll consider how your attention, impulsivity, need for stimulation, routines, sensory experiences, and communication style may affect the sexual behavior you’re trying to change.
I’ll use my experience to develop approaches that fit how you think, communicate, and make decisions. These differences can be important when we’re figuring out why previous attempts haven’t worked and what approaches are likely to be useful for you.
Who is A good fit for Sex and Porn Addiction Therapy?
I work with adults whose pornography use or consensual sexual behavior has become difficult to control and is causing problems in their lives. This can include people who are facing legal consequences related to their sexual behavior, such as an arrest for purchasing sex.
You may be a good fit for therapy with me if:
You’ve tried to stop watching porn, using hookup apps, paying for sex, or engaging in other sexual behaviors, but you keep returning to them.
You’re spending more time or money on sexual activity than you intended, and it’s beginning to interfere with your work, relationships, or other responsibilities.
Your partner has discovered sexual behavior you’ve been hiding, and you’re scared your relationship may not survive another broken promise.
You haven’t been caught, but you’re increasingly worried about what could happen if you continue.
You’re doing things you once told yourself you’d never do, and you’re concerned about where your behavior could lead.
Situations Outside My Clinical Practice
→ I don’t provide specialized treatment for sexual offenses, including sexual assault, rape, voyeurism, child sexual abuse, or offenses involving child sexual abuse material (CSAM). This includes situations where someone hasn’t been arrested or charged.
→ I also don’t provide forensic psychosexual evaluations or prepare reports for legal proceedings.
AASECT-Certified Sex Therapist for Problematic Sexual Behavior
I’m Kate McNulty, LCSW, LICSW
I’ve been a licensed therapist since 1988, and I’ve worked with individuals and couples dealing with out-of-control sexual behavior for decades.
Over the years, I’ve worked with people whose sexual behavior has put their relationships, careers, finances, or personal lives at risk. Many have tried repeatedly to stop on their own, sometimes keeping their behavior secret for years before deciding to get help.
As an AASECT-certified sex therapist, I bring specialized training in human sexuality to understanding why changing sexual behavior can be so difficult. I’m interested in what makes certain experiences compelling, what keeps someone returning to them, and what needs to change for them to make different decisions.
I help clients understand why they keep returning to sexual behavior they want to change, address what has made previous attempts unsuccessful, and make decisions they can follow through on.
If the description on this page sounded like your situation, I’d like to help.
Logistics
Pricing, scheduling, and online therapy sessions
All sessions are conducted by secure, HIPAA-compliant video. I work with adult clients across Washington State.
Sessions are private pay, billed at $500 per hour and $750 for 90-minute sessions. I am not in-network with insurance and cannot bill them directly. For more information about pricing, please see the pricing page.
How to get started in sex and porn addiction therapy
To schedule your first appointment, please choose a day and time on my secure, HIPAA-compliant calendar by clicking the button directly below.
After I approve your request, typically within one business day, you’ll receive new client forms via email, which you’ll review and digitally sign before we meet.
Areas Served Throughout Washington
I’m independently licensed in Washington as a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW, license #SWI.LW.60698797). I provide individual sex and porn addiction therapy through secure, HIPAA-compliant video throughout the state.
This includes:
Seattle and surrounding communities, including Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Shoreline, Mercer Island, Renton, Issaquah, Bothell, Woodinville, and Sammamish
Snohomish County, including Everett, Lynnwood, Edmonds, Mukilteo, Mill Creek, and Marysville
Tacoma and the South Sound, including Lakewood, University Place, Puyallup, Federal Way, Auburn, Kent, and Gig Harbor
Olympia and Southwest Washington, including Lacey, Tumwater, Vancouver, Camas, Battle Ground, and Longview
Northwest Washington, including Bellingham, Mount Vernon, Burlington, Anacortes, and Oak Harbor
Central Washington, including Wenatchee, Ellensburg, Yakima, and Moses Lake
Eastern Washington, including Spokane, Spokane Valley, Pullman, Walla Walla, Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco
The Olympic Peninsula, including Port Angeles, Sequim, Port Townsend, and Bremerton
If you’re anywhere in Washington State, I can work with you.
Common Questions about therapy for out-of-control sexual behavior in Washington —
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Therapy can help you understand why you’ve continued engaging in sexual behavior despite the consequences and develop more effective ways to change it.
We’ll examine what you’ve tried before, what happens when you return to the behavior, and which difficulties need more attention. I’ll help you identify decisions you can make differently and work through what happens as you put those changes into practice.
I can’t promise that you’ll never repeat the behavior or that your partner will stay. I can help you take your efforts to change beyond another promise made during a relationship crisis.
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Yes. You can begin individual therapy whether or not your partner is willing to attend sessions.
We can work on understanding and changing your sexual behavior, taking responsibility for broken agreements, and learning to respond more constructively when your partner is hurt or angry.
Your partner may need time before deciding whether to participate in therapy or continue the relationship. You can begin making changes without waiting for that decision.
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That’s something we can discuss.
I’m both an AASECT-certified sex therapist and a certified Gottman Method couples therapist. Depending on your circumstances and our treatment goals, it may be useful to involve your partner in a session or consider couples therapy as a separate service. Please bring this up at your next session.
Still Have Questions about therapy for sex and porn addiction?
Use the button below to send me a message. I will respond within 2 business days.