Our family had recently moved to a new city. My wife was pregnant with our second child. I had engaged in compulsive sexual behaviors for twenty-eight years. Slowly but surely lust had increased its stranglehold on my life. Once again I hoped that a change of location and career might stop my acting out, only to find it was increasing in frequency and severity. There was so little time in the day to act out that I began to get up in the middle of the night to go through my rituals––while the family slept. A new boundary crossed.
I was spending increasing amounts of time during the day fantasizing about what I was going to do that night. My lustful thoughts were turning increasingly dark and destructive. I had the definite feeling I would not live to see my wife give birth. My life looked great to most people. No one would have guessed how unmanageable it really was. I was working very hard to keep that fact hidden from everyone, especially myself. In fact, I was leading a dual life that was putting everything I cherished in danger.
My obsession with lust had led to my crossing one boundary after another. For example, I’d promised myself I would never act out at work. Yet that’s precisely what I did, and had been doing for months, since being promoted. My boss had even walked into a room adjacent to the one where I was acting out and called my name. A few more steps and I would have lost my job and faced legal consequences and public exposure. I would have been separated from the family I loved.
Reading Sexaholics Anonymous helped me see that I was a sexaholic and could not stay sober by myself. SA helped me understand that lust was the driving force behind all of my acting out, and progressive victory over lust was the only way to freedom. I had been trying to stop my compulsive behaviors, but they were only symptoms of my real problem—lust! Finally, SA taught me that I could not live in the snake pit of resentment.
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions made it clear to me that I must begin my recovery by accepting my “devastating weakness and all its consequences.” It helped me see that if I took hold of the program of Sexaholics Anonymous as a drowning person seizes a “life preserver,” I could get well.
