April 23rd, 2016 was the fourth-year milestone for my recovery from sex and love addiction, yet somehow it still feels somewhat surreal that four years have actually gone by since I last acted out with it.
When I talk about this former addiction to people outside of those recovery circles, many often try to tell me what I did sounds like being just a typical guy. Unfortunately, I think that’s precisely what my ego wants to hear because it tends to give this former disease a slight resuscitation in my head. I generally don’t allow this thinking to last very long though because the fact is this addiction was the one that ultimately convinced me to do things I would never do living in a healthy and sound spiritual life.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to loan $5000 to someone I was attracted to, hoping it might help “save them”. It didn’t of course, nor did I ever see that money get returned.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to hang around someone who was regularly snorting Percocet’s all because I just wanted to sleep with them, which never happened, and all that did was more and more compromising of who I truly was.
It’s this addiction that convinced me it was ok to pursue people that were married or not attracted to me, all because I liked the high of the chase. None of which ever ended well.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to sell my first house and financially support another’s person’s business dream, all because I was too afraid to let them go, all of which only ended in a total financial loss.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to hop on planes and fly to places like Las Vegas or Pittsburg just because I met someone online from there and had a few conversations where I was sure they were “the one” I was meant to spend my life with. None of them were though.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to take people on expensive vacations or out to pricey dinners, solely because I had the hots for them, where each of those trips always seemed to end in depression and misery.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to avoid hanging out with people that truly loved me and cared about me such as my nephews, my sister, or my best friend, opting instead to spend time with someone I hoping to get lucky with. None of which was every truly satisfying.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to wait by the phone on far too many Friday and Saturday nights, hoping for a call from some person I was lustfully pursuing, only to never receive it and instead remain alone and sad.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to place multiple online personal ads out there, juggling numerous people all at once, always looking for the perfect mate, which never came.
It’s this addiction that convinced me it was ok to lead loving people on who truly wanted to be with me as a partner, yet in the end I really only hurt all of them.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to date someone from another country who was already with someone else, allowing myself to believe they would eventually leave that person for me, except they never did.
It’s this addiction that convinced me to spend countless hours on the web looking at pornography, chasing after a high that just grew less and less, until I became a slave to my compute and the Internet.
And it’s this addiction that convinced me that suicide was the answer after I was rejected by one of my lustful pursuits, but thankfully God ended up having another plan for me.
So here I am four years later beyond all this, yet I know it would only take a single slip into some of those old behaviors for all of this to come back. I definitely don’t want this disease to ever return because it was deadly, so deadly that I almost died from it. Maybe that’s why it seems so surreal to me that four years have passed since I last acted out in it because sometimes I think it was just yesterday I was doing all those crazy behaviors. But thank God I’m not anymore, thank God!
I’m grateful to have reached yet another milestone in my sex and love addiction recovery and all of that is because of one thing, God. Thank you God for helping me to get here and for the continued help I’m receiving in this recovery to never return to an addiction that almost destroyed my entire life…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson