"Finding a Home in S-Anon"

When I met my husband, I was impressed by his honesty.  On the first date he announced he was a recovering alcoholic and drug addict who had been in prison.  It didn't occur to me until years later that perhaps a healthier response would have been to smile politely and run the other way.  I, of course, had been well trained by my addictive mother and co addictive father in the find art of denial.  This man was attractive to me (kind of like a magnet), and I was going to marry him.

My Higher Power tried to break through by sending me to a religious leader who recommended I attend Al-Anon as part of my premarital counseling.  Denial is a powerful thing.  It held my hand through six months of dating, up the aisle to the altar, and encouraged me to get pregnant four months later.

Stress, though, has a knack for smashing through even the best denial.  Bounced checks, unpaid parking tickets, moving violations, and little white lies were hard to ignore.  I insisted we seek marital counseling for "his problem."  Life began to settle down, so we quit going.  That was like stopping your medicine half way through the prescription because you feel better.

On some level I knew something wasn't right.  I recall phoning the therapist months later and sharing that I felt there was more.  I wasn't sure why I had that feeling.  Something inside said it was sexual in nature.  It didn't make any sense because our sexual relationship was good.

Years later I found out how accurate my "silly hunch" had been when, in the midst of financial chaos, my spouse admitted that he had a sexual addiction.  The money had been spent on renting telescopes, camera equipment, and at massage parlors.  By this time I had been in Al-Anon for two years and felt comfortable enough to talk about it in my home group.  God is forever sending people to me.  That night a woman attended whom I had never seen before.  After the meeting she approached me to share that she was a recovering sex addict.

She became my lifeline for the next year.  Although my Al-Anon group was non-judgmental, I felt uncomfortable sharing my sexual issues with them regularly.  I felt there was a social stigma in being addicted to a sex addict.  I experienced a level of shame and guilt I had never know in Al-Anon.

Our financial situation worsened as my husband's addiction consumed him.  He'd leave the house under the guise of going to an AA meeting.  I discovered later he had really been acting out his sexaholism.

It all caved in on him and he disappeared for two weeks.  I remember praying that he would kill himself or never come home.  I was tire of the pain.  When the call finally came, he was halfway across the country in a state mental hospital.  He had called a suicide hotline, and they had hospitalized him.

I had learned in Al-Anon not to rescue him.  Even so, I felt heartless when I told him that I would not get him released or send money for him to come home.  For two weeks I had answered phone calls from his creditors and irate customers.  I told him that if we were to live together, he had to get into an inpatient treatment program.  He arranged to go to a hospital that specialized in sexual addictions.  He also managed to finance his drive home.  I managed to gag my wish to "help out."

When I participated in family week at the hospital I began to get in touch with my own pain around sexual issues.  It was no accident that I married a sexaholic.  I had been an incest victim of my brother.  The shame and pain was overwhelming, yet there was relief in admitting it to a group of people whom I felt could understand.

It took a year and a half after this for me to begin attending S-Anon.  I had every excuse in the book not to work an S-Anon program:  "Al-Anon is helping me."  "The S-Anon meeting only has three people; I need a larger meeting."  "I'm not like 'those people'.  My spouse never did 'those things'."  "I might run into a client or former client."  It never occurred to me to question why the same excuses didn't keep me away from Al-Anon.

During that year and a half, I clung to my friendship with the SA I'd met at the Al-Anon meeting.  Periodically she would broach the subject of S-Anon.  She was patient and on day I called in a desperate state asking if she'd take me to an S-Anon meeting.

By the time I joined S-Anon I'd been in Al-Anon for five years.  Despite that I felt like a newcomer.  I struggled with my wish to control, my guilt, and my anger.  It was a relief to hear people talk about sexual issues.  I began to look at what sex means to me and how I used sex to manipulate my husband and reassure myself of my self-worth.  I talked about boundaries and abstinence.

I continue to work both programs because I need both.  S-Anon helps me feel my pain in a way that rarely happens in my other program.  Perhaps it is because it is my core addiction.  I struggle with my own recovery, and my husband struggles with his.  In our struggle together I draw strength from my Higher Power and the power of my groups.

Ironic as it may seem, I am grateful for my husband's addictions.  They have forced me to look at my own issues.  I am addicted to people.  I am addicted to the illusion of control.  I have had to look at my own childhood and confront who I am.  I have learned that when I am convinced I am right it probably means I am wrong.  I have come to realize that my "crazy intuition" isn't crazy after all.

"Step Eleven"

• I felt that prayer and meditation were things I didn't need at all.  It was not so much that I didn't believe, it was just that I didn't practice anything, and I just didn't think about it.  It was too confusing.  I couldn't reconcile everything that I was doing and everything that was happening with me with the existence of a Higher Power.  I found I had to change my conception of what my Higher Power was, and eventually I read something in the AA Big Book that really helped me:  "We have only to admit that there is something stronger than ourselves, or bigger than ourselves.  That we're not the most powerful force in the universe!"  That was a real good way for me to start looking at what a Higher Power is for me.

I have since found so much comfort in prayer and meditation.  I almost feel like a problem is physically being taken away, and I don't have to worry about it any more, especially when I try hard to pray that God's will be done in my life.  It's so hard for me to do that...first to want to do it, then to believe it, because I'm a "doer" and a "fixer"; I want to be active.  I used to think my way in and out of everything, and worry about making the right choices, but that doesn't work.  My best thinking doesn't always come up with the best thing for me.

I find the only way I've ever been able to practice the Eleventh Step is to have a regular schedule.  Every morning I get up and meditate, and if I don't, I know it won't happen later on.  I really thing of prayer and meditation as taking care of myself.  I find that it's a real nurturing kind of thing for me.  I just try to relax and open my mind and be good to myself in that way.

• I was raised in a very fundamental religion, and so from very early o, prayer was an important and essential part of my life.  But I would say it was more of a surface type of praying...praying out of fear that if I didn't pray I didn't know what would happen to me.  I really didn't receive the solace and the comfort that prayer and meditation can offer until quite recently, three or four years ago.  That's what it's all about for me - the action, not what's going to happen afterwards.

• I usually use prayer and meditation when I'm kind of desperate...as a last resort, but I don't do "preventive" praying or meditation yet.  I think about God a lot, in terms of what goes on in my life, and I'm thankful to God, and I say prayers over most of my meals, thanking God and thinking about the things that I'm thankful for during the day, and maybe that's a type of prayer.

• I have two meditation books, and every day I read one of the readings maybe three times, and then I ask myself, "How does this fit in with my life today?"  Then I just sort of think about it.  Sometimes I feel that I get specific guidance on what I need to do, and I'll go do it, or write it down.  Other times I feel that it would be real neat if the attitudes highlighted in the reading were part of my life, and it's like a seed sown, perhaps.  Then I usually think about the first three Steps, and how they apply to me, and I read some of the prayers from the AA Big Book.  There have been times when I stopped reading meditations because it felt like routine, and I didn't want to do anything "routine."  At times like that I'll just pray my own prayers.  At night when I go to bed (I learned this from an Al-Anon book), I think of three things I'm grateful for, and three things that I did well that day, and for me, that's harder than it sounds!

• The Eleventh Step is really my last resort.  I come to God with my problems, so most of the time it's, "Hey, get me out of this!"  I've started praying in the last couple of months, sometimes just little short prayers like "I need You.  Guide me."  I think the main thing that has helped me lately is the Serenity Prayer, because I want to change everything for everyone.  I want to make good things happen for other people, and I know I can't.  I don't have control.  But if I turn it over to God, He has control, and if it's His will, it will happen!  And if it isn't, it won't.

• Meditation has always been hard for me.  I start meditating, and then my mind gets to thinking about what went on during the day, or what could happen.  So I've started reading some meditation books, and I can see some things surfacing now that I hadn't seen before.  I can see that no matter how many times I come to God with a problem, He's always there for me.  And it's not like He does this miraculous thing right in front of me, it's just that I have a warm feeling that He is there, and everything is going to be okay if I let Him do His thing and not get involved in it.  Now that's not saying that I can stand by and not do anything.  I have to be conscious about what's happening to make wise choices about what He gives me.  The problem I have is that I want to solve everyone else's problems, and it's a struggle for me right now to let go of my partner's recovery, but I'm gradually giving that up to God.  He makes me feel good inside.

• When my best efforts let me down, I go to my knees and pray to God to help me let go.  When an obsession has taken over my thoughts, I can use meditation to quiet the chattering monkeys in my head.  I learned in a meditation class to focus on my breath, on being mindful, and on how God's will prevails in my life.  This focusing is not an easy task, but no matter how many negative thoughts get in my way, I continue to focus on my breath and ask God to give me the power to carry out His will.  I read my meditation book daily.  I use spiritual tapes while driving in slow traffic to help me be mindful of my spiritual path and of my daily behavior and attitude.  I am always amazed how prayer and meditation calm me and my thinking, and how they lead me to be more understanding and compassionate with love and kindness to the people in my life.

• Before coming to S-Anon, I tried everything to change my sexaholic husband, and prayed that he would stop acting out.  Sometimes I prayed that he would just die.  Almost every moment of my day was spent obsessing about what I could do to change him.  S-Anon helped me learn how faulty that thinking was, but I still struggled to stop focusing on him and the consequences of his behavior.

Then my spouse was sentenced to prison for his exhibitionism.  My fears became overwhelming, but I had been coming to S-Anon long enough that I knew where to turn for help.  At an S-Anon meeting soon after this, the topic was on Step Eleven.  I was touched by a reading that pointed out that prayer and meditation are healthy replacements for repetitive angry or fearful thoughts.  I was able to start, little by little, catching myself obsessing about the sexaholic and then replacing the thoughts with talking to my Higher Power instead.  It was not easy.  At first it was just, "God, take this obsession away from me.  Help me to know what you want me to do."

Sometimes the prayers felt forced, but it was amazing how turning to prayer and meditation soon became a habit.  My new tools helped me survive my divorce and to thrive working the Program as a single person.  Now I have mini "conversations" with my Higher Power throughout the day, and I am always trying to improve my conscious contact with Him.  When I am praying for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out, there is no room for obsession or fear.  God is doing for me what I could not do for myself.