The best thing that ever happened to me was the day that my ex-wife threw me out of the house, near the end of 2006. I had been through rehab and in and out of SA, and yet here I was again, caught looking at porn online. My wife had had it. Thank God she was willing to give up on me.

I felt horrible at the time, but today I can look back at that first month when I was living out of my car (and bumming places to sleep from friends and family) as the beginning of my freedom from dependency on romantic relationships. From an early age, I had accepted the lie that my self-worth comes from whether or not someone else is willing to be in an exclusive romantic relationship with me. I had to spend a long time after my divorce intentionally staying single, so that I could learn to be comfortable without a romantic partner.

In 2007 and 2008—while I was working on my Fourth Step and with less than three months of sobriety—I attended “Sober Dating” breakout sessions at International conventions and marathons. Someone probably frankly told me that I ought to have more sobriety before starting to date, but I entirely ignored him. Someone else probably pointed out that I ought to be through all Twelve Steps before starting to date, and somehow I missed it. Eventually, in early 2009, my sponsor gently told me that I needed to have at least one year of sobriety and be halfway through my Step Nine amends before he would support my dating. I thank God that this time I listened.

I decided to treat dating the same way I treat all other parts of my recovery: I needed to be accountable. So I did not keep this area private from my sponsor or from the other SA members with whom I’m intimate. The “I-can-do-it-myself” attitude is no more useful here than anywhere else in my recovery. And with the abundance of misinformation in the popular media regarding dating, I probably needed more help in this area than in other parts of my recovery.

I was advised that the best way to find people to date was to get involved in activities I like doing (with no romantic angle), and see who God brings into my life. For me, those activities included serving in the nursery at church, joining a gym, getting together with people to play board games, and joining a small group fellowship in my church. These activities gave me a chance to learn how to identify characteristics in other people that I find attractive. This was a significant change from my old criteria: if a woman was willing to tolerate my presence, I was willing to follow her to the grave.

I learned that there are spiritual and emotional personality traits that are more attractive to me than a nice physical appearance. God regularly reminded me that we will all get old and wrinkly, but a heart trained to seek His Will can last a lifetime (or longer, I believe). I’ve also found that simple tastes and humility can be a lot more important in a partner than a sense of humor or being a good conversationalist.

After much discussion with my sponsor and sober friends in the program, I finally asked a woman out on a date. She was one of the ladies from my church group, and at the time I had been sober just over a year. This was an enormous amount of work! Even before our date, I had to constantly surrender relationship fantasies. She hadn’t even said “Yes” yet and I was picking out curtains. Then after she did say yes, I still had to work hard to stay in the present with God.

The date itself was probably the easiest part. We were able to avoid a lot of the “keeping up appearances” nonsense because we had been developing a friendship in our church group, and we knew quite a bit about each other. This was one of the first times when I was actually able to be myself, instead of acting the way I thought someone else wanted me to act. When I dropped her off, I realized that I was exhausted, and that I really did not want to do that again.

I called my sponsor because we had agreed beforehand that I would bookend the event. God took care of me through the process, and even enabled me to disengage decently when she began dating someone else and eventually married him. It didn’t feel good at the time, but the experience was good for me in the long run.

A couple of years later, I started dating another lady from my church. God managed to keep me sober through 16 months of dating and a five-month engagement. Because of SA, we’ll be celebrating our second anniversary soon (although we’re living one day at a time). We’ve found that taking the actions of love in our marriage is easy for us. Our habits of honesty and respect (which began before we started dating) have borne fruit.

I have come to believe that the romantic notion that there is one “perfect” partner somewhere for me—my “one true love,” my soul mate—is an illusion. My Higher Power is my soul mate. He knows me the best, loves me perfectly, forgives me perfectly, and consistently gives me what I need. I’ve also come to believe that the state of being “in love” is pretty close to mental illness. I went through that phase in my previous dating process, when I could never see any faults in my girlfriends. I always thought they were “perfect.” But that’s not love; that’s infatuation—and infatuation always ends. This time, when I began to experience what I saw as my girlfriend’s faults, I had the chance to practice real love. Because of SA, I can choose to take the actions of love toward others regardless of their actions.

Another step I took, on my sponsor’s advice, was to get the addiction out in the open with my girlfriend fairly early. Through the church group connection, both of the ladies I dated knew that I was an addict, because in the group I would talk in general terms about the Twelve Steps and recovery. (Of course I didn’t share the specifics about the compulsive masturbation or the thousands of hours spent viewing porn!)

With the woman I eventually married, I decided to disclose the more specific details of my addiction on our third date. This also involved many discussions with my sponsor and a lot of work on letting go of expectations. My thinking was that my addiction and my recovery are a central part of my life, so keeping it from her much longer was dishonest. I was open to the idea that she might be catching a cab home from the date because she might not be interested in being around me any longer. I was a bit surprised when her response was to ask me what we were going to do on our fourth date.

On the fifth date, we talked about the issue of physical boundaries in dating. What worked best for me was to not go beyond kissing. We talked about this in clear terms, and we both honored this boundary until we were married. Could I have stayed sober and avoided lust if we had gone further than this? Perhaps—but I didn’t trust myself to do that. And by this time in my recovery, sex had indeed become optional and I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize it.

Today my wife and I are building a relationship together based on a foundation of honesty and trust. I know that I still need to avoid lusting after her, and that sex is optional. But through SA, I have found sober sex within marriage to be quite rewarding, and so much better than addictive sex.

Because of SA, I’m able to submit to my Higher Power, to behave with integrity, and to be faithful to my wife. This is what SA has given me: a life far better than what I could ever have imagined.