I am ready in Step 7 to ask God to remove another shortcoming and in Step 9 make amends to someone I hurt. I was ready with resentment and anger when my spouse opposed me or came to me with a complaint. In truth, it was never the content of her words but the temperature of my lust fever that determined my response because I wasn’t getting what I wanted.
It happened again. I was cooking the family meal and suddenly an attractive woman I know came to mind. I started thinking about her personality qualities and wondering if maybe God would want me to ask her out. It wasn’t lust, I thought — I was only thinking about her personality!
At first, Step Three for me (“Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him”) was just the surrender that I heard talked about in Sexaholics Anonymous meetings.
Bruce A., a grateful recovering sexaholic, sober since January 2019. I am thankful for the SA fellowship with our Bottom Line definition of sexual sobriety. For me, part of my daily working the Steps is reminding myself I am powerless over lust in all its forms. I admit that any lust drink can plunge me into the pit of my life being unmanageable.
I am Kristina from Germany and sober since March 2016 – one day at a time by the grace of my loving Higher Power. When I worked Step 2 with ‘Step into Action’ I wrote something about my Higher Power. As I search for many years in several religions where I could belong to, I found something very very important about “god of my understanding” who gives me strength: for ME it is a SHE most of the time.
I love making candy. As with any interest of mine, it grew into a real passion. People encouraged me to create a candy business, which I tried...and failed. (I’m not a very good businessman.) It was during this period of time, though, that I was experimenting on various recipes and frequently offered samples (and made sales) to folks at work, Church, in our neighborhood and at meetings.
I found myself fully confronted with this question back when I started working the Steps in earnest with a sponsor. Up until that time, I had been willing to settle for periodic “lengths” of sobriety. Because I’m an addict and quite insane when I’m lusting, I had figured that was good enough. I believed I could fight against lust.
When I walked through these doors, all I knew was that I had screwed up, got caught, and wanted to get out of my predicament. My wife was ready to end 38 years of marriage and be rid of me—and my mood swings, impatience and insatiable demands for sex. I got a sponsor and began the Steps.
There was an exceptional meeting tonight in Boston. I walked into the meeting with a lot of restlessness and discontent. We read the portion of Alcoholics Anonymous on fear. My Higher Power helped me realize during the shares that I am afraid because I am using this program like just another tool to run my life. I’m being self reliant.
Sometimes I look back and wonder why it took me so long to finally start living by the most basic and bedrock principles of the 12 Step program. No doubt I was still unwilling to really surrender, so I kept trying to solve my own problem with my own ideas and effort.
