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Connection with a spouse

Over the years in recovery with my spouse, we have had different levels of disclosure between us based on where each of us are in recovery and what we needed at the time. Sometimes we are just going along in recovery with no particular needs other than some basic transparency. Sometimes she needs to build trust with me. Sometimes, she’s overwhelmed and needs a break. I outline each kind of disclosure we have used over the years below. In each case, we discuss as a couple what we both want and need and are in agreement on which level of disclosure we both want.

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Sobriety

Sobriety is where recovery starts. Once I’ve put my addiction down, then I can start recovering. I like the sobriety definition from Sexaholics Anonymous:

“In defining sobriety, we do not speak for those outside Sexaholics Anonymous. We can only speak for ourselves. Thus, for the married sexaholic, sexual sobriety means having no form of sex with self or with persons other than the spouse. In SA’s sobriety definition, the term “spouse” refers to one’s partner in a marriage between a man and a woman. For the unmarried sexaholic, sexual sobriety means freedom from sex of any kind. And for all of us, single and married alike, sexual sobriety also includes progressive victory over lust.”

Sexaholics Anonymous, 191-192
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Recovery Overview

Below is an outline of the basics of my recovery program.  Most of it I’ve learned from books or other people in recovery, but I’ve lived it and made it mine now. Each link will take you to a list of blog posts that have something to do with that topic so you can dig into any of the topics you want to. 

When I am working with someone new to recovery as their sponsor, I tell them to get the basics (listed below under “The Basics” in place first, then start working the 12 steps, and then everything else will fall into place.

  • The Basics
    • Dailies – These are things I do every day to keep me balanced.
    • Boundaries – These separate safe situations from unsafe ones.
    • Connections-Shame and isolation kept me in my addiction, connection keeps me out of addiction.
  • The 12 Steps – (I’m using the generic AA wording of the steps below.)
    • Step 0 – Became part of a fellowship of recovery.
    • Step 1 – We admitted we were powerless over our addiction – that our lives had become unmanageable.
    • Step 2 – Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
    • Step 3 – Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
    • Step 4 – Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
    • Step 5 – Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
    • Step 6 – Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
    • Step 7 – Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
    • Step 8 – Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
    • Step 9 – Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
    • Step 10 – Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
    • Step 11 – Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
    • Step 12 – Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to other addicts, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
  • Other helpful topics
    • Habits – Changing from the outside in.
    • Lust – The opposite of love.  The source of compulsion.  A form of hatred.
    • Relapses and Triggers – Tips and tricks for learning.
    • Shame and Isolation – The core of addiction.
    • Denial and Gas-lighting
    • Codependency – Addiction to other people’s reactions to me.
    • I often learn through Analogies, so here are several in case you do too.
    • Results – What have I gotten out of addiction recovery above and beyond being free from addiction?
  • Myth-busting
    • Marriage doesn’t fix lust/sex addiction if you don’t switch love for lust.
    • Men will be men?  Sex drive is created by my choices to lust.

A Lifetime of Addictions

My addiction to pornography, lust, and masturbation started when I was about 12 years old. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I didn’t think I was hurting anyone, so I continued to use these things to escape from depression and loneliness (though I didn’t know it at the time) and to cover up the things I didn’t like feeling. Around age 16, I started drinking alcohol with my friends as well.

I graduated high school and left home to go to college 600 miles away. Free at last! I partied with my new-found friends. My sexual addictions were always there in their various forms, but I kept them very private because I was ashamed of what I was doing to myself and others. They progressed to sex with others, strip clubs and more. It seemed there was no limit to where I would allow my addictions to take me. I isolated from friends at church and eventually stopped going to church completely. I was often around large groups of people, but I felt completely alone. I was nearing rock bottom and would consistently use lust and alcohol to numb my pains and escape from the realities of life.

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The Thing That Aspires To Be Crap!

In my earliest days of recovery, I can clearly remember the mornings.  My eyes would open and again I would realize it hadn’t been a dream or nightmare but reality.  My wife knew everything and so did my children.  I didn’t feel like getting up and just rolling over but I couldn’t do that either or my wife would become suspicious I was doing something again.

In those days, I would share in group and talk about feeling not just like crap but “the thing that aspires to be crap.”  It was to show how low and worthless I felt.  The guilt and shame were heavy loads.  I was still in the middle of Step 1 and admitting I needed help.  Step 2 was Hope and what hope was there for me?  How could this ever get better?

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For Spouses, Families, and Friends of Addicts

I’m writing this to the wives of addicts since that’s the most common situation. The same advice is relevant for a husband if the addict is a woman. And all of this is helpful for any family member or friend of an addict.

First of all, there is great hope for freedom and happiness. There is a way out of addiction and hundreds of thousands of people have followed this path out. One important key is that the addict has to want to recover from his addiction before he can receive help and make real progress. If he doesn’t want to get well, it will be more difficult for him to get well. Sometimes just going to meetings unwillingly at first will help him gain the hope and humility needed to start the path of recovery. Many have started out this way.

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Addiction – A Chronic Condition

I’ve heard some people who have said, “I’m cured of my addiction to….” When I hear that, I just smile and nod. I congratulate them and keep my opinions to myself. My experience and my opinion though is that addiction to anything (porn, alcohol, drugs, etc.) is a chronic condition. This means it doesn’t go away but only goes into remission.

I am in remission from my addiction to porn, lying, etc. and have to continue to work at staying there. I feel it is very, very dangerous to think you are “healed” of the addiction and go on your merry way. This is a denial of the situation. You can change your habits, you can change your environment, and you can change your heart (with help) but you can’t change that you are and will always be an addict. To refuse to admit this is, in my opinion, akin to lying to yourself in a horrible way. It can lead to denial or justifications about other things and ultimately lead to acting out in a deeper or worse way than you did before.

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Self-Confidence

I found over time that I started to have more self-confidence, not just with being able to choose what’s right regarding the addiction, but in standing up for myself.  It’s strange but it seems that since I was so riddled with guilt and shame all these years, I felt like I deserved anything that anyone did to me that was mean or abusive.  I felt I had earned it.  I was beating myself up so much that I welcomed it when others did the same – hey I deserved it, right.  It was like it was my punishment for doing so much wrong.

Once I stopped beating myself up so much, I started being offended when others would beat me up and I would stand up for myself.  It was scary at first and I had feelings of hypocrisy and unworthiness, but each time I did it, it got easier.  Another thing I realized was that there was a wrong way to stand up for myself (which was to be mean back to the person) and a right way (simply stating how I felt when the person did what they did and if needed, distance myself from them without resentment or hatred).

I also found out that this inability to stand up for myself also extended into the realm of having and expressing opinions. Where do I want to eat? Anywhere is fine. What is my favorite X? I am not sure. It’s as though my opinions and desires were invalid. Perhaps because some of my desires had hurt me so badly that I didn’t want to have any desires any more. I’m starting to have opinions and desires and am starting to be able to express them too.

Pride

I have found that pride is like codependency in its sneakiness.  One good way for me to detect pride in myself is to look at how good of a follower I am.  In the context of being a facilitator, for example, I can ask myself if I am following the guidelines (and my leaders) or not.  If I am following them, am I following them with all my heart, wanting their ideas to work, and thereby I am being a good follower?  If I do my own things that I think are better, then I am seeking praise for doing those things because my idea was better than theirs.  This is the same thing Satan did with God’s plan.  If Satan is anything like me when I’m doing this, he didn’t want to follow the plan because he could get glory for coming up with a better way of doing things.

I was locked into a deadly pride cycle as a facilitator for several years.  I had a few years of physical sobriety and was the facilitator of an LDS 12-step meeting.  I knew it all and “helped” and “saved” everyone I spoke to.  The pride I had in my length of sobriety and in my facilitating position started to blind me to the lust that I was quietly allowing to creep back into my life.  I had to start telling myself and others lies to maintain my status as facilitator and to keep my long sobriety that I was so proud of.  That pride and the lust that crept in over those years cost me my family for a few months during separation once I came clean about the lies I had told myself and others.  I had to drop the pride – I had to surrender everything.  Anything I held onto slowly became a millstone around my neck dragging me down.  God and Christ were the only things I could safely hold onto.

In the context of my main addictions, pride can blind me to my weakness, and like the addiction itself, can numb me to the point that I don’t think I need God’s help.  The only way I have found to keep from falling to pride is through contact with group members through phone calls or at meetings.  I am, through that contact, constantly reminded of the truth about my weaknesses and strengths and am kept on track.