My name is Sylvia and I am a grateful recovering sexaholic. I was a lonely child. I was a daydreamer. I was never present. Growing up people would tell me things I wouldn’t hear because I was always off in my head somewhere.
Imagine a little girl lost inside a book, playing the piano and always alone but feeling safe. Her world brought her happiness. What was happening around her? Sometimes being in the moment it felt too full of other’s expectations, never fitting in, always different from what she saw on the outsides of others.
I am a recovering sex addict from Ukraine, sober since the fall of 2015. I am completely unable to cope with lust, which manifests itself in objectification, fantasies, and an unhealthy obsession with one person or a group of people. I have lost control of my thoughts, feelings, and actions.
I first joined SA 28 years ago, when SA UK was a very small fellowship with very few meetings. My main form of contact with other members was through the phone. I did, however, meet other SA members face to face, including quite a few female members at the only regular UK Convention held in those days.
For somebody who related to the reading "The Invisible Monster" in our book Recovery Continues, it is a miracle that I can share something on “Practicing Healthy Interactions in SA” today. I think the key word for me is “practice” as I will never be perfect and it is progress not perfection.
My first meeting was on October 11, 2011 and by the grace of God I’ve stayed sober since. In the beginning I found joy in my home group in Barcelona. I was the only woman with about five or six men. They were very nice to me and helped me to stay sober.
When I was three, I had to stay at the hospital due to pneumonia while my parents couldn’t be there with me, which was quite a traumatic experience. I knew the “touching game” from the nursery and knew it was a nice feeling.
The brochure Beginnings: Notes on the Origin and Early Growth of SA has become one of my favorite pieces of SA literature. Roy’s account of SA’s early history stresses that men and women together have been centrally involved in our fellowship’s development from the very start.
It was hard to have fun because I was so sensitive. When I came in, I didn’t know I was sensitive. I thought everyone else had problems and they were bothering me. I also thought everyone else should figure out in advance what would bother me (in order to avoid doing so). I was like a crab without shell, or an animal without skin ... just “walking sensitivity.”
I started in SA as a young, widowed, single mom in June 2005. At that time there were three other women in my homegroup. Within a year, they were gone. My sponsor was one of them. She decided to go back out and try some more controlled lusting, my grand-sponsor moved, and the other woman quit coming because of health reasons.
