Month: May 2014

Trust Issues, Abandonment, And Sabotage

I want to be completely honest by stating that I still have some trust issues with my partner. All of it surrounds a single act of infidelity that took place over seven months ago now. And even though I’ve watched him become so much healthier since then, I find myself still struggling at various times to fully trust him. I realized tonight that the source of these trust issues are solely coming from my fear of abandonment.

Throughout most of my life, abandonment has been a common theme. My mother, my father, peers, friends, and partners have all made deep promises to me and later broken them. As each of them happened, my lack of trust in others solidified even deeper. Eventually, I stopped trusting anyone that got close to me because I was so used to people lying to me and breaking their promises.

When my partner and I became monogamous back in February of 2012, I had reached a place in my healing process where I was ready to begin trusting someone else again on a much deeper level. The day I discovered his infidelity over a year and a half later was one that severely triggered my abandonment issues. I put serious thought to walking away from our relationship at that time but I didn’t because I believe everyone deserves a second chance. I’m thankful I gave him one because the two of us have grown much closer ever since. The problem for me now though is those doubts I’m having of his monogamous commitment to our relationship.

While I haven’t actually seen any evidence that supports that fear, I know it’s stemming still from my fear of abandonment. Unfortunately, each of these doubts continue to lead me to behaviors that I know aren’t healthy. Sometimes I check up on him to make sure he’s at where he says he is going to be. Sometimes I interrogate him a little too much about various things. And sometimes I’ve even done some minor snooping on him too. I know that none of these behaviors are healthy, not for him, not for me, and not for us. I’m also starting to see how each is doing nothing more than slowly sabotaging our relationship.

The fact is that I wouldn’t want any of those behaviors being done to me on a regular basis. I’m also sure that I would eventually get sick and tired of someone not trusting me, especially if I was living in complete honesty and integrity. The irony in all of this is that my partner shares the same fear of abandonment as he too has gone through a considerable amount of it himself. In fact, through therapy he discovered his major motivating factor of cheating in the first place was that he was afraid I might abandon him down the road. So he attempted to sabotage it before that could ever happen. As I sit here and type this, I know now that my own acts of not trusting him are no different.

I am afraid that he might cheat on me again as I know our relationship wouldn’t be able to survive that. But I also know that all of my questioning and acts of not trusting him aren’t helping the matter either. I clearly see now that if I keep this up, it could create a self-fulfilling prophecy and I definitely don’t want that to happen. What I do want to happen is to fully trust my partner again, and I know to get there it’s going to mean walking through my fear of abandonment without acting out those fears. That means not checking up on my partner, not giving him the third degree, and believing that within him is the desire to keep the monogamy between us and only us. It’s going to take a lot more work on my part, but I have the willingness to do it.

I truly love my partner deeply and I’m thankful to my Higher Power for the healing taking place in our relationship with our abandonment issues. I fully believe that our Higher Power is giving us the gift each day to work through these issues by being in this connection with each other. The challenge for the two of us now is to trust each other and to not let our fears overwhelm us, as that will only lead us to sabotaging our connection. I make a promise to myself today that I am going to do whatever it takes to work through this, and I pray that my partner will do the same…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Source Of All Fear And Acceptance

Over the past few weeks I’ve been working on getting this new blog up and running and it hasn’t been easy. When I was first notified that my former blog tool was going away for good, it triggered a lot of fear within me. That fear reminded me of a passage that Bill Wilson once wrote in Step Seven of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book and it read as follows:

“The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear – primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.”

Bill Wilson really did have incredible wisdom when it came to the source of all fear. His words have rung so true with every fear-based situation I’ve ever been in, including this one. The root of my fear here was definitely that I was afraid of losing something I already possessed. In my mind, what I possessed was something that was working just fine and that I had finally gotten used to. It also had a built-in readership and decent search results on the web.

Regardless, I had no choice but to begin working on those fears by taking steps to migrate from the old tool to the new one. Night after night I spent hours and hours wracking my brain with this new tool facing many challenges. Each of them kept my level of fear higher as they all were based around me being afraid of losing what I had possessed for the past year and half. Now that I finally have my new blog site up and running, my level of fear has dropped tremendously. While I still do have some fears with WordPress because of some of its limitations, I understand that the only way to get through them is to practice acceptance.

Like I mentioned the other day, I believe that acceptance is truly the key to all my problems today, including any fears I might have. Thus, I have been working on accepting the issues I’m still having with my new blog site and WordPress. In doing so, I find I am feeling a lot more serene then I probably would be feeling otherwise.

I realize now that the next time I face another fear, I only need to apply Bill Wilson’s words from Step Seven to see what the source of that fear is. Once I discover it, I know the solution is to then practice acceptance, as only then I’ll be able experience the serenity I seek in every area of my life.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Let’s Talk About The Importance Of Sex

Most people don’t normally like to talk about sex. It’s generally a topic that’s avoided unless it’s between close friends or two people having an intimate relationship. When I was active in my sex and love addiction though, I used to talk about it all the time to just about everyone I came around. Thankfully, my recovery from that addiction has changed that and I’m much more reserved these days in discussing anything related to it. But there is one area that I’d like to discuss openly with everyone who reads this and it deals with the level of importance that is placed on sex in a relationship.

Many years ago, I met someone from New Jersey who I found extremely attractive. We hit it off in conversation and in chemistry, and I thought the two of us were a good match for a long-term relationship. After two solid weeks of going out on some dates and developing a few romantic feelings, I ran into a wall with that relationship. On one particular evening during a romantic moment, this person attempted to force sex between us. When I stated that I was old-fashioned and wanted to date for a longer period of time, his response was that he wasn’t interested in dating anymore. He said he wanted to have sex because it was one of the most important parts of a relationship. He told me it wouldn’t be worth it to keep dating if the sex between us wasn’t that good. I was dumbfounded at his response and I promptly ended our dating shortly thereafter.

He’s not the first person I’ve met who has felt this way either. I’ve met many other men, especially in the gay community, who feel that sex is the most important part of a relationship. At one point in time, during my sex and love addiction based years, I probably felt the same. Thankfully, that’s quite far from the truth for me now.

While my partner might not be that happy in me stating this, I find it totally acceptable to go weeks without engaging in sex these days. No, that doesn’t mean that I’m a cold fish during all those weeks. In fact, I’m actually quite playful, very touchy feely, and enjoy a good cuddle at the end of every day. To me, those elements are far more important than engaging in sex for however long it lasts.

Some of you reading this may be thinking that maybe my current partner isn’t satisfying me, and that’s why I feel this way. That’s far from the real truth to be honest with all of you. Coming from a person who once lived for almost two decades in a sex and love addiction, there used to be a constant effort to try to top each previous sexual experience. It led me to finding boredom in sex because of that addiction and I starting going to extremes just to experience a high with it. I’m grateful these days that behavior is not active in my life anymore. And while I do enjoy the sexual intimacy with my partner when it happens, it’s not something that I desire to place a huge emphasis on anymore.

What I find most important in my relationship now is growing a spiritual connection between the two of us. That involves me being honest in everything, openly communicating my feelings, showing my daily affection, and offering my love and support to my partner when he needs it. While I do treasure those times I’m sexually intimate with my partner, the bottom line is that I’m not living my life anymore thinking about having to engage in it regularly with him. They say that men think about having sex at least every seven seconds, but I can safely say that I don’t fit into that mold anymore and I’m convinced it has something to do with my priorities these days.

The biggest priority in my life for far too many years was to find my next sexual conquest. Today, my biggest priorities are to grow closer to my Higher Power, to practice the 12-Steps daily, and to show my unconditional love to each and every individual. Having sex isn’t one of those priorities anymore and I can see so clearly today that it’s just one small facet of a healthy relationship.

If sex is still one of your number one priorities in life, you may want to look at why that is. Truthfully, there are a lot of things in life far more enjoyable than any of the sex I’ve ever had in my entire life with anyone. Also, a healthy relationship can actually exist when sex is not the top priority, or even one near the top. There are many people in this world that can’t have sex for various health reasons, and they too have found great happiness in other ways in their relationships. While sex can be wonderful, fun, and important, try to remember that it’s not what truly cements a long lasting relationship together. It’s the unconditional love that does…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson