There Is Great Hope Here

“I can’t have true union with my [husband] while lust is active, because [he] as a person really doesn’t matter; [he’s] even in the way . . . But there is great hope here. By surrendering lust and its acting out each time I’m tempted by it, and then experiencing God’s life-giving deliverance from its power, recovery and healing are taking place, and wholeness is being restored—true union within myself first, then with others and the Source of my life” (SA 42-43).

I remember sitting in our counselor’s office when my husband told me he wanted a divorce. I was devastated. Not because I loved him all that much. My ongoing emotional affairs with the men at work, combined with sexual fantasies and masturbation, were dearer to me than my husband was at the time.

I wasn’t any happier in our marriage than he was, but we are Christians and divorce is “wrong,” and I would be humiliated if he divorced me. What would the people at church think? I was terrified by thoughts like: Where would I live? Who would support me? I had a well-paying job, but I was afraid of ending up penniless and alone. Mainly, though, I was mad that my husband would divorce me, when he was clearly the problem in our marriage.

Instead of seeking divorce, I would fantasize that my husband was dead and I was married to one of my fantasy partners. But they were mostly all married, so I would also fantasize that their wives were dead. I was in complete denial about my own part in our marriage problems.

After the counseling appointment, I asked my husband if we could go to lunch and talk. I told him I would not move out; he would have to throw me out. I asked two friends to pray for us. Somehow, he woke up the next morning announcing, “I repent, I’m joining the counselor’s group.” The date was June 12, 2001, which is also my husband’s SA sobriety date. I had no idea what he was talking about.

When he told me several weeks later that he was in a Twelve Step recovery therapy group for sexaholics, I was shocked. I knew instantly that was the name of my own problem. I was surprised that it was also his problem. But because of the complete lack of intimacy in our marriage, I did not say a thing.

I will be forever grateful to my husband (whose story follows this one) for choosing recovery that day, because his decision changed my life.

Growing up, I had no ability to relate to others. I didn’t feel loved in my family. We mostly all stayed in our rooms with the doors shut. We didn’t talk much at all. When I was in first grade and at school all day for the first time, I would go to the bathroom during lunch and cry because I didn’t know how to talk to people.

I did not feel safe in my family. I remember my brother once breaking my door down with his fist after I shut it in his face. My dad said it was my fault because I was the oldest. My dad once hit me with his belt for not getting straight As. I diligently tried to be perfect.

I also learned the disease of sexaholism from my family. Well before puberty, I would read the Playboy magazines my dad left lying around the house. I didn’t have a clue what sex was at that time, but from the stories I read, the sexual activities seemed exciting.

The magazines also taught me what grown up women were supposed to look like. My father encouraged me to dress this way. He commented on my clothing and body a lot. This was the only positive attention I ever got in my family. It made me feel special.

My family was socially rejected in the neighborhood where we lived. We did not have the right brand of clothes or any of the social graces. But when I was in high school, the popular guys started asking me out because of the way I dressed. I enjoyed the physical activities initiated by those guys, but they dumped me when they discovered I was not ready for sex.

In college I met a guy who introduced me to Christianity. He also jump-started my sex addiction. We spent long hours in his dorm room alone. He had the attitude of “everything goes” except for actual sex. That became my acting out pattern up until marriage: intense sexual activity but no “sex.”

I did not discover masturbation until my early 20s. My previous sexual behavior always left me frustrated, but now I found a wonderful release from the tension. I spent the next 30 years perfecting that feeling.

In my early 30s, a career fell into my lap. My boss asked me to edit a huge document overnight. When she reviewed my work, she said, “You’re better than I am, I hate my job, I quit. I’ll recommend you to fill it.”

It was a pressure-cooker job of long hours, tight deadlines, and multiple activities to coordinate. I was instantly in charge. I was hopelessly insecure about my own abilities—but the high-paced atmosphere suited me perfectly. I seemed to thrive on it. The adrenaline rush of constant deadlines plus the ego-boost of the “status-y” job enabled me to mask my deep insecurities.

I found that an effective way to control things on large projects was to yell a lot. The guys who respected my work found this “aggressive” quality attractive. My husband did not.

My career involved constant travel. I was surrounded by men. I could act out to images of a wide variety of men in my various work environments. With some of them there was a lot of public flirting. Some co-workers attempted to report my behavior to my husband. I claimed innocence.

My husband and I had gotten married while I had this job. Our relationship prior to marriage consisted almost entirely of acting out. We believed sex before marriage was wrong, but we somehow didn’t think of mutual masturbation as sex.

For the first six months of our marriage, I was out of town on a big project. Sadly, marriage hadn’t cured my compulsive masturbation as I had hoped. I had looked forward to the sexual union as the ultimate high, but I found actual sex to be disappointing compared to the high of masturbation. I thought I might have married the wrong guy.

Over the years, as my sexaholism intensified, my resentment toward my husband increased. I would compare him with the guys at work, who were basically wooing me. Around our eighth year of marriage, I insisted we go to marriage counseling to see why he didn’t treat me like these other guys. The fact that he seemed not to care that there were other guys competing for my attention infuriated me. The marriage counseling accomplished nothing.

When we had been married nearly 12 years, I quit my job and, for the first time, we lived together in the same city all the time. Rage became the main characteristic of our marriage. One day after a big blow up, my husband said he was going to see a counselor because he was “afraid” of me. I refused to go. The counselor, it turned out, was a Twelve-Step sex addiction specialist.

After my husband joined the therapy group, the counselor wanted me to join a similar group for spouses. I refused. I considered myself too spiritual to be in a recovery group. I was better suited to the Bible Study group that met at our house. But the counselor insisted I join the group, so I went, just to get him off my back. My goal was to get kicked out.

The first night I was surprised to find that the women in the group seemed more like me than like the “druggies” I had imagined. When I opened the group’s Twelve Step workbook for the first time and looked over the questions, I could tell I would have to be deeply emotionally vulnerable. I was scared, but I knew immediately that the process was meant for me.

My husband and I each completed the Twelve Steps that first year in our groups. I couldn’t work the Steps with much honesty that first time through. I was terrified to show weakness. I confessed my own addiction by saying “I used to masturbate.” But after working through those Steps, I felt something had healed in me. More important, I noticed from the beginning that my husband was changing. We still did not get along well after the first year, but I could already see that the Twelve Step process was healing our marriage.

The second year, we went to a couples Twelve Step recovery group. The meetings involved communications exercises between individual couples, followed by a large group time for sharing the experience. My husband and I usually had nothing to share because we hadn’t completed the exercises. We spent most of the time fighting over the correct way to do them. But by the end of the year, we were getting along better. The exercises—even though we had not done them “correctly”—enabled us to work through years of pent-up hostilities. When the group began again the next January with similar exercises, we had very little conflict because we had worked through the stuff!

But the biggest turning point in our marriage was when I joined the large SA group that my husband is in. It had taken me years to get my SA past completely out in the open, especially to my husband (even though I had often said, “I’m a sex addict too”). Besides the couples group and spouse’s group, I attended a women’s Step study group of mixed addictions (which included another female SA) and S-Anon. I knew the SA sobriety definition from the time my husband started recovery, and have been sober since December 2001. But the only SA meeting I knew of was my husband’s group of more than 40 guys, including guys who knew me from being in groups with their wives. I was mortified at the thought of attending a group with them.

Then, in 2005, at our local regional convention, I attended a meeting entitled “Women Who Work Two Programs.” I was surprised to see S-Anon women I knew from my city. I was also surprised to learn, for the first time, that there is a women-only SA meeting in my city.

Around that time, I completed my first thoroughly honest Step One sexual inventory and read it to my sponsor. The detailed descriptions about my years of acting out brought me to my bottom. I felt intense shame. I was weepy for months. I started attending the women’s SA meeting—and I felt the miraculous freedom of sharing my weaknesses with others who are just like me.

My sobriety up to then had been mostly based on avoiding all men other than my husband. It was a continuous struggle. I could hardly be around a guy without being triggered. But in SA, I saw that being completely vulnerable (the thing I had feared so much) is what would set me free.

Soon, one of the women challenged me to go to the mixed meeting, where she said I would learn “to not sexualize men.” She was suggesting my husband’s group—the one I had avoided for so long. This was too scary. What would my husband think? What would the men who knew me from the past think? How would I deal with constant triggers? After all, most of my “acting out partners” had been the men I was around all day.

In spite of my fears, I went, and I felt welcomed by everyone, especially by my husband. A few people had expressed surprise at first that my husband and I would be in the same group, but soon almost everyone embraced us.

The acceptance of that group has enabled me to deal with the shame of my own past. Because the group is large, I heard a lot of people share their experience, strength, and hope each week, as well as their failures. I heard great examples of rigorous honesty and getting the inside out. I observed healthy boundaries in the guys as they related to women. All of this gave me the courage to begin sharing my own shame. Whenever I shared, I felt accepted—because I’m just an addict with character flaws, like everyone else.

The mixed group has also enabled me to relate to men in healthier ways. From listening to their shares, I could tell that men have struggles similar to mine, but working my program alongside them (as described in SA) has brought great healing: “What better place to work on overcoming temptations than the sanctuary of a meeting where temptations may be present? This is where we can bring temptation to the light, talk about it, and work through it without having to lust. . . The meeting is the crucible in which our recovery can be safely tested and purified” (SA 178). Today, I feel some reprieve from constant triggers. Some days I can be in the group and not think of the guys as guys at all, but just as friends in the program.

My husband has become one of the guys in recovery with me. He is someone with whom I can be vulnerable and feel safe sharing my weakness. He forgives me and loves me in spite of my character flaws. He is my closest friend. I don’t get mad at him for anything he shares; it is just his share. Also, the group has become a safe place for us to share bits of our past with each other, buffered by so many people. My husband says, “It’s cheaper than therapy.”

This past June, we celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary—a miracle based almost entirely on the Twelve Step program of recovery. I’m still a self-centered sex addict. On a bad day, I get irritated with my husband for not noticing that the world revolves around me. We both have highly dominant personalities. We are not cured of anything, but today we have tools that work, and that enable us to communicate even in the midst of a heated argument. One huge surprise is that, after a period of abstinence and several years of sobriety, our sexual intimacy is much more fulfilling today than the high of acting out ever was.

Over the years, God has taken my feeble efforts at working this program and given me back so much more. As I have worked this program (slowly), I have learned (slowly) to relate better to God, others, and myself—and this has overflowed to true union with my husband.

Surprises

I pulled off a crazy surprise party stunt for my wife’s 40th birthday. My wife (who wrote the previous story) had a high-pressure job where she would fly out of state and work 18-hour days on a project and then collapse at home every other weekend. We got along better then, probably because she was gone most of the time.

She was working in town at the home office for a change, but would be working right through her birthday because a deadline was looming. I got the okay from her CEO and planned a surprise party at the deli next door to her building and had her assistant ask her to take a walk with her to relieve stress. We all jumped out yelling “Surprise!” when they came around the bend. You’d think she was having a heart attack. She was in total shock. Later she told me to never do that again. There is a difference between a surprise and a SHOCK, she said. So I spent the next few years figuring out bigger ways to jolt her senses when she turned 50.

But a lot had changed in 10 years. Over the years, I had sought other ways to get the intimacy I thought I deserved. My wife traveled a lot for work, so I had plenty of time to goof off online. I worked by myself in my own business, and I eventually spent all eight hours “at work” acting out with my cyber girlfriends in chat rooms across several time zones. I was totally consumed by lust. I finally had a physical affair with one of my customers. I told myself that I didn’t feel guilty. I only wanted more of the same.

When my wife quit her jet-set job, she was at home most of the time. This was like tying two alley cats’ tails together and throwing them over a clothesline. Feelings of fondness were gone, replaced by survival instincts. In my immaturity, I felt so scared of my wife that I sought help from a therapist. I was sure that every problem in our marriage was HER fault. On my first visit he told me that I had the biggest ego he had ever seen, a huge false front.

I had wanted him to fix my wife, however. I was positive her father must have molested her and she had blocked it (otherwise, why did she not enjoy sex with me?), so I insisted that she go see my therapist. She went, and both of them announced I was wrong (something about she didn’t dislike sex, she disliked me). My over-blown ego could not handle this idea. I was sure the therapist hadn’t asked the right questions, so I sent her back again, only to hear the same verdict. The therapist said, “What does it matter anyway? You can only work on today.” I was mad at both of them!

By this time, my sexual addiction was raging out of control, and I was looking forward to some day when I might be freed from my marriage. While I was marinating in that attitude, I received a call from my mother-in-law asking what we were going to do for her daughter’s 50th birthday. She was willing to fly out and participate, but I discouraged her, saying that I had everything under control. The truth was, I thought I would be long gone by the time her birthday came around, so I didn’t invest a single second in planning anything for her big event, which was still 10 months away.

One day, at a joint session with my therapist, I announced that I wanted a divorce. I’m a big chicken. I never mentioned the word “divorce” until there was someone around to referee. This announcement did not go over very well. My wife and I spent a lot of time together the rest of that Monday, going out to lunch and out for ice cream. She made it known that she would not leave the marriage without a fight, and that it would cost me a ton of money. I know what that’s like; I had been through two divorces already.

The next morning was when the Miracle happened for me. I woke up on Tuesday and turned around to find God behind me. He had been there all along; I had turned away from Him to pursue my addiction. I suddenly knew that I would be walking a different path than I expected the day before, even if I might be miserable for the rest of my life!

I told my wife we would not get divorced, and that I would go get help for myself. I called my therapist and got into his therapy group for sexually addicted men the next night. One day at a time, God has kept me sober ever since that Tuesday morning, June 12, 2001.

Of course, just getting into recovery doesn’t fix everything right away. There was still this broken relationship. Very slowly we made progress as I worked my program and she worked hers. But soon her 50th birthday was upon us, and I still hadn’t done a thing about it.

My idea of celebrating her big event was to invite a couple who we hardly knew out to dinner at a nice restaurant. This was already a few days past her actual birthday. Later that night she let me know that it was not an acceptable celebration for such an important milestone. All of a sudden my brain did a somersault and I realized the enormity of my problem: after deciding to stay in the marriage, I had forgotten to pick up the planning for her birthday. (I have mental lapses like these all the time!) I was in trouble. It was already Thursday and I did not have anything else planned, except for us to spend Friday and Saturday at our favorite hotel 60 miles up the coast.

I felt horrible, so I called up a limo service and arranged for the driver to pick up 18 people at a church parking lot at a certain time on Friday afternoon. I called our favorite restaurant near the hotel and made a reservation for 20 people for Friday evening. Then I called my best friend and said, “If you have any plans on Friday, I need you to drop them.” He did, and he did. Then I went through a short list of people who had to be there, and called them with the opening line, “Whatever you are doing on Friday night, cancel it.” By Thursday afternoon I had 18 people who were spontaneous enough to agree to the plan.

That night, my wife asked why we always had to go to the same restaurant every time. She was now tired of that one. The best laid plans, even if they are only five hours old, can be reduced to ruins in a heartbeat. I said that I had been craving their special soup, and that we could go someplace else after that if she wanted. This worked, so the next afternoon we drove up and checked into the hotel. I slipped away and called my friend’s cell phone and he said that all systems were in place and they were being seated at the long table. We drove to the restaurant and walked in.

It took my wife half an hour to stop shaking enough to pick up a fork. But all went well after that. Everyone had a great time. My sorry self was rescued from a fate worse than death. She explained again later that night that surprise is good; shock is not. But she didn’t seem as angry this time. For the first time since we entered recovery eight months before, she expressed her love for me!

A few years later, in the office of the same therapist, I listened while my wife described to me, in some detail (prompted by the therapist because I hadn’t been listening), enough evidence to prove that she was also a sexaholic. We made this appointment after she disclosed to me the problems she had with the contractors who had worked on our house remodel.

I had asked her to manage our remodel because I didn’t want to be bothered with it, and because in her job she was good at managing crises. But she kept asking me to be there with her when she interviewed contractors. Several times she said she didn’t think she should be around the house with those guys all day. She would say, “I’m a sex addict too.” In my denial, this went in one ear and out the other. The remodel was supposed to be her job. Besides, she couldn’t be a sex addict like me!

Now, a few years later, she had awakened with a flashback memory of spending too much time hanging around those contractors, feeling triggered, and making some poor decisions as a result. She was suddenly feeling responsible for a large part of our remodel disaster, whereas before we were both blaming me! She wanted to disclose the truth to let me off the hook for some things. But in spite of her good intentions, I wasn’t too happy with her disclosure.

In the safety of the counselor’s office, we talked about the contractor scenario, and then she began disclosing bits of her past, until the therapist told her to stop. I was SHOCKED. It finally sank into my thick skull. I said, “You mean, she’s an addict, just like me?” I thought, “My spiritually superior wife has also been living a double life as a sexaholic? She’s a better liar than I am!” I was furious with her for the whole weekend. What else about her past had she lied to me about?

But in a few days something wonderful happened. I realized, “She is one of us. A friend in the program. No crosstalk. Thank you for sharing. Rigorous honesty. Experience, strength, and hope. Trudging the happy road.” This has turned out to be a happy surprise for both of us.

God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. Now we both go to the same large meeting, and sometimes we share things the other has never heard before. “Thank you for sharing!” It’s cheaper and better than therapy.

I wonder what I should do when she turns 60?