Doing What Comes Un-Naturally

(The following is a personal post from one of our group members.)

Recently in our group meeting, we read the following section from the Sexaholics Anonymous book.  During this time in our meeting, we also pause to reading to allow members to share their own personal experience with the content. 

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Doing What Comes Un-Naturally

"Love" is one of the most abused words in the language. That's why we speak not of loving but of taking the actions of love. Just as with faith, love, we discovered, was not a feeling, but attitude in action. We took the actions we knew we should be taking toward others because we did not feel like it. The feelings followed. Love for us is doing—doing what does not come naturally. ....

   We start going to meetings and participating in the fellowship of the program before we feel we want to. We stop sexing, lusting, and resenting before we feel we can. And we start taking the right actions toward others before we feel like doing them naturally. This is the paradox of this "impossible" program.

   How can we do this when we feel so powerless and aren't sure we even want to? We have a God who works, that's why; His business is raising us out of our death! But "faith without action is dead." We receive that power as we take the action, not before.

"A hundred such incidents and I was beginning to learn that the key to doing what did not come naturally was surrender, the key to this whole program. The key to my own happiness. When I distrust my own feelings and just go ahead and do what's right, the miracle happens and I'm out of my dark hole."

   Many of us discovered that once these actions become customary and incorporated in our day-to-day living, we actually begin to change. We become better people and, as a result, happier with ourselves and others. (Sexaholics Anonymous, p146-147)

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The question gets asked, "How can we do this when we feel so powerless and aren't sure we even want to?" Then the author immediately answers with, "We have a God who works, that's why; His business is raising us out of our death!" 

I notice that the majority of sharing in the some of the meetings I participate in don't mention God. Now that doesn't surprise me very much at all. One of the reminders I've heard over the years is the slogan "If you spot it, you got it." Yeah, that was me too, especially in my early years in SA meetings. 

There was a lot I could talk about when I'd share in meetings, but God wasn't yet the main topic, the main point of the whole program for me. I wanted to figure out for myself what I was going to do to get control of my life, find a way for me to break free from my s-xual acting out. I, myself, my, me. The self-obsession is clear to me now. 

"...The key to doing what did not come naturally was surrender, the key to this whole program." "We have a God who works, that's why; His business is raising us out of our death!"

Surrender did not come naturally to me. It made no sense to me. It seemed to be the opposite of what I needed to do if I wanted to break free from whatever it was that I couldn't stop, couldn't get over, couldn't beat. Just a little more effort on my part, and I'd finally get there. That seemed to make better sense to me.

But no, the SA program said in Step One that I was powerless. And when I finally fully accepted that powerlessness, then, and only then, was I ready to surrender to a God who has all power (Step Three). 

Surrender didn't come naturally. I was doing something that seemed a bit crazy. But when I found that it worked, that God worked, then it became the pattern and eventually the habit. And that has made all the difference. 

Substitution was no solution

 (The following is a post from one of our group members.)

The first time it occurred to me to substitute some other form of sex to satisfy my lust was when I was approaching marriage. I was already getting sick of all of the porn and sex with self. I hated that I had begun feeling like I was out of control, powerless and in bondage to sex and porn. I figured that if I was having sex with this "real" person (that I was also lusting after), that would certainly satisfy me, and I would be free from looking elsewhere. 

That didn't work. 

It didn't matter what my wife did or didn't do, she was no match for my lust. Lust was insatiable. Lust was the fantasy world as shown to me in the magazines and on the screen and conjured up in my own twisted mind. That was the un-real, as our literature reminds me, and it could not be real no matter how much I wanted it and tried to make it happen. 

I was left with two realistic options: continue to surrender to the overwhelming power of lust, or begin to be freed from lust by surrendering to a Power greater than me and my lust. Yes, I had tried a third option, but now I can see that was never a realistic possibility. I tried to struggle against lust and become powerful enough to win that fight. That was nothing more than continued insanity. 

So after many years of bondage and pain, I finally surrendered to God, got a sponsor, and followed his instructions on how to work all the way through the 12 Steps. And that connected me with God, the Power that could and would free me from my slavery to lust. I had to find what none of the substitutes had ever supplied. I had to find a loving God.

Sobriety Milestones

 (The following post is the experience of one of our group members.)

In my earliest days of SA meeting attendance, I reported my length of sobriety along with everyone else at our local face-to-face meeting. So it was something that I tracked for that purpose if nothing else. But when I started to get longer lengths of sobriety, I did become prideful of "my achievement", and that attitude was a disaster waiting to happen. As expected, disaster did happen, with many years of relapsing and "going back out there" as the consequence.

In my earliest home group, some of the "old-timers" with longer lengths of sobriety started to introduce themselves by saying "I'm sober today" as a way to avoid making people with shorter lengths of sobriety feel "uncomfortable." Acting like I was following their lead, I started using that same "I'm sober today" line as a way to hide that I wasn't maintaining sobriety at all. (Everything really does boil down to my own attitudes and motives.) But when it got discussed at a group conscience meeting, the clear consensus from those of us with shorter terms of sobriety was that we needed to know that long-term sobriety was desirable and, more importantly, was truly possible. 

In my current period of sobriety, I had finally accepted that I was truly powerless over lust (Step 1). And with that admission, I had fully accepted that "my sobriety" was a gift from God, since I myself am powerless over lust. There is nothing to feel prideful about when all I am doing is accepting the work of God in my life through surrendering that which I am powerless over. 

Today I would say that more times than not, I have slid past my anniversary date without recognizing it until I introduce myself at the next meeting and am a bit surprised that yet another year has passed. 

Today I know that there is no "good reason" for me to ever act out again. Certainly I can start making a whole series of really bad choices that once again separates me from God and his power actively working in my heart and mind. And if I do that, I am most certainly well on my way to a relapse. But if I continue making the principles of this program my daily lifestyle, there is every reason to believe that God will continue to do for me what I cannot do for myself.  That is simply part of his loving nature.  And that still happens one day at a time, regardless of how many days that totals up to be.

I Am Not Strong

(The following post is the experience of one of our group members.)

Almost 12 years ago I "hit bottom". I finally admitted and embraced the reality that I was not only not strong, but that I was powerless over lust. The difference on that day from all the other previous days when I had regretted my sexual acting out was that I finally gave up the delusional idea that I could ever become strong enough to win the fight over lust. My only option to be free from my slavery to lust was to have some other Power to set me free from the power that lust had over me. That Power is God, and God can and will do that for me.

Working the SA 12 Step program did not make me strong enough to fight lust. Instead of taught me how to connect rightly with God through surrendering my lust and my will and life to him. When I live correctly in relationship to God and to others, I stay sober and I continue to be set free from the power of lust.

I had to give up the delusion that I could become strong. I don't need to be strong, but I do need to be connected to Power. That is my experience as a sexaholic, as a person recovering from an addiction to lust.