After five years of sobriety and co-ed religious formation, I thought I could be like normal people and have healthy friendships with the opposite sex. I had made many female friends in the previous years, women I hoped I could see as sisters and live in freedom. There was no lust, as I understood lust, in most of these relationships, no sexual fantasy and crossing physical lines. In some, there was sexual attraction and I knew that I should be careful. I hoped I could ignore the disturbances I felt were neurotic scrupulosity and continue to do as I pleased.

I thought I wasn’t engaging in lust with these female friends. Why then did I continue to experience such disturbance and spiritual noise? For years I furiously denied that lust was present in these friendships. If so, I might have to give them up. But the pain became intolerable. I finally became willing to be honest.

Today I have come to understand that lust truly has corrupted the “very fabric of my being.” Lust has corrupted my emotions and my social instincts, especially when it comes to the opposite sex. Even though I am not fantasizing about sex with my female friends, I engage in what I now see as a form of relationship lust. “Please connect with me and make me whole.”

My God-given social instinct and desire for connection becomes supercharged with NEED for a high, a NEED for relief, a NEED to be made whole, an escape from my lonely world. If I don’t get this connection, I’ll die!

I now believe these inner disturbances tell me that lust is present – often of a more subtle form. Something is not surrendered. My Higher Power has shown me that He must be the one to make me whole. While I was not meant to live in a vacuum, Woman had become my higher power. Mis-dependency. My Higher Power does not want me lonely but he also wants to free me from mis-dependency. He will lead me to make the REAL connection that I need.

It’s amazing that after years of sobriety I continue to see that lust goes deeper than I thought. Gratefully, so can my recovery.