I have always been, like every other creature with a heartbeat, in need of love. I needed attention from others, connection with others, and the knowledge that I was accepted for who I was. I was often overly sweet to my mom as a little girl and then as a teenager in hopes of receiving her love. However, no matter how much my mom loved me and how hard she tried to give us everything, I didn’t feel the love I so longed for. My father moved to the other side of the country when I was 10, so I couldn’t find it there, either. How I longed for that love, though, for their love. I longed for a sense of being good enough, for feeling I mattered, that I was seen—for safety, acceptance, and recognition.

In retrospect, it’s not surprising that I dove into relationships very quickly. I had my first steady relationship at 13 with someone who was 18. I was just a little girl who needed a big solid figure by her side. Someone who could hold me and love me and hopefully never let me go.

To get that love, though, I couldn’t be myself because my character defects weren’t worth loving. So I adapted myself from a young age to ensure getting the kind of love I so desperately craved. I did this for years and years, from age 13 (actually, long before that with my parents) until I was 30. By age 30, I was empty. Totally spent. I had lost myself and was exhausted and drained. I couldn’t continue to live, not even with the strongest will in the world.

Then I prayed sincerely for the first time in my life. It was the Serenity Prayer, which I knew from AA. One day later, I—the dependent love junkie—got the strength to leave my partner. What a miracle!

It took almost another year before I came to SA. In the meantime, I continued to seek attention, love, and safety in the very worst and most dangerous places you could ever imagine. When I was on the verge of suicide, I found SA. My craving for relationships, sex, and lust was destroying me, and I gave myself completely to the Program. I had no other option.

By working the Steps with my sponsor, I discovered a Power greater than myself. I first experienced Higher Power in meetings and then got to know Him better by writing the Step Two inventory as suggested in Step Into Action. That was a miraculous event for me as I discovered that Higher Power can and wants to be everything I once sought in my parents, relationships, and sex partners.

God, as I understand Him, loves me immeasurably. He understands and acknowledges my fears and insecurities and can even take them away from me. He never thinks I’m too much, redundant, nagging too much, talking too much, or being too busy. He gives me nonstop attention and love. He accepts me for who I am today, not for who He thinks I should be. He is the One I always needed but could never find. Of course not! That which my heart desires cannot be given by any human being. I know now that that’s impossible.

Higher Power loves me and guides me. He made it possible for me to find myself: who I am, what my interests and talents are, and what my true values are. What a gift! Thanks to that Higher Power, I continue to discover myself, take good care of myself, and love myself.

Maybe that’s the greatest gift of all, that I love myself. I love myself enough to genuinely enjoy spending time with myself (read: with a blanket on the couch, a book, a few candles lit, and a cup of tea) and to love myself so much that I stay true to my newly-discovered values. The love I always sought in men, I find today in my Higher Power and in myself.

Does this mean that I’m now cured and no longer a relationship junkie? Absolutely not. But as long as I remain abstinent from relationships, from men, I can stay close to my own inner self. But even when I go astray, I have one certainty: God loves me unconditionally, no matter what I do. This unconditional love is exactly what I have always sought, and now have found through SA.