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,