ESSAY Magazine (An International Journal of Sexaholics Anonymous)

God’s love and will in her life are all she needs, and anything else is extra.
I grew up with an urge to be a grandmother; I just loved the idea of having a family and children. I would name my daughter after the girl who sits on the last bench in my class. I was in first grade, and I looked at my crush and thought, “If we had a daughter, I would name her after my classmate who’s at the top of our class.” Cute, right? I chuckle because I was only five when I did this.
Does this make me a sexaholic? Was it just an obsession or a childhood first love? Well, I always liked being in the feeling of love. Yes, love… the grass gets greener, and the sun seems brighter. And when I look at him, I love it when he looks back from afar. I love this one-sided melody without any destination. I don’t know when it turned into an obsession; I don’t know when this foolishness turned into insanity.

By repairing the past, through working the program, he found the freedom of being single.
Throughout my lust addiction, romantic relationships became a golden calf to me. I thought an attractive, emotionally compatible girlfriend would fulfill and complete me.  Having a girlfriend became a persistent fantasy, but every time a woman would say yes to my proposition for a date, I would run from the relationship as soon as it took off. I was too emotionally immature to share my heart with someone in a way that was even remotely selfless or healthy. I was afraid the woman would find out who I really was. To protect myself from rejection, like a parachutist jumping from a crashing airplane, I would bail from the relationship as soon as it took off, fleeing to my addiction, where I thought I could never get hurt. 

She came to accept Higher Power’s plan for her.
I had to learn to love myself, not in the way a conceited person does, but as a precious child of God. I had to learn to enjoy my own company and to remember I am a precious child of God. Not a perfect one, but a work in progress with my Higher Power molding me to His will. I am not in charge of my life; my Higher Power is in charge. I have to accept that Higher Power knows what is best for me. I accept that Higher Power’s plan for me is to be single. Being single is not a failure. I am grateful for the lessons my Higher Power has taught me about loving and liking myself as a precious child of God. God is for the sexaholics, including me. It took me a long time to believe that. Sometimes I forget but my Higher Power reminds me through prayer, words of another sexaholic, or SA literature. 

Surrendering Lust helped him to surrender the shame that came with it.
Yesterday, I started the day in the usual way with prayers and readings—I thank God for that. I then went to do some errands.  About mid-morning, there was a lust hit. I knew the danger, and I acted swiftly. I averted my eyes, got out of the situation, surrendered the look, and prayed. I acknowledged my powerlessness. The lust look is a weakness—it always has been.  
For me, this is not alarming. There was a temptation to look but no struggle or anything like that. I am a sexaholic and this can happen….I can’t take the first drink!  

This tool helps him to release the past.
There are moments in life when the past will not let go. I’ve started the path of recovery, made amends where I could, committed to change, and yet — the memories remain. The images return. The shame lingers. While I’ve begun to move forward on the outside, my mind is still caught in the painful echoes of what I’ve done. This is where the Prayer of Divine Remembrance comes in. 
“God, grant me Your divine remembrance.

Recovery radically changed how he celebrates Father’s Day.
I used to think Father’s Day was about waiting for my children to shower me with drawings, or words that would make me feel like a good father. I thought it was a day to sit back and receive—to be told that all my sacrifices were noticed, my sleepless nights appreciated, my worrying understood.
But something has shifted in me.

This period of being single has given him time to work a rigorous program.
For most of my life, I’ve been looking for someone to connect with me and make me whole. I felt “inadequate, unworthy, alone, and afraid” (SA 203), always comparing my insides to the outsides of others. I was terrified of people seeing me for fear that they’d reject me—which was why I never learned to date. It felt too risky. 
I began acting out when I was 12 and entered SA when I was 22, so I spent at least a decade lost inside myself. I didn’t realize that lust was really my problem; it felt more like my solution. In reality, it was stunting my ability to grow up emotionally, relationally, and spiritually. I couldn’t feel my feelings and thus couldn’t relate to those around me.

Sobriety has helped him deal with the highs and lows of being single.
I am single. I am not always happy, joyous, and free. It can be lonely. Divorce is painful. I don’t feel happy, joyous, and free.
Today, I am 18 months sober—miraculous proof that God can do for me what I couldn’t do for myself. I have also been depressed for about a month. I have been officially single for about half the time I’ve been sober. My wife moved out the same day I went on a bender, two weeks before I went to rehab, which is also two weeks before my current sobriety date.