In my home group, we encourage newcomers to read an Essay article entitled “I Don’t Have to Know” for 40 consecutive days. The author describes a compulsive need to know everything around him. He has Batman-like hyper-vigilance that is a habit of insobriety. Realizing that he is not Batman and not God, he relies on the simple mantra of, “I don’t have to know” to practice a healthy habit to not feed the impulsive desire to look.
In my SA experience, I have encountered many times when lust and arousal seem ready to overwhelm me. In recent conversations I’ve also heard these common sexaholic scenarios:
Often my willfulness asserts itself, and I have been learning the following ingredients of surrender.
In the White Book, it says that we identified with each other at the point of our weakness. I need to hear your struggles with lust in order to get in touch with my own lust. I need to hear your pain so I know I don’t want to go back out there. I need to hear your hope so I know there is a way out. I need you to be “specific but not graphic,” as one member puts it.
I fell hard into the Internet. There I found a world where forbidden things were freely available. At first, I enjoyed this secret place where there was no right or wrong. So I stayed there longer and longer each day. Before long, my seemingly harmless online meetings turned into infidelities. I cheated frequently, after more than fifteen years of faithful marriage.
From the time I was a kid I never liked teams. I didn’t want to lose because some teammate screwed up. If I messed up a bunch of people would hate me for making them lose. And if I’m the prime factor in helping a team win, the credit will be spread out among a bunch of others. By my logic it was better to solo have the credit and control of winning or losing.
In 1993, my wife and I led a church singles ministry. During a pool party at a single’s house while playing catch, my six-year-old son looked at me and said, “Daddy, why do you keep looking around? Why don’t you just play catch with me?” I believe that was the first time anyone spoke to me about my looking at the women around me.
My wife and I were babysitting two of our grandchildren for the weekend. On Saturday afternoon I was keeping my grandson company, lounging next to him on the couch with my legs up on a hassock as he watched his favorite television program.
My recovery requires me to form new habits. It takes time to develop a new habit. The accountability of a daily check-in was absolutely necessary for me to get the momentum required to make something routine. But, even this was not enough to motivate me to be consistent. I shared my struggle with another member and we had a new idea.
A paradox is a statement that apparently contradicts itself and might be true. “When we surrender our ‘freedom,’ we become truly free” (SA 81).
