The Third Tradition is a bringer of many gifts. It makes me a member of the Fellowship. It identifies “lust” as my problem. It is the spiritual link that joins me to other recovering sexaholics and ensures that the meeting will be a safe haven where I can bring lust to the light. And it carries the promise that sobriety can happen for me, as long as I really want it.

As a kid, I was an outsider, not a joiner. I never belonged to anything. I didn’t feel a part of my family, my class at school, or a sports team. As an adult I was fired from many jobs, including a job at my church, where as I left, the door was locked against me.

So I was wary at first about joining this “club.” Could I be a part of it? Did I want to be? My story was tame, I thought, compared to some I heard at meetings. My greatest fear was that they’d say I couldn’t belong! I remember in the early days embellishing my introduction (or “litany,” as we used to call it). When finished, it was, I thought, quite a shocker. Now nobody could say I wasn’t a sexaholic!

Today I know it’s true: nobody can say I’m not a sexaholic. But it’s not my past—shocking or not—that makes it so. As our White Book says, “. . . [We] were driven here by many different forms of the same problem. Some of us fit society’s stereotypes of what a sexaholic might be and some of us did not. Some of us were driven to buy or sell sex on the streets, others to have it anonymously in bars or public places. . . . Many of us kept our obsessions to ourselves, resorting to compulsive masturbation, pictures, fetishes, voyeurism, or exhibitionism” (SA 1).

So if it is not behaviors that define the sexaholic, wherein lies our commonality? As “To the Newcomer” explains, “When we came to SA, we found that in spite of our differences, we shared a common problem—the obsession of lust, usually combined with a compulsive demand for sex in some form. We identified with one another on the inside” (SA 1).

This is the genius of SA: that our disease is lust, manifested in various forms. The way we acted out didn’t matter. What was going on in our heads was the problem—the thoughts we could never get rid of, the images that would not go away. Lust, not sex, was “The Force Behind the Addiction” (SA 39). As the Big Book says about alcoholism, “Our liquor was but a symptom” (AA 64).

So lust is our common problem; sexaholics are powerless over lust. But the glue that bonds us in fellowship is something more than that. As the White Book points out: “There are hundreds of thousands of people with sexual and marital problems of every conceivable description. Many may want a support group, but not sexual sobriety. . .” (SA 176-177).

Here we begin to understand the Fellowship: a group of people who share a common problem (lust) and who also want to stop. I had acted out for 18 years without wanting to stop. Then came the day when I saw the horror and disgust in my victim’s eyes—and the miracle happened.

It didn’t feel very much like a miracle then. It felt like the depths of “guilt, self-hatred, remorse, emptiness, and pain” (SA v). But today I know in that instant, a tiny germ of humility was intersected by a bolt of grace, and a loving God infused in me the desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober.

The “only requirement” is a double-sided concept. It means that I don’t need any special qualifications to be a member. I don’t need to own a car or have a job. This Tradition teaches me to accept my fellow sexaholics as they are: imperfect, flawed, sober or not sober. And in accepting others as imperfect, I learn to accept myself. The only actual requirement is a “desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober.” Each one has the right to be a member by virtue of his or her God-given desire for sobriety.

On a November afternoon some years ago, I met two members of SA at a diner downtown. They told me their stories and invited me to share why I had come. They asked me the questions in “How Do We Deal With Newcomers?” (SA 180). And they explained our sobriety definition. I understood that I was being offered something I craved—a Fellowship, a chance to recover with other recovering sex-drunks, a life-changing program of action. But then there was this thing they called “sexual sobriety.” Did I want it? Could it work for me? I didn’t know.

I had a lot of questions. I told them I was single, that I came from a certain lifestyle. What about same-sex partners and “committed relationships”? The members laughed and said that SA’s definition was the same for everybody. I was free to choose any road I wanted, they said. “We Live and Let Live,” they said, “but we do not call one another sober unless we are practicing sobriety” (SA 193).

I was full of fear. I told them that I didn’t think I could do it, but I was willing to try. They smiled and said that was good enough. They took me to my first meeting, where I soon learned that same-sex sexualizing and extra-marital liaisons were not options here. But I felt comfortable. I had found the Fellowship, and I was a part of it.

The protective arms of the Third Tradition closed around me; I was in a safe place. The desire to stop lusting and become sexually sober made me a member. This desire—God’s gift to the desperate sexaholic—opened the door to my new life of sobriety.