The Space To Recover conference in Sedalia, CO

My name is David and I am a sex alone and I'd like us if we could, to begin with the WE version of the screen

after molar silence,

serenity

to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the different difference.

I there's so many places to start. I have a phenomenal topic of getting sober in a marriage and I will attempt to speak to that as much as possible.

I having said that I was began by being drunk a long time in the marriage. So I'll talk a little bit about that

two and

I'll probably do one of those things that is probably the single most uncommon topic in essay S and on couples meetings, which is talk about sex.

We normally do that in our intellectual so, but I think that has some relevance and more importantly, right before I talk tonight, my sponsor told me to talk about it. That pretty much took care of that. Yeah, I am a poor Wilson information. I'm a poor substitute for him that you really should have invited him back.

If there's anything he told you, I'm just going to repeat. And,

and then my sponsor was here three or four years ago and another sponsor of mine was here four or five years ago. So I feel like I'm part of a noble tradition that you started and I'm very grateful to have a chance to be here. My father's family from Pueblo and we have relatives up and down the Front Range. I have a brother and nieces, nieces and nephew who live in Colorado Springs

and cousins scattered around. So it's it's all he's fun in some ways to come back to a very familiar setting,

but this is not familiar at all. This is very pleasant place with nice discovery.

I'm glad that you have an opportunity to be here. I did go walking around that part of the grounds earlier and I commended to

who is my timer

you are and what is my time.

I believe that you're 7:00 to 8:00 not mistaken. Someone look on the agenda.

So 7 to 8.

OK, so I'll still stop it, which is fine.

I

I like to say my wife and I've been married about 29 and years and three months

and in some ways I've always ever since coming into essay and I came in in August of 1988. My sobriety dates August 2nd, 1980.

Ever since coming in to Sai have been getting, first of all, the awareness that I was a sex alumni and secondly, I

what kinds of situations,

Why? Why I got into the situations I got into over and over again. And I've always felt that ours was kind of the perfect sexaholic marriage. So I might not tell you a little about that. My first wife and I were married in 1966.

We got married because in my mind we had had sex, therefore we had to get married, which I thought was very noble of me. Looking back on it, it was pretty clear that I thought finally I got what I've been fantasizing about all these years. I wasn't going to get away.

My wife informed me well before we were married that she didn't want to be married to someone in the occupation in which I intended to go into. And over the next eight years, I first undergraduate and did

service in the Vietnam War and then finish Graduate School. And as I got close to my graduate degree, entering the career, she had told me before we were married that I shouldn't go in, that she didn't want me in. We move further and further apart. And as it happened, this was the early 70s and we had a group marriage and an open marriage,

at least nominally. And, and so she essentially ended up with the other partner in our group marriage. So I always thought that when I got sober, Hey, wow, that's a good credential. You know, group marriage, open marriage and all that kind of stuff.

And then

met. I was engaged for a while after that marriage ended and was doing an internship and

met the woman I'm now married to

and ended up breaking off the engagement.

In part because

the woman was someone to whom the woman I was engaged to had been someone I was having an affair with during my first marriage.

And in part because I had ordered her or told her, I guess more accurately, that I really didn't want her to have any interactions the sexual interactions with my one of my brothers. And she did.

And I was really angry.

But the truth was, and that was the novel reason I said all that. On the surface though, the truth was I had begun an affair where I was doing my internship and

and I was thoroughly infatuated and wanted to keep that relationship going and so I broke off the engagement with all those excuses.

Looking back now, I can see that all of my decisions regarding marriage and partners or made just for me to act out sexually and to pursue my fantasies and act out my fantasies and that I was not capable of

being a genuine or trustworthy partner in any usual sense of the word

is really humbling. And we

to look back on that from that perspective and

and my sort of pseudo pride that this was such a good beginning for a sexaholic marriage is it's not bad at all.

But it is confirmation that that the disease I have has gone on a long time. I came in when I was 42. I can trace behaviors without interruption from when I was four years old.

I have a six year old grandson and a 5 year old niece and

sometimes when I'm with them, I think, you know, by the time I was your age, I was one or two years into this stuff.

And I certainly hope they're not

from age 10 on. When I discovered how to have sex with myself, there was just no, it was a greased lightning slide down and and went for a long time and a long way. But the basic behaviors and the basic motivations didn't return.

And all of this I just shared. I'll do more detail on that

talking tomorrow, but all of this is just by way of saying I was well established as a sex addict long before I met either one of my wives. I was well established in my acne out patterns and they were not available to be even seen, much less addressed and honestly changed. And

and while obviously my wives had wanted to be involved in a relationship with someone like me,

that the they had no inkling of the extent of the illness. And I tell people, even after 29 years, I think it's still true that my wife has no deeper understanding of what it means to be a sex addict than she did when I came in. She knows that I'm sober. She knows that I'm an entirely different human being and she's really grateful for that and tells me that frequently.

But I don't think that it's on her list of choices

to realize how constant the obsession is and how constant the need to

surrender my will in my life to the care of God as I understanding this. And there is absolutely no reason she needs to, you know, this is my disease. The solution that's been offered to me will work for me if I'll work it. And and that's sufficient. So in terms of getting sober in a marriage, I guess that's the first thing I want to say,

that I came in with a dreaded disease. I didn't sign up for it. I didn't ask for it. It got significantly worse over time. And one characteristic of the disease is that we will trash everything that is most near and dear to us. I did that quite adequately and at the same time,

the only possible solution, which we have a wonderful one, is going to be the one that I work and the one that I bring on into the marriage on a daily basis.

Unfortunately, God has given the willingness to do that one day at a time, and as Jane and Nashville said, for which I can never be sufficiently grateful.

We have a member in Essay who came in 1983 and is still active. She lives just outside Seattle, and I remember her saying at a conference a long time ago that one of they thought I got her into sex. Anonymous was Anonymous was actually a A and it's because the a a big had all this terrible, terrible stuff about sex in it and she couldn't understand why

and she hated it. And it was in doing her 6th and 7th step work on that that she finally came to terms with why she found it so in distressingly. And I would like to just read one paragraph from the chapter 2 lines. How could men who love their wives and children be so sorry? Can you? We can't hear very well. Is it sound? Is the sound system on? Yeah, it's on. And does it need to be turned up? Is there a way to do that? Certainly

no, no problem. The whole point is to be heard. I think

if anybody else has sound problems is speak up sooner let me know. We get a little feedback. So.

So I'll start again. How could men who love their lives and children be so unthinking, so callous, so cruel? There could be no love in such persons, we thought. And just as we were being convinced of their heartlessness, they would surprise us with fresh results and new attentions.

For a while they would be their old sweet cells, only to dash the new structure of affection to pieces once more. Asked why they commenced to drink again, they would reply with some silly excuse or none. It was so baffling, so heartbreaking. Could we have been so mistaken in the man we married when lusting? They were strangers, said Strington. Sometimes they were so inaccessible, it seemed as though a Great Wall had been built about

and it goes on and talks about that.

And that's the description of me.

I loved my wife. I still do. I love my children. I love the whole sense of family and the things we could do together. And at the same time, I was heartless and cruel and, and just did terrible things to my kids and my partner, my wives and other people. And, and I was

as I mean, this sounds so stupid, but I was as perplexed as they were. They didn't want me to be doing those things.

I didn't want to be doing this thing. I just didn't know that there was any way to stop. And in fact, it wasn't until I walked into my first SA meeting on the night of August 2nd and heard it would happen to be all men that night, Every seven or eight of us,

and heard people talk about that they could not stop masturbating. OK, I knew about that. And on that, and I think that was the first realization I had that it wasn't just a, it really was an addiction and it really was.

It was taking me into places not only that I didn't want to go, but from which I could not return and get

on my own. And, and I guess I took my first step that night. I guess that's I did a formal first step about a three weeks later. But I guess that was when I first realized that something was terribly, terribly wrong. My wife and I were separated in the house at that point. She had confronted me about a relationship that she assumed was an affair. That one didn't happen to be, but she didn't know that was.

And

and so we were sleeping separately in the house and fortunately had just started with a marriage counselor, my wife that had the temerity to tell someone, the wife of someone where I worked, that I kept having affairs. And this woman said, well, why don't you go see this counselor because she's been helpful to us, to my husband. And so we did. We'd seen her twice, and

on the night everything came to an end, or came, more accurately to the beginning, On the night everything came to a new beginning

and we separated inside the house. She said she just wouldn't put up with anymore.

We were able to go and see this therapist the next day. And it was that therapist looking at me after I explained, well, I just have to be involved more than one woman at a time. She looked at me and said, well, you're a sex act. And it was kind of like saying, well, you have, you know, sort of reddish skin and your freckles sometimes. And, and I had brown hair then. I mean, it was that kind of a description. And, and of course she was right. And

of course the real miracle is not that she identified me, but that I actually agreed.

And then the real miracle took place, which is that 4 hours later I was sitting in the first SA meeting.

My wife was

not happy.

To say she was rageful would be a gross understatement. It was pretty ugly.

I can tell you the two things that happened that really change

her relationship. One was we did have a wonderful lesson on program

and she was after several couple of weeks willing to start to go to meetings and the women there who

we're able to tolerate her rage

also were able to say, look, there is a solution for you too if you want so

and for that I'm always grateful for that. And it began to have concrete results for us right away. The other thing is we've been separated about two weeks. She was staying downstairs, I was upstairs, and we would sit at the top and the bottom of the stairs respectively, and talk up and down the staircase. And

I've been sober probably about two weeks, maybe somewhere right in there anyway. And she said one night, you know,

you're so different from my first husband. You're very thoughtful. We have the same spending patterns. You're not wild with money. You're very sort of cautious. You're very considered and loving father and very, very good with the kids. And she ran down to litany of things that I was different from her first husband. And then she said, but you do have one thing in common, and that is

you're both sex addicts. And

that was,

I mean, even telling you I get very goose completely. And because that was the moment she took her first step, she doesn't necessarily call it that, but that was the moment she realized that the problem was certainly mine. I had to change. But the problem also was that she kept falling with sex addicts. And actually they think from what she said in passing public and others

that she didn't marry. But whether that's true or not, it was her recognition of a pattern. So we came in kind of slightly off step. Maybe it could like a couple weeks, but in some ways on a very equal

footing. And having been in the fellowship now for 16 some years,

I realized that that was the other, yet another gift. I do not realize for many years how unusual that was and and I've never been sufficiently grateful for that, but I suppose

I did. My first step, as I said, I took a couple of meetings to do it. And after the second, after the meetings, we would go out and sit and have

Coke or coffee or something and talk a little bit. After my first step was done, I said to her, you know,

we were sitting talking. I said if you want to hear what's on my first step,

share it with you. And she said, they warned me in the meeting you would do that, and they told me to say no.

That turned out to be yet another miracle.

There were things that came out years later

that were just, they were terrible and I certainly shared them in my first step,

but

by refusing to listen to them at that point,

the issue remained her getting better and my getting better and not what kind of insanity a crap had got us to that point.

And I don't think I, I knew that intellectually right away, but I don't think I appreciated spiritually or emotionally how powerful that moment was until about six years ago. So at that time, I guess I've been sober about 10 years, and we had moved from Nashville, where we lived. When I got sober,

we had six meetings a week. By the way, on a per capita basis, we have the most essay meetings in the world.

There were more meetings in El A, but they a lot more people. So

I was just very fortunate to need to get sober there too. But anyway, years later, 10 years later in Portland.

I, I was working out of town, I would come back, I'd be gone 5 days and come back

and I came back the next day. And when I would come home, I usually get home around midnight. One AMI could have come home the next day, but I usually just wanted to get home. And, and usually I finally after a few weeks, a few months of this, realized that when I got home, my wife is going to talk for an hour and I could either be miserable or I could enjoy it and I had to stay away. And so she did. She thought, for now.

It wasn't until the next day that she said, oh, by the way,

I got a phone call while you were in Seattle, and she preceded to tell me a story about a guy who had called who had married a woman with whom I had a relationship and a woman who later played. I was not acting out with her anymore, but she played a part in our family life indirectly, and it was not something that she was aware of. She found out later on when we just went through a really tough spell in my work.

And

so this guy was calling to accuse me and and to lay it on her. That was responsible for the fact that their marriage was now dissolved. And, and my wife listened to this, which had to have been just incredibly difficult. It was certainly difficult when she found out about it. And she listened to him and said, you know, you have a real problem.

There's there is a program for you and if you ever want to go to it, there's not a contact and she don't know

or she couldn't get home. And I thought, you know, if if we had talked, if I had dumped my stuff that night and she hadn't been told that he offered signal

it, it was not very difficult. That's all. I,

I don't know what we did.

We do celibate for about 30 days, a little less, maybe 29 or something.

And then there were practical reasons in terms of family visitors that she wanted to not only be sleeping back upstairs again, but we ended up being intimate and we've had celibacy on and off

in our relationship. The longest was about 5 months

and it's always been really helpful for me. I'm not so sure that she would say that for herself,

but I we both would agree. I think that that initial period is helpful because it took the pressure off the need to be physical and

prove something that way.

Umm, but other than that and this the topics getting sober and marriage. So I think talking about how the sobriety definition fit into all this. Other than that, we retained our pretty much level of sexual activity that we've had before. And, you know, and it became,

it was, I got to a point after about four years

where I dreaded it because what I had discovered was that after we were intimate, I would be just wired and sensitive and miserable really the next two or three days, which makes my sponsor miserable because I make him miserable after I was miserable.

And I really assumed that would go on forever.

It actually went on about about 10 years, about nine years, 10 years and one month, one year. I really don't know. I can only say, looking back on it, I realized that that that had gone away

and that in fact, my most common reaction now to our being is that I can't remember it.

And you wouldn't necessarily understand how incredible that is, but that's pretty incredible.

And so that's been one of the the things that is sort of marked the changes, not made the changes, but marked the changes is sobriety and marriage for us.

We got very involved in S and on SA couples

right away. They used to meet at our house. I vividly remember in the first year this

professional, he was quite prominent in the community, on TV a lot, sitting on the couch across the room with his wife during couples meeting. And I remember it partly because of just who he was, but partly because apparently about six months later, he violated his ethical cannons yet again and hung himself.

And that's been another thing that I've had an opportunity to see over the years. About one person a year

in my direct contact kills himself. And it hasn't made me callous about it, I hope. But it has reminded me that that whatever may be going on in a marriage, whatever may be going on in someone's recovery, what we are playing with is death. It's not a choice of ice cream flavors or what kind of

fabric we want for the curtains or anything like that.

And my sponsor once and I were talking and, and

he said that, you know, David,

it's one reason it's hard for lives in our case to understand this, because their disease for them can make them totally miserable, can make us miserable too, for that matter. But it won't kill them. And he said our disease will kill us. It'll kill off our relationships and our friendships and our social ties and our operations and all of those things that are most important to us.

And often it will just kill us literally. And

and that's been another aspect of

getting sober in marriage. And that is I've it is it talks about it in the AB book.

I've had times when I have needed to go to meetings, I needed to talk on the phone, needed to be writing, do some things that we're not always convenient for the family. And I've really tried to be respectful of that. I go mostly the daytime meetings partly through respect then. But I have always had to remember that the person who needs this program is me, not my wife. And

and if it's my life is at stake, I have to do the things that are necessary to get through the day. And

the good thing for me is that she actually respects that totally. Sometimes she's not happy with something I've done. For sure she does respect him. Couple of other things about marriage

the

we we have had a history of of fighting. He usually was my behavior. It was usually pretty justified. I was really good at the hangdog of occasionally true confessions.

I got a whole bunch of sort of variations on the theme, all of which was some clever idea that moved me out of the center of the picture When I came in and heard that one of the things that sexaholics are real good at doing, Addicts in general, but certainly I was

real good at doing, is convincing their wives that they were the crazy ones. And,

and at first I troubled, you know, because of course that's exactly what they've done. And then it began to sink into me, what I had done, to do that.

It was awful, you know, to take not only someone that I dearly loved, but also

who really did a wonderful job and all sorts of areas of her life, not the least of which was putting up with me. And to leave her in the space where she thought she was the crazy one. That's terrible. And and I was glad for that when that finally sort of sank in and I began to understand. And that's been often the case

for our marriage that I began to understand the

the persistence and the depth of the intensity and all of those things of my behaviors and what impact they had had on her and our children

and, and how really

difficult that had made life for them. I, of course, didn't care. I was feeling no pain. I was, I'm some people are dangerous and some are chronics. I happen to be a chronic. I never let the fantasies run out. I never let the sexual acting out stop

and

and so I when I heard about that in meetings, I realized I'm liking out. I'm the kind of alcoholic who just never was the last one. I did it with lust and with sexual behavior.

So getting into marriage, I mean getting into marriage sober, I had an awful lot of things, patterns to undo.

And really one of the decisions, I don't know how I came to this because something wasn't my sponsor,

but I realized that at least for a period of time early on, and it probably lasted about three or four months, I just had to let my wife make decisions for me.

She didn't want the role. Quite frankly. I had to kind of be kind of laid back about it sometimes. Most of the time I was pretty great

and just say I don't know what to do and what do you think over and over and over again. And it wasn't that that was always the best thing to do. It was just that I had no capacity to do that at all. I was always doing things my way and would set things up, manipulate things, you know, track things, whatever. And our biggest battles were usually over my doing things my way. And so I just had to break that pattern. It was kind of variation on the evidence

and not make decisions. Myself

to this day,

if we have a fight, it's going to be because

I think that my way of doing things is better than hers. And you know, it's just not worth the fight. It's just not worth it. And we kept on the battles, and I'll talk more about those in just a second, but until about 5 years ago, about 2000 and

one day, two things happen. One, I realized that our battles were always when I was resisting her interpretation view of something and I was just terrified and she was tired of fighting. Now, I had been working at the entire fighting for a long time at that point. It's eleven years,

but and I had these great expressions that I heard along the way, you know, such as you may be right. No matter what she said, you may be right.

And another one that works really well is when she's upset. Thank you for caring so much, which is helped. What helped me realize by the way, that the opposite of love is indifference.

Love and hater, actually first cousins, but love and indifference are opposites. And, and I really been working on reducing it. But about five years ago, we just stopped. We stopped fighting. We've actually fought once since then. It was not too long ago and I don't know where it was and neither one of us liked it and stopped again. And we haven't done it yet,

but a lot of it was just realizing that my way of doing things kept setting up fights. And what's the point? I don't want to fight. I'm miserable when we fight, she's miserable when we fight

and and we just had to grow through it. Having said that, the very worst time in our whole marriage came in terms of fighting, came after I had been sober four years and we were going through intense 4 1/2 I guess intense professional challenges and problems in Tennessee and

and she really just couldn't take any more. And I had a pragmatic need that happened, involved essays matter of fact,

umm, to stay in Tennessee really about six months longer than she could stay there. And we just had this, oh, terrible, terrible battle. And she literally walked out the house, got in the car and drove from Nashville to Eugene, OR. I think she stopped to get gas

and next appeared living with a cousin of mine who lives in Eugene.

And it was very, very painful and and really just terrible on both of us. And,

and yet at the same time it was such a gift. Not only was that end up being our London celibacy period, but also

I didn't drink. It talks about 12:00 and 12:00 about how when World War Two came along, they were really worried what's going to happen when when these Alcoholics get out on the battlefield, Are they going to drink? And and not only did most of them not drink, they actually did very well. And, and the most common response was, hey, we've already had our Pearl Harbor. What's this,

you know? And that was kind of like what it became in retrospect for us.

And as awful as that was, it didn't end the Mary. I had already made a commitment about two years previously. And I have to give a story about that. I have been made a commitment 2 years previously that no matter what happened, I was not leaving the marriage period. And I kept repeating that meetings often enough that I hadn't forgotten it. And and so when she needed to move across the country and one fell swoop,

I, I was, I wasn't happy. And it was difficult. And we

had a lot of obligations and animals and stuff like that to do selling ice. What is that? It was OK. And I think in some ways,

going through that really painful time and still being married and still being actually, when we were together reasonably happily married was really powerful for us. Where I worked, there was a woman with whom I had an affair who had a right in terms of public access to appear in this place from time to time.

It was awful for me, was awful for my life. And and it kept happening and went on for two years. And I didn't have, I only had one contact with the entire time I walked into the building, she happened to be there. And I just froze like a deer in the headlights. And I said hi. And then I reached in my briefcase and I pulled out a essay pamphlet. I said, this is what I'm doing. And I handed it to her. And then I turned around and ran

and that was the only contact I had. And I don't know what she did with it. I don't know what the kid,

but but it was just really, really unpleasant there that I was in a situation about

three months later to publicly state that I had a commitment to my wife and it was there no matter what. It happened to be our anniversary and I had a reason to be able to publish this kind of thing on a regular basis, so I put it in there.

The woman never appeared in the building again.

And you know it. It didn't ever. It didn't seem like it was anything I was doing.

And yet I remember the moment I realized what had changed that it, it wasn't in this case anything I was doing. It was what I hadn't done, which is to say in an irrevocable way that I'm doing a different life now than the life I was doing before. And when I guess I don't know what went on in her, but I know her behavior when she read that and

and knew based on my behavior that it was true.

She didn't need to be there. And,

and that was really humbling because I and even my wife would have told you that, that that behavior was continuing independent of us. And, and it's, it's just a way of being reminded rather forcefully that God works through every situation, including inaction. And, and it was the willingness to take action. They need all the difference.

I've stayed involved in Sai, do a lot of service work,

do a lot of meetings. I do best when I go to four to five meetings a week. Sometimes I get down to two. That's a pretty slim week

and I wish I didn't. And then sometimes I get to go to seven or one. That's really great.

So I have a routine of doing this that has now gone on for the 16 some years. I, I when I came in, I was told to do 9090 and I came real close to that. And basically it's seven meetings a week for the first probably three or four years, unless there was just a physical reason I was traveling that was not a physical reason because I go to a A or NAA

and we're asking if they were available. And, and that pattern for me is continued. My wife is fully supportive of it. She appreciates that I go to daytime meetings last time. And mostly it's because I think she has come to understand at some gut level or what the illustration I use that this is my insulin. You know, a diabetic, whether they're having a good day or a bad day or whether they've eaten cake or not eating cake, there's still going to be a diabetic

afterwards. And and I have a disease is very much like diabetes. And if I don't take my insulin every day, I might not die, but it has real predictable effects and not the least of which is that I may go into a coma. And and comas for me are those fantasy translate states that go nowhere but into disasters

and so I do that. And my wife was active in Essendon for about 5 years and then

decided in the move actually that she was not connecting in the 2nd way she had.

And we get a couples group until last summer and really only stop that because of exterior factors. But we have not yet restarted either. And all of that, though, I have, I get a lot of phone calls from people that sponsor and make calls

and, and I every once in a while I'll realize that talking to someone on the phone and she's quoting a piece of program literature, quoting me or something.

And it's not that she's working her program through me, it's just just like other incidents, if I'm doing my job,

she'll do her job. And her job in some parts is just to pass on what she sees me doing. So it actually gives us a common ground. We both became into the program as atheist. I had to give it up after three years. It wasn't working. And so I was telling Steve, I have a evangelical minister friend who tells me I'm a non practicing atheist.

Umm, he's a non practicing theist that were matched. And my wife has never really been all that comfortable with this whole God stuff. But what she is comfortable with is talking that way and listening to me talk that way and talking with other people that way. And and that has given us a spiritual language and a spiritual bond. That is certainly a big part of being sober in marriage today.

I think for both of us now, probably her slightly more than me,

sex truly is optionally most of the time, probably almost all the time. That's a gift. Roy writes about it in the right book and does a pretty good job. And and the other thing that's in there with this all closed is that in all, we're now married 29 years and three months. I guess

we say we're in our third marriage. We each had a first marriage. The second marriage lasted 12 years

and the third marriage began in August of 1988. But we haven't married to the same person.