I’ve always had an approach-avoidance relationship with working the Steps. I always feel great after having done some writing on a Step, but it can take quite a long time for me to stop the squirrel cage long enough to actually sit down and start writing. The fact that I took five years to work the first three Steps in the program tells me that I wasn’t in any great hurry to recover from my self-destructive behaviors and attitudes.
When I sit in meetings listening to others sharing their personal issues, I have a tendency to compare myself to what they are describing. In doing this I miss the point of my recovery. My personal truth is that listening to someone else’s difficulties makes me feel comfortable that there is a group where I can express the same frustrations. I really loved that at first.
I suffer from a sort of hyper-vigilance. Something in me wants to identify and define every object, every person, every angle and surface in my physical environment. My ears are open; my eyes are taking in the very texture of things around me. This drive to know everything that’s going on around me could be a useful trait if I were Batman and dwelt in Gotham City.
Okay, I understood that part about no sex with anyone other than the spouse. Heck, that’s what got me to Sexaholics Anonymous in the first place. But no sex with myself? Who were these guys kidding? Didn’t they understand that if I refrained from sex with self, something terrible would happen? I might even die, or explode, or something equally dire.
I stood in disbelief. The computer screen had three emails from women at work that I was acting out with. My wife was crying, asking me, “Why?” I was in shock. I stood there physically present, but emotionally far, far away. I was numb to my feelings, to my life, and to myself.
“Progressive victory over lust” is often the hurdle that humbles me in my own program. My lust can, in a heartbeat, zero in on just about anything: sexualizing people, overeating, disappearing into TV, lying, pretending to be someone other than who I am, the list goes on and on. The solution has always been the same: reaching out and giving, of my time, my experience, my caring, my love; giving some of the “real” me to someone else.
My name is Bill and I’m a grateful and recovering sexaholic, actively involved in SA for almost ten years. I’ve been blessed with the grace to maintain sobriety, and by all appearances seemed to be working a solid program. However, somewhere along the path in the last few years, complacency set in.
In the past, a big part of the reason why I felt that I had little value as a person was because I did not own valuable things. I didn’t own a fancy car, live in a dream house, or flaunt a stylish wardrobe; I didn’t have an impressive career in which I could rub elbows with the rich and popular.
Yesterday I got a call from one of our members who has struggled with staying sexually sober. He had a business trip scheduled that would take him a couple of hundred miles from home and through some towns where he typically would stop at slippery places. He would set himself up to act out when he arrived at his destination.
If you are a newcomer to SA, you may have the same opinion of the saying “Keep coming back, it works if you work it” that I did when I first started attending meetings. Whenever people got all excited talking about the power of those two simple principles—go to meetings, work the Steps—I often felt they were misguided or brainwashed, or maybe even a little crazy.
