Self-indulgent musings of a social retard.

This place is still around?

It's so strange to go to the home page and see how lo-fi it is!

It's also strange and sad and horrifying to read back through all the old entries and to see now what I didn't see then. It's so obvious to me that I was (am) a sex and love addict.

I've had the same relationship issues for as long as I can remember, but I never knew I had an actual problem. Or addiction. Or disease - however you want to classify it.

I've been going to SLAA meetings for seven months now. Progress is slow. This is my first-ever 12-step program, and it's kind of kicking my ass. I don't like to share in meetings. I don't like to hang out, or fellowship after meetings. I refuse to make phone calls. I can't stop isolating myself...which is a huge barrier to recovery. But I'm trying.

Of the Twelve Characteristics of S.L.A.A., I can identify with more than half of them. They are:

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 contact.

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 or emotional anorexia for sobriety.

12. We assign magical qualities to others. We idealize and pursue them, then blame them for not fulfilling our fantasies and expectations.

It's a battle. I hope to fight the good fight.

It has cost much too much of my life, and the lives of those who care about me. Enough is enough.

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