Dear Son:

It is amazing to see the very same issue that I experienced with my mother reappear in my relationship with you. The same wedge of estrangement, resentment, and detachment that I created and nourished with her has also developed in my relationship with you. I’m not surprised, considering the damaging behavior I inflicted on you in my addiction. I’m now aware that the same feelings I have toward my mother are present in your attitudes toward me.

With my mother, no matter what I did, it was never good enough. No matter what I thought, it was never right. I could never measure up to her perceived expectation. As a result, I found everything intolerable, and I built a wall that was impenetrable around me. Unfortunately, I chose to escape this resentment and self-pity by acting out sexually; first with myself and then with others. All the time I had an insatiable need for more and more pornography.

Living inside my head, I deluded myself into lusting for newer and different behaviors to increase my sexual high. Whatever I did was never enough, and it took me to places of great pain and shame. When I let myself be consumed by lust, I lost all touch with reality and with life. No one else existed and the only things important were my own needs and desires.

This has been a progressive disease for me, beginning with some very early shame-based events that occurred in my childhood. The main memory seems to be the time my mother beat me severely for dressing as a girl when I was playing beauty pageant with my younger sister. I retreated into myself and knew that I had to hide from her and the outside world. (A part of me knows the behavior was innocent, but another part sees it as wrong.) That sense of shame and want became inseparably coupled in my head; one could not exist without the other. The endless cycle of searching for more and more lust continued with greater and greater shame.

I’m so deeply sorry that this illness of mine permeated your childhood. The worst part was my acting out behind closed doors with mom’s computer while you and your sister were watching videos on the couch in the living room. I would also stay up late at night acting out via online dating sites and porn sites, and then think I could awake the next day and be a “good father.”

I started putting my being back together with a commitment to recovery in SA in Spring 1998. I did well after a few weeks and was able to stop the acting out in May 1998, but then I found a host of character defects, especially my rage, resentment, and self-pity appear as the driving forces of my addiction. I’d like to think things were somewhat better for you, but I know I was still a very emotionally broken person.

I stayed sober until April 2003 but then lost my sobriety to a single bout of masturbation. My ego had gotten the best of me; I thought I deserved a reward for my great service to SA. I was wrong and got back into sobriety.

In August 2004, your Mom told me that I had become the man she had always hoped I would become. My ego ran with the thought that I was fixed. It wasn’t too long before I allowed myself to go back to my past behavior, starting with once-a-week masturbation. But in my mind there was no sanity, and it quickly escalated. Soon all walls were down and I was back online looking for more of the same old crap. I simply had to have it. I thought I deserved it and that I needed to get it before I was too old to enjoy it. My sick mind when unleashed looks for any and every sick thing it can find and excludes all else.

After the terrible revelation to your Mom, I was able to at least stop acting out and got back into meetings. I acted out three more times over the next nine months. Finally, in August 2005, I saw the despicable nature of my sickness when I tried to engineer a load of resentment toward her just prior to her leaving on a business trip. I acted out the last day of her trip just prior to her coming home and realized the full extent of the damage I was doing to myself. The “high” was gone and I saw that I had never given up this addiction for myself. I have been sober since that day.

I finally told Mom about this last episode this past summer, because she has told me that if we are honest with one another, there is no addiction. This program means having my life back. If I act out I am lost and gone. Life means doing the business of the SA program. It means going to meetings, and for me that is three per week. It means talking to people at the meetings about our problem and our solution. It means helping the newcomers find sexual sobriety. Now we have over 50 people that come to meetings in the area. Sobriety means that I give back what I have been given in order to keep it.

The other big component of Twelve Step recovery is making amends. The other night, Mom expressed to me her deep remorse about the childhoods we may have given you and your sister and our sadness that we didn’t do what we should have done to help you. I became defensive (as addicts often do when challenged), but I’ve since thought about her comment. She’s right. I need to make amends to help heal this hurt.

Son, I am profoundly sorry for the effects of my acting out sexually that have directly impacted your life. I was an unfit and broken father who inflicted negativity and soul-sickness into our family, our home, and our lives. My negativity permeated our lives and did great harm. You see, I sincerely believe that this illness is passed on. I know that there are many parts of this disease that came from my mother. I have never quite forgiven her for that behavior—but I know I must forgive her for my own continued sanity and sobriety.

I was wrong for letting sexual lust preoccupy my being especially during your childhood. I know it may seem trite, but I sincerely ask for your forgiveness. I have a deep desire to have a better relationship with you. I want you to know I love you very much. I work and pray every day for your happiness in life.

I have seen great benefits come into my life as a result of letting go of resentments, pain, and character defects. It is not easy, but it can be done. I have seen this miracle come into the lives of many people I associate with on a weekly basis in our meetings.

You are now 21 and your own person. My attempts to shape and control you are no longer needed or useful. You are your own man and need to be making your own decisions. It is not my place to impose my judgment or criticism.

As I recently heard in a meeting share: “What makes me think that God doesn’t have your best interest in mind all the time?” My amends to you is to live each day physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually sober; to be a loving husband to your mother and a kind and loving father to you and your sister, and to give this gift of sobriety to others.

— Love, Dad