Healing Sex Addiction with the Magic of Integrity

And a Higher Power lighting up the twelve steps.

Integrity? What the heck is that?

Integrity was not a word that dared come within a ten-mile radius of the me I used to be. Impulsive, needy, loose, hedonistic lier-cheater — yes. Integrity — not!

Case in point: I lost my virginity with a man married to a woman I considered a friend. In their bed, with their baby crawling around and over us, laughing at my shyness.

When his wife asked me to stop seeing him, I acted like I would — acting being the key word here.

So we would meet in secret — at my place when my roommates were away. For a quickie in his campus office late at night before the janitor jingled keys in the lock. Or in his car with its back seat almost big enough to bed us both — provided I was on the bottom, and it was his head that banged against the window — not mine.

I only acted innocent. I was far from it.

While traversing the bay to learn salsa dancing — where I picked up or got picked up by a variety of partners — I learned to dance with my words as well as my feet, being married at the time.

So when my husband asked if I had a boyfriend, I would say things like, what good would that do? (for our failing marriage). But it was a long time before I answered him honestly.

It would take getting my ass into recovery for that to happen.

First, I had to fall for another married man, swallowing the fact that my so-called love involved hurting not one but two grown-ups and a small child. That took a pretty big gulp.

Thinking I was getting away with gold, I dug myself deeper and deeper into a place of self-loathing bleakness. Rather than look at that, I reached for my drug of choice — not so much the hot sex, but the power to attract and the power to dump.

Not a very efficient or long-lasting drug.

The more I got, the more I wanted and needed — till I eventually crashed and burned. The day our then-roommate moved out, leaving me to face the emptiness of my marriage alone, I hit bottom.

Thanks to seeds planted by a friend, I knew what kind of help I needed. That same night, I went to my first Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meeting. (They didn’t have a Power and Control Addicts meeting.)

SLAA didn’t try to reason with me or teach me anything directly. I learned by example and emulation. If you want what we have — a sane, sober life — you gotta do what we do. And what we recommend.

Then they would say, you can’t think your way into right action. If you could, I would have been there six months earlier when I first read their book and identified with every story in it.

Instead, you have to act your way into right thinking.

In my case, abstinence from lying, cheating, and sexing to get what I wanted. I had to set up some “no contacts.” I had to stop going to salsa clubs and try sober ballroom studios that did not serve booze or boys.

Places that had older, stodgier married couples learning the Foxtrot for an upcoming showcase. My shaking and shimmying didn’t cut it in the land of twinkle steps and quick, quick slows.

But I read the writing on the wall, did my no contacts, and danced my way into better thinking. Into bite-size bits of integrity. By being where I said I would be. With whom I said I would be with. And return home on the same day I left the house.

White-knuckling my way though withdrawal was no fun.

But it led me to prayer — an easier, softer way to abstain. It got me to meetings where I learned about the twelve steps and the meaning of turn it over and surrender. Once I admitted my powerlessness, I got Higher Powered help.

With those right actions came humility, honesty, and willingness. The willingness that puts on its big girl pants and makes genuine amends.

Amends are not for the timid or the faint of heart.

Genuine amends meant finally telling my husband what I’d really been up to with those boyfriends I pretended not to have.

Genuine amends meant calling up that very first lover, verbally wrestling for his wife’s street address, sending her a letter of apology revealing the truth. And learning from the now grown-up baby that the letter landed favorably.

Genuine amends also meant breaking up with the married boyfriend with the young child. And staying broken up even after I separated from my husband. That was tough. He kept coming around for sex, and I kept enticing him with treats like crab enchiladas, which he wouldn’t eat so as not to tip off his wife.

When a man refuses your crab enchiladas and is not allergic to shellfish, the writing’s on the wall. The relationship can’t go anywhere worth going. All that to say, when I shined the light of integrity on those stolen moments, they lost their luster.

I finally went cold turkey.

Letting go of the last vestiges of stolen comfort in a lover’s arms required facing my lonely, scared self and the unhealed pain of my past. After all, we drug so as not to feel, right?

My sponsor handed me a Kleenex box and encouraged me to cry it all out. The ragged rawness of that pain was nothing any human could soothe. I learned to reach for God, Who grabbed and held me and hasn’t let go yet.

It took a while, but I’ve arrived at the place where the light of integrity is no longer a tiny flame. It’s a lighthouse beacon I can see no matter how thick the fog — or smoke from not so distant wildfires.

My job now is to keep that beacon in view. I do so by regularly re-climbing the twelve high steps and cleaning any dimming dust off the glass plates that aim and focus her light. She shines 24/7 on my crazy, busy days. And in my night’s sober dreams.

Marilyn Flower writes political humor and satire to delight socially and spiritually conscious folks. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, where she writes about faith and prayer. Five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her resolve during these crazy times.