I came into SA in 1993 with a desire to fix my marriage. I had heard other newcomers share this goal, and it seemed reasonable to me. But placing my marriage relationship before my personal recovery led me to significant danger. I thought that If I placed “fixing” my marriage relationship first, then when those issues were resolved—or if they remained unresolved—I might stop coming to meetings and abandon the program entirely. And that is exactly what happened to me.

When I first came to SA, I did many things wrong. I ignored “A Caution” in the White Book (SA 3), and one Friday evening I dumped my entire secret life on my wife. As it turned out, my “recovery” was as self-centered as my acting-out life had been. I wanted her to “get over it,” forgive me, and stop being angry. That was reasonable, wasn’t it? No, it was not. In fact, my expectations were totally insane. After having heaped on my wife (throughout our entire married life) the burden of satisfying my sexaholism, I was now demanding forgiveness and forgetfulness within a few months. Just like my sexaholism, my recovery began in fantasy and was fueled by denial.

The hard truth was that I had spent decades developing and hollowing out the well-worn rut of my addiction. And recovery meant a long period of painful change for me—focusing on my own healing—while my wife came to terms with who I really was, as well as what her options might be for the future. I needed to let go of her. I needed to not spend time with her. There certainly needed to be no sex, which would only confuse and abort the recovery process.

We were separated for 10 months after full disclosure. Only then did we begin the long process of rebuilding our marriage. This ended up taking years and in many ways, it is still in progress. After a significant illness during our separation, I moved back into our house. I began talking to my wife and listening to her as trust was slowly rebuilt. We had a brief period of abstinence. I changed careers. Things gradually improved. But I came to realize that the marriage we had was dead. If I were to be the husband my wife deserved, I would have to change.

During our time of separation (and beyond), I had to come to terms with some key questions. First, was I willing to live without my wife? Regardless of whether or not we reconciled, I needed to come to this place of freedom. Second, could sex become truly optional for me? Why was this necessary? I needed to relate to my wife as a free man, and not as someone driven by compulsion or dependence. I needed to accept that if she chose to leave me, this would be a reasonable decision based on what I had done to her. God would provide for me regardless of her decision. I knew that if I was unable to surrender her, I would never be free. But it took me 17 years—during which I totally abandoned SA and reached a new bottom—for me to finally surrender. I never would have designed my life this way, but apparently God was preparing for me a long, hard bottom.

I left SA around 2004 because I had never really worked the SA program. Instead I worked my own program, which was to avoid having affairs. As a result, lust continued to lurk, and when Internet porn became available, I crashed. I was watching porn three to four hours a day at work. One day I downloaded a page of thumbnails and stuffed the printed pornography sheet into my pocket, thinking that I would throw it away later. But that night while doing the laundry, my wife found the printout in the pocket of my pants. She asked, “What’s this?” A voice inside my head said, “It’s over.”

I knew what this meant. I believed God was telling me, “If you give this to me now, I will take it away.” The date was July 11, 2010, and I have not looked at porn or masturbated since then. For the first time, I began to work the full SA program. I went back to SA, attended meetings regularly, worked the Steps, got a sponsor, sponsored others, came to terms with my character defects, served where I could, and began to enjoy life one day at a time.

When I first came into these rooms, I would talk about how my wife was acting. But this was not recovery. Today I’m in these rooms and working the Steps with my sponsor and helping others for one reason only: for my own recovery. I needed to recognize my dependent relationship with my wife and my attempts to control her.

Today I know that my wife is not my god. I needed to be willing to live on my own if that was the outcome of her decisions. And finally, after 35 years of marriage, I have come to the place of surrendering my wife to God. I would not trade the freedom we experience today for my co-dependency of the past.

Today, after over four years of sobriety, my relationship with my wife is more free and open than ever. I no longer close down or hide when she walks through the door. I can accept whatever happens sexually without controlling it through lust or fantasy. We can sit in a room and talk with no ulterior motive. When fear and difficult feelings arise, we discuss them, pray, and let go. It was only when I finally let go that I began to realize for the first time that the marriage I desire is possible—that is, a marriage in which two people freely choose one another every day, without compulsion, coercion, control, or dependence. Without this surrender, my own recovery is in jeopardy. With surrender, anything is possible. The promise of the program is that we get as long as it takes to get sober. For me, it took 17 years because apparently what needed to happen inside of me took exactly that long.