I don't go anywhere fast

You and me we're goin' nowhere slowly

And we've gotta get away from the past

There's nothin' wrong with goin' nowhere, baby

But we should be goin' nowhere fast

This is the problem with addiction , not finding contentment in the place that you are. Not wanting to rest in solitude. Not being comfortable with yourself where you are. At some point when I was younger something in me clicked or snapped or something, I don't know why it did but it did. At this point I don't think that is the most important thing for me to worry about. I think its more important to learn how to deal today. Anyway, after that happened I knew what I wanted and I just wanted it and it didn't matter the cost, and I have been fighting that desire ever since. It is much easier today and I can surrender it away.

I didn't care where I was going, I just wanted to get to it quicker. Today, I care where I go, and I fight to go where I ought and not to wander nowhere fast. Nowhere is the road of addiction, nothing gained and it all becomes lost.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Dealing with expectations and lust

A little advanced warning, this may be a bit long but hopefully I won't ramble too much.

Maybe

Yesterday the odds were stacked

In favor of my expectations

Flyin' above the rest

Never fallin' from the nest

Tuesday came and went and now

I'm in a little situation

Maybe it's for the best

I can live alone, I guess

Maybe I can stand alone

Maybe I'm strong as stone

Even though the bird has flown

Maybe he'll fly on home

Forgive me if I'm keeping you

Apart from Better conversation

Hung up on all my doubt

Trying to sort the whole thing out

Tell me that I'm smart enough

To deal with all the information

Spinning inside my head

Every word he ever said

Maybe I can stand alone

Maybe I'm strong as stone

Even though the bird has flown

Maybe he'll fly on home

I think one of the biggest problems with living life, especially when you have lived a life of erotic fantasy is dealing with expectations. I found this definition here:

The noun "expectation" has 4 senses.
1. expectation, outlook, prospect -- belief about (or mental picture of) the future

2. anticipation, expectation -- wishing with confidence of fulfillment

3. expectation -- the feeling that something is about to happen

4. arithmetic mean, first moment, expectation, expected value -- the sum of the values of a random variable divided by the number of values

As an addict I built a fantasy life. My addiction was taking lust and living out fantasies in my mind. How would sex be this way or that way? Combine this with pornorgraphy (video, magazine, "literature") and the fodder for fantasy just continues. I can take images of people walking past or just delve into my mind, I can perform better than any porn star and have more "glorious" sex than any porn star ever could. I can satisfy every partner and be ever satisfied. Then I step back to reality and find guilt shame and the like.

Well, you say, fantasy is good for a healthy sex life. Yeah, I have used fantasy in my sex life, it worked for awhile and made it "hot" but then shame and guilt crept in, we didn't want to go that way, we didn't really want to do those things and we couldn't see a sign that said this road only goes so far. Who knows where that road ends. As a recovering addict I know that it doesn't, you keep looking for the "perfect" event, the one that lives up to all the expectations, the one that throws you into the perfect union and perfects you as a human being. An addict lost in fantasy trying to connect to the unreal, stuck in the world of the real, resentful.

The fantasy makes my expectations unreal, the fantasies are "perfect" and I am not. The fantasies are all about me and love isn't about me. I have to surrender (that word keeps popping up in recovery) my expectations to the real. Love is sacrificial, its about doing the dishes when I get home and they need done (takes 20 minutes) and not being mad about them for the next two hours until someone else does them or I begrudginly spend an hour washing them.

If I truly believe my higher power is God who made everything (that means he made it to work a certain way) then surrendering to Him means that I have to accept the real, I have to make my expectations fit the way the world works. I can no longer expect to do what I want, but I must do what I ought. As my recovery progresses and my life becomes more real the points that lust used to creep into my life increasingly strike me as odd. I am not saying that in a heartbeat I couldn't fall but it is only through continuing surrender that goes deeper and deeper into every part of my life (work, parenting, friendships, marriage, entertainment) that I am able to keep walking the path of recovery.

I can't play with lust and become disillusioned and let expectations about sex creep into my mind. Real sexuality and sex with my wife is meaningful and more beautiful than anything I could do as the pornstar of my mind. When I am really sacrificially expressing my love for my wife I do want to hold her and cuddle with her and spend time with her in other healthy and meaningful ways (yes, talking with her and helping her with chores). Play the tape to the end.

In my mind the sex is 'glorious' all the way to the end but I don't know what happens when it is done, I only know the shame, guilt and resentment that comes from filling my life with the lust. When I am truly loving I know how it ends, I can play that tape to the end, I feel close to my wife and I love her more and more. I accept her for who she is and how she is made. I am truly free, free to be who I am supposed to be and that is my fulfillment.

Under the Mercy,

MS

Do I really have to start over????

I hate being an addict! I really don't think you understand that I HATE being an addict. You see, the problem is that I think that I have this under control and have 8 months of sobriety under my belt (my drug of choice is fantasy with being lusted after as the major element) and I am thinking that I am getting things under control and working the program like it needs to be worked.

Well, in some ways I get to start over, back to the beginning. Re-work the steps, learn a new perspective and keep working on my life. I had a busy weekend and figured out that I had failed in not doing more to work on an honest, open and strong male relationship I had promised my wife I would build.

I publicly got irritated at this person's, what I was calling harrasment, insistence that I do something when I am not currently able to commit to it for a weekend. My wife confronted me for embarassing her by raising the tone of my voice, I wasn't derogatory but I was tired, annoyed and louder than conversational. I tried to justify my lack of response to one line e-mails asking how I was doing by pointing out the fact that I was promised more by him (in person or phone contact) but in reality I was making little to no effort on my part. I also got agitated by my wife bringing this up and delaying my leaving for my SA meeting.

My wife, God love her, saw this and called a time-out. I was going to simply drag myself to and through the meeting and go straight to bed out of spite to her. However, the meeting was on the spiritual basis of addiction and I ended up getting the shell broke down of the fortress I had built up. The section we read from takes the sexual acting-out out of the addictive process and shows the cycle of resentment (the underlying factor in toxic shame) and shows how it works in the addictive process.

I realized that I was holding resentment and breaking away from others, using it as a barrier to intimacy with people around me. I was going to then be in a position to be resentful and anything I didn’t like in an agitated state I would resent more. This is the underlying cycle of toxic shame, act out then feel bad so I need to act out. In a way I was acting out without participating in my addiction of fantasy and masturbation.

So, I begin again but I am not starting over, I am just going deeper. God love all of you that read this, and your many notes of encouragement. It has been busy around here and it has been slow blogging.

Under the Mercy,
MS


12steps 12+steps sex+addiction sexaholic sexaholism lust recovery porn+addiction spiritual+addiction resentment sa intimacy

Step Six

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

As an addict I can say that I felt I was at this place for a long time before I started working the steps. Some addicts don't want to get better and only want to learn to control their lust, to enjoy it without the negative consequences, at the beginning of every meeting we even read a passage that mentions that specifically.

I felt and would say for a long time that I wanted God to remove these defects of character. I didn't want to deal with the problems they caused and I simply wanted to live life without the hassle.

Now, I realize that I wasn't truly ready to have God remove these character flaws, I was ready for him to remove the trouble they caused. After seeking out true contrition towards God I was able to really come to a place where 8 could say that I wanted to be done with lust and the behaviors it caused.

For the longest time in recovery I had come to a point where I could admit my life had become unmanageable and it was due to lust. The problem was that I would have been perfectly content with having the lust without the problem. As I mentioned in my prior post, after I asked God for forgiveness for not living as he intended did I come to realize in my heart that lust is unmanageable, not the consequences.

Now, I am in a place where I wouldn't want lust without the problems, I have surrended to the way I am made. I must decrease, He must increase. I must accept myself and be who I am to be.

Under the Mercy,
MS

Keep coming back, it works if you work it and you are worth it.

sexaholic sexaholism 12step 12+step step+six step6 step+6 porn+addiction lust recovery

Step Five

Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

Forgive me Father for I am a worm. This is a dangerous and crucial step for recovery. By the time the addict gets to here they should/need to have lots of support around them. The danger is depression and temptation to relapse as the addict's drug is how they deal with feeling bad ("The only way we knew to be free of it was to do it." P 203 SA White Book). That is why this step should not be walked alone.

Their is something that is freed when another person knows that I have done wrong, done really wrong ("The Sexaholic takes himself or herself out of the whole context of what is right or wrong." P.202 SA White Book) and still looks at me with accepting love for me as another human being. When they see me as a human being and not the worm I see in the mirror it allows me an opportunity to see myself as human.

The other important thing that occurs here is honesty with God, He already knows but now I am being honest with the One that knows me and made me. Here I ask for forgiveness for not being who I was made to be. I think that is at the heart of addiction, not being true to who you are made to be. My root addiction is lust, inordinate sexual craving, and I act outside of what my sexual passion should be, and I cannot stop but I must ("So it is with the sexaholic, or sex drunk, who can no longer tolerate lust but cannot stop." P. 202 SA White Book).

I have taken myself out of reality, here I know where I am so that I can begin the journey to who I am supposed to be.

Under the Mercy,

MS

12steps 12+steps sexaholic sexaholism porn+addiction step5 step+5 step+five lust

Step Four

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

Now we get to some hard work. In some ways this could easily become a list of faults and failings and nothing more. I think that would be a mistake, a missed opportunity for growth. I am not saying that it is unimportant to know where you have failed but I think we need to dig deeper.

In step one we recount places that we have failed to show how our life has become unmanageable due to lust. Here we can take that and see where our insides our and see what our true moral standards are, we can learn our true current standards by how we act and not what we profess. This shows us where we truly are on the journey.

For me I professed that masturbation was inherently wrong. However, in reality I didn't have a problem with it and in reality my behavior made it look like a good thing. It wasn't just masturbation but objectifying women and thinking of them doing things to me, lusting and wanting to be lusted after.

This point of my inventory wasn't to show me that, "Oh well, I guess masturbation is okay and this isn't a problem." The point was to show me that I had work to do, I may fail but I need to work myself back to my standard. The other thing it showed me was how lust allowed me (lust didn't do this but I did) to take steps away from Truth.

This shows me that when I began to lust and masturbate I lowered my standard. This allowed me to take further steps from pornography to fantasy. I began to lead a double life, a life of secrecy, and secrecy is a hallmark of lustful actions. Now the question laying in front of me and seperately in front of my wife was: How far away will you go?

Would I go to an affair when fantasy didn't bring the high and an opportunity presented itself? What was I capable of? This helps to build resolve in my being, to make me stronger to not go further than I am now.

However, I have to take that resolve and stand up with it and work to reclaim what I profess in the actions of secrecy, they must, one at a time, begin to match what I profess.

I must not see a beautiful woman and wonder what she wants to do to me sexually but instead thank God for her beauty, have awe for His creation. I have to attatch feelings of respect and remember that she is someone's daughter and was lovingly held by a father who, not unlike me, loves his daughter completely.

I don't want my daughters to be hurt the way I have hurt my wife and in some ways I have to surrender the ultimate fact that this is partly out of my control. On the other hand I have to have the courage to be a man of integrity so that my daughters will see that, respect it and come to be attracted to or have that as their standard.

That is what is important about this step today, to keep going on the journey back to morality. To striving day by day to be the man I profess, it will be the journey of my life but it is the journey I am choosing. I choose the narrow way, the road less traveled.

Under the mercy,

M S

step+four 12steps 12+step lust sexaholic sexaholism sex+addiction step+4 masturbation

Step Three

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

At times it seems that the journey to recovery requires what seems like superhuman abilities to me, the addict. Step three is a place to learn that we don't have to be superhuman to be in recovery from our addiction. Trying to be superhuman hasn't worked, we can't be in recovery and white knuckle it. Here we are asked to come as you are.

As love cripples not only do we not know how to love but we really don't know how to be loved. Here we are able to admit that we don't fully understand God. In truth, we hardly know him and we definitely don't feel loved by God. As an addict at times and it is very easy to feel this way, I feel very alone and unloved.

Here is were I extend what little I know of intimacy and make myself vulnerable to God. As a Catholic, that is confession and adoration of Jesus. I have to rend my garments, the defenses and secrecy of lust, and present myself naked before God. This is an act of surrender, coming to God as I am as I know Him. This is how I can begin to grow personally and in knowledge of Him who saves me and helps purify my defects.

Under the Mercy.

12+steps sex+addiction lust recovery step+three higher+power god jesus+christ confession sexaholic sexaholism

Journal 20070701

Tonight, I went to my weekly meeting. Tonight one of our members gave his first step. I know that this was hard for him to do. It took up most of the meeting and his recounting encompassed probably over 30 hand-written pages. This step was a recounting, a disclosure, of how life had become unmanageable by lust. It is amazing how deep his hurt had become. How much pain had he experienced in his life. How lust had overcome him. Many people I know and popular culture would have you think that all of these activities: pornography (still and video), fooling around, masturbation and yes even some people prostitution; are all perfectly normal and legitimate activites for people to partake in.

This realization hascome to me that those of us in the meeting are sexaholics. Just like those working steps in AA are alcoholics. Their are many people out their that are drunks that are not alcoolics, alcoholics go to meetings. Many people in our society are sex drunks, sex addicts, they just haven't admited that they have a problem. Their are people I know that sexual fulfillment is how they feel loved or how they find meaning in their life. They do not see the bigger purpose and that sexual fullfillment comes out of their intimacy with another. Being "intimate" isn't about laying someone down, spreading their legs and ravaging their body so that you have a pleasurable experience.

This is not to say that one can be in the fruits of intimacy in one moment and then something can change or happen that makes them begin to lust. I have had that experience and it was hard to surrender it. WIth his mercy and the true love of my wife I was able to get to that.
I love you, my dearling.

And to those out their struggling, keep coming back it works if you work it. And you are worth it.

Under the Mercy,
M

step+one 12+steps sexaholic sexaholism alcoholic journal lust intimacy

Journal 20070628

One of my favorite songs from adolescence is For Crying out Loud as performed by MeatLoaf. It still to this day strikes a chord in my heart. However, as I grow and mature I have come to realize that it describes the addict in me and my true self. It is a portrayal of the conflict inside my being.

I am thankful that I have found my wife for she found me at a time when I was able to give myself to her but the addict soon returned, and I didn't realize I was an addict. I am thankful for her as she has helped/pushed/moved me to work this program of recovery. I have learned more about myself by knowing her, by having children with her and by experiencing true love from her.

I was lost till you were found
But I never knew how far down
I was falling
Before I reached the bottom

I was cold and you were fire
And I never knew how the pyre
Could be burning
On the edge of the ice field. . .

I truly felt this way, I had a poor self image of myself, I placed my self-image in her. In some ways my self-image is still tied to her, I am still working on my own self-image. Having a positive self-image is something that is hard to do when you are an addict, you hate yourself for the pain you cause and the slave you are inside.

. . . Oh I know you belong inside my aching heart
And
cant you see my faded levis bursting apart
And dont you hear me crying:
Oh babe, dont go
And dont you hear me screaming:
How was I to know?

I'm in the middle of nowhere
Near the end of the line
But theres
a border to somewhere waiting
And theres a tankful of time
Oh give me
just another moment to see the light of the day
And take me to another land
where I dont have to stay

I tied up all my fear and all my hope and ll my being in my wife and her approval, I was alone without her adoration of me. I wanted to be lusted after, I made myself a God. Really, I wanted myself to be a God to her. In reality I was all alone and a crying little boy, I had stopped growing up. Lust had stopped my development as a person.

And Im gonna need somebody to make me feel like you do
And I will receive somebody with open arms, open eyes,
Open up the sky
and let the planet that I love shine through

For crying out loud
You
know I love you

This is the thing that every addict says. Everytime they are asked to stop, they mean it when they say they will. They really do mean it. The problem is that they mean it so that they will have your approval and the high will come from you, they are still searching for the high. They have to admit that seeking the high has made things unmanageable. They have to surrender it, show real intimacy and not seeking the high.

For pulling me away when Im starting to fall
For revving
me up when Im starting to stall
And all in all
For that I want you

For taking and for giving and for playing the game
For praying for
my future in the days that remain
Oh lord

For that I hold you

To hold and to want. Two of the things that addict always wanted, these actions are things that can be a product of addiction and they can be a product of intimacy. I can participate in the marital embrace and it can be the most lustful acting out ever or it can be a fruit of intimacy and love between my wife and I. Sex is not inimacy, it is a fruit of intimacy. I thank my wife for sticking with me and praying for me and for keeping me going forward in recovery.

Ah but most of all
For cryin out loud
For that I
love you

When youre crying out loud
You know I love you

I really, really love my wife, she is my other half, I do not know where I end and she begins. That is the truth, even when she is not by my side she is on my heart, pressed upon it. My thoughts are of concern for her, for her welfare.

Under the Mercy

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Lust Versus Intimacy

One of the biggest things addiction to lust, more commonly know as Sex Addicts or Sexaholics, does to a person is it makes them incapable of sharing with anyone else who they really are. It could be due to embarrassment, shame, guilt or a variety of other reasons but the sex addict disconnects and begins to connect to the unreal to make him or herself feel real or whole.

Don’t get me wrong, at times the Sexaholic can connect with other people very well. I have personally experienced many times that I connected to those around me; the problem was a small period of time that came afterward when I would have self-doubt. That self-doubt is about the other person not connecting with the real me, with what I really wanted, the pleasure, the lust, the acting out. In reality the other person had connected with the real me, the cripple, the part of me that I allowed to define me that was not the real me.

I was ashamed of the things I had done in secret, those were the things that I kept to myself and never shared with anyone else. If I had ever shared them I would have risked my status as a person, the funny thing is that it increased the addiction, allowed it to have more control over me and made the risk greater, I just thought I was controlling it.

The answer to the problem is sharing oneself, your true self. I had to learn to share all of me, who I am and the addict. The true me was on the inside, I was scared of the acting out and the addiction, the things that I had done in my life or fantasized about. I was beginning to let the addiction define me; I was losing my life and my identity.

The sharing of ME is where intimacy comes into play. Lust, the addiction, was where I took from others what I wanted of them as an object and took from them what I wanted for me. My conscience was withered inside me but it made me feel bad in what small ways it could, because I never felt quite right about having used someone, be it internet pornography or any other way of acting out.

I had to learn to integrate myself and be honest with those closest to me. I had to learn how to share myself, this is intimacy, the SPICES of life (Spiritual, Physical, Intellectual, Emotional, Sexual). This began in the group. This began by sharing all of who I was in the group. I came to learn to share myself, my sins and my successes, I learned it didn’t kill me for others to know how bad I was. I have learned to replace old patterns with new ones. Instead of internet pornography, I share some of myself here. Instead of using the internet in secret I am here with my daughter across from me working on her schoolwork and my wife a little further beyond her.

Instead of lusting after women, I attach feelings to them. They are someone’s little girl and I know how I would feel about someone who treated my little girls the way I have treated others, even though the little girl in question is a “consenting adult”. I am surrendering myself and amazingly it has been given back to me.

Under the Mercy.

Lust	Intimacy
Avoid Consequences	Accepting Consequences
Protect Self	Make Self Vulnerable
Opaque	Transparent
Share Part of Self	Share Whole Self
Take	Give
Conquer	Surrender
Self-Centered	Other-Centered
Reacting to Feelings	Attaching Feelings
Secrecy	Honesty

sex+addiction sexaholic sexaholism lust intimacy step+one secrecy 12+steps meetings journal

The road is long....

I don't know if any of you have the song running through your head that I do right now:

He Ain't Heavy

The road is long, With many a winding turn, That leads us to who knows
where, Who knows where, But I'm strong, Strong enough to carry him, He ain't
heavy, he's my brother. So on we go, His welfare is my concern, No burden
is he to bear, We'll get there, For I know, He would not encumber me, He
ain't heavy, he's my brother.

by Sidney Russell and Robert Scott

At times it is easier to bear other people's burdens then our burdens. The things that are the cross on my shoulder are the things that I don't want to deal with anymore, but because they are on my shoulder I must carry them. However, I can not carry them on my own. Well, I can but its like walking a tightrope.

Walking the tightrope up higher and higher without a safety net and without a balancing pole to keep me steady. When I have others around me, accountability partners, my recovery fellowship and I am accountable about who I am that is my safety net, just knowing it is their makes a difference. My balance pole is another wonderful thing, it is what keeps me steady, it is my sobriety. Sobriety is the momentum that keeps me moving forward with my eyes on the prize.

The burden is lighter when the fellowship helps. Kind of backwards because when I step into the fellowship I put my burden in a pile of burdens and help carry a much larger pile, but working together with others makes it lighter.

One thing that I have talked about before is the fact that we are love cripples, that we only know lust, and not love. Intimacy is something that we refuse to follow, I am hoping to post on the differences between the two and show how true Intimacy is the road to overcoming lust, or at least that is what I think right now. I will say that it appears that the fellowship is that place where we start practicing intimacy, we begin to share ourselves and accept others and what they share as gifts.

Under the Mercy.

Keep coming back, it works if you work it, and we are worth it.

12 Steps fellowship SA sobriety accountability lust intimacy,

Step Two

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Again, I find two things laid at my feet in this second step. The first thing is something that should be obvious from the condition the addict finds themselves.

As an addict I am fully aware that a power greater than myself does have an effect on my life. I believe it was Lewis that said something to the effect that a human being can’t be static. You are either are going to be becoming more saint-like or you will become more hell-like.

A power greater than myself will control my life if I decide to be in charge and have my way. This is the way of an addict. This is me when I act to take what I want. This is what happens when I succumb to lust, that becomes a power greater than me.

When I choose to surrender myself to a higher power, to let go of my hyper-emotional wants, to give of myself in service of others, which is when the other Higher Power takes over. This is the true higher power.

At first for some the higher power is the group, or an accountability partner. Remember, we are love cripples and our intimacy is broken, we don’t know how to truly connect. Eventually, God comes into the picture, it takes time though.

Under the Mercy


12+steps sex+addiction recovery step+two lust

Step One: My life is unmanageable due to what?

We admitted that we were powerless over lust -- that our lives had become
unmanageable.

This step has two parts that are very distinct in it. When we begin this process it is out of an admission that our lives are unmanageable, but first our lives have to beome unmanageable due to lust. How does that happen?

In my journey of recovery I have met several people that exemplify several different types of unmanageability in life. I have met a few people that had abused children and had dealt with criminal consequences. Some were trying to heal marriages damaged by affairs or strings of affairs. Still others were driven by religious conversions of themselves or spouses.

My recovery was very motivated by my wife's conversion and in some ways what I would call my reversion to the faith. I had lived a wide and varied past and experienced things not uncommon to many teens and twenty-somethings today. I was caught in relationships of fantasy, use of pornography, erotic literature, strip clubs, using my wife as an outlet and masturbation.

These things were my "problem" to be fixed. Behaviors that needed stopping before they escalated further. Behaviors that harmed my relationships with others at the different stages of my life. My wife began to think ill of them, the ones she knew about and as she found out about others. For a time we explored some of the fantasies, for a time that is all they were but after attempting one of the more harmless ones things began to change.

Part of my insides saw a door opening and it yearned for fantasy to become real. Fortunately, the door was closing my wife made a definitive turn down the path of conversion and for that I thank give thanks to God to this day. Pressure from her was a large motivating factor for me to begin my journey to recovery. It is just now, years later that I am realizing that I was only really focusing on behaviors, not acting out, instead of what the addiction truly is, on what had made me a love cripple. That is lust. That is what has made my life unmanageable.

I have to admit this and it is not easy to admit but I am learning day by day to express myself intimately and not lustfully. To give without expectation of return instead of taking with the expectation of getting more.

Under the Mercy,
MS