Romantic Fantasy Addiction Kicked my Butt
And what I did about it
There I was lying on the couch conjuring up romantic scenarios involving me and a certain young man I met salsa dancing who I’ll call Javier. Hot Javier, which in Spanish is an alliteration. Not so much handsome as cute, a decent dancer, who somehow got under my skin.
And not just mine. One of my dancer friends had dated him on and off. She was hooked on him too. He was all over the dance floor and all over the ladies. He knew the effect he had on us and played it for all he was worth.
Javier also drank to excess. So much so that our first and only passionate kiss got rudely interrupted when the contents of his stomach needed to get some fresh air.
I’d been in recovery a short while. I still went dancing on Thursday nights at the Caribee in downtown Oakland where I might run into him.
And on Friday nights, I went to my Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) meeting and shared about being obsessed with seeing him. If he was there, we’d dance about three dances and then he’d move on while I got triggered.
But if he wasn’t there, I’d stay till they closed in the hopes he might show up. Intermittent reward is highly addictive. Ask any compulsive gambler. So those nights where I didn’t see him messed me up even more.
To my more sober SLAA colleagues, I sounded worse after he didn’t show up than when he did.
Did I want a relationship with him? An alcoholic womanizer? Hell, no!
Did I want to dance with him? Hell yes!
It was like my heart took a selfie of us dancing together and then later, at home, wove a whole romantic story around that image.
And that became my hit.
So that’s when my SLAA friends sweetly suggested I not go to that or any club.
They were right. I conceded. I stayed home and went through Javier withdrawal. That’s when the fantasies in my head intensified.
If I couldn’t control the real man and his behavior, I could control the story I created in my head. And there by control him — which is what my disease seemed to be about, not so much sex but power and control.
I came to call these stories fantasies to remind myself they were not real.
Were they sexual? Not really. They were romantic — moonlight walks, candle lit dinners, dancing, dancing, dancing and a few kisses.
Harmless, right?
Except that I became obsessed and like I said, could lay on the couch lost in la-la land for hours. I didn’t need a romance novel because, after all, I’m a writer. I just wrote it in sensuous details in my head.
Was I objectifying Javier for my personal pleasure? Yep!
Could I justify this behavior? You bet!
I was not out in clubs. I was not cheating on my husband. I was not engaging in casual recreational addictive sex. I was not risking STD’s. I was not staying out till all hours. Etc., etc. I wasn’t even masturbating while I did it.
So it was a “more sober” form of acting out. A way to have my cake and eat it too, so to speak.
But in my book, it was still acting out.
It was still using a person and behaviors to alter my brain chemistry with a high. It was a mind-altering substance that took me out of the present which I used to escape from facing the serious issues in my life.
So finally, with much tough love from my sponsor, I labeled fantasy addiction as one of my personal bottom line behaviors and became willing to surrender its hold on me and mine on it.
This was not easy.
Fantasy addiction, given its so-called harmless aura can be bitch to kick.
After much trial and failure, here’s what worked:
I had to stop calling it fantasy and start calling it painful. Why painful?
If nothing else, because it wasn’t real. Because I was using someone. Because I was powerless over it and it was making my life increasingly unmanageable.
Once I got there, I was willing to work the steps around it. Especially steps 1 through 3 — admitting I was powerless over it and it was crazy-making, believing a Higher Power could restore me to back to sanity, and asking my Higher Power to so do.
The magic bullet in this for me was and is prayer.
When I caught myself fantasizing, I stopped and grabbed a sheet of paper and started writing a letter to God prayer.
Saying one out loud did not do the trick. It wasn’t a big enough gear shift. I had to go get paper, sit at a desk or table and get in spirit mode and write a Dear God prayer.
The deal with myself was — I had to keep writing till something shifted. Till I felt the compulsion lift as I wrote. This had to be a sincere prayer, not just a going through the motions so I could get back to the reverie.
If I got to the bottom of the page and I didn’t feel the lift, I turned the page over and kept writing.
If I got to the bottom of that page and nothing happened, I got out more paper, not just writing but praying as I wrote. When I felt the shift, I folded the paper and put it in my God box.
They’re still in there to this day. I’m not about to move them and mess with the juju.
There’s more to the deal.
If I didn’t get enough relief to stop fantasizing, I made a program call — to my sponsor or another member of the fellowship. And if one call wasn’t enough, I had to make more.
And if that didn’t do the trick, I went to go to a meeting. If not SLAA, it could be AA. Any 12 step meeting would break the spell.
Amazingly to some, though not to me, this worked.
I doubt I could have done it alone. Not without my fellow SLAA members teasing me relentlessly about having the exact same share every Friday night. They’d joke and say, can’t you at least go to another club and find a different guy?
This teasing helped me become self-aware and willing.
Behind the teasing was some kick-butt unconditional tough love. I knew it was there waiting to be unleashed if needed. It had been unleashed on me in earlier phases of my recovery when I most certainly needed it. This is serious stuff.
If nothing else, fantasy left unaddressed could lead me right back to those earlier behaviors. And serious consequences.
Have I had relapses since then? One…and it was a doozy. I was dating someone else at the time.
What helped me get over it was a deal I made with myself in addition to the steps described above. The deal was I had to tell the guy I was doing this and apologize for using him in this way.
The thought of doing that out loud to his handsome face was so embarrassing and shaming to me, it worked.
It’s impossible to say I’m cured. I have a disease that one day at a time, by keeping in fit spiritual condition has not flared up. But knowing me, it wouldn’t take much.
Helping others, including via writing this article is a huge part of keeping the high watch and leverage on myself.
If it helps you, great, but that’s just a side effect.
Marilyn Flower writes fast fun reads with a touch of magical realism to strength the imagination of socially conscious folks. Clowning and improvisation strengthen her during these crazy times. She’s a regular columnist for the prison newsletter, Freedom Anywhere, and five of her short plays have been produced in San Francisco.