My journey to recovery from SLA, Sex and Love Addiction, I am going to detail by focusing on the facts about SLA provided by Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (slaafws.org). What I am "all about" with this blog is being unbarred, sincere, and tangible. With this particular topic I feel instead of giving verbatim details I will just let the SLAA description tell the tale.
Characteristics of Sex and Love Addiction ( "I expressed or experienced many, but not all of the characteristics"-Stigmas and Stilettos)
© 1990 The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
1. Having few healthy boundaries, we become sexually involved with and/or emotionally attached
to people without knowing them.
2. Fearing abandonment and loneliness, we stay in and return to painful, destructive
relationships, concealing our dependency needs from ourselves and others, growing more
isolated and alienated from friends and loved ones, ourselves, and God.
3. Fearing emotional and/or sexual deprivation, we compulsively pursue and involve ourselves in
one relationship after another, sometimes having more than one sexual or emotional liaison at
a time.
4. We confuse love with neediness, physical and sexual attraction, pity and/or the need to rescue
or be rescued.
5. We feel empty and incomplete when we are alone. Even though we fear intimacy and
commitment, we continually search for relationships and sexual contacts.
6. We sexualize stress, guilt, loneliness, anger, shame, fear and envy. We use sex or emotional
dependence as substitutes for nurturing care, and support.
7. We use sex and emotional involvement to manipulate and control others.
8. We become immobilized or seriously distracted by romantic or sexual obsessions or fantasies.
9. We avoid responsibility for ourselves by attaching ourselves to people who are emotionally
unavailable.
10. We stay enslaved to emotional dependency, romantic intrigue, or compulsive sexual activities.
11. To avoid feeling vulnerable, we may retreat from all intimate involvement, mistaking sexual and
emotional anorexia for recovery.
12. We assign magical qualities to others. We idealize and pursue them, then blame them for not
fulfilling our fantasies and expectations.
40 Questions for Self Diagnosis
excerpted © 1985 The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc.
All Rights Reserved
The following questions are designed to be used as guidelines to identifying possible signposts of sex and love addiction. They are not intended to provide a sure-fire method of diagnosis, nor can negative answers to these questions provide absolute assurance that the illness is not present. Many sex and love addicts have varying patterns which can result in very different ways of approaching and answering these questions. Despite this fact, we have found that short, to-the-point questions have often provided as effective a tool for self-diagnosis as have lengthy explanations of what sex and love addiction is. We appreciate that the diagnosis of sex and love addiction is a matter that needs to be both very serious and very private. We hope that these questions will prove helpful.
Yes [ ] No [ ] 1.) Have you ever tried to control how much sex to have or how often you would see
someone?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 2.) Do you find yourself unable to stop seeing a specific person even though you know
that seeing this person is destructive to you?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 3.) Do you feel that you don't want anyone to know about your sexual or romantic
activities? Do you feel you need to hide these activities from others – friends,
family, co-workers, counselors, etc.?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 4.) Do you get "high" from sex and/or romance? Do you crash?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 5.) Have you had sex at inappropriate times, in inappropriate places, and/or with
inappropriate people?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 6.) Do you make promises to yourself or rules for yourself concerning your sexual or
romantic behavior that you find you cannot follow?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 7.) Have you had or do you have sex with someone you don't (didn't) want to have sex
with?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 8.) Do you believe that sex and/or a relationship will make your life bearable?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 9.) Have you ever felt that you had to have sex?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 10.) Do you believe that someone can "fix" you?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 11.) Do you keep a list, written or otherwise, of the number of partners you've had?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 12.) Do you feel desperation or uneasiness when you are away from your lover or
sexual partner?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 13.) Have you lost count of the number of sexual partners you've had?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 14.) Do you feel desperate about your need for a lover, sexual fix, or future mate?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 15.) Have you or do you have sex regardless of the consequences (e.g. the threat of
being caught, the risk of contracting herpes, gonorrhea, AIDS, etc.)?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 16.) Do you find that you have a pattern of repeating bad relationships?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 17.) Do you feel that your only (or major) value in a relationship is your ability to perform
sexually, or provide an emotional fix?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 18.) Do you feel like a lifeless puppet unless there is someone around with whom you
can flirt? Do you feel that you're not "really alive" unless you are with your sexual /
romantic partner?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 19.) Do you feel entitled to sex?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 20.) Do you find yourself in a relationship that you cannot leave?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 21.) Have you ever threatened your financial stability or standing in the community by
pursuing a sexual partner?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 22.) Do you believe that the problems in your "love life" result from not
having enough of, or the right kind of sex? Or from continuing to
remain with the "wrong" person?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 23.) Have you ever had a serious relationship threatened or destroyed because of
outside sexual activity?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 24.) Do you feel that life would have no meaning without a love relationship or without
sex? Do you feel that you would have no identity if you were not someone’s lover?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 25.) Do you find yourself flirting or sexualizing with someone even if you do not mean
to?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 26.) Does your sexual and/or romantic behavior affect your reputation?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 27.) Do you have sex and/or "relationships" to try to deal with, or escape from life's
problems?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 28.) Do you feel uncomfortable about your masturbation because of the frequency with
which you masturbate, the fantasies you engage in, the props you use, and/or the
places in which you do it?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 29.) Do you engage in the practices of voyeurism, exhibitionism, etc., in ways that bring
discomfort and pain?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 30.) Do you find yourself needing greater and greater variety and energy in your sexual
or romantic activities just to achieve an "acceptable" level of physical and
emotional relief?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 31.) Do you need to have sex, or "fall in love" in order to feel like a "real man" or a "real
woman"?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 32.) Do you feel that your sexual and romantic behavior is about as rewarding as
hijacking a revolving door? Are you jaded?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 33.) Are you unable to concentrate on other areas of your life because of thoughts or
feelings you are having about another person or about sex?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 34.) Do you find yourself obsessing about a specific person or sexual act even though
these thoughts bring pain, craving or discomfort?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 35.) Have you ever wished you could stop or control your sexual and romantic activities
for a given period of time? Have you ever wished you could be less emotionally
dependent?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 36.) Do you find the pain in your life increasing no matter what you do? Are you afraid
that deep down you are unacceptable?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 37.) Do you feel that you lack dignity and wholeness?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 38.) Do you feel that your sexual and/or romantic life affects your spiritual life in a
negative way?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 39.) Do you feel that your life is unmanageable because of your sexual and/or romantic
behavior or your excessive dependency needs?
Yes [ ] No [ ] 40.) Have you ever thought that there might be more you could do with your life if you
were not so driven by sexual and romantic pursuits?
The Twelve Steps of S.L.A.A.*
1. We admitted we were powerless over sex and love addiction - that our lives had
become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood
God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our
wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to
them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would
injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with a Power
greater than ourselves, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power
to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this
message to sex and love addicts and to practice these principles in all areas of our
lives.
* ©1985 The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The Twelve Steps are reprinted and adapted with permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. Permission to reprint and adapt the Twelve Steps does not mean that A.A. is affiliated with this program. A.A. is a program of recovery from alcoholism only. Use of the Twelve Steps in connection with programs and activities, which are patterned after A.A., but which address other problems, does not imply otherwise.
S.L.A.A. Signs of Recovery
© 1990 The Augustine Fellowship, S.L.A.A., Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
1. We seek to develop a daily relationship with a Higher Power, knowing that we
are not alone in our efforts to heal ourselves from our addiction.
2. We are willing to be vulnerable because the capacity to trust has been
restored to us by our faith in a Higher Power.
3. We surrender, one day at a time, our whole life strategy of, and our obsession
with the pursuit of romantic and sexual intrigue and emotional dependency.
4. We learn to avoid situations that may put us at risk physically, morally,
psychologically or spiritually.
5. We learn to accept and love ourselves, to take responsibility for our own lives,
and to take care of our own needs before involving ourselves with others.
6. We become willing to ask for help, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and
learning to trust and accept others.
7. We allow ourselves to work through the pain of our low self-esteem and our
fears of abandonment and responsibility. We learn to feel comfortable in
solitude.
8. We begin to accept our imperfections and mistakes as part
My moment that changed my life forever was something that made me collapse on the floor of my old apartment and transformed me, renewed me, redeemed me, and it was an experience that I could have never imagined.
On the next blog.
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