What do you think is acceptable sex conduct? This is a question whose answer has definitely changed for me over the years the more I’ve worked on my recovery, my spirituality, and my relationship to my Higher Power.
It honestly wasn’t that long ago, about five years now, when I still thought it was completely ok to spend each of my late night evenings watching pornography on the Internet for hours on end. It was also quite acceptable for me around that time to engage in sexual relations with someone who was already in a relationship with another, all under the pretense that I was single then and they were consenting. Years prior to this, when I was in a long-term monogamous relationship, I never saw any problem with my sex conduct then either, even when I was doing various behaviors such as fantasizing lustrously of others, leading people to think I’d leave my partner for them, engaging in phone or cyber sex conversations with strangers, flirting heavily with anyone I came into contact with, or having romantic but non physical interludes with someone other than my actual partner.
The reality was that none of my sex conduct changed until I did. It wasn’t until I fully started practicing the 12 Steps of recovery a few years ago did any of it alter. When I did, that’s when my spirituality truly started to grow. It’s also when I really started to draw closer to the God of my understanding. And the more I continued to do each of these things, the more I began seeing my sex conduct in a vastly different light. One that helped me to see my behaviors from the eyes of those I had hurt directly or indirectly, like those I had been in a relationship with, or the other halves of those I had seduced, or even myself.
Over the past few years now I’ve been coming into contact with plenty of people whose sex conduct are great reminders of where I once was with it all. Watching them randomly hook up with one person after another, or going to “bookstores”, parks, and rest stops for anonymous encounters, or hiring prostitutes and hookers for quick pleasure, or attending local strip clubs for a tease, or talking incessantly on a sexual level no matter what their audience is, or watching pornography on a regular basis, or sexually chatting on social media until the wee hours of most mornings, has caused me to reflect on how I too once thought each of these actions and more were totally acceptable.
But the fact FOR ME today is they aren’t. They aren’t because none of them ever brought me any true happiness. They never brought me the peace and serenity I sought. They ultimately never did anything for me other than make me crave them even more. I’m immensely grateful to my Higher Power for helping me to see this so clearly now and for leading me away from that darkness of my former sex conduct.
I must proclaim though that I am NO better than any of those who may still be doing any of these sex conduct based actions because it wasn’t that long ago when I WAS them and they were me. I must also admit that I’m far from perfect with this and occasionally have a flirtatious slip here and there. But I believe that if I continue to deepen my recovery, my spirituality, and my relationship to God that I will never completely relapse back into any of my old sex conduct behaviors again.
So what do I think is acceptable sex conduct? The best answer I can offer is that mine has definitely changed from what it once was. Honestly, how can I say what’s acceptable sex conduct for anyone else given we’re all on our own unique spiritual paths in life? I think the only other thing I can safely say about this subject matter is that I know I’m a much healthier person today because of the changes my sex conduct has undergone. I give my Higher Power all that credit, for I know I wouldn’t be where I am today if I had never drawn closer to God in the first place…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson