I have amends to make to some people. A few years ago, I abused four women, and I hurt two others for terribly selfish reasons. The four women were prostitutes. They were working in that abusive industry here in my own locality. Two were on the street, one was listed in the classified ads, and one worked in a “studio,” a sanitized name for a brothel.

In the eyes of all four I saw disgust. At the time I thought it was about me. As a typical addict, of course I assumed everything was all about me. I now wonder how much of that disgust was because of what their lifestyle was doing to them. It is not just their bodies that get used and hurt. Prostitution damages the spirit. I harmed more than their bodies. I may have even hurt them worse than if I had hit them. I fed the system. I paid the pimps. I kept them in slavery.

In their eyes I saw fear too. They were vulnerable. They did not know what I would do to them. They got hurt and battered all the time. They were beaten and abused by their pimps. Of course they feared me; they learned to fear men, because men abuse them.

The fifth woman used to be a friend and the wife of a friend. She is now a former affair, and the wife of an ex-friend. What we had was not love, though it masqueraded as love. It was lust, and a selfish thing. If I had loved her, I never would have jeopardized her marriage and her health. My actions were focused on my own pleasure, on what I could get, and not on her good. I used her like the other four. I lied to her and I led her into adultery.

The sixth woman is my wife. I have been apologizing to her ever since I entered recovery. I will continue to apologize in word and deed. I will keep trying to make up for all the ways I hurt her over the years. I will never finish, but I must never stop trying. I am learning to listen to her better, to be kinder and gentler. I am also learning to communicate, to be aware of my feelings and to share them. The most important amends I can make to her is to keep growing, learning, and following this path of recovery: to get to my meetings, to stay in touch with my sponsors, and to let my Higher Power take care of the person I hid from her all those years.

When I am recovering, I am giving her the best I can, because I am becoming what God wants me to be.

My sexaholism started many years ago with a magazine. I saw women pictured as objects to be viewed and consumed with the eyes of selfishness. That false connection, that illusion of intimacy, was a temporary high that masked my pain. I was not equipped to make a real connection. I was a “love cripple” who feared real intimacy, and I used the lies and distortions of pornography as a substitute for the truth of a real intimate relationship.

Eventually I replaced magazines with the Internet, “the crack cocaine of pornography.” Not only was it faster and bigger and filled with a seemingly limitless selection, it was also cheaper and more secret. I descended deeper into a world of lies, delusions, and deception. I saw the exceptional as normal or necessary. I began to feel I deserved things. I tried to demand things to which I have no right. It started with images, and progressed to chat rooms and seduction games, and it was only going to keep progressing.

I became more and more selfish and needy, more and more demanding and difficult towards my wife. I started to destroy a good marriage and replace it with lies, greed, and disappointment. I let my wife down. I focused on what she did not want to do instead of the wonder and the gift that she is. In the end, I jumped into a false connection with someone as sick as I was in her own way.

When I began the affair with my friend’s wife, I stopped using pornography. At the time, I was surprised and confused. In retrospect, it makes perfect sense. I replaced the visual illusions with a live fantasy. I was not getting better, I was getting worse. I had gone from using images to using real people. I was in a spiral dive.

Then I ended the affair and cut off contact with her in the same way I had always burned the magazines and cleaned my computer drive. That was a part of the addictive cycle for me. I always quit and decided I would never do anything like that again, ever. Like I have read from others, “Quitting is easy—I’ve done it a thousand times.”

I came into SA for two reasons. First, my profession found out that I was not what or who I presented myself to be. All the time I was acting out and sliding deeper into addiction, I was supposedly helping and leading people. On the surface I was very different from what was brewing underneath. Then my double life was revealed. My actions, and the choices I made when active in the addiction, carried a terrible price for us. I was banned from working at my job, and I lost our home, friends, and community. Now I am working in a different field, with a decreasing chance of ever reentering my former occupation. My income may stay low and we may struggle for a few more years, but as long as I am sober and keep working the Steps, I am far better off.

The other reason I came to SA was a better one. Deep inside myself, I always wanted out. I was relieved to finally be getting help with my addiction. I was no longer alone. It was a huge weight off my conscience and my heart to lose my double life. I no longer had anything to hide, it all became known. My professional suspension was widely published. All my former colleagues and potential employers were warned about me. I could not pretend that all was fine. I had to lean on God and depend on others. I found out I like living this way better.

So now what is different? I have changed, but it was not I who did it. God changed me. I am not alone in this struggle. Breaking the isolation has been the biggest change. Now I meet with others who have struggled and are struggling with the same or similar issues. We ask for strength from a Higher Power. We try to live sober lives. We try to give back instead of taking. We challenge each other to recover from sexual obsession and addiction.

This is why I keep coming back. This program is working for me as I work the Steps. There are plenty of struggles. I don’t know how this journey will end, or what detours are coming up, but I am not alone.