As I anticipated attending the 2007 Convention, I felt both excitement and fear. Excitement because the idea of meeting lots of new friends in recovery (including people I do service work with) sounded like great fun! But fear at the prospect of traveling to Maryland to meet these people, especially the men.
I just got back from the SA International Convention in Maryland and it was wonderful! But it didn’t start out that way.
When I first came to SA in June 2002, I was miserable and I was single. I didn’t want to be miserable, and I sure didn’t want to be single! My divorce had been finalized just two months before I came to SA, and I was jealous and upset that my newly ex-husband had gotten engaged before the divorce was final.
This sponsor/friend thing has been emotional for both of us. I have so much life stuff going on that I haven’t been dealing with my feelings around our relationship. Part of me doesn’t know how. I’ve never been in this situation before. To be a sponsor is one thing, it’s more cut and dried. A friend is another thing completely; it takes the “conditions” out.
I have heard of problems at mixed meetings, and I have had a few of my own making. But the problems have been valuable lessons in my recovery, and I wouldn’t trade those experiences because of the wisdom I’ve gained from them.
A member asked, “Do you feel connected to people?” She was feeling uncomfortable in mixed meetings, after one year of sobriety.
My dear friend, I’ve been masturbating since the 6th grade and found SA in 2003 or 2004; I don’t remember exactly when. I went to some meetings and then stopped for several months. I came back in 2005 for good.
In the 2005 movie Crash about race relations in Los Angeles, a cop sexually assaults a woman, while her husband stands by, completely powerless to save her. Husband and wife both fear for their lives. The experience devastates her, and threatens to destroy their marriage. Weeks later the same woman is in a car crash, trapped in a flaming wreck in the middle of a highway. The officer who shows up to rescue her? The same cop who attacked her.
SA’s sobriety definition says “for the single sexaholic, sexual sobriety means freedom from sex of any kind.” It does not say that we endure the endless torture of chastity.
A newcomer recently asked how long withdrawal from lust could possibly last, and I want to share my personal experience, strength, and hope on that topic from my current vantage point of one year sober.
