“Please Limit Your Sharing To 3 To 5 Minutes…”

I regularly attend a 12 Step meeting that asks for everyone who raises their hand to “please limit your sharing to 3 to 5 minutes”. Ironically, the sponsor who took me through the 12 Steps for the first time often told me the very same thing, but she also always added something else on to that. She’d tell me quite bluntly that anything more than 3 to 5 minutes is just going to be bullshit coming from my ego. Unfortunately, it took me a good while in recovery to figure out how right she truly was.

The fact is I used to hold most 12 Step meetings hostage that I went to by sharing for far longer than 3 to 5 minutes. Usually those shares were either about my drama I was still creating in life or the messes I used to create during the days I got drunk or high. Sadly, I never had much in the way of hope to contribute to any of those meetings, but I never really cared because my ego liked the spotlight. And the reason why my ego liked that spotlight stemmed back to my lack of having it during all of my childhood years.

Back then, I never felt like my parents or anybody in school paid much attention to me so I grew up feeling like I didn’t matter. And my discovery of alcohol and drugs would only numb that feeling for the years I did them addictively. By the time I found sobriety from both and began to check out those 12 Step meetings, I immediately started to feel like I mattered in life because all eyes would be intently on me for each of the moments I shared in them. The downside was that I’d frequently speak for 10 minutes or more where most of what I said rarely had anything of importance to help someone else.

Thankfully, my Higher Power brought that sponsor into my life and she became the first one to tell me how much I was feeding my ego every time I shared. Although I was initially offended and carried a slight resentment towards her because of it, I eventually saw it for myself. I noticed how people would get up and go to the bathroom or even leave every time I shared. I saw how many would pull out their cell phones and play on them when I spoke. And I observed how no one ever came up to me after the meeting to thank me for any of what I had to say. The reality was that I should have spent more time listening, and not talking, in each of those 12 Step meetings I went to early on in my recovery. But I didn’t and instead I spent years droning on about my miseries of life not ever realizing it was all ego and bullshit just like my sponsor had said.

I’m rather grateful to say that’s not who I am anymore and I have to thank that former sponsor and those wise words she once told me about limiting my sharing. Because of her, I’m doing my best these days to limit it to that 3 to 5 minute rule not only because I’ve learned how to spread my experience, strength, and hope in under that amount of time, but also because I absolutely want to hear from others more so than myself.

I’m just glad I don’t allow my ego anymore to convince me otherwise, but even better, I have a lot more compassion nowadays for all those who end up holding a meeting hostage like I once did. Hopefully they too will one day learn the same invaluable lesson my sponsor once taught me, by limiting their own sharing to 3 to 5 minutes…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Having Compassion For A Pet Who Passes Away

I used to believe that losing a pet was no big deal. When friends or acquaintances would mourn one of their own passing away, I rarely had much sympathy at all and usually just told them to get over it. But as my heart has become more open to seeing the love and light from my Higher Power in everyone and everything, this has definitely improved and so has my level of compassion when it happens.

My shift in empathy for when any pet leaves this world was clearly evident to me recently when my sister let me know her favorite cat was in the final stages of renal failure. A loyal, faithful, and unconditionally loving companion to my sister for around 17 years, Boo-Bear’s life was almost complete and I too was going to miss her. She was one of those cats who purred all the time and truly liked to cuddle up and have you constantly pet her. She gave light meows all the time as well that could soften your heart pretty quickly. But it wasn’t that long ago that I remember visiting my sister and pushing this cat away because I found it very annoying. I now know why that was. The simple answer is that I didn’t know how to receive any unconditional love from anyone or anything, including from a cat named Boo-Bear.

Growing up in a family where love was more conditional-based, I spent many years only being comfortable receiving that type of love from everything around me. My heart was truly jaded to feeling unconditional love because of how my parents were towards me. Love normally came with a price back then and for the few times it didn’t, it felt foreign and uncomfortable, so I usually ran from it. That pattern became routine for me for several decades until I drew closer to my Higher Power. Through a lot of hard work, my Higher Power has helped me to drop a ton of the walls around my heart that have always prevented me from enjoying any absolute love that comes my way.

I’m a firm believer that most cats and dogs are God’s instruments for showing us what absolute love looks like and Boo-Bear was a perfect example of that, especially to my sister. Many of us can easily forget what unconditional love looks like in a world that is filled with so much selfishness these days. Thankfully, there are wonderful pets like Boo-Bear who are sent her to be great reminders of a quality that is already innate within each and every one of our souls.

My partner’s cat Driggs is another example of a pet I believe has been a great reminder from my Higher Power to help me be more loving. I’ve grown to love and feel quite close to her over time. While initially I kept my walls up and didn’t like her at all, she’s become a staple in my life, as well as in my heart. The idea of her passing away one day is a thought I don’t like to think about because she in her own unique way has taught me a thing or two about what unconditional love should look like. My friend Mat would probably agree about this type of unrequited love that pets bring, as he too experienced it from his dog Jake who sadly, just recently passed away after many devoted years.

I’m just grateful that my heart is a lot more open today to grieving alongside people like my sister and Mat, as each lament the loss of something that gave them such beautiful unconditional love for so long. So I send my own love and compassion out to the both of you, as I know Boo-Bear and Jake were members of your family and will always remain a part of your hearts and souls. May they each be with you now God, eternally watching over Laura and Mat, just as they always did when they were here…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Internet And My Many Fantasy-Based Relationships

I consider myself pretty blessed in that I met my current partner on the Internet almost three years ago now and we’re still happily together to this day. I say that only because the Internet and it’s various chat rooms and dating sites were often my breeding ground for many fantasy-based relationships that I used to fall prey to quite often.

Feeling lonely inside was definitely the sole reason why I originally started chatting with anyone on the Internet in the first place. Ironically I wasn’t physically alone though when this behavior started, as I was in a monogamous relationship at the time. My loneliness was actually to do with the fact that I didn’t love myself at all and truthfully, I didn’t like myself much either. For a while, I sought that approval from that former partner, except it eventually stopped working. But instead of searching for it within, I found those chat sites and dating rooms on the Web and proceeded to look for it there. It didn’t take me that long to find it either nor did much time even pass before I got completely hooked on them as well.

It was easy to initially buy into anything people said to me via those Internet sites whether it was through an instant message or an email. Why? Because I’d often see an extremely attractive picture of any one of these individuals and I’d read the few sentences they had written about themselves in their profile, where the combination of both would lead me to create this fantasy in my brain that told me they were exactly what I was missing in my life. What I didn’t know back then was the only thing that was missing in my life was a loving relationship with my Higher Power and myself. Sadly, it would take me almost 15 more years to figure this out. But before I did, I immersed myself in this Internet fantasy world with far too many people.

I honestly lost count of the amount of individuals I created these fantasies with online over those 15 years. Sadly, most were never who they claimed to be. They were either married or in some type of an open relationship, or they would lie about important aspects of themselves just to paint a better picture for me to see. And the majority would mostly only want some type of a sexual conversation for a short period of time solely to stimulate themselves for self-gratification purposes. While that wasn’t any of what I originally was looking for, the more I lived in this sex and love addiction based fantasy world, the more I became willing to settle for less and less. While it started with me solely seeking external approval from these people online, it eventually ended with me taking my clothes off like a prostitute would, but one who wasn’t getting paid for it. It also included me engaging in cyber sex or phone sex with many of these people I met online, as that became a way of temporarily making myself feel more wanted and less lonely. But ironically, I felt even less wanted and lonelier after each time of doing this.

It really is truly amazing how time and time again my ego believed each of the people I met online were going to be my knight in shining armor. Some of them I ultimately even met in person because I had allowed my fantasy of them to take over any good sense of rationality. Most of them usually just wanted an in-person hookup though, but the few that didn’t, who wanted more of a serious relationship, were consistently the exact opposite of the fantasy I’d created of them.

Thankfully, I would finally discover Sex And Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) where I learned not only about this addiction I had succumbed to, but also that I had to heal a lot more parts of myself before I could ever successfully love and be loved by another. I spent about 11 months being completely celibate doing just that and by the end of it, I made the decision to respond to someone who had found my personal ad online. This was very unusual for me because it was normally me doing the searching. This individual is now the partner I referred to in the beginning of this article and to this day, I have had no desire to return any of my old Internet behaviors since being in this relationship. I truly believe the only reason why is that I don’t feel that loneliness inside anymore like I once did. That’s much in part because the 12 Steps and my Higher Power have helped me to learn how to love myself so much more unconditionally then I ever used to.

So if you should happen to feel as lonely and empty inside like I once regularly did, please take a moment, breathe, and know there’s a good chance you’re never going to be happy with anyone else either, especially from someone you might find on the Internet. While your ego will try to convince you that this cyber person is the perfect relationship for you to pursue, the reality is that in most cases, it’s probably just an illusion and a fantasy-based relationship your mind is trying to create. Try working on having a more loving relationship with your Higher Power and yourself instead, and know in doing so, you’ll eventually attract the person you truly are meant to be with…

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson