I'm not the one with the problem...

Like most partners of addicts (of any flavor), when it was suggested that I go to a 12 step group, my first thought was, "Me? I don't have a problem! Why would I need recovery?"

I went to Al-Anon fairly readily, though, when my life suddenly became TRULY unmanageable. My husband had been through a number of terrifying events in a short amount of time. He was laid off from work a few days before I discovered his sexual acting-out, through a third party. We were living in different cities at the time because his job was there and I was in school here. Not long after discovery, he disclosed to me that he had been drinking very heavily in the past year that we had been separated. Soon after that, he was in a hit-and-run accident, during which he was heavily intoxicated and received his second DUI. The following day he was suicidal and I had to call 911 from 400 miles away to get him some help. He spent the next week as an inpatient in a psychiatric facility. All of these things happened in a 2 week period in January. It was clear that my life was unmanageable, and that I needed some support.

But when it came to support and recovery as a spouse of a sex addict, I resisted more. I am not really sure why. Perhaps it was because I didn't really understand how it was an addiction; perhaps because I was still so angry and hurt by the discovery of what my husband had been doing. After several weeks, it became clear to me that this was the problem that was hardest for either of us to understand, and it was the problem that was driving the majority of the crisis in our lives. Most importantly, it was the problem that I couldn't talk to most people about, and I desperately needed some support.

There are a lot of options for sex addiction support: SA, SAA, SLAA, S-Anon, COSA, RCA, etc. In this city, SA and S-Anon seem to be the main resources available. There are some significant differences in philosophy between SA, SAA, and SLAA. But if there are differences in the partner groups, it doesn't really seem to matter much, as far as I can tell. Just being in a room with other people (our group is entirely women, which is fairly common) who have been through what you are going through is a very powerful experience. Everybody there has their own experience and their own definitions of what is acceptable behavior, but the important thing that everyone agrees on is that we are there for our own recovery, separate from that of our partners.

My husband went to a few SA meetings here in our city, then he had to go back to the other city to deal with the legal fall-out of the hit-and-run/DUI for a few weeks. During that time I started going to S-Anon and have been going ever since. Now that he is back here, we have been going together, as the two groups meet at the same time, and it's been a great experience. I always leave feeling uplifted and understood, regardless of what I heard or said in the meeting.

Our group is very small. At first, there was only 1 woman, waiting for someone else to come so they could have a meeting. Then a second woman came, and they had meetings, just the two of them, for a couple of years. It's been pretty recent, within the last 6 months, that others have started to show up. Now there are about 6 regulars, and a few other intermittent members. Occasionally there is a newcomer or two. So far I've seen 3 newcomers besides myself. Two didn't come back, and the other was just last night, so we'll see if she comes back. But I think it's probably pretty common for someone to come to their first meeting, then wait a while before returning. That's just a hunch on my part.

Here's how the meeting goes: We open with the Serenity Prayer. There are several opening readings, detailing who we are and why we are there. We read the 12 and 12 (steps/traditions). We read several other paragraphs: the Gifts of S-Anon, the Keys to Recovery, etc. Then we have announcements, usually about upcoming retreats and events. We do a reading from one of the S-Anon books, either the Green Book or Reflections of Hope (alternating each week). Then we share. We close with a statement about anonymity and the Serenity Prayer. Then we usually chat for a while. The meetings sound scripted and boring, but there is usually a lot of laughter and empathy. We rarely talk about our partners' behavior, acting out, or recovery, unless it relates to our own recovery. We work hard to keep the focus on ourselves. It would be easy for this to devolve into a bitching session or an opportunity to gossip about or degrade the partners, if we did not strictly adhere to our focus. Mainly we talk about the things we have to work on in ourselves, such as our attempts to control situations and people that are out of our control, our distorted thinking, how crazy we can become when we are acting in a codependent fashion. This group in particular (I haven't been to any others) is very loving and respectful towards our partners when we talk about them at all. It creates a very peaceful, supportive and fun environment, and I look forward to these meetings all week.