I often feel like my recovery from sex and love addiction is way more difficult to handle than the one I’ve had from alcohol and drugs. Even though I have over two years of sobriety now from when I last relapsed into any toxic sex or love behavior, I find I’m continuing to be triggered quite a bit with this disease. So I decided it would be a good thing to write down some of those triggers, not just for my benefit, but also for others who might be unaware of what they actually look like with this specific addiction.
For those who might not know what a trigger means in recover, it’s all the things that can lead a person to a relapse and back into their addiction. With alcohol and drugs, there’s very few of them anymore that exist for me. Going to bars and visiting my fraternity are really the only two I can think of that still stimulate my thoughts on drinking and drugging. I stay away from bars completely for that reason and I visit my former chapter house only once a year solely to speak about the disease with the hopes it will help my brothers. It’s a completely different scenario though when it comes to my sex and love addiction.
Before I go into what some of my triggers are for that addiction, I’d like to mention briefly the top five things I was doing at the peak of when I was active in that disease.
- I was sleeping with a sponsee (13th stepping) instead of helping them recover.
- I was looking at porn and having sexual conversations on the Internet every single night for 3+ hours.
- I was chasing after married men regularly and trying to seduce them.
- I was saying sexual innuendos in just about every single conversation I had.
- I had multiple friends in my life quite close to me who I walked the fine line with between harmless flirtation and direct sexual behaviors.
And that’s only the top five, but there were many others as well. Once I found recovery from that addiction in Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous, my life began to greatly improve. It’s then I began to see just how many triggers I actually had with that addiction and here are ten of those I know that can drive me back into it.
- Any type of movie or television show that has high sexual content in it with people I find attractive.
- Daily masturbation by myself.
- Group situations with friends who regularly use sexual innuendos in conversation.
- Close friendships with anyone I would consider dating if I were single.
- Any type of bar, especially gay bars.
- Any man who says they are straight but still flirts with other men.
- Weekend retreats where there is nudity or public sex taking place.
- Any type of bookstore that predominantly caters to sex.
- Locker rooms, steam rooms, and saunas in public gyms.
- The bear culture (a subset of the gay culture for large men and their admirers)
There are plenty of other ones I could mention as well, but these were the first ten to pop up in my mind. To be honest, sometimes it feels like I’m navigating a minefield when it comes to this addiction. I can see why now there’s an extremely high rate of relapse with those who’ve suffered from sex and love addiction. In fact, it’s far higher than alcohol and drug addiction is.
I believe the reason for this is due to the fact that sex is everywhere in our culture and is present in almost everything we do. While alcohol and drugs can be avoided and aren’t necessarily part of our biological makeup, sex and love are. I believe they are God given and truly a part of our human nature. Our media, advertising, and most of our culture cater to it for that specific reason. So while one person may see something as simple as a magazine with people half naked on it and never even pick it up, I can be immediately triggered because of it, if I find the person on it sexually attractive. This is why my recovery for my sex and love addiction is a constant work in progress. It’s something I know will probably test me on and off for the rest of my life. I do my best to avoid all of the triggers I have with this addiction, but I know it’s impossible to do so 100%. Thankfully, I have a very strong relationship with my Higher Power today and that alone has kept me clean and sober from my sex and love addiction since April of 2012.
A sex and love addiction is cunning, baffling, and powerful just like alcohol and drug addiction can be. In some ways though, it’s can be even craftier because sex and love are a part of who we all are inside. Thankfully, this addiction is in remission for me and a big reason for that is in knowing what my triggers are. It’s truly is very important to know them no matter what the addiction is, because when we don’t, we stand a good chance of allowing one of them to drive us back into our disease. I know I don’t want that to ever happen, and so I will continue to do my best to draw closer to my Higher Power avoid being around any of them…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson