Anonymity

I had to make some changes to the blog to preserve my anonymity. I have mixed feelings about it, but for now it seems prudent to keep this separated from my other blog, in which I am identified.

So, there is a new URL, and I had to repost everything after I imported the blog. Thus, it appears the first 4 entries were made last night. They weren't. It irritated me, but there it is.

Anonymity is important in AA and Al-Anon, but much more so in sex addiction recovery groups such as SA and S-Anon. It is an interesting situation at the S-Anon group I attend. There is a SA meeting that occurs at the same time, and pretty much every member of S-Anon has a mate in the SA group. We know who is over there, and sometimes we can hear them laughing, or we can see them walking down the hall. Being married to the SA members, there is a lot of cross-pollination. Mates are sponsors to mates of other S-Anons. I have found it especially challenging to figure out exactly what is and is not protecting anonymity with my hubby. Our habit has been to tell each other pretty much everything interesting, but in this case we just can't. I learned a few things about some of the SA members before I was attending S-Anon, and when I met their mates it made an awkward problem for me. I couldn't really tell the women that I knew anything about their husbands or even that I knew they were attending the SA meeting. And in at least one case, what I heard about the husband was very different from what I heard from the wife. This can be surprisingly hard to avoid, but it was made clear to me at my first meeting that this sort of thing must be avoided at all costs. Our group meetings are about OUR recovery, not talking about the SA member. And if my husband gets as a sponsor someone that a S-Anon is married to, I don't want to know all about them. It's not my business. Yet, it's difficult not to "learn" some things about the other group. We just try to be mindful and I try hard to avoid talking about anything that happens in my group, except perhaps what I chose to share. I am still figuring out what is and is not okay to say about meetings. For example, if my husband and I both go to that meeting, we both see who is going into each group. Is it betraying anonymity if I let slip that a certain person was present? I guess not if he saw that person there. But he might assume if that person's partner was at his meeting. It gets surprisingly dicey.

Here on the blog, my own personal anonymity doesn't matter too much to me right now, but I don't know if it might in the future. Also, I want to avoid identifying my husband, mainly to keep potential employers from finding him on these blogs. It seems right now that the best move is to remain anonymous, until it seems best to do otherwise. Once the toothpaste is out of the tube, you can't put it back in.