2000

Originally published in ESSAY, 2000, Issue One

All in My Head

(Excerpts from Jess’s Member Story)

Sex was the dominant thing in my mind from my earliest memory. I was deeply obsessed about what was under my cousins’ dresses from the time I was in first or second grade. Lots of kids tried to play doctor, but for me it was an intense preoccupation. When an older boy taught me to masturbate at eleven or twelve, I really got into that and into the fantasies I needed for my masturbation. Masturbation stepped up in frequency to three to five times a day. I kept trying to stop, but there was no stopping. I found a piece of pornography and hid it up in the haymow of our small barn in that little town.

…[As a college professor] I got so out of control with my students that I found a way to resign my teaching job. In my business travels I got into a number of affairs. An intense affair, coupled with sex with other women at the same time, finally forced me to see how powerless and out of control I was. I gave up the affair, all sexual relationships, and gradually reduced the flirtations and coming-on to women I met. I still used the mental videotapes of those past experiences as tranquilizers to put me to sleep at night, or as comfort when I was troubled. I didn’t see anything wrong with what I was doing, even though I had been in another Twelve Step program for seventeen years.

Finally, my wife got enough recovery to realize that she could not stand my behavior anymore. She told me to get into SA or get out. I called the number she gave me. The man said, “It’s lust, it’s what’s in your head that is killing you.” That was the greatest relief in my life. …Here I was using what was for me the strongest drug, sexual excitement, and I didn’t even know it. My lust had been my dependable friend for so long that I hadn’t had the slightest suspicion it was really my problem.

Because I now had the Twelve Step program of Sexaholics Anonymous, I knew I never needed to lust again, with God’s help, one moment at a time. My time in recovery has been spent going to meetings, working the Steps, reaching out to others, and practicing these principles in all my affairs. Close and loving relationships developed with men first, and much later with a few women. I’m gradually coming out of my isolation into intimacy. There is a growing love and emotional intimacy in our marriage. The years of abuse have severely impaired my sexual functioning, but that’s all right. The growing strengths in other aspects of the marriage help make up for that.

I love this program. I put it ahead of everything else because it saved my life by helping guide me toward the real Connection. There is a deep love and closeness in our SA group and in the fellowship. Here I’m home.