[Excerpts from the sharing at the Saturday evening banquet at the Portland, Oregon SA/S-Anon Conference, July 1994]

Hi, my name is Mike, and I’m a recovering sexaholic. And I’m grateful to be here sober tonight through God’s grace, and all of you people. A couple of years ago we had Thanksgiving dinner at my house for the first time. My whole family came. I figured I should say something before we all ate, but I knew there were lots of things going on in the family, so I didn’t know quite what to say. So I said, “You’re welcome to be here as you are. If you’re excited to be here at my house for Thanksgiving, you’re welcome. And if you wish you weren’t here, but you’re just here because this is where Thanksgiving is this year, you’re welcome. And if you’re somewhere in the middle of all that, you’re welcome.” And I thought I did fairly well, and one of my brothers came up and gave me a big hug, and I thought, “Well, that must have been a great speech.” Then my other brother stormed by me with a look like he was ready to kill me, so I don’t know if it’s gonna work or not, but “Welcome, as you are.” Maybe newly sober, maybe not sober, maybe dragged by a husband or a wife, maybe ten years sober and “happy, joyous and free,” and probably, for many of us, somewhere in the middle.

I want to thank my wife and my son, and say that I love them and miss them, and I want to thank all the SA members in this room and not in this room who have helped me stay sober, and I want to say sincerely that any harm I may have caused anyone in this program or S-Anon I’m sorry and I ask for your forgiveness.

What have I discovered in recovery? I’ll start with a few random thoughts. One, that I’m a sexaholic, and two, that I’m sober. Never one or the other, never either/or, for me, today, but both/and. I am a sexaholic, and I am sober. I was in a swimming pool in March…and the first night in the swimming pool was rather typical for me—I spent about 80 percent of the time underwater praying with my eyes closed. [Laughter] Which was good enough, because I stayed sober. And the next day was a very different day. Many of the same people appeared to be out, wearing pretty much the same garb, it being a swimming pool, and I prayed once, and I helped my son learn how to swim for two hours, without lust, without having to run from lust, without having to dive under the water and pray. It was the first time in ten years that I really knew I was sober.

I’m sober today, and I am a sexaholic. I’ve been trying to make friends with women. I made a friend in another fellowship, and one day I found that friend touching me in ways that I’m sure were intended to be friendly, but I sure didn’t know what to make of them. I won’t go into detail, but let me just say that I needed to curtail certain aspects of that friendship real quick, with a lot of mixed feelings, and to take a look at, with the help of some people in Sexaholics Anonymous, what had been going on beyond friendship, not so much in my behavior, but in my mind. So I am sober, and I am a sexaholic.

I’ve discovered, for me, that in the many arguments I’ve had over the years in Sexaholics Anonymous with members about “do we have to be absolutist on things, or more moderate? Do we have to strike a balance, or do we have to draw a line in the sand?” I’ve discovered for me that it’s both/and, not either/or. I have to be absolute about some things in Sexaholics Anonymous. No sex outside of marriage, including sex with myself. That’s an absolute, for me, in Sexaholics Anonymous. It’s not something I want to be moderate about, it’s not something I want to find any balance about, it’s just the way it is. I draw a line in the sand, and I don’t cross it.

How to do that, how to stay sober, how to be in recovery, there I find myself a little more wary of absolute thinking, because I see lots of people stay sober in lots of different ways. One of those has to do with marriage. There was a recent article in the Essay about abstinence in marriage, and I thought it was a pretty good article, but I wanted to write another one, and maybe I will, and the title would be “Sex in Marriage.” Not either/or, but both/and. I’ve had celibacy in my marriage, with my wife. I’ve also had sex, and at different times, I’ve needed both. What I’ve found is that because sex in my marriage today is lust-free for 90-some percent of the time, that my sexual relationship with my wife no longer covers defects, but exposes them, because there’s two real human beings in the room. Sex is not the enemy for me today. Lust is the enemy.

I’ve also discovered that for me SA works best when it’s a 12-Step program, nothing more, and nothing less. It’s not a religion. It’s also not a therapy group. There’s lots of stuff that religion does that I need in my life, and there’s lots of stuff that therapy does that I and other people may or may not need in their lives, and I’m all for all of it, but Sexaholics Anonymous is a 12-Step program for sex drunks who desperately need to get sober, and when I remember that and when my group remembers that, things seem to go better. Those are some of the things that I’ve discovered in recovery.

My early years of sobriety I would call rather strict. No sexual fantasy of any kind. Constant prayer—probably a hundred “I’m powerless over lust. God help me” a day. Some limited sexual thoughts I might occasionally allow about my wife. All others were banished. Even the thoughts about my wife were scrupulously observed to examine the percentage of lust content in them. No “R” rated movies, no “X” rated movies. And those movies rated lower than that had to be reviewed by my movie reviewer. (A gentleman in AA reviews my movies for me, and just simply says without giving me any detail, “Yes” or “No.” [Laughter]) No friendships with women, with very few exceptions, and in the first seven or eight years of my recovery, all the exceptions were women in SA with long-term sobriety. Strict sponsorship. If someone wanted me to be their sponsor, there was very little grey. There were a lot of blacks, and a lot of whites. I remember saying in a meeting when someone announced that they had started a new type of SA meeting for a certain type of member, I remember saying in all my young sureness, “Sounds really interesting, but it’s not an SA meeting!”…

I would describe my first six or seven years as “tight.” Necessarily so, because I was a sex drunk, and I didn’t know how to stay sober, and I had to stay sober, and I desperately wanted to stay sober. I didn’t ask any questions about why I was a sex drunk, where it came from, whether or not I’d ever get any smaller amounts of lust. I just knew what I had to do when I started to lust, and that was my foundation. That’s still my foundation.

And now what am I? I’m ten years sober as of June 3, 1994. And I’ve changed my approach to recovery just a little bit. Sometimes with not very good results, and other times with some reasonably good results. Sometimes today I can appreciate a beautiful woman without lust. Sometimes…. I didn’t used to have any women friends, and I have a few today… I have more trust in my prayer today, sometimes. I’m a little less superstitious and a little less ritualistic and I’m really believing that there’s really a God listening to me and that it’s not the way I say it or how I say it or how many times I say it, or the things I think about when I say it, but that there’s a God coming right into the middle of my lust when I surrender it to Him. Today I’m confident that my marriage bed is free from lust, and I’m free to be with my wife most of the time. My wife invited me to a couple of movies. I saw them both, without permission of my movie reviewer, because I figured my wife had priority. They were fine…. So I’m still pretty strict on the essentials, but I’m less sure I know some of the other answers. I’m a little less tight, a little more relaxed, and I think, a little more able to be of use and be of service. I’m not dangerous today. I was once, and I could be again tomorrow. To be honest, I could be 15 minutes from now…. But by in large today I’m not dangerous, and I’m finding most women are not dangerous either, and that those that are dangerous for me, whether it be my problem or theirs, I can pray for and walk away from. I make mistakes, but when lust comes up l surrender, and by and large I find myself moving toward the world rather than away from it. I ask questions today. I ask “Why am I a sexaholic?” I say, “Can I get beyond lust and surrender and get freedom from lust so that I don’t have to pray a hundred times a day because I’m not lusting a hundred times a day.” And some days it happens and I think “Yes!” Other days it doesn’t happen and I’m not so sure, but the journey is worth it.

I’m beginning to be able to discern for myself what I believe to be right and good and what I believe to be wrong. To turn away from something, yes, because I’m a sexaholic, but also because I’m “moral,” and this behavior or that attitude or that desire is not in keeping with my dignity or with [the dignity of] whatever woman might be in the picture at that time.

So I’m moving forward, I’m not going back. I want to say a little bit more about my marriage. I have known my wife for 16 years. I dated her for just about all of those [years], and we’ve been married almost 10 years. My sexual relationship with her prior to our marriage I would describe as angry, demanding, 100 percent initiated by me, at times abusive, and then I found the program. A celibacy period is the best thing that ever happened to either one of us—finding ways to be together, to talk, to touch, without sex, without lust. Marriage—trying to establish a sexual relationship in marriage, resentment, anger, demands, a lot of push, lust, fantasy—somewhere early on a lot of the direct lusting, the fantasizing about other people went away, but there was still a lot of “push,” and a lot of demands, and a lot of anger…. [Now we are] able to be sexual together, without lust, without anger, without demands, without pressure, without pushing. I don’t want to paint a picture that it is or was perfect, only that it was basically healing, healthy and whole. There was no secret evil hiding underneath the pillow. There was no lust that needed to be torn out. There’s just me and this gal that I married ten years ago.

We lost a baby a couple of months ago; … it was a very painful experience, and surprisingly, it raised questions in me about my recovery, and I know intellectually that it had nothing to do with my recovery, but I found myself thinking “Maybe sex is evil, because my wife is a sick girl, and my baby is dead, and maybe I did it.” And I was able to talk to members of my family and members of AA and members of SA who have become my best friends over the last 10 or 12 years, and talk through some of that with my wife. And I was able to name my child, and to name godparents in heaven for my child, with this woman that I love.

The last thing I want to say is about the 12th Step. I was at my meeting Wednesday night, and I noticed that there were six people in the room that I was sponsoring, and I thought, that’s pretty good, because for a few years there, I wasn’t really sponsoring very many people. I was in a real tight place, and I was afraid to get too close to the sick and suffering sexaholic, lest I relapse. And this is seven and eight years into recovery! Somehow in the last two years I’ve begun to reach out again… and it’s been a great experience to work with this gentleman, and other people in Sexaholics Anonymous. I find myself renewed in my recovery, reminded that in order to keep this program, I have to give it away; that I am helped as much as I am helping, and I’m not so afraid. I think it’s taken me a long time to be convinced at the deepest level of two things: 1) that I’m really sober; and 2) that Sexaholics Anonymous works. I’m glad to be here. Thanks.