True Intimacy
My husband and I were talking about intimacy recently. We agreed that intimacy must be based in truth, and that I need to be totally honest (without gory details) about the big stuff.
My husband and I were talking about intimacy recently. We agreed that intimacy must be based in truth, and that I need to be totally honest (without gory details) about the big stuff.
When I first came to SA, I was one of those people who wanted to control and enjoy my lust, but not stop lusting altogether. I wanted to work my own program. I thought I was smarter than the other members and smarter than my therapist.
I started sex-addiction recovery in 1994 in another sex-addiction fellowship, and spent the next eight years in a state of chronic relapse. Sometimes I couldn’t even get one day of sobriety, although a couple of times I reached six months. But five years ago something changed, and I have been able to stay sober.
I was 18 when I first went to a gay bar. I had to wear a wristband to get in. I stood in the corner on the edge of the dance floor nursing my virgin Rum and Coke. My hair was unkempt. I wasn’t manicured. Every time I tried to connect, all I could say was, “God this music sucks.” I was desperate to make friends, but I couldn’t seem to break through.
In 1998, I believed I had a good life. I was 50 years old and satisfied in my marriage of 25 years, secure in my job, and content to have raised two grown children who were now out of the house. At the time, computers were the latest technology, and the Internet was an intriguing way to spend time talking with people from all over the country.
I’m an 18-year-old virgin sexaholic. I came to SA in March 2006, worried I wouldn’t be accepted because I’ve never had actual sex. But at my first meeting I was assured that I was quite qualified.
I love this quote: “In between black and white thinking is not grey; in between black and white thinking is where the colors are.” I want to share with you the rainbow that recovery has given me.
Six years ago, when I was 21, I was shocked to hear my counselor say he thought I was a sex addict. I was in college and trying to be cool and impress my friends. The last thing I wanted to be was a sex addict. But today I realize that his diagnosis was the turning point in my life.
Today the world is adrift on a sea of rapidly shifting mores. Change is accelerating at an unprecedented rate. The last eighty years have surpassed the rate of change of the last eight thousand, and the last thirty have probably surpassed it all. Every aspect of our lives and sexual thinking are affected.
As a child I had no exposure to healthy intimacy or communication. My parents had seven marriages between them, and seven children, two of whom I never met. My father left when I was three; my mother remarried when I was in my 20s.