Feelings Are Real But Not Reality

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo / Public domain

Being in close quarters precipitate conflict, impatience, and sometimes even a sense of purposelessness that we never detected had we had been going along with our normal routine.  Bumping into each other causes feelings and reactions.

The slogan I hold to is Feelings are real but not reality. The anger I may feel, the sense of injustice, the void of purposelessness, the lack of control, the uncertainty and the forced living without resolution is more and more a part of life.  And none of us like that feeling.

But is it reality?  Is this all there is?  My program and the experience, strength, and hope of others tells me the answer is no.  In some ways, there is greater opportunity for intimacy, serving others, giving, reflection, and trust.

Currently Meeting Online

Note: We are now meeting online .  Email WataugaShares@gmail.com to get the link to join from your computer, smart phone, or traditional phone.

Humility

Yesterday at the meeting we kicked off the step seven reading.  Humbly ask God to remove all of our defects of character.  

I suppose for some there for the pride to conquer the world around us.  But we sex addicts have found that when we ran the show, we ran the show into the ditch.

We don't want to live in shame, but our acting out hurt people, destroyed relationships, objectified people, put us in danger of disease and life, and moved us towards losing the things that we valued the most.  It wasn't our worst thinking that got us there but our best.

So we had to find a different way and that way was in humility.  The humility that is less self-preoccupied and boring.  The humility that lets us learn from God and others to enjoy the good things of life given to us.

Whiskey And Milk

Yesterday at the meeting, we discussed the story from the AA big book affectionately known as whiskey and milk.

An alcoholic, a bit disgruntled about working for a man who owns the company he once owned, went to a roadside restaurant and bar.  After a couple of sandwiches and glasses of milk, he had the crazy thought that if he put whiskey in the milk, the milk would counteract the alcohol and have no affect on him.

After a few drinks that led to another, he found himself in a complete relaps.

Internal consternation and unsettlement easily sets us off.  It puts us in a place to be where we are open to patently ridiculous ideas that bring us back into our addiction.  What are our sex addiction whiskey and milk stories we tell ourselves only to wake up in shame and regret the next morning?

A lot can be learned here - noting our serenity and when we are off, cultivating narratives that make illogical sense to us,  letting our rationalize lead us off the cliff.

It's all so subtle.  Which is why talking about these things in a group proves to be immensely helpful.

See you next Monday July 15th at 6 PM.

Step Seven and Humility

In our group share we talked about humbly asking God to remove our character defects.  For some of us, the simple desire to stop resenting our spouses seems impossible.  Humility is where our Higher Power is often bringing us to.  God's grace can bring us to the place where we can choose to let go of our cherished resentment.

It is easy to  to simply back away from our addition trying to make the overt behavior stop.  Over time, we learn to run towards recovery to be molded into a new person.  Great to hear the voices of others that help us examine our lives and set our hearts towards another week of sobriety.

E-mail us at WataugaShares@gmail.com to join us Monday night as we recover from sexual addiction together.

Sexual Sobriety

To counter the destructive consequences of sex and love addiction, we draw on five major resources  Here is one: 

Sobriety. Our willingness to stop acting out in our own personal bottom-line addictive behavior on a daily basis. 

This doesn't mean we stop having sex.  It means that we identify and eliminate behavior that we have tried again and again and find destructive and disruptive.  This opens the way to what is genuine and pure in our lives.

Returned To Over and Over

Before coming to meetings, many of us never knew that our problem had a name.  All we knew was that we couldn't control our sexual behavior.  For us, sex was a consuming way of life.  Although the details of our stories were different, our problem was the same.  We were addicted to sexual behaviors that we returned to over and over, despite the consequences. - Sex Addicts Anonymous Page 3.

I remember pushing back against the idea of sexual addiction.  Some argued that the idea of addiction is counter to the idea of sin or the moral side of my behavior.  Others didn't like the term for the opposite reason thinking that if they accept it as an addiction, they would be judging a behavior they felt they were perfectly free to do.  But I had to remove myself from such debates and admit that this was behavior I was returning to over and over again in spite of what it was doing to my life and the great peril it was putting me.

In spite of the large amount of money spent, the time wasted, the secrets carried, the deception of missing work, stretching lunch hours, making up stories, the risky behavior, the uncertainty of disease, and the treat of being caught, I would return again again and again.  

I am perfectly willing to identify as a sex addict.  I got to the place where I no longer wanted to argue the term.  I just wanted help.