Originally published in Essay, July 1988

…I am a high-bottom alcoholic and a low-bottom drunk … sexually sober for 14 months. I am eternally grateful … to SA, and to God for my new lease on life. I have received many blessings throughout my life, but my sexual sobriety is the most precious.…

I have read lots of literature on sexual addiction and compulsivity… There is in our SA white book a spirituality and a sense of recovery that I simply don’t find anywhere outside of the AA Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve.… SA is unique in that we don’t promise a “healthy” relationship or a “normal” sex life. These may come about as a result of recovery, but they are not the goals of the program. Rather, the message I hear in SA and AA is that my surrender to God must be unconditional. If I set up preconceived notions of what recovery should bring me (no matter how praiseworthy or noble the goals) I am very likely placing conditions on my surrender to God. The more determined I am to achieve my goals, the less open I am to God’s will for me. That is not to say I don’t have goals or that I don’t work hard toward them. But I try not to make my goals my primary purpose. I try to remain open to letting them go (an often painful process) if an inconsistent Divine will is revealed to me.

Just such a letting-go process occurred for me with respect to my goal (condition?) of achieving a “healthy” sex life in my marriage and “intimacy” with my wife. For the first two and one-half months of my current sobriety, we were celibate. Then sex was gradually resumed. At first it seemed right. There was no lust. It flowed out of a mutual affection and tenderness. And I was open with my SA group about it (something that I had not been able to do in my first six months or so in the program). But gradually marital sex became compulsive for me. I didn’t even see this happening at first—I was in denial. I became selfish and manipulative around sex, as if I was somehow entitled to it because I was staying sober. And sexual gratification was, for me, a powerful narcotic that numbed my feelings. So much for intimacy. Sex was safer and easier.

Fortunately, I was not totally out of touch with God. One evening I recognized that I was very uncomfortable emotionally and spiritually. Rather than watching TV, raiding the ice box, or seducing my wife, I sat alone and quietly reflected. As I searched deeper inside myself, I discovered that I was uncomfortable with the way I was using marital sex. I didn’t like being a selfish and manipulative person, and I didn’t like replacing one drug (lust) with another (marital sex). The next day I began writing an inventory on my marital sex and intimacy issues. I shared with my sponsor, with another married SA member, and at a few meetings. And I prayed. Finally, I made the decision to discuss with my wife the possibility of another period of celibacy. I thought she would be resistant, but she was actually relieved. I had apparently not been so subtle in my selfishness and manipulation.

Like the guy in that [passage from another book], I had been trying to merge sexuality and intimacy in my marriage, and all I got was compulsive sex and a resentful wife. I may someday experience a healthy sex life—and I hope I do—but it is not a goal of my program today. It is not a condition on my surrender. Sobriety and spiritual growth are more important. If it is ultimately revealed that God’s will is for me to be celibate indefinitely, so be it. I have that option today.

I continue to learn important lessons. For example, I initially thought this period of celibacy would be the answer to all of my fear of intimacy problems. I had it psychoanalyzed: Sex was an easy way for me to avoid being truly intimate, so once sex was no longer an option, my feelings would gush forth in one great orgy of marital intimacy. I was wrong. Over six months of sexual abstinence and I still struggle almost daily with an intense fear of letting my wife know who I really am inside. It is ironic when I look back on it. I am a sexaholic, which, for me, means that sex can very quickly become a compulsive activity and a powerful narcotic. And for me, being a sexaholic also means I have a severely reduced capacity for true intimacy. Nonetheless, there I was, with only a few months of sexual sobriety, trying to merge sexuality and intimacy in a relationship.

I have also received two important gifts from this period of celibacy. First, I have now experienced that sex is indeed optional. I sort of believed that before, but deep inside there was always this gnawing suspicion that I was different, that I could not last for any considerable period without some sort of sexual release. But I now see that was only my disease talking. Second, I now have an additional message to carry to newcomers. I used to get very uncomfortable when newcomers questioned the SA sobriety definition because I was still having sex. Now I can speak assuredly from personal experience.…