living sobriety

Sex Addict Microblog 12.4.11

2011-12-04T04:58:00.001-08:00

The Good: I finished the month's notes and bills, save for a few, and comparatively it is a FEW loose ends, for work. It feels good to be in integrity as best I can, and I've done it by following my boss' suggestions which I've been resisting for months and months. Go figure.

The Not-So-Good: I've taken to regular use of porn nearly nightly on the Internet to masturbate to. Lately it's been once per evening, as opposed to 2 or 3 or 4 times on previous 'binges'. It's also to legal content and involves no one else live or through chats, emails, etc.

The Plan: I like Carnes' "Picky" (PCI) tool as a guide to help myself know what I'm doing daily that's an indicator of how I'm acting healthy, or what I'm lacking.

I still feel shame that I've gone back to porn, but I'm actually fully disclosed to my wife about it and we have plans to continue counseling and working on our relationship, so I'd say in general, I'm hopeful.

Food has sucked for weeks. I'm not sure where my weight is but I'd wager I'm near 350, my heaviest. I'm barely fitting into my fattest fat clothes. Maybe I should consider an OA meeting? Track my food?

We'll see... I hope I don't drop dead before I figure this out. If I do, I love my wife and all my kids, my family, and the opportunity to have tasted this recovery. It's sweeter than the most concentrated sweet I've ever acted out with /;^) >

Sex Addict MicroBlog

2011-11-21T23:07:00.001-08:00

Positive: finished about half of what I need t do to be "caught up" at work. Spent time withall my kids and out in a full days work. Prayed so so. Shaking exercise. Negative: still want to search porn and I'm considering (preoccupied) with acting out. Still eating like $hi+. Tired as fu€|<. Don't wanna go to bed. Going to eat more ice cream before bed.

The Sex Addict Dodges a Bullet--the Dex(ter) Addict Wins!

2011-10-17T03:14:00.000-07:00

I love the show Dexter. It's about a serial killer who sublimates his killing ways into vigilantism, woven into a clever set of stories in the setting of a Miami Police Department. The protagonist/serial killer is Dexter. In one season he actually attends a 12 step meeting for heroin addicts and talks about how he's always giving in to his "dark passenger" and he's living a double life where if people knew the real him, they would never want to be around him.

So it goes as the sex addict. And all addicts for that matter. We feel that if anyone knew the real us, they'd never want to be a part of our lives.

I told my wife this past holiday week that I'm tired of being caught in the crossfire of my overtaxing work, while I hear thankless demands to do more at home. This is all the while I live in an environment defined by chaos and clutter, and fueled by 'inner circle foods' that are either brought/created by Motown Girl or purchased/consumed by myself.

Lately, like since she became pregnant this last mid August, I've been feeling that she continues to demand more and more of me, she complains of constant fatigue, pain, discomfort and/or nausea, and sexual encounters understandably are about the last thing on her mind.

Meanwhile, I'm feeling overwhelmed by work, where I've fallen behind on paper work and I'm currently in a continuous audit that's putting my job in jeopardy to do so, and I've been going into work later and later, not meeting their expectations, and this is because I'm either spending time trying to help my wife, or it's because I'm acting out in some way. The acting out online with porn and masturbation hasn't sunk to the degrees it has/could, but it's been consistent in that I've done it several times since the pregnancy began. I'm also still eating like crap, hardly exercising, and I'm at nearly 345 pounds, the heaviest I've ever been. It's hard to walk around normally with that much extra weight. I constantly feel short of breath when I exert myself beyond minimally, I don't think my CPAP is working for my sleep apnea since I'm often tired when I wake up and I suspect I might even need a new machine in addition to the already overdue changes in the settings. Finally, I'm feeling that my wife has distanced herself tremendously from me. This has come in the form of little to no hugging, kissing, holding, we don't generally sleep together in the same bed since she's usually uncomfortable and doesn't like me near her, and she also has a routine of getting the baby (now over 1 year old) and bringing him in bed in the early morning. This, of course, is in addition to the absence of sex.

So what do I do? I continue to eat like sh*t, I continue to avoid any extra exercise, I continue to act out online, I continue to keep a distance by not sleeping with her in the same bed, by staying up late acting out, by overeating and worsening the way I feel both physically and emotionally about myself.

It's a f*cking nightmare to keep up all of this self destructive behavior. I need some help...

In comes the new psychiatrist--later this month--to give me a second opinion on the meds I'm on.

In comes a truthful conversation with my wife telling her all of the abovc in the most respectful and loving way that I could.

In comes the Sex Addict to the bed with the wife. I've now relocated the CPAP to the bedside and moved all the piles of clothes to the other bed so I can share a bed with her.

In comes the Sex Addict making lots of phone calls, talking about the above and talking about how despite my efforts, I still want to act out.

So I made a plan. Keep the iPad in the bedroom, next to the wife, and use only the computer/smart phone that's protected by the Covenant Eyes and XXX Church.

Add in a walk up the monstrous hill near my house before I ate dinner and sat down to watch Season Five of Dexter (the last few episodes were killer ;-> )

You'd think that would keep me sober, no?

When I came home from the walk and went into the bedroom, I decided to see how my iPad backup in preparation for the new iOS5 update was going. I'd read a bunch of stuff and did some tips and tricks to get the thing to work smoothly, but two things went wrong.

The first, and most triggering, was that it didn't work. When I realized that and was starting to just download the software in the bedroom, my wife woke up and told me to take the whole mess--iPad, computer and all--into the other room since I was keeping her up.

Being a good little sex addict, I "eroticized" my rage in my head and told myself "bingo! I can go act out--it's her fault!!" and I told her that.

Like a bad co dependent i.e. someone in good recovery, she said "I can't help what you do...I can't worry about you...I need rest...Good night...I love you" and she rolled over and went to bed.

What a rotten person, I thought--although it didn't feel right. She was actually doing something very healthy. And this was after she spent all day taking great care of our son, a lot of her free time straightening out things I'd asked her to start to take care of so I'd feel better about coming home, and she also made me a salmon dinner.

What nerve!

I guess it's me with the nerve. So I realized, I'm powerless over this stuff (step I) and I told myself, "sure, we're going to act out, but let's take our time and enjoy the evening".

So I didn't do any work, I put on Dexter and quickly became engaged in the final episodes of the season. Additionally, I ate the yummy dinner my wife had made, and I synced my iPad to the new software.

So the Dexter watching (I'm a Dex Addict too) and the iPad syncing kept me away from the porn.

By the time I'd finished Dexter and the iPad was in the midst of successful downloading of the new iOS5 and iCloud was working it's magic with restoring my apps, I've lost the urge to act out.

Just for the moment...

G-d gave me a freebie....perhaps it's the harvest holiday of Sukkot I should be thankful for.

Today and tonight are going to be tough. I'm going to have to sleep as much as I can so I can go to work, work efficiently and then do my usual 'overnighter' on Monday evening as I prepare the paperwork for my associate taking over the work sites on Tuesday morning.

At least I know who's in control and I guess that's a start....

Mrs. Jones, Mr. Jones, Teen Jones, Baby Jones--theyr'e all a target of lust for the Sex Addict

2011-09-26T22:48:00.000-07:00

I don't know what the f#ck has gotten into me. I'm not "horny" or lustful, per se, but I feel an overwhelming desire to look at porn lately. I just heard one little ad for a masturbatory device and my mind was off to the races. I wanted to see the videos of the device in action.

Ironically, as I watched two short clips, I didn't feel aroused--I was kind of disgusted. There's a pic of this guy masturbating with his hand and then with the device and I'm thinking, "yeah, this is exactly what I need"--NOT!

So why do I come here as my wife goes to bed? She knows that I'm Jonesing, she knows that she's been accused of being an enabler, both for telling me "do what you want" previously, and then at other times, including tonight, she's offered oral sex.

It's a lose-lose for the both of us. I actually refused the sex, since I felt it was being offered in an unhealthy way. But then I'm sitting out here in the living room, tired, feeling sorry for myself, feeling stressed by work, feeling there's virtually untenable clutter everywhere in the condo, and I wanna say "pfuggit" and go to the races.

But where does it leave me afterwords. I know the addiction cycle. I'm stuck in the preoccupation phase. I'm looking to avoid the ritualization/acting out phase and the phase that's the worst, most potentially lethal--the despair that follows.

Usually right after that ejaculation, as the waves of warmth fade from my limbs, torso and brain, I have the immediate sense that I've done something wrong, that I have to immediately tell my wife, recovery buddy, sponsor, and that I'm frustratingly starting out at square one again.

MotownGirl sees the risk of me going online as being 'bad' for me, but from what I gather, she seems most afraid that I'm going to either pick up a hooker and/or meet up with someone to have a sexual tryst. That, or perhaps go online and masturbate on cam to someone that I think is a woman. I'm sure she's also concerned that I'll escalate to one of the forbidden zones i.e. to child porn which, apart from being disastrous for me with respect to shame and dangerous from the standpoint of fueling my addicts desire for that which is off limits, it puts me at risk for arrest, loss of livelihood, and loss of access to all of my children.

But here I sit, inches away from an Internet device that is not protected from viewing all of those things, and I'm still contemplating it.

What the F#ck is wrong with me?!?

I'm an addict, and that's a given, but it's more than that.

I'm very sad.

I'm sad that I'm a professional and I'm in a financial hole that I'm barely able to tread water in, and I'm one little tip in the balance of the universe from losing my ability to pay my bills.

I'm sad that my life partner is having such a hard time harnessing her emotions, such a hard time managing our beautiful little boy, and such a hard time handling the discomforts of pregnancy. She's also obviously stressed about our ability to make ends meet, she seems unhappy living in a city where she remains a foreigner and is far from comforts that should come with living a "middle class" life in an Orthodox Jewish community. And she seems unhappy with her body. She's kept a whole spectrum of clothes in our closet, to the point where we can barely navigate to find the things that we need, and yet I don't believe she fits into 10% of the stuff. That being said, she, like myself, continues to eat mind numbing foods (from what I can tell, although I'm no expert about others, let alone myself), and she's told me that she's gained about 50 to 60 pounds since we've married.

I'm sad that I've let myself go with my food and I can't even remember what it's like to eat normal, let alone exercise regularly. Speaking of, I'm sad I can't seem to afford seeing the personal trainer more than four times a month--something that somehow gets me off of my a$$ and into the gym.

I'm sad that I'm still restricted from my kids, that I have to pay a "babysitter" to watch me when I visit with them, and that I don't get to see them often.

I'm sad I can't bring my kids to my house since it's so cluttered and dirty that they won't have a place to sit, play, eat, without feeling uncomfortable.

I'm sad that my wife has had to take on so much responsibility with my twins, including setting up their visits, preparing food for them and/or buying food for them, and she's had to cut back finances in her life because of the gigantic expenditures that I have related to my divorce agreement and my financial responsibilities that I've agreed on with the Ex.

I'm sad that if I do enough face-to-face time at work with my clients, that I cannot finish my paperwork in a timely fashion, and this results in me being perpetually behind.

I'm sad that I don't have the money or the time to set up my own professional corporation/office doing my craft so that I don't have to rely on my employer to keep my boat floating.

I'm sad that the economy is so sh*tty that my condo's value has sunk to new lows continuously, despite our efforts to pay down the principle to allow us to refinance and lower our payments.

I'm still sad about the tens of thousands we have in credit card debt that seems to have 'snuck up on us', but truly occurred with our conscious use of the credit cards while simultaneously burying our heads in the sand about these consequence we're now suffering i.e. paying enormous fees and finance charges to the banks just to keep our accounts from going into collections.

I'm sad that my body is 70 pounds heavier than when I met my current spouse and 160 pounds more than it was when I met my second wife. I think I was about the same weight when I met wives #1 and #2...

I'm sad that I'm so apathetic about the initiation of exercise or food changes in my life. It seems that the exercise is too difficult due to fatigue and entitlement that I should be able to relax, and the food is a conscious choice to eat the crap I want to prevent myself from acting out sexually, and of course to numb out from all of the other problems.

So as my therapist has said, and I reluctantly believe, now is the best time for me to type this sh*t up. It's when I want to act out that I need to ask myself "what am I feeling?", "where do I feel it?", and I also need to use this time to use the tools that keep one sober.

One thing is blogging, another is using my laptop which is protected by Covenant Eyes, as opposed to the iPad which is a bastion of potential sin (I can just hear Dana Carvey as the Church Lady saying, "It's the Devil himself trying to drag you away from Jee zuss!". Of course as a Jew who follows the Torah, we didn't "get" the "New Testament" and therefore don't follow the teachings of Jesus, but I digress on my digression).

Another thing to get me to stay sober, I need to feel how tired I am, stop working, and go to sleep.

I'm not sure how long the sobriety will last. I may just leave here and go blow it anyway. But I'm going to just put one foot in front of the other and go back to the bedroom, next to my wife, and try to get some shut eye without going down the wrong path.

Lord help me...I need it, for all of the above reasons, and the ones I'm sure You know and that I've yet to find out...

I Deserve It: the Sex Addict Justifies His latest Binges

2011-09-26T01:54:00.000-07:00

Last week my wife, MotownGirl, who is several weeks pregnant and taking steroids on top of that per her doctors orders, gave me the "go ahead" to act out with porn. I can't remember exactly how long and how much I looked at, but I think there were four 'sessions' over a few hours that night, into the wee hours of the morning.

I gotta make it good, make it feel right, if I'm gonna do it--no?

She was feeling sick, was in pain, was moody, and continues to be exhausted all of the time. She's preoccupied by our freakishly strong and active 11 month old and despite increasing efforts, the condo remains a certifiable disaster area. Were it not for the 2 1/2 foot plastic fence play pen we snapped together in the living room, I'd say the living room would be a veritable deathtrap for our poor little guy.

As I stumble through the piles of groceries on the ground, step over the occasional trash, dropped food, dirty clothes or the rare soiled diaper, I grumble that I'm not supposed to live like this. I'm working my a$$ off as a professional and I've got the most freaking ginormous fixed expenses one could imagine, courtesy of being an Orthodox Jew Sex Addict Divorcee with agreed upon supervision around my twins from the Ex and another year of paying for the Ex's shrink bills. The 'shrink tax' and supervisor alone cost me north of $1000 per month.

So I feel like somehow I deserve the live in house keeper that would keep the place neat and tidy so I can walk around here without tripping over things.

But if I'm going to live in that fantasy land, I might as well say that I deserve to live in an Orthodox neighborhood in a house--an absolute impossibility with our current ownership of an underwater condo in one of the most expensive housing markets in the US, despite the economic downturn.

Compound that with the ongoing struggles of the wife who's, sick, tired, and overwhelmed. She's had the added stress of having to do my soiled sweaty, frequent gas and bowel movement having obese man's laundry, her infant son's laundry, as well as her own, she has to do the cooking, the limited cleaning which is still significant despite the above complaints, and then she has the stool caked, sweaty, obese ogre of a husband who wants to have sex with her or at least get some decent heavy petting to climax.

And I expect it, to some degree. I deserve it, right? Don't I work insane hours? Don't I help out enough at home with the kid? All the time, even on busy days? Don't I earn the cash to pay all of these bills? Aren't I making the efforts to get us more income so we could perhaps at some point move out of this little dump into a more spacious home in a neighborhood that we feel is our own?

It seems like the only way something significant is going to change for the "better" financially in the foreseeable future is if (G-d forbid) my mother passes away or both of her parents pass away (they should all live a healthy, happy life until 120!). Or if I die of some life insurance acceptable way. That would suck for me, but I'd be gone so who cares what I think. It's the twins, the current boy and our unborn fetus that I'm concerned about, in addition to my wife, the mother of 1 child plus a fetus plus four snowflakes on ice.

But the f#cking CRACK COCAINE for my brain--porn--is just absolutely kicking my a$$ since I looked at it last. I have ways of looking at it without getting "tracked" on my computer, not to mention I just don't have the desire to stay sober that I used to. I really felt comfortable surfing all that porn, finding things quickly as if I'd never left. And I know exactly what I like to look at so that I can get that 'hit' and climax.

The only problem is, it's never enough. It is never enough, it will never be enough, and no matter how hard I try, it will always, always, always demand that I go after more and more and more.

Why can't I just be "normal" and Jack Off a little and go to bed? Why can't I just stop with a little self pleasure and then finished?

Nope. Not me. Gotta go for more, then, eventually I'll need to escalate what I look at to make it more titillating. And I'm all too aware that escalation can lead down roads that could be illegal and/or immoral to the point of jeopardizing my marriage, my relationship with all of my kids, my career, and my right to live freely in any community.

So that should stop most people.

Not me!

It would also possibly lead me back to prostitutes, many of whom, like it or not, are underage and at risk teens.

Wouldn't that just kill my family, work, and community ties?

But I still want to go there...

So what's keeping me sober now?

I went to a meeting tonight. That probably helped. I set all of my browsers for the iPad into areas where I shouldn't go unless I'm doing work for work. The browsers I do use are monitored by my therapist.

I don't carry cash and my wife follows my (our) cash use to the penny. It would be a disaster for me to go down that road again, on many levels, not the least of which would be my emotional wife who may poison me or slit my throat, if it weren't for the insurance company having a history of scrutinizing suspicious deaths--and I'm talking about if she caught me cheating in any way. I don't think she wants to kill me just yet otherwise.

And I made some phone calls to some recovery buddies this evening. I'd promised to stay sober and I'd like to keep that promise.

But being as tired and stressed as I am, I have to be gentle with myself and remember to lean on the One who does have the power to keep me sober.

This week is Rosh Hashannah, the head of the new year on the Jewish calendar, and as they say in some Jewish circles "the King is in the Field". G-d is out in the open this month leading up to the High Holy Days and he's asking that we, the Jewish people, crown him as King once again for the coming year. At the same time, we Jews are asking that G-d listen to our supplications, our desires or a better life in the new year.

It would seem to be a bad time to act out sexually. It's also a good time to as the One Above for help.

If He's in the field, may He extend a helping Hand to one who has poor ability to help himself, especially after subjecting himself to such toxic, toxic poison.

Time to go to sleep. G-d help me remain sober one day at a time...

Got me Some 7 year old Pu$$Y!! The Sex Addict warms up with a young boy...

2011-09-14T00:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, it sounds disgusting.

Yes, I'm a sick ba$tard.

You'd think a sex addict couldn't stoop lower, particularly after so many years of good, strong recovery.

But what doesn't add up about the title of the post?

If you've been following me for long, you're used to "the hook". If you're new here, perhaps it's you who needs to read on--for some help.

I don't pretend to be a sex addict. I really am one. And a sick one at that.

But the Pu$$y and boy don't quite jive together, do they?

That's because I'm talking about one of my three felines.

It's been a rough week in the sex addict household. Motown Girl is officially pregnant with a single baby. We saw it's beautiful heart beating on an ultrasound about a week ago. Earlier today, she was told by her OB that she has "a lot of bleeding" and he implied that it looks "bad" and she needs to be on strict bed rest. He also took her off of aspirin--he's a fu(king genius for doing that, IMNSHO.

This is the same guy who helped us get pregnant with our first son, so he is a miracle worker of sorts, but he's notoriously bombastic in about everything he does, from telling his nurses what to do, to telling his patients the downside of their odds of getting pregnant, to interpreting test results in a catastrophizing and negative way. And I think he does this on purpose perhaps to let the people with poorer outcomes hit the ground a little more gently.

But I think it serves him more than it serves his patients. He doesn't look like such a bad guy if he says 2/3 of the efforts are going to fail and that some one's developed a complication that makes it "really likely" to have a miscarriage. Then if there is a miscarriage (G-d forbid), he's predicted it, he's given you the expected outcome, and he's in the clear to continue working with you and collecting your cash to try again. If you have a good outcome, then he looks like a saint, and you're ready to fork over more cash and/or tell others that the guy is a miracle worker.

Then there's MG. She's a smart girl, but more street smart than book smart (sorry honey--you've told me that yourself though). And, like my mother (and this is a compliment) she's decided to use her street smarts to serve her well in life, showing that the degrees don't make you who you are necessarily.

She's also a very anxious individual. That's more like my dad. Some of this manifests as an impetus to pre plan things in a good way, but another way it comes across is neurotic and borderline abusive where she announces over and over and over again what our plans for the afternoon, day, event, trip, life are and then, like a virus addled PC with Microsoft Outlook alarms, she repeats the time, the remaining time until [event coming up], and reminds me not so kindly what I have to do between now and then.

My gut reaction when I hear that, unfortunately for both of us, is to slow down and keep doing what I'm doing. That's an issue I should take up with my therapist and I won't expound on it further until MG corners me on it later this week, after she's read this.

So MG is anxious as H3LL about this pregnancy, she's very uncomfortable with some accompanying nausea, and she has to take these very painful steroid shots every night that her doc has placed her on to help with the in vitro process. Now I'm certain we're both grateful she's pregnant, and with that we're grateful for anything that has helped her become so, but what rattles my cage is that the steroids make MG seem like...well, it makes her seem like she's on steroids!

Ever hear of "roid rage"? Ever known someone who's been on steroids who's a body builder or seen one of those cable shows that illustrate the disastrous consequences of using steroids? Well, as I like to say, "it's that, but on steroids".

You get the picture.

MG's already got a physical disability that, although she's not one to admit it, has placed some limitations on her ability to easily chase after our 11 month old while keeping a small condo uncluttered and clean, and while trying to satisfy her sex addicted husband in a non sexual, non co dependent way. And she does better than probably most people would, under the circumstances. With literally one arm that's very limited in carrying and grasping and one leg that she has difficulty with a limp, weakness and balance compared to the other one, she's able to do more than most of us can with all of our limbs and faculties.

But not admitting her shortcomings and not asking for help has resulted in this place remaining cluttered, dirty, and disorganized. I'd realized quite a while ago that I just need to adopt certain things as my job, and I have to say I never did that well in my previous two marriages. But my problem is that I'd literally love to stay up all night, organize, clean, do laundry, and fold clothes, but I've go my full time job, and I've got my own passions, desires, addictions that hold me back. Some of the things that hold me back are pathological, like surfing the internet or watching TV or reading compulsively, along with overeating compulsively. Other things, like work and the endless administrative tasks that come with it, preclude me from doing as much for our home or kid. Also, I have the twins from the Ex that I see thrice on a bi monthly basis.

Add to that our limited funds from my demotion and our/my compulsive spending in the past, which gratefully has slowed down to a near trickle, and we're unable to easily afford the help we need to clean this place or, and this is why I brought all of this up, for us to get someone to help MG keep our kid cared for and her on the bed rest she allegedly needs.

My issue here is that we don't even know if our doc is overreacting for who knows what reason or if she's really threatened by the this situation.

My suggested plan of action was to have her get an ASAP ultrasound from another doctor and see what they say. She wants to wait a week and see where things go from here.

But what happens if, without a helper and me working full time, she overdoes it and loses the pregnancy? And what if she takes it easy and our home continues to implode with stacks of garbage, piles of cat $h*t and dirty diapers and with me stumbling around looking for clean clothes? I could lose it and decide, what the H3LL, why not act out sexually? It's worth it and I deserve it.

Not so fast...

I'm sleeping with my 7 y/o kitty cat, who's a boy, each night and he's giving me the purring and warmth that feels pretty good. My other cat, a little younger and dumber, but very cute, was just diagnosed with a $5000 work up/treatment ailment that may or may not shorten his life dramatically, and rather than freak out like I may have a few years ago, I've been very measured and I've been giving him love and support and he's been staying healthy.

My food, not so good. My finances, not so good mostly due to the food which costs quite a bit.

I'm holding it together, sort of, but I want to do better.

I definitely need the help of my Higher Power as there ayn no way I'm gonna do this alone.

"Thy will, not mine, be done...."

Sick Sex Addict Designs: Acting Out is the Only Way to Relief?

2011-09-02T02:03:00.000-07:00

It's frustrating that I know one of the solutions to my 'micromisery' is to change my job and/or stop working so hard. Ironically, I have to work more and harder to make ends meet in order to pay for things like my therapist, my gym trainer, and my improved food intake.

How much would it cost to just see a hooker every time I had the urge? Or, much simpler, to watch porn and masturbate every night before bed.

That's the real no brainer. The cost of the hooker is my marriage, my family, possibly my life.

The cost of the porn and the masturbation is my marriage, my family, and surprisingly, my life.

One may ask, why would the porn cost me that much?

I can't stop. I don't have an off button. And I need to continually escalate the images so I can climax. They have to be more perverted, more dangerous, perhaps more forbidden or illegal.

I can't go there as much as I want to numb out down that road.

My work is just killing me these last couple of weeks. It's double time on the phone end with me covering an extra work site until a new employee starts. Then Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday of this week I have to cover the crazy, overtaxing work site. I'm way behind on the paperwork, have been staying up late, going to bed late, which is a bozo no no for my boss and for my job, and I'm exhausted coming home, wanting to act out with either food or sex.

So far, it's just been food. I've been tempted to go back to the Internet porn and the thought of traveling down to just see if there are prostitutes in the old hang outs crossed my mind.

But I know how I work. First I drive down to see if there's a hooker around, then, if I'm lucky, I go home without acting out. Eventually it escalates with me trying to off one a ride somewhere, perhaps acting surprised that she thinks this is a date. Then I justify lending her some money to get home, and she gives me a present for helping her out.

I'll just tell Motown Girl the money was or something else like a present for her that I can't divulge, or some cash need I had or work, that I'll swear up and down about.

But I've really yet to lie to her about anything.

It's all a disaster scenario that I can't stomach and I don't want.

Amazingly, I've also stayed away from web surfing this week, something that I think I've also used to numb out from feelings and reality.

Speaking of, my fatigue is causing me to fade fast.

I'm sober for the moment. I hope this remains the case going forward. Just gotta keep reminding myself the consequences are just not worth it....

Let's Make Love with an Old Crush--the Sex Addict sees a Flick where Cheating is Acceptable

2011-08-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

Oh the irony...

Motown Girl runs our finances so she asked that I save a few bucks and watch the movie she'd rented-- "Something Borrowed".   Looked like a chick flick I wouldn't like, then I saw it involved some adults that were hitting an early mid-life crisis and it piqued my interest.

There's Rachel, the now 30 year old woman whose best friend Darcy has set up a surprise 30th birthday party. Darcy's a lush who's about to marry Dex, who happens to be the crush that Rachel studied with all of the time in law school.

Drunk Darcy leaves her purse at the party, getting Dex to go back for it. Dex runs into his old study buddy Rachel and shares a cab with her, intending to bring the purse back to his fiance.

Now comes the SPOILER.

Rachel admits to Dexs that she's always had a crush on him and he then kisses her, starting the forbidden affair.

They both reveal that they've always been poor at communicating their interest in one another for years, while the aggressive, inebriated Darcy had no problem making moves on Dex, ultimately getting engaged to him.

The story unfolds with Dex admitting he'd always been the one to try to please his mother during deep depressions while his father would disappear from the picture, not able to handle his wife's problem. I guess the suggestion is that his trying to save his mother from her devastating problem is perhaps being recreated with his alcoholic fiance who he's always getting out of trouble.

The love affair between Rachel and Dex is portrayed in a sweet way, showing flashbacks to the cute relationship development between them and you begin to feel like--wow, they really should be together.

Then the addict in me--the recovering addict--thinks, "it's a disaster that this Darcy and Dex relationship is now being destroyed by an affair". Sure, I get that Darcy's a drunk who's self centered and she's always one-upping her 'best friend' Rachel, and the Rachel-Dex combo should've happened years ago in law school, but that doesn't justify the forbidden relationship.

Later we find out that Darcy actually cheated on Dex with Dex's best friend a number of times, which she freely admits to Rachel. We also find out that Dex's dysfunctional family approves of the wedding with Darcy and strongly frowns on the relationship between Dex and Rachel, whom they 'bump into' on a secret date.

Dex clearly sees the threat to his relationship with his parents and feels scared to displease Darcy if he calls off the wedding.  Additionally, his wealthy, old monied father even seems to 'buy some insurance' by purchasing the happy couple a new mansion. Subsequently, despite Rachel's request, he refuses to call off the wedding at the 11th hour.

In another irony of ironies, Ethan, the go to guy friend that Rachel has, professes his 'like' for Rachel, in a similar way that Rachel and Ethan were unable to tell each other how they loved each other. This sparks her to remain true to her best friend and keep the commitment to go to this wedding despite her disapproval and personal loss in it.

In the end Dex, who looks like a cross between Tom Cruise and Jimmy Fallon, ties up the loose ends by thanking Rachel for calling him to the carpet and this prompted him to speak out against his fiance and parents, and speak up for his heart. And just as you think they may end up going their separate ways, they get back together and live happily ever after.

Awwwww!!!! What a nice ending. Except for the premise of this cutsie little film is all on deception and lies.

Yeah, it's just a film, fantasy, Hollywood, etc.

But reality is that this kind of drama happens all of the time. The 'reasoning' behind it (i.e. poor communication, recreating trauma from the parent-child relationship) is all too real, in my opinion.

Deception, lies, trickery, double crossing, it's all part of the sex and love addict's world.

I'm not surprised about the movie, it's premise, it's players, it's portrayal of real character defects. What surprised me was that I couldn't watch this film without feeling pain. I saw what the dishonesty does to all of these people. What not speaking up does in a relationship. I've been guilty of these things before.

How could these situations have been fixed? Perhaps they all should have had a team of therapists that could have walked them through the 'gentle path'. Perhaps they could have avoided getting engaged and/or cheating on their lover if they'd been right in their heads in the first place.

Living sobriety means living in integrity. It means living with the pain, not numbing it out. It also means living goodness, living love, living feelings--living life.

I can't go back to that dark place I lived in so many years ago. And if I were to continue down the wrong path, which I started slip into in recent weeks, I don't know that I'd survive the trip.

I'm glad I saved $4.99 and watched that dumb movie.

But whatever happened to the mindless, fun chick flick?

Splashguard: The Sex Addict needs to Protect his Brain from the 'Perils of Sobriety'

2011-08-27T22:38:00.000-07:00

Conjures up some nasty images for me, 'splashguard'. I used to joke that my computer screen needed a splashguard due to all of the ejaculate spraying in that general direction. I also figured there was an inordinate amount of DNA evidence on any computers that I used to act out. Good thing that wasn't checked when they were searching at a job site for who was fiddling around on the Internet. It likely would have been an open and shut case.

"If we find his sperm, his job we'll spurn". That would be my Johnnie Cochran-like attorney admitting that I've painted myself into a corner.

Perhaps painted is the wrong metaphor.

Anyhow, I'm a sex addict. What else do you expect?

Since my last post, I was able to get the iPad to reboot, but lost all of my work programs that had, so I thought, no important data on them. Then I went back to my notes and found out that I've lost about six hours of work that I'll need to re do.

All of that for the love of the porn? Isn't that painful enough?

You'd think so, but after I've worked my tail off catching up for lost time on other paperwork, feeling about ready to celebrate getting tomy last page of my loooong to do list, I discovered the six hours of work was gone. Vanished in thin air. No way (that I know of easily or timely) to get it back.

So now I'm strapped with six additional hours of work, I still have to make up a missing work shift in the coming two days, and then I'm back on my 'normal schedule' for work on Tuesday.

It's absolutely disheartening.

And yet what do I want? I want food. I want sexual acting out. I want to numb myself and say F it all.

And what will I do?

I'm taking the rest of the night off. I'm going to eat something healthy and watch something clean and entertaining. And then I'm going to bed.

Time to do the right thing.

May I have good news to report on the other side...

Baby Sex--I mean Baby Steps in the Nascent Sobriety of the Sex Addict

2011-08-26T03:37:00.000-07:00

Yeah, still sober.
I'm trying to remember the date of my last acting out. I was coming out of the bathroom with my iPad and had just crossed the line, looking at full on porn and masturbating to it. I think it was the morning of the 21st of August.
Anyhow, I've seen my shrink since then and he'd suggested either losing the iPad or setting more rigid boundaries.
Since then, I've put X3Church on both the iPad and the new Android phone I got this week, and I've continued to refrain from surfing the net in the places I usually go. Evidently he feels the 'screen time' I put in is numbing me out, like an Internet addiction.
And sure enough, I feel like I'm withdrawing from Internet surfing as well. My food addiction spiked in the past couple of days. My irritability has gone up considerably. I've been much more emotional in general.
And I'm blogging after 3am on a day that I should be sleeping now and up in the morning.
I actually went to sleep around 8pm or so and woke up around 1:30a, which believe it or not is about the amount of sleep I've been getting lately.
One $hi++y consequence of my acting out is that I've had to restore my iPad for some reason and I've never had to do that. I suspect, just like in the old days of my acting out on my laptop, the iPad has been corrupted by the porn and I've ruined another device, hopefully temporarily. This happened yesterday afternoon and allowed for me to go to bed early since I couldn't do my administrative work, which is overdue and stressing me out. I'm tempted to wrap up this post and do some now on the laptop, but I sense that doing it during the day would be better for my body, so I'll probably go to sleep momentarily and pick it up during the day Friday.
Overall I'd say I'm feeling much better. I've disclosed to my wife about all that I've dipped into--thankfully I didn't reach my bottom of child porn or prostitutes. I've set up seemingly effective boundaries for sobriety, for the moment anyway.
The one thing I didn't do that I said I would is get to a meeting. I had planned to go on Wednesday night but couldn't find my car keys and stayed home with the wife instead. It worked out okay just the same. We did some things that had to be done here and now we're in good shape for moving on with our daily lives, having completed some essential chores for the homestead.
I'm still frustrated with my food addiction and I've not committed to any boundaries there. I am reading some books on intuitive eating which, in my opinion, is potentially effective for some addicts, but has not been for me up to now. I'm just not ready to give up food on top of Internet, on top of sex for right now.
I am ready to try to continuing being present, feeling my feelings, and taking care of my mind and body.
Which is why I'm going to sign off and go to sleep, wake up a little later, do my work instead of fooling around online, and then go exercise.
G-d helps those who help themselves :)

Sexual Fetish: The Sex Addict Nearly Eats a Dirty Diaper, and Other Endearing Stories

2011-08-22T02:45:00.000-07:00

Well I'm sober at the moment. I guess It's a little over a half day since I last acted out. This last time was over the line--at least one line--where I went to the porn sites of my choice and yanked on the crank until climax.

A lovely image, no? Me sitting on the toilet, all 340 pounds at 5'10, balancing the iPad in front of me with one of my favorite fetish videos and masturbating with the other hand. Strange how it takes me 30 seconds to masturbate to the 'right' images, but in the past, when I was acting out regularly, I'd take hours to climax with my partner, if I even could.

So that's one argument against masturbating for me, especially masturbating to pornography. My wife, or any wife, cannot compete with the exact images of my 'lust template', the 'zone' that I get my mind in when I touch myself (or grind myself or my pillow in an effort to be 'sober' because I didn't use my hand).

It's the cocaine or heroin addict's same ritual of thinking about 'scoring', searching for the 'score', and then using the drug to reach that ultimate high--the one we'll never be able to reach to the degree that makes us say "I'm done, I don't ever need to do that again".

I mourned the loss of porn several years ago when I'd given it up 'for good'.

And now it's creeped back into my life, first looking at 'legitimate' images on mainstream search engines, even with safe searches engaged.

Then I threw out the 'safe search', saying "Fuggit, I'm going to look at what's out there". At that time I'd been thinking I'd look at the images, 'store them' for later, when I'd surely have a fantasy/wet dream that would 'scratch the itch' that I had.

Next came the forays into videos that essentially were pornographic, but they were 'clean enough' for a site like You Tube to post without problems.

Finally there was the final "Fuggit, I'm gonna look at the 'good stuff' I've 'never had a chance to see' since I'd been sober for the last five years plus from surfing porn sites". Then I'd grinded my way to ejaculation, thinking this wasn't truly acting out.

Last, but certainly not least, I sat down on the toily when my wife was in the other room and said, "Fuggit, I grinded to a climax last night to feaux porn images, I might as well enjoy the real deal since either way I have to reset my sobriety".

And how could my wife, or anyone's partner compete with that? They can't beat this bottomless pit of false connections propped up by poor soul-less images, masked in youth, beauty, and that can be summoned to tweak our lust template just the way we want it.

I also know that when I was acting out on a regular basis, it was often at a time I wasn't getting along with my wives, past and present. This was confounded by the fact that I would create some of the conflicts in order to justify my going to act out. THAT particular trait has gratefully seemed absent up to now, but I'm definitely stressed out in the home environment.

My wife continues to be off limits sexually, she's--as usual--completely consumed, and rightfully so, with our beautiful 10 month old child, and she's 'hormonal', having to take medications to help maintain the nascent 'pregnancy' that started when our two 'snowflake' embryos were implanted over a week ago.

I continue to work hard at an extra job site that is notorious for eating up and spitting out professionals due to the complexity of the work and the nature of the clientele.

Compound that with the already slow nature of my completing my mandatory paperwork and billing, and my poor habits of staying up late on work nights (it's after 2am and I have to work in the morning) and you're in the midst of a vicious cycle that's creating the perfect environment for more acting out.

I've (re)established a boundary to prevent porn surfing on the iPad which included moving the one browser that I kept 'out' in the open 'for work'. It also conveniently happens to be the browser I know how to hide my tracks on and it's not tracked by Covenant Eyes.

I also decided to go back to the laptop that's completely secured (monitored) by CE so I'll always have the 'eye in the sky' watching me. Funny how an Orthodox Jew doesn't worry so much about the G-d I otherwise fear from seeing me act out, but I'm more concerned that my therapist who monitors my activity doesn't see me doing it.

For times that I will surf on the iPad, I'll use the CE Browser and keep those 'other browsers' for work in a folder that I have to go dig for a little, which hopefully be enough of a boundary to keep me from going there, in conjunction to other program work of course.

Regarding You Tube, I commit to watching it on the lap top or via the CE Browser. The YT iPad app is way too easy to act out on. It's too easy to erase the tracks and pretend it never happened.

From the 12-step angle, I've decided I must go back to meetings. It's probably been a year or more since I went to my last, and it's time to go and go regularly. It's like bathing. Unless I do it enough, I begin to stink again.

Reconnecting with my religious community has been a big obstacle for me. It used to be a degree of shame and also the discomfort of seeing the Ex and her husband hanging out with my twins, and then the twins preferentially staying around them instead of me.

Now it's kind of morphed into shame that I've disconnected from the community, shame that I've gained about sixty pounds since the birth of my child and since I've last attended synagogue regularly. And there's the shame/anger I have against the local rabbi who'd done his best in his own way to be supportive, but who I butted heads with and felt a lack of a connection to since I moved to this state in the first place. I also understand he's having some personal difficulties of a financial nature that may be weighing on him significantly.

The work at my job has kept me overly preoccupied and kept me home on Saturdays, a shame that I carry and hide from all but G-d Himself. I'd like to find a way to lose that 'workday' and make it a true day of rest. It's probably resulted in me being more loosie goosie on other matters in my religious observance, which from what I've seen with addiction, also leads to the ultimate compromises and bastardizations of life.

So I'm humbled by this disease, terrified that it can still flare up to the worst degrees I've ever hit and beyond, and yet I still have the smouldering lust that just had gasoline and a match thrown on it a number of times in the past few weeks. Once is too high of a number, or as my 12 step buddies say....

"One is too many and 100 is not enough".

Ain't it the truth?

Just had dinner that was left for me in the fridge my Motown Girl. She left a dirty diaper in a plastic bag on top of the food bag in there, which I at first thought was a joke. When I went back into the bedroom to thank her for the dinner and the diaper, I realized this wasn't a joke. She's been so overworked, over-hormoned, and emotionally overwhelmed, she likely just tossed all of the bags from her hands into the fridge, not realizing the diaper was in there too.

Well, after surfing porn in recent days and seeing how disgusting my fetishes are and what worse ones are out there, I thought it was appropo that there was a soiled diaper sitting on my dinner this evening :)

I'll keep trudging...just gotta stay sober for a few more minutes and then sleep will take over...may G-d help me...

Seems Like Old Times: The Sex Addict Returns to Masturbation and Internet Porn

2011-08-19T04:29:00.001-07:00

It doesn't take a genius to know why I masturbated to porn this evening. Or a few nights ago. Or a couple of weeks ago. I don't even like to admit that it was porn or that I masturbated. I was searching the Goog images with Safe Search off and using terms that I hoped would 'happen' to turn up triggering images. Then I'd either go to sleep hoping that I have a wetdream and relieved my 'need' or, finally, I just grinded a pillow or myself until ejaculation.

I hope this description doesn't trigger some of you to act out the way I did. If anything, I hope you picture this pathetic, middle aged, morbidly obese, sweaty, smelly sex addict who is using gluttony of food and porn to soothe his self induced 'crisis'.

What's the crisis? Work has been short two professionals lately and I've been "volunteered" to help fill the gaps. During this time, Motown Girl has been I impregnated with two embryos and she's on abstinence measures.

Why does the sex addiction creep back in now?

The tired and stressed part is easy to figure out. The overtime is taking time away from my wife, who I need quality time with, albeit non sexual at the moment. It is draining time and energy from me working out. It's triggering overeating like mad. And when I overeat, I'm self loathing. When I'm overworked, tired, and stressed, I feel a need to have a release. Most recently, I've not wanted to watch my favorite comedy shows on cable, or play my video games that I enjoy, or exercise, or watch a movie, or read a book. I've just wanted to look for images of my sexual addiction template and ejaculate.

In the past, I've done those other things, I've made phone calls, I've gone to meetings, I've blogged, and I've gotten together with friends. I've actually disclosed every indiscretion I've had to my wife, my sponsor, and my closest SA friend.

So what gives in the continued fu€K ups?

No surrender.

Without surround and admonition of total powerlessness, the game is over before it even starts.

What's amazing is my wife, who I'd usually tell these thing to last, came up with the only obvious solution. Use my Covenant Eyes browser on the iPad and that will likely put the ki-bosh on the acting out on the computer.

Continuing to address my frustration with my boss and admitting it to my wife and friends should help.

Exercising, playing video games, watching a movie, and other healthy self care measures should help.

And for G-d's sake, admitting that I'm powerless over and over and over is only going to help.

May G-d grant me the Serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

Courage to Change the things I can,

And the Wisdom to know the difference,

Thy will, not mine be done...

Pedophiles Beware: The Sex Addict Discovers Fetishism in the Mainstream

2011-07-24T04:54:00.001-07:00

I've lost my sobriety twice in the past 2 weeks. Why?

I'm not taking care of myself. Is that a surprise.

Thankfully it's only been looking at YT for fetish videos. I've got this incredible ability to sexualize the most mundane, non pornographic videos. I wish I'd use that kind of ingenuity to improve my relationships or finances or exercise routines or diet.

What did it this time was I worked my tail off with barely a break today, the Sabbath, and I was too lazy to go act out with food or, better yet, do something healthy for myself. So instead, I surfed YT and found videos that most sex addicts would fall asleep to.

Not me. Despite having a beautiful wife with a good relationship, considering where I've come from especially, I chose to isolate and medicate without using any of he arsenal f tools I have at my disposal.

So the goal, going forward, is to take better care of myself, which will unplug the generator of lust for a moment and help me say safe.

Unfortunately, the stakes in this disease couldn't be higher. I'm reminded of a friend I met in professional school that I used to 'party' with. We were two peas in a pod. Drinkers, porn lovers, food addicts, pot smokers, adventure seekers. I spent a year or more cruising hookers at the time I hung out with him.

I was thinking about him the other day, hadn't seen any activity on FB from him in the recent past, so I decided to Google him.

And there it was:

www.legacy.com /drfunguy/dead. What-the-Fu€!
You know what happened.

I emailed his ex wife and found out he'd been discovered to have a philandering problem by he, and a drinking problem by his employer. Ultimately, it sounds like he died of complications of untreated addiction. Another friend emailed me saying I heard it was suicide'.

All addicts die of suicide. It just depends how they get there. A food addict may die if heart or re oratory failure, but he knows it's the compulsive overeating that go him to that point.

Yesterday I read that Amy Winehouse died. Some called it an overdose. Most said 'it was expected'.

While my sexual sobriety is at a tremendously different place than it was compared to my worst bottom lines, I still think fantasizing and ejaculating to YouTube versus porn is like getting drunk on beer instead of whiskey. I still got drunk.

And doing the things that generate my lust for food, sex, spending, fill in the blank, will always lead to the same place--death by suicide.

Back to Step 1.

I'm powerless...put Serentiy prayer in here________...

Throwing up and Throwing down: The Sex Addict loses his sh#t and nearly hurts those closest again

2011-01-16T01:35:00.000-08:00

Man do I feel like an a**hole.

I'm sexually sober. Food's not been too bad in recent weeks. Exercise has been good. I've been helping out my wife with my baby as often as I can. Unfortunately, I've continued to neglect my needs and my feelings so much that I'm building up the biggest 'R' in the addicts bag of addiction related 'Rs', and that's resentment.

I've been resentful of Motown Girl having only slowly cleaned up the place that's been a mess since she moved in. I've been resentful of her not being as committed to religion as I believed she was when I first met her (ironically, I'm the one who often works on the Sabbath and breaks my religious committments on a regular basis with workload as an 'excuse'). I'm resentful that she's asked me many times to help her out when I cannot even finish the things that I have to do for my job. And most recently, I've been resentful that she's not seemed to understand the gravity of my flunking a board certification exam for my career, while at the same time pissing off my bosses by not doing all of the expected paperwork in a quality-filled, timely fashion.

The biggest thing, I've found, has been this weight of work that I've been carrying around for the past year and a half plus, working essentially 24/7 with minimal help and I've expected myself to maintain the work of two to three employees on my own, while being a devoted husband, father, spouse of a pregnant wife and now to a newborn/first-time mother. I've also expected myself to run this beautifully orchestrated exercise program, food program and all the while I tell myself who's in control "G-d",...

...but my shameful and violent--yes violent--emotional outburst tonight shows that I thought it was me in control.

Hardly in control is more like it.

MG and I have not had sex, for the record, for about a year. This is because we have been avoiding hurting her, without going into graphic details, so we've avoided sex apart from some 'petting' on rare occasions, and this hasn't happened since prior to the baby being born.

Prior to my sexual sobriety, which is now 21 months old (who's counting?), this would have led me to masturbating and perhaps even going out to find others to have sex with. I've done none of that, and I'd say I don't think my violent (I'll explain in a moment) outburst is a direct result of that. I think not having sex has been a symptom of what's been going on.

MG has been, to her credit, significantly improving the way she takes care of the house, she's done an outstanding job loving and caring for our son, and she continues to amaze me in a good way at her kindness and generosity to people she cares about. This includes buying gifts for people, sending condolences and supportive gifts for people having a hard time, and staying in touch with people that she's moved away from in the Midwest.

She's continued to care for our son, she sets up and cares for my twins when I see them every other week, and she cooks, does tons of laundry, and as I've noted, she's improved in the cleaning department. She's also made committments to work with me on emptying our home of things that are clutter that we don't use.

All good things, you say. Why, and how, did I get violent?

It was at the end of a day when I spent hours doing paperwork, a day that I had 'off' but had spent doing things I was behind on. I was down on myself for that, and felt bad that I didn't give the time to her, my son, to G-d in the way of prayers at proscribed times and in synagogue. It was all about the work. I then went out with her and our son, although I was tired, and we went shopping for quite a while. We went to the bookstore, grocery shopping and finally back home.

She'd just made me a beautiful tuna steak dinner and we were sharing an ice cream dessert.

No? And why would I be an a**hole and get scarily violent you ask?

She came up to me and kept badgering me about my calendar with my kids and how it's changed. I didn't want to hear it at that moment. It was pushing a button for unclear reasons. I guess it was just that I was in a bad space in my head with everything else weighing on me so I tried to physically shut the computer off.

Then she did something that sent me into the worst tirade I've had in years. I've had perhaps half a dozen of these as an adult. One was when I lifted my first wife up and dropped her in the hallway of our apartment. That was the end of that marriage. The second was when I yelled obscenities and told my 2nd wife 'how do you know I won't go crazy on you and the kids'. I was kicked out of the house and out of the marriage (for a lot of other worse offenses--see the rest of the blog), and now this.

She slapped my hands when I was trying to shut off the computer and all of the sudden I felt like, "I'm done! I've had it, she's physically hit me and now I'm letting loose!!".

I picked up the computer and threw it across the room. I aimed for a big leather chair which it landed on and bounced onto the floor, thankfully not breaking. Then she started screaming and hitting my arms more.

I took the gallon of ice cream and--most unfortunately--aimed for the side of the crib that my son was in. I was not aiming for him, G-d forbid, and not for her. I was just aiming for something soft. I didn't even think he was in that one, as she'd had him in his bouncy seat a little earlier. Unfortunately, there was a maraca noisemaker that was hit by the ice cream box and that, with the spoon fell off of the shelf next to the crib and onto my son's head. Thank the Good Lord that it didn't hurt him seriously. I didn't even think it woke him up, but my wife ran over and grabbed him out of the crib, understandably screaming hysterically.

I didn't even see this happen at first and so I'd already grabbed my next pick-up-and-destroy item, the cable remote, and I threw that away from her, away from the crib, towards another kids toy seat, but this time something broke--the remote. It didn't even shatter, but it doesn't work and when you shake it, there's a broken piece in there.

As she ran away with the baby, she threw or kicked a metal chair towards me, which I threw back towards her and it just rattled the ground, unharmed as was the floor. It just made scary noises which made her and the baby cry harder.

I was finally done with my child like tantrum and felt so awful that I offered to call the police and have myself arrested. Thankfully she stopped me.

About a half hour later, after all of us calmed down and I profusely apologized, as did she, we vowed to make a nightly check in to see where our feelings are at.

Why we haven't done this before, who knows.

I've already had my work situation improve significantly, adding five employees, one who directly shares my workload, and I've rearranged my visits with the kids so that they don't interfere with work. This is allowing me to have a relatively normal job and it won't cost anything with regard to my already rather generous pay.

I just never, ever want to experience that rage again. I've said this before and it's happened several times in my life. It's one of the reasons I don't drink, because if I did, I suppose I could have been really dangerous. I don't think any of my moves were even remotely intentional to hurt anyone. They were moves of an inner child having a tantrum, saying, "Listen to me, dammit!".

Well, I'm listening now. I need to be true to my feelings and share them better or this will lead to the end of marriage number three and could lead to a relapse in any/all of my addictions.

I'm going to pray now. I know I'm not in control.

G-d, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to changes the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Thy will, not mine, be done....

The Sex Addict and Lifecycles: Correcting the Mistakes of Past Generations; Repeating Mistakes of These Selfsame Generatlons

2010-11-26T01:30:00.000-08:00

We're supposed to improve upon the last generation, at least in Western culture. Get a better education, have a better income, live a better lifestyle, learn from our elders' mistakes.

I'm part of an interesting branch in my family tree. As far as I know, I'm the only sex addict in a long lineage of addicts, to have any degree of persistent sobriety from bottomline behaviors for years (up to today, as we say...).

I guess I don't really know if that's true, but I do know that at my age my dad was viewing plenty of porn mags, he had a vast collection of video porn, and I don't know and may never know what he had going outside of the marriage i.e. one night stands, affairs, hookers.

I also know he was a compulsive overeater--I've continued that tradition. He was a workaholic--I'm there with him. He was a rage-oholic--I'm much better in that regard. I don't know what kind of peace he made with his demons, and I don't know what those demons were.

He was much better at saving money, making money, investing money, creating a nest egg, supporting his family, taking extravagant vacations, buying property.

The anniversary of his death is just around the corner, I've named my 3rd son after him, and I am thinking quite a bit about him and how I compare and contrast to him these days.

I'm exhausted, so this better late and brief than never entry is about to end.

Life is good with our newest addition to the family. I believe MG is having some difficulty balancing her life/schedule with the strain of taking care of our newborn, but I believe that will only get better, as it did with my twins as they got older.

And speaking of the twins, I've asked the Ex to be accommodating with a change in the parenting plan due to a change in my job hours. It looks like, per the Rabbi, she will be limited in her options to help meet our needs due to her schedule. My interpretation is that schedule revolve around her, but she says it's all about the kids.

She sent me a nastygram just because I included her in the cc's for the email. We'd agreed no contact. That was stupid on my part, but please--it's been 4 and a half years since I cheated on her, since I put her and my twins of risk of STD's from hookers, since I admitted to my view objectionable pictures that included children on the internet, since I admitted to a murky recollection of me (nearly) raping a 2 year old boy, since I gave a veiled 'death threat' to her and my my children, saying 'how do you know I won't go crazy on you?'.

Okay, so there's a lot of fuel fo anger there. But will it last years? Decades? Probably eternity is my guess.

My mom is hounding me to get a bulldog lawyer and sue for joint custody and to stop being a pantywaisted whooping post for her. I'd say the above admonitions likely put the possibility of unsupervised visits out of reach until the kids are 18, or perhaps even 21.

So what do I do?

Not to be decided by me tonight.....zzzzzzzzz...til next time...

Full of potatoes, chicken and ice cream, the Sex Addict admits defeat

2010-10-04T01:45:00.000-07:00

I was eating the last quarter of my half chicken, that followed the large serving of mashed potatoes, that followed the four scoops of sugar free ice cream, that followed the twelve hour work day, and I felt like puking even before the last part of that dead bird ended up in my stomach.

To say that I'm overwhelmed on some level is a fair statement.

I'm not being sarcastic. I just approach each day one day at a time, like the Big Book says, only I feel like there's a part of me that's doing the same thing I used to do when I'd act out with a hooker and then I'd go home to my wife and kids and say, "Okay, let's just forget that happened and move on".

In other words, I think I'm compartmentalizing my fear and anxiety about what's going on in my life.

Right now, I have a career licensing exam that comes every ten years and I feel like I have a good chance at failing it. Thankfully, it's extremely unlikely that failing it will be significantly impact my career. It would be humbling to flunk. It would be expensive, as I'd have to re-up the ante on the thousand dollar exam and take a review course for a couple thousand more. But it would hardly be a career ending problem, and for that, I should be thankful. It also takes the pressure off of me to kill myself trying to prepare for this exam.

Concomitantlly, my wife has two weeks left of our pregnancy, so we're bound to have a baby boy, G-d willing in good health for her and the child, in the next several days to couple of weeks. This will undoubtedly change the shape of our lives forever, and hopefully for the better and in good health for everyone involved.

Last, but not least, there's my current job. I've been a month behind on paperwork for two months, and now I'm a month behind on billing/charges. This comes at the same time that I took nearly a month off of work related to vacation and Jewish holidays. I'm still not caught up on the billing piece and I'd say that's amongst the most important to maintain good standing with my employer. I'm also continuing to work this job full time, but expect to take a day or two off for the birth of my child, and a couple of weeks off in December when we trounce the tike around the Midwest to show him off to the fam.

So I'm a bit overwhelmed when I think of it all, and that causes me to feel anxious and this has most recently led to me overeating.

Sexwise, I'm sober, but with the spaight of holidays we just had, I was reminded of some of the worst acting out I did this time of year. I guess I should be happy to have another anniversary away from it, but it would be inhuman not to remember it and/or just to ignore it.

The shame is not what it used to be, but not being with my kids for the holidays and having the continued supervised visits keeps the reminders coming without pause.

Following my exam, I plan to approach the Ex about changing our parenting plan to include me seeing the kids every other weekend and I'm going to ask her to foot the babysitting every other week while I work on our usual visit days as my work schedule is changing. The reason I want her to foot the bill instead of sharing it is because our babysitter has to travel with the kids about 45 minutes to an hour to take them to their new, more distant home. This costs more money for us and it takes at least that amount of time out of our visit--less time with the kids at a higher cost.

But as many around me say, the Ex wants me to keep on paying more and more for my sins. She 'forgave' me the year after we split supposedly, but she's constantly exacting a steady amount of reparations for the pain I caused her.

And I doubt it can ever be enough, to make her feel whole again. That's the way my addiction was. It didn't matter how much sex I had, how many times I ejaculated, how much booze I drank, how high I got, how much food I stuffed into my pie hole. It was never enough.

So I have to continue to grow up, take the higher road, but I can't keep on taking it on the chin because I wronged her. I have to stand up for my rights as a father and as a provider. It's time to stop giving in to every little thing that she demands. As I see it, if she decides to fight me and go to a public court on the record about my shortcomings, it will be a public record that any divorcee may have. Accusations of infidelity, pornography, mention of child pornography, child abuse. It may spur investigations of my computers, my internet providers, my work computers. It could involve my employer, asking them to supoeona their computers and give them the reasons why.

Chances are, even if the 'worst case scenario' takes place, any employer will not fire me for being accused of these things. And I won't be convicted of jack squat. I've done nothing that can put me into that position as far as I know and as far as my therapists know. They told me that the clean life I've led and the therapy I've done will serve me well in court if need be.

So why continue to cave in to her demands? I don't want to spend much money since I don't have extra money to do this. But I have to do the basics and that's to stand up for my rights to see the kids, to seem them when serves all of us best, and to ask for a 'fair and balanced' arrangement to use the babysitter and consider the increased travel time.

I hope their mother has it in her heart to allow for these changes without forcing my hand to send her a letter from a lawyer I really can't afford now, but must hire if she refuses. I especially don't want to have that lawyer file a motion on my behalf that's going to lead to more expenses and the possibility of public records of my wrongdoings, albeit in an accusatory form that cannot and most likely will not be confirmed in a legal forum.

But ask I must, and ask I will, despite the misgivings of my very pregnant and cost-conscious wife. I don't ask for much in our marriage, at least not from a financial perspective.

So here's where I go from this point:

-go to sleep and wake up to do a touch of paperwork before we go to Motown Girls OB appointment
-go to work for a couple of hours at each worksite before meeting up with the kids
-go to see the kids and enjoy them to the fullest
-go home and finish as much paperwork as I can

-after the licensing exam, create a parenting plan, submit it to the Rabbi (and MG) and eventually see if the Ex wants to suck more blood out of my neck or does she want what's best for the kids and all of us involved in their lives.

We shall see. And let's not forget, at any moment, I'm going to be a father with unrestricted access to a newborn. That's not worrying me, but there's a lot of people around me, including some who are on 'my side' that are itching to see how I handle it.

I'm not worried...but the proof is in the pudding...

No Extra Credit for the Sex Addict

2010-09-12T00:01:00.000-07:00

It's been quite a while since I posted here. Life's been as busy as can be--and most importantly, still sexually sober. I did have a wet dream where I had a 70 year old Tina Turner grinding me with my permission, causing me to ejaculate. I told my wife about it and she's been making fun of me since then.

Life being pregnant is not what we expected, but it's not as bad as it was with the Ex. First of all, this pregnancy, thank G-d, has included no 'bedrest' periods.

The Ex was on bedrest for 6 out of 9 months and I had been blamed for at least some of that. Despite the fact that having twins was a high risk pregnancy, she said the time that I 'forced' her to give me oral sex was the reason the rest of the pregnancy was 'ruined'. That was following months of no sexual contact between us and me, being drunk in a hotel room with her, decided to ask her (repeatedly and annoyingly) in my inebriated state to perform oral sex. She said my badgering was equal to 'forcing' her. She cried while she was doing it and I stopped her nearly immediately, at least that's what I remember.

After I disclosed my sex addiction to her and the fact that I'd been with prostitutes and looked at illegal porn, her 'new memory' was that I forced her head down and kept her doing it for 'a long time' and that's when she started her pre-term labor.

It's my word against hers and my lawyer said it's one of many things that most judgements go against the husband, so he suggested I not fight for improved custody rights. The Rabbi agreed. Public knowledge of my prostitution habit, my porn habit, and possible disclosure by her publicly about where I looked at porn and what kind, may have hurt my employment and my ability to get a job in the future.

Meantwhile, Motown Girl has been complaining of aches and pains, difficulties sleeping, and when we tried to have intercourse, she says it hurt and she didn't want to. Whenever we talked about any sexual contact with me, it was in the context of her saying 'I'll give you [pleasure] so you won't go to a hooker'. I didn't want this 'charity sex' so I decided to refuse it. This happened several times and I've just lived without sex.

I'm not sure how much this has played into my continued struggles with food. I actually did well until we took a trip to the Midwest for the past two weeks. I found several opportunities to overeat at delicious kosher restaurants there, something we rarely do in the Northwest.

Upon our return, I recalled how I'd busted my rear to make my 'quota' plus enough to earn a significant bonus, at least what I thought would be significant, in the past three months. This is also at time when I still haven't figured out how to complete my administrative work in a timely manner and I'm expected to be helpful and present at home as much as possible, in addition to having twice weekly visits with my boys towards the end of my workday.

We returned home tonight from a 3 day High Holy Day weekend to find a photo ticket from a red light sent to us from our Midwest vacation, and the bonus that I received was about half of what we expected.

With my professional licensing exam coming up and the difficulties completing my paper work for my job, I find the pittance of a bonus to be a disincentive to increase my productivity. Sad, considering the company wants us to hit bonus numbers regularly.

So what I've realized recently is that I work too hard, I don't do enough for myself with respect to exercise and eating right, and I don't sleep enough.

I also haven't been to a 12-step meeting in forever, so that's a need that has to be filled.

I'm on my way to sleep shortly. Time to rethink how I approach my professional life. My father, he should rest in peace, used to say that your headstone will not say "He didn't spend enough time at the office".

His should say he spent too much time there...

Caught in the Act: The Sex Addict is Witnessed by Several to Touch a Half Naked Six-year-old Girl!

2010-07-09T03:06:00.000-07:00

The Ex knew it would happen sooner or later. She just didn't think it would happen in a public restroom, a Women's public restroom, and in a synagogue no less!

Where did I go wrong today???

It all started when I left late for work. I knew traffic was going to be bad, that I wouldn't get much done before I had to leave again to have a supervised visit with my children.

Motown Girl wanted me to be at the park early so I could maximize my time with the kids. I left about 35 minutes after getting to work. I didn't get anything billable done. Two hours in the car and nothing to show for it. It's no wonder I was 'off' today.

Then when I got to the park, I had to wait over a half hour for the boysand MG to show up with the supervisor. I did use the time wisely by praying--you'd think that would center a person, no?

Then it took 20 plus minutes for the kids' bathroom ritual with the babysitter. I spent that time talking with my wife and finishing my prayers. When we finally had a few minutes in the park, we had to quickly feed the boys and then head off to the synagogue where we were to attend a 'brit', the ritual circumcision that a boy undergoes in his first days (usually the 8th day) of life.

It was to take place at the synagogue that my Ex now attends with her husband and my kids. The rabbi and his wife there are friends with the Ex and her family and I feel particularly distant from his rather icy wife, who likely doesn't mean to make me feel bad but I take her manner personally, unfortunately. I also was surrounded by people who are friends with "Mr. Wonderful", the name I will now call my Ex's current husband, aka 'W'.

What's more shocking is that I didn't feel the shame that I usually felt in my own synagogue despite this place being led by this rabbi I'm not friendly with and in a community that's clearly close with W and the Ex. When people around us saw me with the boys, I'm sure they knew that I'm the Sex Addict or something like that, given the constant presence of the supervisor next to me.

So where did it go wrong?

Let's share a few random details and see where your mind goes. Then I'll tell you the real story.

Just remember--"How do you know an addict is lying? His lips are moving". That's the Ex's favorite joke that she heard about addiction at the end of our marriage.

So I had a rather nice time, all things considered that it was very hot in the synagogue and the mohel (the rabbi who cuts the foreskin off the kid) was very late. In fact, I was a bit anxious and not only left a message for W, I texted him that the boys may be 15 minutes or so late so they could enjoy the party and goodies after the brit.

Ultimately the rabbi showed up and brit went off without a hitch, no pun intended. Unfortunately for the boys, it was too late for them to wait for the party, so we said our goodbyes and the supervisor brought them back home. They made it home right on time, thankfully.

Now for the juicy part. After the boys left, while the party was winding down, there were shrieks and cries of children outside of the social hall. Several minutes later, as the shrieks and crying continued, I was seen in the Ladies bathroom with a six-year-old girl standing in nothing but her panties. I was holding onto her arm when the bathroom door flew open. I decided to run out as her mother grabbed her screaming child.

My wife had gone home, and I went to work, remarkably having a very productive night.

Hours later, after I came home and kissed my wife goodnight, I received an ominous email:

"Several things tonight"

Uh oh. Could the jig be up? Did the Ex and/or W find out about me being seen in the Ladies bathroom with a half naked screaming 6 year-old?

What would my 'excuse' be?

I better hope no one can trace this blog! Is my IP address recorded here? Can people figure out my identity? I do say quite a bit about where I am and what I do, about my faith community which is relatively small...I bet someone could figure it out....

What REALLY happened?

What really happened, and this is verifiable by Motown Girl herself, is that I didn't do anything terrible, but I did have my shame triggered in a rather big way.

Thank G-d for Lithium, despite the weight gain! I think I handled it all very well when the dust settled and the smoke cleared.

You see, when we had the boys with us tonight, it was so hot and the rabbi was so late that MG decided to give the kids a cold soda. It was a decaf Diet Coke--gold can. I opened it myself. We also didn't give them any cake or goodies from the party since they missed the party and had to go. And as a matter of habit, we didn't take the kids to the bathroom at the 'appointed time' which is 6 o'clock, so that my oldest doesn't poop his pants. In addition to that, we forgot his stool medicine. The medicine and the prompted poop time is an effort by the Ex and her pediatrician to get my oldest potty trained. He's nearly six and still has occasional accidents. The new regimen has helped, but we rely on the babysitter too much and she didn't bring the kids to the toilet at six tonight. Forgetting the medicine has happened at least a few times in the past year, but not likely 'several', as the email we received tonight intimated.

Following the party, a group of kids were playing outside and all three, from the same family apparently, were stung by wasps. The six-year-old and two-year-old were having absolute meltdowns and their mother was frozen in her tracks.

My wife actually dragged me into the Ladies bathroom where this kid was still screaming. Their mother pulled the six-year-old's clothes off in front of me and I saw that a stinger was still in her skin, which I pulled out. I then decided to go out into the hallway as my wife and several other people barrelled back into the small tiled bathroom.

Outside in the hallway was the screaming 2 year-old. I grabbed him, looked at his sting and then pointed out that it was looking better already. I had his big brother kiss the sting site and then we started reading from a 'Clifford the Big Red Dog' book.

I don't know if any of those people know that I'm a sex addict or if they're aware that the Ex is having me supervised because of her fear that I'm a potential sexual or physical threat to children in her eyes, but I was concerned when I got the email tonight that this was about to blow up in our faces.

Thankfully, W was just bemoaning that my oldest pooped his pants and he gingerly accused us, preceded by an 'apology if I'm wrong', that we fed the kids caffeine and sugar before then came home, in addition to not giving the oldest his medicine and not taking him to the dumper.

Instead of my pre-Lithium tirade and scores of cc'd emails going to family, friends and the Rabbi, I sent an apology, albeit one with a few snide admonitions of possible but unlikely guilt on our part (regarding the caffeine free soda and the low carb meal). I also apologized for forgetting the medicine and took responsibility for MG and I not prompting the sitter to bring the kids to the toilet (although we CLEARLY have told the our paid supervisor that this is one of the FEW things we insist that she take care of).

Our printed 'plan of correction' included plans to keep several bottles of medicine around--one for each car and the condo--and our plan to (continue to) avoid sugary and caffeinated foods/beverages when we're with the children.

This was followed by another apology and a 'best wishes' for the Sabbath and weekend.

No, I didn't commit a felony that I know of. I didn't do anything so terrible to the kids either. In fact, one could argue (and would if he wasn't on Lithium) that the kids actually suffered these setbacks this evening due to the carelessness of our supervisor.

But alas, I've learned in four years of program work, pointing the finger at others does not a recovering addict make. The tenth step says we continue to take a personal inventory and when we're wrong to promptly admit it.

Good on me, no?

The ugly part of this was the shame it brought up for me. I didn't like the feeling it gave me to have that email in my inbox, particularly after today's events. I think W was really pissed because our oldest crapped his pants, needed a shower and the youngest was bouncing off the walls till 9pm this evening. It's also very hot for our part of the country and it's unlikely that the Ex or W would have air-conditioning in their house, let alone use it, being the thrifty tree-huggers that they are.

So it goes.

I'm still a bit wound up, but I need to go to sleep. I don't do well in my program when I'm tired...

Compulsive Overeating is NOT Sexy--the Sex Addict, Sexual Anorexia, and Overeating

2010-07-05T00:16:00.000-07:00

I think I'm slowly turning the battleship in the right direction. While I remain sober sexually, it's partly because of a period of anorexia that I'm experiencing. I know that all addictions ebb and flow, it's just that I don't remember the last time my sex addiction was in such a state.

My wife is pregnant nearly 26 weeks and she's not felt able to connect with me sexually since she's become pregnant. Ironically, she offers me sexual gratification of one form or another and I refuse. Why? I'd say it's not her. It has nothing to do with a lack of attraction, although we get frustrated with one another and that certainly isn't a time one wants to be close.

There are a few reasons why I refuse. One is that I don't feel attractive. I tipped the scales at 328 the other day. It was only once, but I felt every pound of it. When she and I got married, I was somewhere's around 258. In my book, and I'm no mathematician, that's about 70 pounds in just over a year. Forty of them came on in the last three months, when I started lithium. And which came first, the chicken or the egg? I went to the shrink because I felt I was heading down the wrong path emotionally and I needed something to help my labile moods. I was hoping for something that had the side effect of weight loss. Oh well...

Another reason I refuse is because of the type of sexual connection that's being offered. It's true my favorite type of acting out with hookers was receptive oral sex. It was also my template when I looked at porn. So
one would think that I'd welcome the opportunity for such an offer from MG. But, without getting too graphic, she feels I need to help her do this manually and this, to me, feels more like a masturbation session than a sexual encounter with my wife.

Then there's the fact that I'm just plain preoccupied with other things in my life. I remember back in my previous marriage during the pregnancy, the Ex was always uncomfortable, often sick and/or on bedrest, and I was acting out on the Internet like a fiend as well as drinking booze alone at night while she slept. The same was happening after the kids were born, until I got caught surfing porn at work and had to disclose this to her and the Rabbi.

What other alternative did I have? I had to go to hookers and porn shops, since my outlet of porn at home was gone. What incredible logic I used!

So nowadays, I'm eating better, I'm exercising more, I'm even starting to do my daily prayers again. It's just that it's a slow process and the results are so intangible. I've decided I need to go back to OA, although I really don't want to go to the Monday night meeting that I used to attend. The trouble is, that's the only men's meeting in the area and it's not comfortable for my lovely wife to have me going to meetings with lots of troubled women.

This past week, my Sex Addict group therapy had a bull session that revealed some frustrations different members had about how things were going. The last time we had one of these, nearly everyone in the group thought I was heading over a cliff with respect to dating, deciding to get married, and then continually breaking my sexual sobriety with my fiance by having sex before marriage.

In the most recent discussions, the guys had come to the conclusion that I'm not putting enough effort into our group and they seem to be wondering what's going on. Among the complaints were comments that I show up 45 minutes to an hour late nearly every week, that I often get interruptions during group with phone calls I have to take for work, and I don't seem to be engaged in what's going on in group because of my tardiness and my phone interruptions.

My response was not defensive. I do have work obligations that make it necessary for me to take those calls. I also have to drive at least an hour from work to attend group and the group is at 5:30pm, causing me to have to leave work at 4:30p at the latest, which I often don't do since I'm usually not done with my responsibilities by then. In health care and in the chaos of my life, I can't seem to get everything done in the allotted time. Part of it is because of the nature of the work, and the rest is because I've busted my a*s so much for so long that I can't hardly get up in the morning, nor go to sleep at a decent hour.

What sounded like an excellent suggestion from my therapist is the notion that I should consider changing to a compulsive overeaters group therapy.

And that's a piece of the puzzle that may help me on many levels.

So at this point, I'm sexually anorexic, and nearly opposite that with my food, although I've not been bingeing in recent days.

G-d, give me the strength to make one more day of good choices in all of my addictions. I'm glad it's only one day at a time.

Lithium Blues: How the Sex Addict Beat Rage and Turned it Inward--with Food

2010-06-28T00:19:00.000-07:00

Life is good. I said it, and I mean it. Today I went to the zoo with my wife, my mom, my two boys, and my mom's boyfriend, in addition to the supervisor for me around the kids. The day was beautiful, the kids were in a good mood, the exhibits were fun, and I think we just had a great time.

We took the kids to a kosher restaurant after that, one they'd never been to, and we okayed this with their step dad regarding the degree of 'kashrus' (or kosherness) that the restaurant met and he said it was fine to bring them there.

This evening, after we dropped the kids off, the Ex sent an email kindly referring Motown Girl to a website that showed this restaurant really wasn't up to the standards of kosher that she wants her kids at. Truth be told, I knew this was a place she wouldn't have gone to with me and/or the kids when we were married, but her current husband says he's gone there, evidently their kids have eaten carry out from there, and that it was 'fine' to go there.

Her note suggested we not bring them there again.

Ordinarily, this, along with any other commentary on our visits with the boys, would send me into a tailspin and a tirade of angry emails. But lately, under the influence of my new friend Lithium, I've let things like this and other interactions with the Ex just roll off of my back like water off of a soiled Gulf Pelican.

Where I seem to continue to struggle, albeit not as much in recent days, is with food. Last week I had one evening that I ran out of food and I went to the store and bought a pound of M&M's and mixed half of it with yogurt that evening and the next morning for 'meals'. This past Sabbath, I ate 2/3 of a rich cake that was left to my consumption (read 'in my house') while working on a stack of paperwork that was essential for my job, despite the Sabbath.

When I look back at the 'anatomy' of my 'slips', they come at particular times, under particular circumstances. My meals during the days are primarily apples and crunchy peanut butter by the barrel. My 'candy and ice cream' runs have been after long days/evenings when I was overly stressed, tired, working late, and didn't have enough to eat. I also hadn't been exercising around those days. The exception was yesterday, when I had just completed a week of working out 4 out of 7 days, a personal record for recent times. I still ate the cake, and I think this was related to my sadness and anger towards myself for doing work on the Sabbath that although may be justified as a healthcare provider, is certainly againtst the Spirit of the Sabbath. It's also impacting the way my wife celebrates the day and keeps her drowning out her boredom and loneliness by watching television that she often sets on a timer since she knows I'm mostly unavailable on the Sabbath.

It's not genious work to figure out that a few things need to change to optimize the chances of my moving in a better direction with respect to the food. I've recently begun to read a book by author Dean Ornish MD called The Spectrum . In it, he describes how some people have to work harder to overcome their genetic code that may predispose them to different illnesses like obesity and heart disease. I have extrapolated from this regarding weight gain and Lithium use. Evidently it's unclear why people on lithium gain weight using the drug, but theories include the possibility that it's an appetite stimulant, it may affect thyroid function and slow it down, and it may change something else in the body, affecting metabolism and therefore weight. As a result, people that suffer this side effect must do things to overcome this propensity to gain weight.

It just seems difficult, for a compulsive overeater with body dysmorphia, to be the one who has to overcome an increase in appetite.

So what can I do? Where are those problem areas that I can do something about?

I've mentioned them before.

I need to buy foods and prepare lunches, dinners, and snacks that 'work' better than the peanut butter, nuts, candy, ice cream, and any other 'crap' foods that have contributed to my new and over-indulged body.
I need to know that I'm going to have 'high risk foods' on the Sabbath with my pregnant, likely food addict wife, who will not change what she brings into the house for me. That said, somehow I have to improve the boundaries around problem foods and do something to take extra good care of myself at times that I would have otherwise turn to the food. Particularly dangerous times for me are when I'm going to work, when I leave work, and when I'm in between job sites. Another dangerous time is on the Sabbath when I'm doing work and my wife is wallowing in front of the television.
I need to exercise on a daily or nearly daily basis. I've found that walking in my neighborhood has made a big difference for me with respect to cardiovascular workouts. We live at the base of a monstrous hill and walking up and down the hill once is up to an hour of exercise, half of it is very strenuous for me anyways.

I still haven't followed my 'Picky' (PCI). I strongly suspect that it will lead to more Serenity, but I'm not there yet.

I am exhausted however, and sleep is an important part of my recovery.

We'll see how it goes from here...G-d willing and "the creek don't rise"

Penis Length: The Sex Addict's Measure of Self Worth

2010-06-04T07:45:00.000-07:00

Back when I was acting out sexually, I'd often wonder about the length of my genitals. I recall cutting my pubic hair, partly to look more like the porn stars I admired so much, partly because it made me 'look longer'. And when I realized that I wasn't the next Ron Jeremy or Peter North, it would be fodder for more acting out.

Fast forward four years into my recovery. I've discovered my food addiction is, like all my other addictions, more than I can handle. I recall going to OA meetings early on in my sex addiction recovery, thinking that I didn't belong there, and I vaguely remember hearing that we shouldn't weigh in often. "Once a month" for some people and my first and last sponsor said his sponsor weighs in once a YEAR (?!).

I'm in a health profession and you'd think I'd know what's good and not good to eat. It's true that I have a great deal of knowledge on subjects related to health. I'm intelligent, like a lot of other addicts and people of great 'potential'. I just don't apply that intelligence and knowledge to help myself all of the time.

This morning, I weighed myself for the first time in about a week. I'm standing there in my boxers and wife beater--much like my father dressed around my home as a kid--and there's that magic number. The number that gives me value as a human being. It's 317 and some change today.

Amazing that I'd say 'and some change', considering a bowel movement or emptying of my bladder could be 'the change', and it's just a tiny fraction of my true weight, being so heavy.

I guess the reason we don't weigh ourselves compulsively in OA is because, like measuring genitals, it somehow translates into some skewed internal value of shame, due to the dysmorphism created by the addict's mind.

One of the things on my PCI that I've not followed yet is the food prep that I know is part and parcel of my food recovery. It's been amongst the hardest things for me to do. I'm not sure why it's so friggin' difficult for me, but it's almost like the last bastion of addictive behavior that I don't want to give up.

In my car, where I spend a significant chunk of time each day, I have a 'vat' of peanut butter and usually (although I ran out yesterday) a bunch of apples. I used to have a measuring spoon. I'd use that to make sure I'd at least have an idea of how much peanut butter I was eating in a given day. Well, somehow the spoon got lost, and I'm back to mindlessly scooping out 'shovelfuls' with this disgusting knife/spade/shovel thing that I bought to cut avocados (something else I used to eat a lot of, but now has mysteriously fallen away from my diet).

So whilst my worst bottomline behaviors of acting out with food have gone away, like buying ice cream novelties and large containers of ice cream or candies, I'm still shoveling large amounts of fat/sugar laden peanut butter into my pie hole. Eating all those apples with a relatively smaller volume of food (highly concentrated with fat and sugar) makes me feel like I'm on the road to food recovery and, as such, I should weigh 5, 10, 20 pounds less, even though this improved behavior has a similar calorie intake and it's been going on only for a week or so.

I guess what it comes down to is that I have to go back to the basics, like in anything else. It's going to take daily practice of the fundamentals to keep me moving in the right direction.

Today is the 4th of June, 2010. It's exactly 16 years to the day since I was married to my first wife. It should be pretty easy to remember to weigh in once a month on the fourth.

That's my commitment for the moment. I'll weigh in on the fourth of each month, get a new measuring spoon, and prepare a better group of foods to travel with each day.

Oh, and since getting into recovery, I've not tried to measure my penis that I can remember.
Each journey starts with the first step...

Numbing Parallels: The Sex Addict's 4th grader 'friend' made him feel so good...

2010-06-03T00:14:00.000-07:00

What a powerful image. I'm standing in a 4th grade classroom, covered in plaster, as the rest of the kids go about their business around me.

Mrs. Altecocker glares at me, says, "Yeah, you're a bad person, yeah, you're going to a psychologist, yeah, these kids want nothing to do with you. You still need to stand there and take it".

I went home after that, as usual, sitting alone on the bus. I looked longingly at the little blonde 11 year old, peripubescent body beginning to show the signs of adult maturity. I wanted to touch her. To have her touch me.

I followed her off of the bus...followed her down the sidewalk towards her house. I was far enough back that her mother didn't see me when she walked up to the front door and went in.

Turning around with tears in my eyes, I shuffled home.

I recall pounding on the glass of the front door. The housekeeper, who barely spoke a lick of English, answers the door with a smile and spins around on her heel back into her room where I heard the usual tinny sound of Mexican Mariachi trumpets and guitars playing on the radio.

I wandered into the kitchen--no sign of Mom. Dad was at work. Turning to the right, I knew that last night's dinner awaited me for snacking. There was also plenty of popcorn, potato chips, and if I was lucky, candy in the pantry. And don't forget the Coke. Always Coke, or Pepsi, depending what was on sale, chilling in the refrigerator.

The TV was a color set, no remote, sitting on the desk in the kitchen, about 17 inches diagonally. We had maybe ten or twelve channels at that time--pre cable--and I'd usually watch cartoons and eat a meal or two prior to Mom coming home and/or Conchita making me my second or third hot meal of the afternoon/evening.

Dad came home around 7, 7:30pm, depending on. He almost always had a McDonald's bag with him. It was usually empty, but he'd at least have a little bit of his ice cold Coke with him, and rarely but occasionally a milk shake.

Mom didn't like him to bring home the milk shakes since it evidentally resulted in a brown splotch in his shorts and sometimes on the sheets later that night, not to mention the wreak of the atmosphere around him.

So that was my 4th grade 'friend'. It was also my 5th grade friend and on and on, to the present day.

Fast forward to June 2010. I'm working a 12 hour shift, coming home after only eating a few apples, a handful of pistachios, and perhaps a 1/4 cup of peanut butter. I'm starving and my wife, who's been suffering from a labile mood and fatigue at most hours of the day with her pregnancy, is as usual a bit moody and doesn't like to be touched or bothered.

The truth is, no one in their right mind likes to be bothered when they sleep, but my current wife, of all of my three wives, is the only one who doesn't seem to like to cuddle, at least not when she's in the midst of trying to sleep. Lately she's taken to a few minutes in the morning after she wakes up to 'cuddle' and then it's only for a few minutes and it doesn't usually involve holding each other. It involves me going to her side and clinging on to her like a remora on the side of a shark. It lasts only a few minutes at best, until she tells me my breath smells like sh*t and I need to get up and go to work.

Along those same lines, she's not very touchy, feely to begin with, and since she became pregnant, 21 weeks ago today, we've not had sex. We tried to once, but it was too uncomfortable so we ditched the idea. Sure, I've been fortunate as a sex addict guy to have some other pleasures with her, but this is not the only thing that I crave, as evidenced by my session with my shrink this eveing.

Earlier tonight, as I sat in an average appearing session with my therapist, I was asked to get in touch with my body and it's sensations. I described the above scene in a 4th grade classroom. It is a real memory. I'd been acting out verbally, telling all the kids in the classroom that I was 'crazy', that I was going to be expelled from school and that I was seeing a therapist. I believe this was in response to some kids making fun of me for being fat.

I was exhausted from being picked on and just wanted out of that class, out of that school, out of my life.

But there was not much love or support at home. Mom was finishing college, having raised five older siblings before me and she figured it was time to return and finish her degree. Dad was working his usual 12 hour days and in the evenings, he'd shoo me away like a fly while he watched TV, half listening to my Mom unload her daily emotional vomitus and then the she would march me to my room as Dad prepared for his nightly ritual of masturbating while looking at his hardcore porn magazines and/or watching his hardcore porn video tapes.

It was around that time that I'd started screening the porn movies with him--me watching on another TV hooked to the same VCR, in the family room just ten feet below his rocking chair in his room where he sat and smoked cigarettes while he masturbated.

It was an easy solution, eating was. You come home after a day of getting picked on, and there's no one there to love you, to hold you, to ask you how your day was. But there's a bounty of food and a color television. What else does a kid need?

What else does an adult need?

These days, I come home every night like Dad used to after an 8, 10, 12, 14 hour shift. I may or may not talk to my wife briefly, let alone have any quality time or touching of any sort, and then I plop down, do some administrative work for my job while listening to some podcasts. During that time I usually eat a meal or two, play some Wii video games, and surf the net--usually political and world news blogs.

It's an easy solution. You come home after a day of getting 'picked on' in a hard job, and there's no one there to love you, to hold you, to ask you how your day was. But there's that bounty of food again--and a laptop computer with high speed Internet.

What else do I need?

And so it goes...

But it's not up to my wife to solve this problem. It's not her fault she has certain likes or dislikes. And she certainly can't read my mind about my needs.

I also 'made the bed I'm sleeping in' with regards to the work I do and the hours I keep.

And I certainly don't act as if there's something Bigger than me and more Powerful than me to help me out of this rut.

How has complaining about my plight helped me out? It most certainly hasn't done anything.

It's G-d who can help me. My Higher Power, my connection to my sense of spirituality, my physical feelings, and my emotions, in conjunction with improving my self-care will help me out of this rut.

And no, I've not followed the PCI I set up for myself yet.

I guess it's wait and see how bad things hurt before I start to follow that or continue down a worse path of acting out with food and who knows what else. I just don't want to go there.

Time to move another step forward...

The Sex Addict Tries to Put His Finger On 'It'

2010-05-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

'It' is not a euphemism for a neighborhood child, or any child, nor any person. It's an expression denoting my impetus to allow for my food addiction to run virtually unchecked.

I was reading a little out of the OA 'Brown Book' and found that one of the reasons people overeat (or act out in any addiction) is to stuff our feelings. It's not a new concept for me.

I look at what my 'top plate' concerns are in life and there are a lot of them.

One thing that bugs the stuffing out of me is that addictions that used to be a method of soothing and making us feel better ultimately become something that can cause problems and create perpetual angst, and therefore perpetual acting out. It's an irony that sits squarely in the center of my life, since my bizaare dysmorphic perception of my body tends to lead me to act out even more.

What a treat addiction is! No wonder it takes the strength of a Higher Power to get out of the cycle. It's an unbelieveably strong affliction that kills people, destroys families, and creates billions in profits for the likes of the casino owners and porn peddlers.

How in the world do I get off this merry-go-round? My lovely wife MG is not at fault, as much as I'd like to blame her buying crap foods and leaving them around. I don't remember once, even at our wedding, when she shoved food into my mouth. She's not prevented me from exercising and taking care of my body. If anything, she's encouraged it. She's helped me get clothes that fit better, arguably an enabler, although I think it's actually a help since I feel less angst when I fit into my clothing.

What are the things around me that do tend to bother me and lead to a case of the "screw it's", when I just cave in and eat what's available or go find something to act out with?

I'll take the present moment as an example.

Right now, my wife is picking up her parents who are spending the week with us. I get along very well with her parents and I find them to be fine people who are do-gooders and pleasant to spend time with.

From an angst perspective, I have some anxiety around the fact that they're going to see how much weight I've gained since I last saw them (at least 40 pounds) and either they won't like me as much, they won't trust that I have an ability to care for myself or their daughter, let alone their grandchild to be. In my mind, I invent that they may say something hurtful to me about my weight, or at least express concern about a shaming problem I have.

Other things going on today: I have to go to work and since I'm meeting the wife and in-laws for lunch, I'm going to be later than they've expected me. I have to prepare for a professional certification exam that's coming up in a few months and I haven't cracked a book for it. I have a chaotic array of furniture, boxes, and odds-n-ends that I have no place to store in my condo and that needs organization and storage.

None of this in and of itself is seriously unapproachable or unmanageable. How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time....although I should probably use a different analogy given I'm a food addict :(

Anyhow, it feels like I just need to do more surrendering to my Higher Power, and a whole lot more food prep. I'd say one of the biggest, if not the biggest, problems I have with food right now is that I have no plan. None. I just eat what I want, where I want, when I want. If some potential trigger food is in front of me and I have any angst from the above mentioned issues, or if I'm just having some of the HALT/BEAR issues creep into my life, I'm gone.

Gone without a plan.

I should know better as a recovering sex addict. Why is it so hard for me to get any traction in food recovery?

I need help.

G-d, grant me the Serenity, to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Thy will, not mine, be done.

I'm going to give it another go. The only time you truly lose the game is if you stop showing up....

The Sex Addict Gets 'Picky': Time to Restart the Personal Craziness Index?

2010-05-23T01:32:00.001-07:00

The PCI or 'Picky' or Personal Craziness Index was developed by Dr. Patrick Carnes (I believe) as an aid to help you figure out how crazy you're getting, depending on how you are hitting certain benchmarks of stability or craziness each day.
The exercise involves making a list of 30 or more things that are indicators of craziness in your daily/life routines. My therapists, alternatively, said make a list of 30 things that keep you healthy in your daily/life routines. Pick seven items off of the list that you find the most important/impactful and for every one that you do on that day, take a point away from 7. The points each day add up to your PCI for the week. The higher then number, the crazier you are.
In the coming weeks, I'd like to start focusing on how to improve my degree of craziness and as such, I'll add things to the PCI that are benchmarks I'd like to hit each day to avoid craziness.
There are plenty of things I can put on this list, but amongst the most important are:

daily prayer--I'd like to do a '90 in 90', just like the AA 90 meetings in 90 days, only with the proscribed daily prayers for Orthodox Jews
exercise--my goal is three times per week in the gym plus walking to synagogue both Fridays and Saturdays
food boundaries--avoiding the process sugars that are 'inner circle' for me; eating better with respect to eating planned meals, healthy foods, and healthy portions
start daily work on my professional licensing test prep
get up early and go to work early
read for pleasure every day
spend quality time with my wife every day
talk with my kids every day

Naturally, like everything else in life, these are subject to change. It's going to help me put together an action plan to get my life better immediately, something that's always helped me in the past.

I look forward to reporting some successes when I return here.

Stay tuned...

Life as a Sex Addict: Four Years After Diagnosis

2010-05-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

I'd like to say that I've changed to the degree that I expected four years after diagnosis.

The things that have been miraculous--staying sober from porn, prostitutes, and having only masturbated on two occasions in four years. That's something I'd say is absolutely a miracle.

Being married for a third time, expecting a third child (first from the current spouse), and having my own condo--all miracles.

Having started a division of a national company that could generate a large portion of their income in the future--a miracle.

And I still struggle with my recovery, day by day. I've been doing a bit 'better' with food, but that's a relative term. I've had a handful of binges in the past couple of weeks, as opposed to daily struggles. I have exercised more in the past couple of weeks and I've been committing to daily prayers on a more regular basis.

I still have the defects of character that brought me misery to begin with, and that's going to be a daily process of working the steps, going to meetings, and surrendering to the One Above.

I'm grateful to be sober one more day, making it four years, from my lowest bottom line behaviors.

I'll keep trudging the road, earning my momentary reprieve from madness, one day at a time.

Clutter Meltdown: The Sex Addict has a Clutter Tantrum

2010-05-16T13:32:00.000-07:00

I don't often lose my sh*t and today, I'd say I came as close to it as I've been in quite a while. It's probably a combination of things. It's been a long, long, long year with regards to being way overcommitted to the workload at my job. I've had little downtime and I'm not taking care of my body, which always puts a 'taint' of badness in my attitude.

This morning MG was asking me, compulsively, over and over and over and over and over, the same question she asked me that I responded affirmatively to in the past two days. "Will you please take out the garbage and recycling?".

While I have an enormous stack of papers on my 'desk' (translated--any flat surface that is near where I sit and isn't cluttered), a long list of paperwork to do for my new colleagues to get started at work tomorrow, and our home is as bad as it's ever been with respect to clutter and mess, I just blew a gasket when my wife asked me to clean up again--for the umpteenth time--and I can't find my book I was reading, let alone step anywhere without tripping over something that's been left on the floor or stacked against the wall.

MG reminds me that I'm "at fault too", that "a lot of the stuff is" mine that I'm tripping over.

The way that I look at it, about 5-15% at best that's left around on the floor is mine, and I 'blame' it on the fact that I can't walk to where it would be stored out of the way, or I'm just plain frustrated that everything else is such a friggin' mess.

MG is pregnant and certainly has earned the right to take it easy, rest, feel uncomfortable and tired, and ask me to do more around the house. However, I'm working a ridiculously busy full time job that's only now going to become somewhat manageable and over the summer will become 'normal', at least for this line of work. With that, at the very least I'd expect an organized list of things to do along with some suggestions on how to complete them.

This morning, after she asked me for the several'th time to do the work around the house, I asked her to write said list.

As 'a joke', she took a permanent marker Sharpie and wrote the list on the shin of my right leg. This just pissed me off, so I decided I'd take a reading break--I'm reading a John Grisham book for the first time. FYI, he's quite an engaging author. I'm reading 'The Last Juror' and it's very good about 2/3 of the way through.

I digress...

So I couldn't find my stinking book. Yes, it's true that I was the one who put it down. Yes, it's actually common for me to lose things in this house. I claim to have the mental equivalent of male pattern baldness, known as 'Male Pattern Blindness', when a person with a Y chromosome puts something down, usually in front of him, and occasionally on his person, and he subsequently can't find it. MG has found my keys, shoes, and wallet on numerous occasions and we've only known each other for a year and a half.

Anyhow, I couldn't find the book so I picked up something within eyeshot and tossed it behind me, half-thinking' (key word-- 'HALF') that it would land harmlessly on the floor. Instead, the shoe I tossed behind me knocked over a faux Tiffany lamp that I liked very much. Now the lamp is still in good shape, but it could have shattered and/or started a fire on the pile of never-recycled-papers that MG has promised to shred or recycle several months ago.

At that point, I was done. Done talking, done negotiating, done justifying, done doing anything that had to do with constructively working on our issues of the day. I needed some away time from the situation.

One of the things that I did to 'help' myself, was eat a 1/4 pound of potato chips. The other thing was to eat a couple cups of yogurt mixed with about a cup of melted chocolate.

This likely didn't help anything.

So finally, I did what I considere is the next best thing--instead of eating more or acting out in some other way--and that's to blog.

I haven't come here for that reason much in the past year or so, but I'd like to make this more of a pop off valve that's both therapeutic for me and perhaps helpful for others who run across this emotional swill.

Well, here's to us, the emotionally labile, the addicted, the broken-who-want-to-be-cured. May we all benefit from either writing or reading about our trials and tribulations rather than letting our emotions get the best of us and letting our actions make the worst of us...

I Raped a 13 year old; I Exposed Myself to a 2 year old--the Sex Addict Recalls his Past

2010-05-16T00:01:00.000-07:00

I was just reading about Lawrence Taylor, the former New York Giants legendary defense man who was recently arrested for having sexual contact with a 16 year-old and I was reminded of my own sordid past.

While I don't know for sure that any prostitute that I paid was under 18, I'm all but sure of it by having looked at them, and my polygraph that I took a couple of years ago suggests that I believe it's true.

I remember the one girl that I was pretty sure was under age. She was running across the street I was 'cruising' on, wearing a hoodie and a backpack. She looked like she'd just left her middle school extracurricular activity and needed a ride home, but she asked me if I was 'looking for a date' and asked me to prove I wasn't a cop. I told her to go ahead and touch me and then she'd know, which she did and agreed this 'proved' I wasn't.

I finally looked over at her baby face as we zinged down a side street to a parking spot in a residential neighborhood. I asked her how old she was and she said, "Um, I just turned 18".

"How long have you been doing this?"

"A couple years...er...I mean a couple weeks after my 18th birthday."

She was nervous. Her eyes darted over her shoulders out the windows looking for police or dog walkers, or anyone else who might report us and lead to (another?) arrest.

I asked for my usual (receptive oral sex) and paid her the requisite $40. She insisted on using a condom, something I didn't much appreciate and would often pay extra to lose. She wouldn't go for it, which to me was another indicator that she was either young or new or both.

Knowing that she was likely underage seemed to make me feel I was committing an even higher crime and this was actually a turn-off, despite the fact that I enjoyed looking at porn that included minors at that time. So I had a difficult time reaching a climax and finally she was so angry and paranoid that she left the car a few minutes later, running down the street without saying a word to me.

Moments later, a police patrol car rolled by and flashed his spotlight in my face. Luckily there was no minor or any other hooker in the car next to me and I'd already disposed of the condom and 'put myself away'.

I'm also reminded of the time I was babysitting at age 12 or 13 and I was watching a porn movie in the house I was sitting in. This was the same house where I'd snooped in their bedside night stand and found condoms and a Polaroid of the mother of the child standing naked and pregnant. I'd also been caught on more than one occasion having a 'friend over', uninvited, and both times he drank their booze and watered it down to keep the bottle at the same level. The second time that friend was caught visiting, I was fired.

This one time when I was masturbating to a video at their house, the two year old came downstairs and was watching me for an unknown length of time. I recall looking at him and asked him to come over to me. What exactly happened during this event is pretty fuzzy, but part of me wants to say that I had him sit on the couch next to me and put his hand on my penis, although I don't clearly remember him ever touching me. Somehow I do remember him on the couch next to me on my left as I was holding an erection and I showed it to him. I believe he shook his head intuitively and repeated 'no, no' as he got up and ran upstairs back to his bedroom. I then remember going up to his room and apologizing to him, telling him that it was 'nothing' and then I let him go back to sleep.

How much of the above is true is anybodies guess. My initial memory of this event as an adult was that I didn't have him touch me. More recent thoughts about it suggest that he may have touched me briefly but he didn't continue despite my insistence.

What would frighten me is if I begin to remember other events like forcing a child to have sex with me. I know my guilt-riddled mind can invent these 'memories' that may or may not be real, and I will likely never know exactly what happened, unless perhaps I subject myself to hypnosis or if there's another mind reading technique that's developed during my lifetime.

As the birth of my current wife's and my son approaches, I have no fears that I'm going to molest this child. I have no fears that I will molest any kids, nor look at more child porn, and I don't beleive that I'm a danger to anyone's kids.

What makes me feel afraid is that my sex addiction is still right underneath the surface and I know that this is a progressive disease that will continue to smoulder to the day I suck my last breath. It will always be possible for me to solicit prostitutes in the future, to harm a child sexually, to look at pornography on the Internet or in magazines or other media. It's just something I have to accept and continue to work a program around.

My food addiction continues to hurtle out of control, albeit less so in recent weeks. Now I just seem to be eating the wrong foods that are available to me at home, rather than going out and buying gallons of ice cream or pounds of candy or nuts.

I'm looking forward to going to my shrink in the coming weeks. She said she may put me on Adderall if I continue to eat out of control. I have to say my appetite has become insatiable since I started the lithium and although I seem to be on more of an even keel with my emotions, I'll be four hundred pounds and unable to wipe my own ass by my New Year's if this keeps up.

I hope the honesty in this and other posts will somehow educate someone regarding sex addiction and recovery. The title suggests something out of control and sensational, and my life has been in the past, but at this time, I'm sober--for one more day at least...

The Sex Addict Tries a New Position--and at Work of all places!

2010-05-13T07:31:00.000-07:00

At long last, about fourteen months into the project, we're starting two new employees to work with me. It feels like it's about six months too late, but we did make some adjustments in my work flow to allow me to survive to this point.
Later this morning, I'll be meeting with my boss, Mama, and our two new recruits on the first of a two day orientation. What's really scary to me is that today is the first day of what will forever be a new job. Up to now, this project was just me in the field and Mama running the administrative side. The vision all along has been to expand this both locally and nationally, and we've set up lots of infrastructure to put that into place.
As my local rabbi would say, it's "punch time". I've gone through a year-plus in survival mode, many times where I put in crazy hours both in length and time of day, and this new distribution of the work is going to force me to keep more regular hours and to be more organized, rather than just stomping out fires wherever they appear.
Meanwhile, I've been on the Lithium for about two months now, and since then, I've gained no less than 17 pounds. The upside of the drug is that I've had much more measured responses to the usual craziness in my life, particularly around the Ex and her antics with respect to moving and regarding her usual responses to my wanting to change some of our parenting plan because of my new schedule (translation: she's still unreasonably inflexible). The downside is that, at the same time my stress and responsibilities was ramping up at work, I feel that this medication has stimulated a voracious appetite.
It's true that Motown Girl is pregnant. Back when the Ex was preggers, I had an unusually voracious appetite and gained about fifty pounds. But we weren't getting along at all and I was acting out to porn and drinking booze alone at that time.
My finances are better than they have been in that MG has balanced our budget and taken the stress away from me by keeping our bills and accounts in order.
Exercise has decreased on a number of fronts. I've not been going to synagogue every week on the Sabbath, which is mostly due to my extreme fatigue of being on call 24/7 and my inability to complete my administrative work during the workweek. I've also dropped down to one visit with my trainer at the gym per week. I found the two meetings per week to keep me more accountable and I subsequently would eat better, as I was working out my body more. So the mile-plus stroll each way on Friday night and Saturday, accompanied by the second scheduled workout session at the gym per week was keeping my body on a better track.
The work on the Sabbath, including both phone call and administrative catch-up has been a source of guilt for me. Part of my justification is that I used to pray three formal prayers daily, perform all of the obligatory rituals, and attend synagogue regularly, and at the same time I was acting out with sex, food, and booze. My more recent approach to spirituality and mental health has been to refrain from busting my chops about not adhering to the proscribed prayers and rituals, and to focus on being a good person who's sober sexually. That shows the miracle of G-d on a daily basis, this coming from the mouth of a low bottom sex addict.
So with a baby coming, help at work finally arriving, and my body screaming out for better care, I've decided to treat this change at work as a 'new job'. It's going to have a different set of responsibilities--less physical work and more managerial tasks. It's going to have a more organized and scheduled approach--reducing the chaos for me and my clients. It's going to free up some time for self care.
One thing that's got to change, and this has scared me as well, is that I have to draw some boundaries around work and seeing my kids. I've gone through the last four years with seeing my kids--work or no work--twice a week on Mondays and Thursdays, from around four to seven in the evening. Now that my schedule is going to be 'seven days on and seven days off', I'm committed to being at work during my child visits every other week. This change is not fully effective until we get employees number three and four working along side me, but I'm now going to be implementing a modified 'high presence' model for our clients and this is going to require better accountability for me appearing at work on designated days at designated times.
Thankfully, following some persistent negotiations and a trip to my lawyer's office, it looks like the Ex might be willing to allow for my current wife, MG, to care for the kids without a supervisor, saving us some precious cash and this will allow for me to see the kids on a weekend day twice a month for an extended period of time--something I've never done in the past four years.
The additional organized schedule will be a perfect opportunity for me to commit another day or two in the gym, which almost certainly will be accompanied by a better balanced diet, since my body doesn't crave the junk when I take care of it better.
So why do I have such anxiety around this? Why the uneasiness when things are clearly going to be better?
It's a change. For better or for worse, change is an agent that can disrupt the life of any addict. And this change is very significant. I remember my big sister telling me that her husband, who works in the same field as me, worked so hard all of the time that he forgot what 'normal' time commitments were.
I'd have to say that's pretty accurate. I recall professional school, apprenticeship and then in my professional work since--each had a deeper level of complexity and greater degree of time commitment. This will be the first time since high school, some twenty-two years ago, that my life is going to be simplified and more streamlined. Seems like a pretty good reason to feel like a big change is happening.
Going forward, I commit to reinvesting in myself physically, spiritually, mentally. Having just turned 40 has made me feel my mortality just a little bit more. I certainly don't know how much more time I have on the planet. My father, he should rest in peace, was just shy of 76. The Talmud says we should be more mindful of our mortality when our age is within 5 years of when a parent passed away, meaning age 71 for me. That's 31 years away. That used to seem like a long time, but when 22 years ago was my high school graduation and that seems recent, I'm really getting more mindful of how short this life is.
One of the many things I love about being a Jew is that each day is a total renewal, a blank slate, and a new start. Each day we can do more, achieve more, and earn more of a right of passage to a better spiritual life.
It's time to reinvigorate and today is as good a day as any to begin that journey...

Whip Cream and Sex: The Sex Addict is tired of his See Food Diet

2010-05-09T02:30:00.000-07:00

Not that I want to trade in a year plus of sexual sobriety and nearly four years of sobriety from my low bottom behaviors, but my food addiction is killing me.

I topped in at 312 pounds today, the highest number that I've actually seen on a scale--I've probably been upwards of 350, but I stopped weighing in just under 300.

I recall when that poor mouthpiece for the Bush White House Tony Snow died of colon cancer. He's the same guy who said, "It's a number" when the Iraq War hit the death toll of 2500. A grim parallel was that Tony Snow died of recurrent metastatic colon cancer 25 months later, nearly to the day.

I'm reminded of Tony because when I hit 300 pounds, my first thought was, "It's a number".

But statistics show that people who have the body mass index that I have are 'morbidly obese' and have a much higher chance of dying young and getting any number of associated health problems, from diabetes, to stroke, to heart attack, to cancer.

I'm a health professional, which makes me dangerous in my degree of intelligence both as a professional and as an addict.

I'm completely powerless over my 'self-control' over what I eat. I'm so very tired of wearing tight clothing, feeling short of breath just moving around, having to stretch just to wipe my bottom since my arm is too short and my body is too big. If I get much bigger, I won't be able to take care of basic hygeine--which is something that scares the tar out of me.

And yet, just like when I was picking up hookers as a married man with children at home, I cannot see an end to the madness. I feel like if there's any food that is a trigger within my reach, I'll choose to eat it and go to town.

Looking at this from the perspective of the basics in 12 steps and addictions, I find that one of my triggers is the stack of work that I've been building for weeks. I'd love to take a day off and just finish it, but I'm still alone in my work and we have two new associates starting in a couple of weeks--not soon enough!

It feels like such a catch 22. I have this desire to be more physically active, to eat healthier, to pray more, and professionally I have a desire to do the work on my plate, to keep up with my continuing education and certifications, at home I have a desire to have a successful marriage, to be a supportive husband for my pregnant wife.

It's just too much for one person to handle.

There is One (Above) who can handle it, and I keep on forgetting to bring Him into this equation.

And that makes me pissed at myself, as does being behind at work, staying up late, getting up late, eating too much, weighing too much, appearing fat in the mirror, and on and on and on...

...and THOSE things become my Higher Power.

For F's sake! Why is it so hard for me to realize the basics?

Back to step one. Back to meetings. Back to the basics.

I'm powerless....here we go....

"Clear away the wreckage of your past"--the Sex Addict takes "A Vision for You" literally

2010-04-27T01:53:00.000-07:00

I came home this evening, like many other evening in the past year, close to midnight, tired, hungry, irritated that I had to work so much and still feel like I'm always behind, and as I walk into my darkened condo, I saw a common site that's been there for about a year now.

Clutter.

So what's the big deal? Why is it so important to maintain tidiness? Who's 'job' is it anyways?

I married Motown Girl just under a year ago. At that time, I had a relatively tidy condo that, save for some stuff in a couple of closets, was pretty well organized. The finishing touches on my "reorganization" post divorce had started when I hired a 'personal organizer' to help me declutter my closets. I recall having just thrown away great big Hefty bags full of papers before MG moved in.

Shortly after I began speaking with her, MG relayed to me that "I'm not the neatest person in the world...". I immediately retorted, "You mean your a slob", half joking, half knowing that she was of the addict ilk and tended to minimize problems.

Sure enough, having met her in Motown, I saw her apartment was none too neat or organized. It was not a dealbreaker, then or now, but it would be a new experience for me to live with someone who literally needs a maid following them to close cabinet and closet doors, put away clothes, put dirty dishes into the sink and clean them, put food away after taking it out, throw away junk mail, file away important papers, etc, etc, etc.

Since she moved in, I've gone through several different phases in response to her 'neatness' problem. I've been blunt and told her just what I wanted. I've occasionally put things away and tried to 'do it all myself'--that lasted about five minutes and just builds resentment (which is what my Ex did when I was a slob and messed up her home). I've told both marital therapists we've seen that I want this clutter issue to improve in our home. We've had a couple of different housekeepers to help us out, but the place is still a fricking disaster.

Finally, I've gone to a given up mode and started doing similar things that she does. Throwing clothes, shoes, wrappers, and garbage on the floor, leaving food out, leaving dishes on the table or on the side of my easy chairs, and this "worked" for a while...but not really.

Recently, I've started on the medication lithium for a diagnosis of 'Bipolar Affective Disorder" and I've gained about fifteen pounds, probably from an increased appetite and decreased exercise. This has not helped my self-image to say the least, but I have noticed that I'm much less apt to have my 'usual' lashing out at my Ex via e-mail or at people on the job who have crossed me in some way or another.

I've also been able to take a look at my homelife from a different, calmer perspective and feel that this clutter is indeed adversely affecting me in more ways than I care to say.

I'm reminded of the time I had my living room and dining room repainted and had hardwood flooring put in. The contractor was brilliant in his skills, but he was working too many jobs at the same time and I didn't give him a deadline until months into the project. In the interim, my condo's furniture was piled into different rooms and the hallway and I was forced to spend time with my kids outside of the condo since there was no place to play or eat, and I had to climb over things for months to do anything while the work dragged on.

This evening, as I went to put some things down and tried to go start my work following greeting my wife, I had to climb over or step around several items on the floor and stacked around. Every flat surface in each room of the home has something stacked on it. There are countless things that we said should be in storage or that need to be given away that have been sitting around for weeks to months.

Everywhere I look there's clutter.

What does that do to my mind? I'm certain that this is affecting me in a negative way. Every time I ignore my feelings around these things, I risk building resentment towards my wife and/or building up negative energy that I may use to fuel my acting out in someway, which is really with food these days.

So I have about three weeks before I finally get some relief at work. Besides using my newfound free time to tidy up around the house, I plan to exercise more, pray more, eat better, and prepare for my professional licensing exam.

It's time to clear away the clutter in my life. It's inhibiting progress in my recovery and that is not worth sacrificing for any price...

A Drag Queen Interviews the Sex Addict

2010-04-25T02:56:00.000-07:00

Going to a drag show is probably not the first place a recovering sex addict should go for a night out. Not usually.

A few days back, I decided to take my wife out for a date to a live act. I'd heard that this drag show was one of the 'best in the Northwest', so I figured we should buy tickets and see what it would be like.

I always wear my yarlmulka these days. The only time I'd take it off in the 'old days' was when I was acting out. This evening, I wore a dress hat on top of my 'headgear' and we went to the show sitting down in the back.

Not wanting to be conspicuous, I kept my usual 'low profile'...that is until the drag queen host indicated that this was going to be an audience participation show. Then they started asking if there were out of towners. I pointed to my wife, who likes to say she's from Motown.

For that, she 'won' a free Jaegermeister shirt. Then they asked if there were any people 'celebrating anything' in the crowd. My birthday was yesterday, so I asked MG and she said 'Go for it'. I went up with about a dozen others, all women, and each of us was interviewed by the emcee drag queen.

She...er...he...whatever....had a foul mouth. She kept on dropping 'f' bombs and asking everyone about their favorite style of sex. This was not particularly triggering, except for the woman next to me said she was in the same profession as I was and claimed she loved risque sex. It was energizing, but I didn't have a problem with it.

When it was my turn, I was asked what type of sex I liked and I responded, "I like it as often as I can get it".

I felt that this was a more tasteful answer, and it's quite true.

Being next to my wife in this environment and knowing that these beautiful 'women' were all men actually took most of the energy out of the show for me. I suppose if I'd been drinking and alone, it would have been a dangerous spot.

Although I don't consider myself bisexual or gay, I definitely have the propensity to regress to sex with men or any other type of inappropriate sexual activity if I was drinking. Hence, the reason I consider myself a 'problem drinker' and I stay away from any/all alcohol. This has probably resulted in saving me from a lot of bad situations.

The other things that could get me into trouble with acting out are the usual: HALT and BEAR acronyms that work well for me.

Hungry
Angry
Lonely
Tired

and

Bored
Entitled
Angry
Resentful

These things can lead me down the wrong path in all of my bad behaviors.

I'm grateful I recognize these issues and I'm able to prevent most of my bottom line behaviors. The key now is to develop the first order change with respect to my food recovery and continue the second order change the comes with the other addictions.

Well, I have to get up relatively early and I'm getting tired here. Could lead to trouble, so I'm gonna head to bed now. Hope I don't dream in drag...

Sex Addiction at 40

2010-04-23T02:14:00.000-07:00

I remember when my friends and I were turning 13. As a Jewish boy, it meant not only being a teen, developing the secondary sex characteristics of pubic hair, body odor and the ability to ejaculate, it meant a Bar Mitzvah. To me, as a rather 'secular', minimally observant, 'Conservative' Jew, it meant that I'd be having a swanky suare where the boys and girls would be allowed to dance to rock music and possibly indulge in some liquor and/or groping of the beautiful pre-teen/teen sex objects that I'd already started to lust after.

Here I am, my birthday, 27 years later, divorced twice, father of two, a 'bun in the oven' with my wife expecting in October, and I'm still struggling with my addictions, albeit from the perspective of recovery.

In this past year, I've let go of my forced prayer while I've overtaxed myself with work and trying to stay present and engaged in my relationship with my new wife. It's been a tremendously successful year, from the standpoint of starting a new division for my company, starting a fresh relationship based on honesty and trust with a mixture of loving playfulness and desire for better things, and it's been a challenging year with respect to my divesting myself of time and energy that I used to spend on 'looking like' a 'good Jew'.

So where's the balance?

Recovery has caused me to realize that one of the chief problems of the typical addict is the unamnageability that comes with our addictions. What first started as a way to numb out the pain in our life began to draw our time and energy to achieve that 'first high' that we can never again attain.

Unfortunately, as I've been performing well in some areas of my life, some have slipped into disarray that I'm ashamed and scared of.

Among them:

Diet and Exercise: There was a time about six months ago when I was still attending the OA meetings on a regular basis and I was still exercising at a minimum of twice weekly. What's changed? My time commitment at work has been extraordinarily heavy and I've been focused on my marriage. Additionally, finances have been tight, so I have cut back on my (accountability partner) personal trainer to once weekly.
Professional Life: I have a professional certification that is due this year. It's true that most of the individuals who take the test to recertify pass and have no problem, but there's a process of recertifying that involves a project at work, study time, and practicing test taking. I've not started and time's running out. I'm scared.
12 Step Work: It's been months since I've sat down and actually written on step work, attended an SA meeting, or regularly gone to any 12 Step meetings. True I've sat down with my SA sponsor recently and I've commited to going to a meeting with him in the coming weeks. Also true that I've been going to weekly group work that's run by a sex addiction therapist and is filled with sex addicts. And true that I've been going to a sex addiction therapist bimonthly and talking with my SA buddy (there's one main one these days) nearly ever day. But there's no substitute for 12 Step meetings. Never has been. Never will be.
I've started using nicotine via e-cigarettes, which, while likely consderably less harmful than a real cigarette, is still no good for a 40 year old obese man with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and a known family history of heart disease.
I've stepped away from formalized prayer voluntarily, partly to preserve my sanity because I'd pressure myself to death to do things in a timely fashion and perfectly. Partly because of my new questioning of the Universe. Where is G-d? I see him in my recovery, in the creation of my unborn child from the loins of a person incapable of conceiving, in meeting my lovely wife after going through the first two marriages in the midst of full blown sex addiction out of control. But where is He now? Why do I have trouble getting inspired to conduct ritualized prayer that I was born into? Part of me has a desire to reconnect with Him in that way. Part of me says it's not to be until I have more free time and I'm less scattered with my time, which should happen in the near future when I have some associates to work with in my company and I'm no longer '24/7'.

I feel like I started my 'mid-life crisis' at age 30 and it's only now begun to look like I'm formulating a good plan for my life in the future. What's frightening for me is that I see my mortality today better than I ever have in the past. It's right there in front of me.

Today, without going into details how, I saw a woman taking her last gasps of breath as her husband of 58 years sat at her bedside waiting.

Within the hour, I'd returned to the room and saw the man rubbing the sweat off of his now deceased wife's forehead, crying, as her lifeless face stared right past him.

Where did she go?

It's a mystery that will never be solved on this side of the ground. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, there's no question that part of us, as matter, will never be destroyed. We will always 'be'.

What we do before we meet the fate of that poor lady and the billions who have gone before her, that is what I must decide from today forward.

Every day is precious. Every moment is sacred.

Why did I waste so many of them wacking off to porn and cheating on wife #2?

It doesn't matter right now. What matters is what I do going forward.

Time to make a new blueprint for the coming sacred moments...

Asphyxia Sex: The Sex Addict and his Pregnant Wife try to Make Love

2010-04-13T01:36:00.000-07:00

Too much to tell in one short entry regarding a long absence.

In summary, I'm still sober sexually, my wife is pregnant 3+ months by way of IVF with a single pregnancy, and we've matched weight gain pound per pound via hormone shots for her and compulsive overeating for me.

Now a little more detail.

My employer and I agreed (read: reluctantly agreed on my part since I need the job) to change my bonus structure to one that's more 'reasonable'. It's resulted in a bonus that's 2/3 less than what I was getting in the previous agreement. Among other things like gigantic debt in an upside down condo mortgage and a 401k that's been borrowed against for 4 years to pay off credit card debt, I need to continue child support payments for the Ex and, of course, my current wife Motown Girl and baby-to-be need a roof over their heads.

Hence, I press on in a job where I have enough work, by definition, for 5 people, as we've hired four colleagues for me to train and implement in the coming few months. This will be a great relief, but without a doubt, I'm way overtaxed and under rested, under served and I've not been taking care of my basic needs that help keep me sober.

So my friend 'Lunchbox' (a nickname he gave himself at over 300 pounds) and I have stopped working together in OA and in SA. It's a bit complicated it seems, but essentially he has more sobriety than me in SA due to my indiscretionary masturbation and then sex with my fiance in the past year.

And speaking of, I just realized--and this is the G-d's honest truth--it is 'coincidentally' my one year anniversary of SA sobriety.

Unbelievable. I didn't plan to blog tonight of all nights. As another tangent spins off, I have not been blogging partly because I began doing the bulk of my administrative work on a laptop provided by my employer. As such, the Macbook has been laying 'idle' in my wife's lap while she spends endless hours doing her activities online, much of it being compulsive research into pregnancy, IVF, sex while pregnant, and one time she decided to look up something about a certain kind of horse and she clicked on some bestiality link or something.

Mind you all the computers in my home are linked to my account at www.covenanteyes.com . My shrink has my accountability emails now and he queried my search into horse porn. Thankfully my wife was honest with both of us and took the blame.

I digress...

Back to 'Lunchbox'. He's nearly three years sober in SA and he's lost over 100 pounds in OA. A few months back, he had told me for the upteenth time to follow my food plan, go to more OA meetings, write answers to the questions he provided to me involving OA step work, and he finally gently let me 'go' work my program without his guidance (read: he fired me as a sponsee). I was told not to take it personally, I knew not to take it personally, but I felt bad about it.

I stopped going to OA meetings after that, and with the new pregnancy and compulsive eating going on in our household by my wife (an enabler, not to be blamed however), I began to skirt into middle and finally inner circle eating. That was about 40 pounds ago. I'm pretty sure I was down to about 266 with my step work, writing, and meetings going well, but then I went up to 306 and counting since stopping meetings and decreasing exercise.

So while Lunchbox was also my SA sponsee, he noticed that I wasn't going to those meetings, I've not been active with my SA sponsor, and I've been acting out with food. He let me down easy again a few weeks ago, this time telling me that he has some serious stuff to work on in recovery and that while it was good to work together when we did, he's moved to a different sponsor and I shouldn't take it personally.

While logically I know that this is not something that is all about me, I still think that the toxicity that I may be exuding from not 12 stepping my food addiction is rubbing off on him and he needs a sponsor who's not toxic and who's working the SA program actively.

Understandable, not personal, but it still hurt.

So as I continued this downward spiral of overeating, I looked at what has changed in my household. Not much, right?

Let's see.

- Motown girl went through IVF hormones for several weeks. We haven't had sex since then--until tonight--and so I've been largely sexless in city. Admittedly, we have had some physical intimacy, but it's not the same. No I didn't die, for you SA's/S-program people. I'm still in the program, just not active. Still connected by regular phone calls, still have a sponsor, still have a group counseling meeting and individual therapist.
- My work has been non-stop 24/7 since a year ago. No joke, 24/7, the only professional providing services and I'm on call 24/7. Gratefully, the system and my work have evolved enough that I do in fact sleep. Just not enough and I need these new associates to start yesterday. Too bad it's a month away...
- I've not been doing my formal prayers as I used to. I'm still an Orthodox Jew, per se. I still observe the Sabbath, albeit on call and with my exhaustion playing into my not going to synagogue on most Saturdays. I also had not been to synagogue for weeks at a time because I so despise seeing my twins glomming onto their step father and barely saying 'hi' to me when I visit them. The Ex picked up on this and the fact that Motown Girl wants to consider moving to a new community in the same city so she and the family up and bought a new house 25 minutes away from here, bringing up the next doozy...
- My Ex has now extracted the kids out of my life significantly in that I will not afford a supervisor for the 30 plus hours of the Sabbath, so I will not be able to see my kids on Saturdays or Holidays unless a family in their community is kind enough to help, which is hard to see, but I won't future trip about it now...
- My finances continue to be tight
- My pants are tighter than my finances and that always makes me feel like sh*t

I did go back to OA a couple of weeks ago and I've been eating more mindfully in the past two weeks than I have in the past 3-4 months. But I've had some significant food backsliding, as recently as today with the white flour pizza for dinner--I ate most of it--and with the remnant of another binge from last week--M&Ms and mixed nuts--that I ate quite a bit of today on my way to work.

To turn this battleship around, I went to a psychiatrist and told her about my short fuse with my Ex, my recurrent self-damaging comments and calls that I've made to her, her parents, her husband, and she said, following an hour or so of my history, that I'm likely Bipolar.

Great. I was missing a dual diagnosis...er...no I'm not. I'm overweight, have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, I'm a binge alcoholic (still sober), sex addict (ditto), and now I'm labeled 'bipolar'.

I bought the lithium, thinking it would make things better.

15 pounds later, I'm less labile in my affect and more balanced, but I feel terrible with the weight gain, nearly half of which may have been related to the lithium.

What next? Adderall? I've thought of it from a weight loss perspective, and ADHD perspective, and I'm scared of it from an addict's perspective. But my shrink and I meet at the end of the month to discuss it, and I'm not ruling it in or out at this point.

Last week, the Ex's hub told me that buying a house 25 minutes from us. Literally that weekend, they moved.

Whoa. Thanks for the notice.

I guess the good part is I didn't 'freak out'. Thank you lithium!

Well, it's nearly 1:30am and I've been all over the map about what's been doing for the past 3 plus months. I guess I'll mention the point of the title now that you've read this far.

Being so overweight now, and having the 'body dysmorphism' that goes with it, I feel short of breath by pretty minimal exertion. I won't get graphic, but my lovely wife decided this evening that it was time to 'test the waters' of sex as a pregnant woman. It didn't last too long, as she was hurting and not wanting to continue. I, ashamedly, was out of breath with rather minimal exertion. Being the codependent that she is, she wanted me to 'finish' despite her needing to stop our activity.

For what it's worth, I knew that I had to do some administrative work tonight, I have to get to work early tomorrow, and I desperately wanted to use her 'unuseable' computer that she traded me for my Macbook. I decided to forego the seeming selfish 'finish' and opted to go do my work. I'd never have done that 3 and a half years ago!

So her I sit in my easy chair with this behemoth of a laptop that runs Windows 7 very well I might add. I can type on this computer and not worry about my employer looking at the blog as easily as if I'd surfed here on my work computer.

At least I'm that thoughtful!

I think getting back to the blog is going to be helpful for me. I've been getting much more benefit from it than I probably know, and we'll see where my recovery goes from here. I'd love to get to a more pure living sobriety...

Fatigue, Big Bonus, Future Tripping and Sanctioned Masturbation: The Sex Addict finds his Reason to Eat a Pint of Ice Cream

2010-01-07T07:10:00.000-08:00

I guess the good news is that I could have found a reason to act out to a lower bottom line and I had just exercised before the 'session'.

I'm not sure what played in more, but ironically, as a sex addict, I feel the 'sanctioned masturbation' that I did for the in vitro fertilization process my wife and I are going through was the least energizing from an acting out point of view.

I was told I'd need to produce a semen sample for culture 'as part of the protocol', but I found it interesting that this was requested after I disclosed to the IVF specialist that I'm a sex addict and this addiction resulted in the dissolution of my last marriage just months after the birth of my last IVF children. It's certainly understandable that he'd be concerned I might have an STD, particularly after that disclosure.

The actual masturbating took place in a room connected to a medical lab which had a couple of easy chairs, a flat screen TV and a couple porn DVDs. I did see a nude woman on the cover of one of the DVDs but it wasn't even a trigger for me. I decided to proceed with a fantasy involving my current wife and, as an established expert, I procured a semen sample within minutes.

Naturally, I was asked why I take so long to ejaculate by my wife when it comes to our own sex life. I'm not sure of the answer to that, apart from that I have a hard wired brain with vast experience at going right to my deeply ingrained pleasure centers and I believe that this type of fantasy experience, if allowed into our bedroom, is really a self-serving, disconnected way of leading to a climax.

I digress...

As I sit here eating breakfast, no doubt instigating my next bowel movement which judging from the gurgles will be my act of penance for acting out with ice cream, I want to conduct the 'autopsy' on the behavior as to why it happened and what I can do to prevent it.

Prevention seems easy, in hindsight. I have ice cream in the house along with chocolate chips and chocolate syrup. This is like me having booze or a hooker in the house or a stash of porn that's undetected. It seems obvious that I need to live in a home with minimal opportunities to act out with available food, but the problem is I live with another person who doesn't have issue with the inner circle foods being available here.

So I guess it's back to recovery 101. Make phone calls, go to meetings, read and write around recovery, and perform self care.

The underlying events that preceded my infraction included not sleeping enough lately, being hungry and not having a proper intake of food and fluid around the time that I had just worked out, and the biggies, perceived troubles around work.

For years I'd told my company that we should engage in the line of work that I'm now spearheading for them. Initially, I met with resistance to the idea, then I was restricted in how aggressively I was allowed to go forward and build it up, then I was told I was building it too slowly, and finally I was told to slow down since there was concern that I wasn't doing a sustainable job that would be reproducible once we hire other 'artisans' to join me.

My wife has been a great addition to my life for many reasons, not the least of which is her ability to budget and persistently follow the money trails wherever they may lead. As such, we have some clearly defined debt problems, now that she's fleshed out all of my income and outgo.

During a recent conversation with my boss, I realized that I'd not yet received my first production bonus which should have come from my last paycheck.

Much to my surprise, she told me that the check would be three times my monthly salary and would be paid on my next paycheck.

Whuh?? Huh??

I had to ask her to clarify that. "Does that include my other income or is that just the production bonus?".

"Just the bonus".

Wa wa wee wah!!

You'd think I'd be bouncing off the rafters. This effectively doubles my income from what I received at my last job.

So what's my problem? The boss proceeded to say, if I understood her correctly, that she wanted to renegotiate my contract since the company feels this compensation is too generous, and she proposed an alternative way of creating the bonus, which would be about 70% less money for me per bonus period.

WTF? You want me to renegotiate my pay so I get 70% less bonus for the same effort, and you guys will then get 70% more?!?

Immediately my shame filled, low self-esteemed inner child wanted to yell out, 'Fine!' and accept the terms without question. I also began to future trip that this big, powerful company, who could easily take my contract and have their lawyers twist the interpretation of the language to either force me to accept anything they want or fire me immediately.

This of course would lead to the immediate implosion of their investment which stands to make them millions of dollars, literally, if the vision is carried out the way it's moving now.

So there you have it. My reason for coming home from the gym, eating a full dinner, and then going to the freezer and eating a pint of ice cream covered in chocolate sauce and chocolate chips.

Too bad recovery has lessened the high that comes with acting out and I'm going to have to cut this blog short since the now digested by-products of the ice cream will soon be shooting out of me like a stream of urine...

Plans for the future? Eat better, sleep better, let go and let G-d, make more phone calls, and go to more meetings.

Gotta go to the can now...

Defiance and The Sex Addict: Who's Will Be Done?

2010-01-06T07:17:00.000-08:00

This is an awfully touchy subject for the consummate addict.

Last evening I spoke with a sponsee in SA who has recently started running his successful business from a remote island location and he evidently spends more time in 12 step meetings than working.

Sounds like a great life to me, except for that he also was engaged and subsequently broke off the engagement in the months that preceded his move, and now he is dating with the intent to marry a woman who is anything but transparent about her nebulous cross country relationship with another gentleman.

Far be it from me to understand this situation--I'm trying to figure out my own--but I'm concerned for my fellow addict. My concern includes the 'defiance' discussed on pages 31 to 33 of the AA book 'The Twelve and Twelve'.

But look at my finger pointing elsewhere and note the three pointing at me.

There have been many a time that I've thought my own recovery program was going well, only to find that I've been ignoring some key blind spots that could have been devastating. These include, but are not excluded to, my absence of following a budget, my ongoing struggles with food, my ongoing struggles with working under difficult circumstances (overcommitments abound), and my ongoing difficulties communicating my feelings honestly and effectively with those around me i.e. boss, co-workers, friends, spouse.

So effectively, I'm sitting with a bottle of booze in hand, looking at those around me and slurring, "Look'a that sunuva bish! Anda other one over'der!!", whilst I'm sitting in my own urine soaked pants, drooling, drunk and disheveled. And as I judge those addicts around me, somewhere inside me the truth lurks, and I know it, and I refuse to take responsibility.

"It's G-d's fault", I say. And I'd continue to 'wallow in emotionalism' instead of truly connecting with my Higher Power. I'd continue to say "Thy will, not mine, be done", while doing whatever I wanted to do. I'd repeatedly declare that I'm "giving it up to G-d", while I'm really leaving it up to me and not allowing for my destructive behavior to be seen for what it was.

I don't want to admit that I have blind spots and ongoing frailties. But until I have solved all of my own shortcomings, perhaps I should limit my assessments and judgements of others...

New Year's Day: The Sex Addict starts the New Decade in a Pissy Mood

2010-01-01T01:03:00.000-08:00

Really I should be putting together a gratitude list rather than a rant about why I'm in a crappy mood. I'm exposed to surreal amounts of suffering in both my work life (in health care) and in my private life amongst the addicts with whom I affiliate. And yet I wanna sit here and criticize, condemn and complain all night about how all is not well in my life.

I could be the guy who's my age who not only believes he has several serious illnesses, he's gone to extreme lengths to damage his body, mimicking serious diseases and actually has under gone numerous surgeries because of it (see Munchausen syndrome).

I could be the guy who was driving his car in perfect health a couple of weeks ago, wearing the stockings for chronic leg swelling that his doctor told him to, who developed two gigantic infected ulcers in his shins that require weeks of IV antibiotics and a 'wound vacuum' to help him heal this horrific looking sores.

Then there's the woman who was trying to help herself get out of her morbid obesity, so she underwent a gastric bypass surgery about ten years ago, only to develop severe leg swelling, diminished strength, and nausea with vomiting accompanied by fevers and weight loss in recent months. She was found to have a partial blockage of her bowel and needed a major abdominal surgery to correct that. Now she needs to recover from this surgery, continue receiving weeks of IV nutrition until she can have 'the rest' of her surgery done on her bowel to reverse her original gastric bypass to correct the poor absorption syndrome that she suffers from. She's in her early 40's now and cannot leave a nursing home for weeks to months until this is all resolved.

And finally there's the guy who was told he'd have a couple of weeks to live at most. He is a former heavy drinker, heavy smoker, Vietnam vet in his late 50's, discovered to have a tumor in his lung that spread to his bones a few months ago when he had presented to his doctor with complaints of cough, diminished appetite, sweats, and bone pain in his arm and leg. He received some radiation therapy to the affected bones to provide some relief but he was told that he may have a couple weeks at best and the radiation was meant to make the bone pain treatable with by mouth antibiotics.

The poor guy asked me a week ago 'why am I still here?'. He was still suffering from tremendous bone pain, worsening shortness of breath with a moist cough and difficulty breathing. His comfort meds were increased dramatically a week ago and I believe I've seen him for the last time this evening, although he was amazingly still hanging on by some thin threads.

So what the H*ll am I complaining about? I'm tired. I've been 'on call' since May. I don't have anyone in my company to help me do the foot work in the field right now. I want to continue to optimize the time with my kids on Mondays and Thursdays, continue my commitments to working out, group therapy, and individual therapy on Wednesdays and Sundays, and continue 12 stepping at least every other week on Thursday evenings. I also want to spend quality time with my lovely wife and we're working on having a baby by IVF.

In the interim, I've been fantasizing about developing an internet business or coffee stand to make extra money so we can afford the cost of having more kids.

G-d, grant me the Serenity, to accept the the things I cannot change, the Courage to change the things I can, and the Wisdom to know the difference...

Keep Him at the forefront of my mind and it's all good, one way or the other...

Sex, Food, Money, Co-dependent Relationships: "Substitutes" for the Sex Addict's Higher Power

2009-12-30T23:47:00.000-08:00

It's easy for me to forget about my Higher Power. Coming from an 'Orthodox' Jew, that would seem impossible, but it's unfortunately true.

I haven't forgotten the basic tenets of my religion. I've not forgotten why I'm here, where my success in anything has come from, and what is the Source of everything.

But I often forget what's most important in life.

I think I've always been that way, at least for as long as I can remember.

As an animal, a human being's actions may be dictated by 'instincts' and what feels good. I have even used that as an excuse to act out sexually. I wasn't "getting it" from my wife, so I turned to masturbation or I turned to hookers.

Similarly, I'd look to food, booze, drugs, video games, and even pathological relationships to numb out.

In Chassidic Jewish philosophy, the difference between the animals and ourselves is that human beings have a "Yetzer Tov" (YATE-sir TOVE) or 'good inclination' or 'G-dly soul'. However you want to look at it, we have a part of us that can rule over our "Yetzer Harah" (YATE-sir ha-RAH) or 'evil inclination'. That, and an opposable thumb, seems to clinch our rule over the beasts of the world.

Some of us, particularly the addicts, allow their evil inclination to rule their actions, no matter what the consequences may be.

So here I am, over 3 and a half years away from surfing porn, masturbating (save for a masturbation episode here ), and using hookers, and these days I find the most difficult part of my recovery to be with food. I work in a field where I should know that taking care of one's body is paramount in trying to ensure a longer healthier life, and yet I don't truly connect with that concept when I choose to act out with food.

Food, in a sense, becomes my Higher Power. And what's really the most difficult for me is to look at the 'small infractions' of overeating on one thing in a meal or snack, which has physical effects and, perhaps even more importantly, psychological effects.

I'm not sure of how to make this better, apart from continuing to go to meetings, working the steps, working with a sponsor, and constantly reminding myself of Who should be in charge and why...

Anger Targets: The Sex Addict Stews over his Sister and the Ex

2009-12-25T01:17:00.000-08:00

You'd think after 3 and a half years plus of recovery work and over two years since the divorce that I'd be better able to handle myself around the Ex.

And when I hear about why my oldest sister, who I was quite close with a decade ago, has written me off as someone she doesn't want herself or her family to be around, I feel similar anger.

What's up with that?

I suppose with the Ex, it's understandable that I'd have some degree of anger. But the shrinks always say that anger is a 'cloak' for sadness or it's 'depression turned inward'.

Who wouldn't be sad or depressed about my plight? I lost my marriage, albeit one that really shouldn't have continued beyond the first year or two. I lost unrestricted access to my kids. I lost (the facade of) the appearance that I'm a 'normal' person in my community. Whenever I am on an outing with my children, my supervisor must be there with us, by legal agreement. I seem to be treated as a pariah by a handful of leaders in my local Jewish community. They seem to draw their children away from me, give me sidelong glances, and no longer talk with me. While I know I shouldn't take this personally and it's really about them, no me, it still hurts.

The Ex and I don't make eye contact. We don't speak on the phone, even about the kids. If I call, she hands the phone to them. If they're not available, she let's my caller ID'd number go to voicemail. On the few and rare occasions that I call from an unknown number, she is curt with me and hangs up.

And why shouldn't she act like this? I did appear most threatening to her just a couple of years ago. I did hurt her tremendously when I disclosed the ugly truth about who she was married to.

Here's an example of a recent exchange of emails that display my current anger clearly. Preceding these emails below was a discussion between my wife, Motown Girl, and the Ex regarding our change of child support payment dates to mid month due a timing change with my paychecks these days. The Ex agreed to this several months ago (June 09), but this month she tried to take the child support on the first of the month and said she never remembered our new agreement to pay her mid month.

Some important additional history is that she rarely took money out of our joint account in the past couple of years, let alone 'on time'.

My response just prior to the emails below included a 'low blow' saying that she should stop being selfish and think about the kids instead of being right and proving me wrong.
___________________________________________________________

From: The Ex
To: The Sex Addict
RE: your recent contact/comment
Hello- I have talked to the Rabbi and will wait until the 15th of this month to take out 1.5 month's worth of child support. After this month, starting in January, I will receive payment on the 15th covering the next four weeks. I have always appreciated your timeliness in paying the child support and look forward to your timeliness continuing in the future, as I have every confidence that it will.

I find it unfortunate that you brought up the well-being of the boys in your e-mail and that I should think of what is best for them--you know that I always do. And you and I know that you only suggest such things when you are in a bad place--I am sorry that you are in that place and hope that you do not take it out on me or my feelings for the boys in the future.
As for why I was so distressed about the lag time of two weeks, I will tell you that it had a lot to do with bad timing. Right after I sent the e-mail telling Motown Girl that I would be OK with the delay, I happened to be on Facebook and saw that a mutual friend had made a comment on MG's status. I had never looked at MG's status before and didn't even know that she was on Facebook, but clicked over to see what her status said. And you know, that was the day she posted that you guys had bought a TV, Wii, fridge and computer. So, I am sure you can understand, I was pretty disappointed about the priorities and that this was affecting me.

Like I said, I will wait 2 weeks and withdraw the money on the 15th. I look forward to more positive interactions with you in the future.
The Ex

___________________________________________________________
From: The Sex Addict
To: The Ex
RE: You're Amazing!

Ex:

You are amazing-- "you and I know that you only suggest such things when you are in a bad place".

It's obvious we're both in a bad place when it comes to dealing with each other.
I'm sad to see you making the above assumption about what 'you and I know'. If you were so insightful in the first place, you would never have allowed yourself to get married to me, let alone have children.
I'm sorry that we have to deal with each other on any level anymore.
Keep your eye on your problems and I'll try to deal with mine, in my 'bad place'...

The Sex Addict

________________________________________________________

I never got a response to that one. She's smarter than I am about these things and knows when to pack it in.

Regarding my oldest sister, she and I were involved in the old Amway business and she was my 'upline mentor' as was her husband. She loved the Ex and always saw my getting married to her as a product of her efforts to mentor me in conjunction with the 'wealth building system' provided by her and the Amway upline she was affiliated with.

It's true that 'the system' absolutely influenced many of my personal choices back then, and it also influenced my involvement with the Ex--I showed her 'the Plan' on our first date and told her if she ever married me, she'd have to embrace the Amway opportunity since it was destined to bring us our main source of income, despite the fact that I was in training to become a professional, starting an apprenticeship and was poised to earn a top income once I would graduate.

Sadly, my sister and I drifted apart after she pulled away from the Amway business. She and her husband began to focus on their 'day jobs' since their main 'conventional' business was suffering while they were working to build their Amway business.

Once I'd separated from the Ex, I tried to reach out to my sister and her husband for support. I disclosed to them some vague details of my problems with internet porn, and I'm all but sure I alluded to my viewing of child porn and my use of (almost certainly underaged) prostitutes.

From that time on, understandably, my sister and her husband have spoken to me only a few times. Add to that the notion that they are staunch supporters of the Republican Party and I'm a bleeding heart liberal that supports the Democrats (reluctantly these days) and believes in so-called 'Social Democracy' .

Earlier today, I spoke with my Mom who said that her eldest, my sister, 'has her ways' and she said I shouldn't worry about reconnecting with her.

I feel slighted, in that we are not having an adult converstaion about what she's afraid of in me. What's she disgusted with? Can we have a conversation about it and move past it? Perhaps we could learn more about ourselves and each other by having such a hard conversation.

But alas, she's not returning my phone calls, and I suppose had we not been related, I wouldn't be interested in pursuing any relationship with her or her family.

I'm sad that I have these beautiful children who have never met this aunt of theirs, and they certainly don't deserve her 'silent treatment'.

I definitely have more work to do around my feelings when it comes to the Ex and my oldest sis.

May G-d grant me strength and wisdom in these areas to help me improve.

The Sex Addict Describes Addiction and Insanity

2009-12-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

I used to get really upset when the Ex told me that I was insane.

How could she say something so insulting about the father of her children?

Sure, I was related to some insane people--my parents, my siblings. And I married into an insane family--she and her mother. But how was I insane?

I remember years ago joining an MLM company that I thought would make me financially free. They did have a great basic business/sales education program, based on good values/principles, and generally, they were led by very fine people. I subscribed to their 'system' of education, which at that time was on tapes and CD's. These were recorded motivational and education seminars that were quite inspiring and ultimately were the glue that kept me involved, albeit just as a customer, in their business.

There was this 'cutie' expression that came up frequently in those seminars--'the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result'.

It is true, however.

Here I was, in my second soon-to-be-failed marriage, doing the same things and expecting a different result.

Regarding sex, I didn't tell my wife about my porn collection on videos. I didn't divulge that I was masturbating incessantly, often to images that were more deranged and vulgar over time, as I needed to 'escalate' my addiction to get the same 'effect' from my acting out.

I masturbated at work, using work computers to search for immoral and sometimes illegal images. I masturbated in my car while driving down public streets. I did this both to fantasy and to porn that I'd purchased at adult bookshops. I masturbated in porn booths in adult bookstores.

And then there were the prostitutes. I drove for hours 'cruising' the streets for someone to pick up. Hindsight is 20/20--many of these ladies, according to statistics, are between the ages of 12 to 14. Often times I found myself frequenting hookers while in predicaments where people had firearms, illegal drugs, and serious mental illness to boot.

How was that not insanity?

Insanity around food wasn't much better. I would continue to go out and buy candy, eat extra meals, and then arrived at home to eat more than was needed for an obese adult, even if I hadn't just acted out with food. I'd seen numerous family members with diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and their accompanying compulsive overeating, and yet I followed their same path to destruction.

I regularly consumed extraordinary amounts of calories, most often in secret, and I gained incredible amounts of weight.

And I'd do this again and again during different periods of my life, usually following a period of fad dieting, compulsively exercising, and weight loss of 50 to 100 pounds.

So, as much as I'd like to say the Ex was crazy, and that she has no right to restrict my children from me, the truth is that an insane person would ignore the problems that I had and allow unrestricted access to their children.

True, I've continued to work recovery programs consistently and successfully for over three and a half years since I disclosed my disease to her, but unfortunately our communication doesn't allow for her to learn about how I have changed since May 2006. There was an arrest in her perception about me at that point, and my periodic anger flares surrounding my continued 'sex offender' treatment by her and family has helped perpetuate my situation.

May G-d help me do better in all areas of recovery...

Two Years On: Lessons from and Memories of my Sex Addict Father Z"L

2009-12-20T22:57:00.000-08:00

It didn't take long for two years to pass. In some ways, it seems like yesterday when I had received the call of my father's passing. I remember my oldest brother saying "He's gone".

It took one moment for my father to pass from this world. His memory, may it continue to be a blessing, lives on. In fact, as I do more work in recovery, I am beginning to have a better understanding of who my father was in the world, who he was and is to me, and how it is my job to do the work that he never had the chance to do.

While I think my father enjoyed much of his life, I don't think he ever had true relief from shame or remorse from his sex addiction. I don't know the true extent of his addiction, and I don't know if he realized how his actions affected my family to such a large degree.

Of the six of us, all of us have abused drugs, all of us drank heavily at times, all of us compulsively overate at times and some still do, and all four boys have been divorced at least once. I'm on my third marriage. All four boys have used prostitutes, surfed internet porn, and at least two of my older brothers molested younger siblings, one of them being me.

Not the best light to remember my father in on the day on the Hebrew calendar that commemorates his passing.

But nonetheless, as my lovely wife would have you know, had I not gone through the things that I went through, she and I wouldn't be together, my lovely kids from wife #2 wouldn't be here, and perhaps I'd still be deep in my addiction or even dead.

The work that I've been doing in 12 step and with my personal therapist lately seems to be pivotal in my recovery work overall. I've been engaging in something called "Lifespan Integration" that has been helping me heal some of these past traumas without causing me to go back into the most painful part of those memories.

I've also been working the 12 steps of OA which is, at least for now, the only addiction that is kicking my *ss at the moment.

Really, I have a lot of gratitude towards my father. I wish I were able to tell him how much I learned from him, the good values he taught me, to tell him how much I appreciated his kindness and generosity, and to show him that I'm taking the difficult parts of our relationship and making my life better for it.

In the coming year, Motown Girl and I hope to have at least one baby, perhaps twins. We're going through the IVF process, one that I've been through and had lots of difficulty with in the past.

But the key to success in our future endeavor is to learn from the past, rely on our Higher Power, and surrender the results to the One above.

The most difficult part of my recovery that's ongoing in my mind is committing to the ongoing OA sobriety, committing to the persistent surrender necessary in all areas of recovery, and keeping my drive to continue learning, growing, and helping others come along.

I've also found it difficult in the past year, and mostly in recent months, to go through the formal prayers found in Orthodox Judaism with the proper "kavanah" or spiritual connection.

I guess I'll continue to 'fake it til I make it' for now, a tenet that worked for me in recovery up to now.

I do have incredibly high hopes for the future. I just hope that I'm able to continue doing the 'mundane' and the 'basics' every day, as that's the way anyone gets to their destination--one day at a time...

Honesty and Sex Addiction: The Beginning, Middle and End of Recovery

2009-12-17T01:41:00.000-08:00

I remember this professor in college who told our class of about 30 students that she had been assaulted and taken advantage of by a colleague when she was teaching in a high school. Evidently, this other teacher had convinced her to drive him to work every day despite his being married and she was a single young attractive woman. She said that he eventually compelled her to perfom sexual acts on him and that she perceived she was threatened by this and could not tell his wife, tell the school or go to the 'authorities'. Eventually she left the job to get away from him.

As a budding young sex addict, I was intrigued and always remembered that story. I believe I fantasized and masturbated to visions of her being taken advantage of.

Years later, I realize that this kind of honesty in a public setting is inappropriate. You'd think I would have realized that years ago, but that's not what I was thinking at the time. I was just thrilled to hear a sexual story in a public class told by the person who was involved with what I adopted as a sexual fantasy.

When I finally got into recovery, I read in the SA 'White Book' the section called 'A Caution'. It didn't resonate with me enough to not disclose to my wife at that time, unfortunately for her.

I remember that night, as painful as it was, as if it was yesterday. We were sitting at the kitchen table. She'd already seen me reading the sex addiction books. She'd caught me in lies about driving around and about money disappearing from our bank accounts. She'd heard me disclose about me getting caught surfing porn sites at work. She finally sat me down in our dark dining room, one light bulb burning above our heads in the mostly burned out chandelier.

"Have you ever been with anyone else...had sex with anyone else while we were married. Tell me the truth".

"Do you really wanna know it? I...." a long pause followed. My heart raced, my skin was clammy, I became nauseated and had to move my bowels. "You really...I...". I didn't know what to do. "Yes."

She began to cry silently. Several seconds, which felt like several minutes, passed while she couldn't even take a breath. "What about the boys? Did you think of the boys?".

No. I'm an addict. I didn't think about my kids, my wife, my family, my career, at least not enough to stop me from that insatiable drive to act out. But I did think about them afterwards. Oh man did I ever. It drove me to new depths of despair, the after effects of acting out. I was so depressed and despondent about what I'd done each time, I'd want to end my life.

Alas, each time I snapped out of it and told myself to 'act dumb' and have a 'selective memory'.

But the last time she asked me to be honest, I decided to tell her as many details as I could. We'd been together as a couple for almost nine years at that point. Married for six.

And I all I could do was finally unload the burden of all of that poison I'd built up for all of those years. I finally was honest with her, the mother of my children, the wife of six years.

I felt considerably better after telling her.

She did not.

My honesty became the linchpin of her leverage in our divorce. She not only received everything that she asked for financially, she was able to get me effectively permanent supervised visits for me to spend time with my kids.

Ironically, the honesty that set my recovery in motion is also potentially fueling my relapse. Whilst I have been sober from my bottom line behaviors for over three and a half years--no prostitutes, no porn, no masturbating, save for two masturbatory slips to fantasy of my current wife--the powderkeg of resentment is ready to blow.

And it's time to be openminded, willing and dedicated to working the fourth step around my Ex and my resentment of her restricting my access to my kids. I've also commited to working a fourth step around the resentments I've had towards people in our Jewish community.

It's time to sleep right now, but may G-d give me the strength to complete this task before the years end...

The Sex Addict talks about HOW and the relationship to Food Addiction

2009-12-11T01:32:00.000-08:00

Honesty, Openmindedness, Willingness. That's the "HOW" of recovery. It's not the food program I've joined, but I've been to a CEA-HOW group several times and the weighing and measuring was too stringent for me, at least I thought. But the principles of HOW are absolutely necessary in healthy recovery from any addiction.

Addiction is not just about the acting out, whatever that is. It's about the spiritual illness that underlies that acting out.

Honesty is a key component to recovery. One must be honest with themselves and with others. There is a very important caveat regarding honesty with others, one that I didn't learn until I'd vomited very painful truths about my sex addiction to my ex wife, leading to permanent emotional trauma with accompanying PTSD that afflicts her today. The honesty one should have 'in program' is complete with one's sponsor and fellow addicts. With others, like friends and relatives, and even a spouse, it must be with the understanding that there are important boundaries that need to be observed and disclosure should be done with the guidance of a professional.

That's not to say that one should harbor secrets from a spouse or family/friends 'so as not to hurt them'. That's a cop out that is to be avoided in healthy recovery. I'm the first to tell you that doing a disclosure sans guidance can ruin relationships and reak as much havoc as the original acting out.

Openmindedness is also a key component in recovery. As a sex addict, I'd use my 'openmindedness' in a twisted way, like looking at more and more objectionable material on the Internet. I'm not talking about that kind of openmindedness. I'm referring to the open mind that one has to have to be teachable by others, to be a good listener to recovery stories and advice, to be open to constructive criticism from those who have been there and done that, from therapists, and even from the inexperienced 'unwashed masses' who are not in recovery. We can learn from everyone and everything, and there's a postive value of everything that happens to us in recovery--a Chasidic Jewish teaching at it's root.

Willingness is also part and parcel to a good recovery. One can consider themselves to be openminded, but it's the actual willingness to take the steps rather than the open mind to consider them. It's like that old story of the thee frogs on a log and one decides to jump off. How many are left? Three--the one who decided didn't actually have the willingness to do what he said he'd do.

So it goes with recovery. We must have the Honesty, Openmindedness, Willingness to do the things that will achieve sobriety, recovery, and ultimately serenity.

It's not surprising to see that people who follow a HOW program in their food have significant success. I admit I've not been perfect in my food program, but it has been more successful undoubtedly because I've had some degree of the HOW attitude in what I've been doing lately.

Perhaps that's what I need more of going forward...

The Sex Addict Contemplates: Why is Powerlessness a Prerequisite to Believing in a Higher Power

2009-12-08T01:08:00.000-08:00

Why can't the first thing we believe in be a Higher Power? After all, G-d is the beginning and end of all existence, in my opinion.

But that's not the opinion of most addicts who are acting out. When we're acting with anything--sex, food, money, anger (all of my favorites, not necessarily in that order all of the time)--that 'thing' really becomes the 'higher power'.

When I risked losing my professional schooling, my professional career, my freedom (due to incarceration for acting out) and my life while acting out, I wasn't feeling powerless, and it didn't matter what my idea of G-d was. On some level, I was even hoping to get caught, as I thought it may have been my only way out of the addictive lifestyle and all of it's attendant wreckage.

Now that I've been in recovery for over three and a half years, I see that powerlessness is a prerequisite to believing 'a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity'.

If we're 'in control' of our addiction, then there's no reason to move on to the next step anyhow.

It's a fallacy to think there's nothing more powerful than 'will power'. I have proven this over and over again in my acting out. I had to be 'powerless' to give up the notion of 'will power' and let my 'Higher Power' chime in to help me out.

If there's no powerlessness, the implication is that the addict will not give up the reigns and allow any other source to help control his or her destiny. There will always be some resistance, some retained grasp on the poisonous substance that is the fuel for this person's addictive cyle.

Being powerless is a prerequisite to sobriety and recovery. It is a 'no brainer' to be a 'no brainer' and let go, and let G-d....

The Solution To Sex Addiction--all addictions--Is Counterintuitive: There is Power in Powerslessness

2009-12-02T08:30:00.000-08:00

It's the last thing I'd think of when trying to overcome addiction. How many times did I say the last hooker was the 'last time'? How many times did I look at the porn site and say 'this is it. I'm not going here anymore'? How many times did I tell myself that I'm never going to masturbate again?

The same holds true for food addiction. Many more times in my life did I say 'I'm done with desserts' or 'I'm going on the strictest diet now'.

From an early age, I was taught that my problem with overeating was due to a lack of 'Will Power'. It was drilled into my head from my parents as they struggled with compulsive overeating. "You just need to try harder", "You're only hurting yourself--just think before you act".

WTF? If it was only about trying harder and my parents, the 'strongest and best people in the world' had their recurrent struggles, why should their son, who was 'stupid', 'no good', and an 'a**hole' going to do better than they could'?

The AA 12 and 12 book spells out the most counterintuitive argument that one could think of: Give up. Don't have self confidence. Hit bottom--that's the only way you can start getting better.

You've got to be kidding. So I have to give up and admit I'm powerless? I've got to take my self confidence out of the equation? I need to hit the bottom of the barrel before I can start getting better?

Well, from my educated perspective, the good part of that meant that I need to keep acting out so I can hit bottom. Of course the problem with that is I am a 'low bottom'. It's not enough for me to masturbate or look at porn. I have to keep escalating. And from what I understand, despite sobriety and recovery, the disease continues to be a progressive one. My bottom line of 3 and a half years ago is no doubt deeper than it was. I've talked to guys with more than a dozen years of sobriety and they've said the same thing. Despite their continued sobriety and recovery, they've felt that their bottom line 'in the brain' had gone to new depths.

And that's what my mind always would do when I was acting out. I'd have to find the sickest, most preposterous things on the 'net for me to continue to satisfy my craving. And of course, the addict's 'itch' is one that can never be scratched.

So the counterintuitive nature of recovery is actually right on. As I look at my 'socially acceptable' addiction with food, as with sex, I need to raise the bottom and admit I'm powerless. My self confidence needs to be eliminated from the equation. I need to enlist the help of other addicts who will help me maintain sobriety and grow in recovery.

It's not about the will power. I wish my father, he should rest in peace, would have found that solution. He never got into recovery for sex or food addiction. And my mother still struggles with her food, although she's discovered exercise as a healthy outlet and has been in the best shape of her adult life in recent years.

I'm powerless over food and lust. May I continue on the path of sobriety, recovery and serenity one day at a time--another difficult concept. How can I say I'm only sober at the moment? Why not just commit to the lifetime solution?

Because we live in the moment, and like everything else in life, all great achievements are earned by taking one step after the other...

The Sex Addict Reviews 'The Double Life' Concept and How it Relates to Food Addiction

2009-11-29T02:26:00.000-08:00

It was easy to justify the double life in Sexaholism. The private things I did to feed my addiction were simply socially unacceptable. This, of course, allowed for bigger secrets to develop and left alone to my own thought processes, I continued to escalate in the addiction while justifying my actions and lies.

Why would I want to tell my wife that I was masturbating incessantly to porn back then? And why would it be important for her to know I was looking at more and more objectionable material, including animals and children, as well as pictures depicting violence and necrohilia. She didn't need to know that and it wouldn't hurt her or our marriage. Right?

How about when I escalated to chat rooms, pretending (to myself anyway) that I was going to pick up an underage girl in one of these rooms. And then there were the masturbation episodes on cam. She didn't need to know about those either. Nor did she need to know that I watched women expose their breasts on cam and one time I watched a male masturbating on cam.

I'm pretty sure she didn't need to know that I was going to adult bookstores and masturbating in booths again, nor did she need to know that I was viewing erotic dancers and masturbating to them as well. She definitiely didn't need to know about the cruising in areas where there 'may have been hookers'.

And finally, she didn't need to know that I finally crossed the boundary of picking up a hooker again--just that once. Only to do it about three times a week for the better part of a year, constantly 'quitting for good', only to start again sometimes even the same day.

The lying was meant to protect the innocent spouse from harm while I fed the addiction. It actually enabled me to escalate to a point of no return. Once I'd confided my crimes to her, our marriage was over and the damage to her seems to be permanent. Even more than 3 and a half years later.

So here I am, remarried, sober from sex addiction for all of this time and thinking recovery has been going well.

That is, apart from the food. It's the first addiction, the one that is really socially acceptable to some degree, and one that people can live with--at least initially. I'd say the damage the food addiction does to one's self esteem can lead to acting out in other areas. I've seen myself binge on food and then go act out sexually or vice versa in the past. I still have some spending problems and they've occurred around the times I've acted out with food.

So the lies I told while acting out with food have also been to protect others. I didn't want my parents, my spouse(s), or people who cared about me to see me compulsively overeating, so rarely did I do it in public.

But what happens after you binge privately over and over and over? You gain weight, making the current clothing tighter and requiring new clothes, eventually. It also leads to a more toxic personality in my case. I become bitter, sarcastic, withdrawn.

How does leading a double life help in food addiction? In sex addiction?

It doesn't. It enables acting out to continue in perpetuity. And in both cases, it leads to death and destruction of the addict, and also of those around the addict. Sooner or later...

The Sex Addict and the Spiritual Solution--it works for food too!

2009-11-24T01:45:00.000-08:00

It's amazing to me how much discipline I had with regards to ensuring I could act out and get away with it in a previous marriage. This occurred with both the sex and the food addictions. I'd allow the Ex to fall asleep and then I'd ever so quietly slip out of bed/out of the room and to the Internet to look for my favorite porn. I'd eat whole meals or gigantic sugar snacks on the way home from work and then hide the wrappers in the garbage at a store or outside my house.

So discipline plays a role in successfully acting out as an addict.

Has discipline played a role in recovery? Can their be a sex or food recovery without discipline? How about without a Spiritual connection?

And it's simlply a willingness to connect with a Power greater than ourselves.

Discipline can be your friend or it can be your enemy.

Discipline earned me a college and professional degree. It helped stay sober from sex addiction for years now. It continues to keep me out of troublesome situations with regard to the sex addiction. It's the LACK of discipline and connection with the spiritual side of my life that has led to repeated failures in food recovery.

I know it's progress not perfection, but it seems that the yo yo dieting has a distinct negative effect on my willingness to connect to that Higher Power.

So I ask G-d for the willingness to connect with Him and make the spiritual connection that may be necessary for food sobriety. This simple discipline to let go and let G-d...

The Sex Addict faces the merciless nature in all his addictions...

2009-11-17T01:52:00.000-08:00

Ain't that the truth. I've met very few people in recovery--real recovery--that didn't get that addiction leads to life threatening consequences.

Acting out with prostitutes on the streets, viewing illegal porn on public computers, let alone 'private' computers, and going to strip joints, porn shops, and peep shows put me in the most dicey situations one could imagine. At any point I may have come face to face with either a cold blooded killer, life threatening disease, or with the long arm of the Law.

Ultimately it was the efforts to preserve my marriage and my brutal honesty in confession (translation--dumping my guilt in a shock wave of pain) to my Ex that resulted in my most painful consequence right now, the legal restrictions around seeing my children unsupervised.

Switch gears to the more 'socially acceptable' addiction and there are unique differences, along with startling parallels in the 'fatal nature' of food addiction.

Acting out with food has some obvious consequences. It leads to obesity, which is associated with heart disease, stroke, and death. What is not as obvious is the link to sleep apnea, which in my case led to my constant fatigue, which fueled my acting out in all areas of my life. Overeating also leads to poor self image, which leads to more acting out and need to numb. It leads to ingesting more carcinogens, which could lead to cancer. It also can lead to overspending (on food), spending on new (bigger) clothes, and more money spent on healthcare due to associated health problems.

Being obese absolutely has diminished my life experience. There are things I couldn't do because of being out of shape like certain hiking trips, climbing trips (favorite things to do for some in the Northwest) and it has led me to be more reclusive, antisocial and that leads to less fun, fulfilling life experiences. I become more introverted after acting out with food, which leads to more isolation and therefore less interaction with people and things around me. I also believe there's descrimination against overweight people. This occurs for job opportunitities, for opportunities to have friendships or romantic relationships, although gratefully I am comfortable enough in my own skin and with my marriage that the latter do not matter to me. I also believe that those who judge people 'of size' and don't want to befriend them simply for that are likely not people I'd like to befriend in the first place.

Here food was supposed to help me feel better and resolve my angst, and it has a terrible effect on the rest of my life and on relationships.

I'm grateful to be working on food recovery...

Quick Food Fixes are Sexy for the Sex Addict

2009-11-13T07:36:00.000-08:00

Until I have completely hit a rock bottom, I'm not sure that any addiction I have can enter the recovery phase.

That's why, as it says in the AA 12 and 12 book, we have to find a way to raise the bottom. I cannot control and enjoy sexual acting out at this point. The consequences were too painful for me with losing my kids, losing my marriage, and nearly losing my career and freedom.

Food addiction is different, without a doubt. And it's as or more deadly than any other addiction, but it is much more pernicious and tenacious than the others. I have to 'walk the tiger three times a day' with food. No other addiction that I know of has that kind of power. I didn't have any sexual activity for 2 and a half years in my SA recovery and I didn't die. I couldn't go 2 and a half weeks without eating, much less 2 and a half days--at least without severe physical consequences.

Food addiction can have direct and indirect consequences on my life, some quick and others slow. The slow ones are obvious. Being overweight and consuming poor foods leads to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, some cancers, sleep apnea, and a host of other maladies.

Immediate consequences are not as obvious, but very significant. The effects on my psychological state are profound. Acting out with eating has high highs and low lows. The low lows affect my self confidence which can lead me to worsening of all areas of my life. The same way alcohol and pot were considered 'gateway drugs' to worse problems, so is acting out with food. It's a gateway to all other addictions for me.

And like all other addictions, it's progressive. I've always found new ways of acting out and escalating the ways I 'mainline' my drug. This also leads to more escalation of the mental and physical problems that accompany this problem.

Ironically, we must admit we are powerless over the addiction(s) to gain any power over them. No one can be pushed into recovery unless they've hit their own bottom of sorts.

Old Les Brown ( http://www.lesbrown.com/ ) says 'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'.

Thankfully, I'm making progress with the food addiction today...

The Sex Addict Noshes on the 12 and 12: Am I TRULY a Complulsive Overeater?

2009-11-12T03:19:00.000-08:00

I'd like to say no. Where's the evidence for it?

From a young age, I had been told that I shouldn't overeat and that I need to lose weight. As a result of the shaming and damning that my parents did at home, including putting me on a diet while the rest of the family, friends, kids at camp, ate what they wanted to. I was urged to diet and count calories while I was still in grade school.
And what did I do when I came home from grade school? I'd sit and watch the boob tube while munching on leftovers or junkfood or something that would be helping me numb out.

I began hiding what I ate at age 8 or younger. I didn't want family, friends, fellow campers to see what I was actually consuming.

Later in life, in middle school on up, I'd enjoyed bingeing with certain friends, another sign of my compulsive eating behaviors.

Since college, I've frequently yo yo 'd with my weight.

To be con'd...

Juggling Cobras versus Juggling Bowling Balls: the Sex Addict compares life sports

2009-11-05T01:08:00.000-08:00

I think living the double life that I lived as an acting out sex addict was like juggling cobras. Imagine that for a moment: the long flexible, poisonous snakes, being thrown into the air one by one as the other one or two are in your hands. Keep moving, keep shucking and jiving, don't get bit.

It took tremendous amounts of energy to craft my lies, maintain them, and then more acting out would add to them. Carrying them around was very difficult as it was a poison to my system. It made me feel worse about myself which would lead me to want to escape--back to the numbing medicine of choice, sex.

Nowadays, my problems are not nearly as energy draining, but it doesn't diminish the stress they create. This stress, if not handled appropriately, will lead me right back the low bottoms I'd reached as a sex addict around 3 and 1/2 years ago.

How time flies...

Most recent top plate issues are work, finances, and home environment.

Work takes up too much time as it is and yet I'm not even able to finish the responsibilities expected of me. I've got a whole mess of documentation that I'm over a month behind on and my boss won't let me get help either with a secretary or a hired service, which is expensive. I've suggested to my wife that we hire a friend with some background in my field and, due to our tight finances, she says she'll learn how to help me.

While I would love to have her help, she's already complained of the light officework I've had her do and has not accomplished what she said she would in helping organize our home. Not that she hasn't helped out--she's gotten our finances back in balance and has a watchful eye on income/outgo. She also makes the condo presentable for my kids when they visit, but we both have to take some time and get rid of/organize a ton of stuff, particularly if we want family/friends to visit, and very significantly, if we have kids of our own.

Speaking of, the final assessment of my sperm count during a recent test--not conducted with the use of porn--showed I have about a 1% lifetime chance of conceiving a child with my 'poor quality sperm'.

Pretty emasculating and very expensive. This is going to cost us $10k that we don't have, which Motown Girl is borrowing from her parents on an open timeline, no interest loan.

Finances are going to be better month by month, as I'm now working on a more lucrative contract.

That leaves work, a perpetual difficulty. I'm working at 10 (that's ten) sites for my job each week. I've been on call 24/7 since March 2009, apart from the week I got married, and now I'm way behind on this paperwork. You'd think the company would throw me another frickin' bone to help me out, but it's looking like they're holding out for life getting better when we get our new associates up and running--perhaps 6 months away.

Gotta go sleep. Need to wake up and do it again tomorrow, with G-d's help....

The Sex Addict on his Food Addiction-III

2009-10-25T22:57:00.000-07:00

I recall going to summer camp for the first time. I had just turned 8--it was 1978--and I was one of three children in the cabin for eight weeks. I remember the camp director's wife was prompted by my mother to 'work on' me to improve my athleticism and decrease my food intake. I know she didn't do much apart from cut me off from the desserts that the other kids had. This really just set me apart as the fat kid who was still fat but wasn't allowed to have the goodies that the 'normal' kids could have. It was another opportunity for those kids to make fun of me.

Camp had a few bullies, one of whom was a year older, and he used to pick on me about being fat as well as phyiscially assault me from time to time. I think this reinforced my isolation and also prompted me to start eating food privately.

When my parents came up to visit that summer, we went out to some big meals 'in town' and also bought some 'treats' including the most wonderfully sweet peanut brittle, fudge and candies from the local candy store. Naturally, I didn't want to be seen eating this stuff, so I would eat it in secret, throwing away the wrappers so no one would be the wiser.

Sick, when I think about it. It was the first time, as an eight year old for G-d sakes, that I was hiding what I was eating from others.

It was 1980 when I met 'Charlz Eye'. He and I didn't get along at first. He was a bully as well, and would make fun of me for being a fat kid. In the ensuing summers, he gained quite a bit of weight and ultimately he exceeded my weight, which is still true today. I'm about 290 and he's around 390.

Charlz and I would later become best of friends in middle school and remain so to this day. Through the years, he and I went through our 'growth spurt' together, experimented with drinking, drugs, and porn together, and we became 'eating buddies'. It became kind of a joke at camp. Who could eat more? Who was larger?

Our parents quickly realized that we enabled each other and used to warn us 'He's a bad influence on you', and in the meantime we would clean our respective family's refrigerator of any edible food.

I'm not sure if being pudgy or the object of people's jokes as 'the fat kid' made me more vulnerable to be abused, but I strongly suspect this. Essentially, my self esteem sucked, which led me to be the 'funny kid', always telling jokes and being the class clown. Anything for a laugh. I also wanted to be liked by any kid that I thought was 'cool'.

I met JM in kindergarten, but became closer friends with him in fifth grade. I couldn't have been more than 10 or 11. His parents were divorced. He had an older brother that was at least 13 or 14, and the two of them introduced me to their 'fort' which was essentially a tree house in the field behind their house where they hid out and smoked cigarettes and looked at porn magazines.

Here was a couple of guys who would make fun of me, but would laugh at my jokes and when I did risky things like drink alchohol with them and smoke 'to be cool', I was considered more acceptable to them, at least so I thought.

These are the boys who introduced me to heavy drinking and smoking pot at age 12, and it was JM's brother's teenaged friend who forced me to perform oral sex on him.

So food addiction and being overweight ultimately led to one of the most traumatic experiences in my childhood, one my parents didn't know how to handle, and one that would go on to shape my sex addiction later in life.

Once I began puberty, I did drop some weight and get to be more of a 'chubby' physique, but I had such an awful self image and I'd become so addicted to my father's porn collections for comfort, I never developed normal relationships with others in middle school and high school. My circle of friends included other kids from broken homes, more 'food buddies', and buddies that engaged in consumption of porn, teen sex, and substance abuse.

After graduating high school, I decided I was going to dedicate my life to working out and losing weight 'no matter what'. I began to swim daily, sometimes twice a day, and I began eating a nearly vegan diet. I also would binge on smoking pot, which always led to food and sex binges, and then I 'quit forever' and complulsively exercise away any weight gain.

From my freshman year of college, when I weighed over 300 or so, I dropped over120 pounds, down to the 170's, a weight I hadn't seen since grade school. It was then that I met my first girlfriends and had my first sexual experiences as a teen, including losing my virginity to a 17 year old when I was 18--a crime, I'm now told.

What would later become a pattern throughout my adult life, I met my first wife when I was around 19 and at my thinnest, most muscular. After she and I dated for several months and I felt like my secret double life of porn and masturbation which was ramping up was getting more difficult to keep secret, I stopped exercising and began to compulsively overeat again.

In the last two years of college, I easily gained about 50 pounds back. After getting married and starting professional school, I ballooned out to nearly 300 pounds again. It was during those most stressful periods that I also abused my then fiance's roommate's cat physically, and ultimately severely tortured her cat that we bought when we got married. This displaced rage brought me incredible shame, leading me to compulsively overeat more.

I also recall that the enormous burden of trying to get into professional school, starting professional school, and ramping up my responsibilities financially, taking out giganto school loans, all put me into a more stressed state of mind.

How did I handle stress then? I tortured a defenseless cat, I masturbated in porn booths, and I compulsively overate, all while isolating more and more from my wife, friends and family. My fuse was very short and I became scary to those around me, particularly my wife. She would rarely say anything about my weight, but when she did, she'd do it in the most docile way. Nevertheless, I'd freak out and take it as if she called me a 'fat slob' and would be very verbally abusive to her.

After eight months of marriage under then same roof and about a year and a half after we officially moved to another city with each other, we separated.

I used that as my springboard into the 'big leagues' of sex addiction. I picked up my first prostitutes, continued to compulsively overeat, and moved in my my food addicted parents, including the sex addicted father who had also sexually assaulted me a few times as a child.

In my third year of professional school, I began to drink heavily again, going to bars alone, looking for 'legitimate' women to pick up and have sex with. It never happened, until I met MG.

She was a model, rapidly approaching 30, who liked the idea that I was this solo drinker doing my own thing in the bar where she was a barmaid. We had sex on our first date--something I'd never done before or since--and we became drinking buddies together. The relationship is documented elsewhere in the blog, but suffice it to say that this new found regular sex partner prompted me to lose about 100 pounds, once again exercising compulsively to get to the leanest weight of around 175 pounds.

Gratefully, this relationship ended on my graduation day from professional school and I had a backslide in my food until I met the Ex, who was a professional student when I was an apprentice. That kicked me back into high gear of diminished eating and compulsive exercising again.

I look at that same pattern of meeting a woman, getting close with her, and then, once we moved in with each other and life became difficult in terms of maintaining my secret sex addiction, I began to drink heavily and gain weight again.

With the Ex, it occurred a few times. Once when we got married, which was a stressful period and was associated with about a 40 pound weight gain. The next was when we moved from the Midwest to the Northwest and were pregnant with our petri dish kids. That was associated with another 40 pounds, bringing me to about 250.

Finally, I went full blown back into my sex addiction after my kids were born, and that was associated with an unclear large weight gain that I believe brought me up to about 330 pounds, which if I'm right, was about an 80 pound weight gain between 2004 and 2006.

By the grace of G-d, I was able to get into sex addiction recovery and concommitantly began to eat more sensibly, which helped me drop 30 pounds immediately.

Since that time, I've yo-yo'd between 274 and 300 for the past few years.

Since joining OA, I've been as low as 274 about two months ago and now I'm around 290.

I admit that I'm absolutely powerless over food. If you put sweets or a good entree into my possession, it's fortuitous if I don't overeat.

Time to turn it in. I'm grateful to be in some sort of food recovery. I plan to share the above with my sponsor and I'm supposing I've much more to uncover and discover about my food history in future posts.

Till then, sleep tight and eat well....

The Sex Addict Chronicles--Food History Part Deux

2009-10-21T00:44:00.001-07:00

I really don't feel like blogging now.

I'm full from eating about 3 times the amount of chicken that would have been abstinent. And why did I do it?

It's the "victory plate" syndrome. My father, he should rest in peace, was born in the depression era, and his mother used to call it a "victory plate" when he finished his plate of food. My mother, born in the same era, grew up in Poland as a Jew and they escaped to Argentina during WWII. She lived in squalor as a child and was always encouraged to finish as much food as she was given.

So I could 'blame' my parents for teaching me the same. It was indeed drilled into my head that we shouldn't waste food.

But I think there's more to it than that. Not that I'll come up with the answers now, but I acknowledge that this is a problem with a complex history, but seems to have a simple (not 'easy') solution.

I'm not sure when my 'clean plate club' mentality began, or when food took on the role of providing comfort, but I do remember in my early grade school years my mom would have me cutting back on my food intake at times because I was overweight for my age. In fact, I remember old Dr. Buckman--looked like he was about 90 in the 1970's with his white hair but was likely only about 50 back then. He used to say, "you need to lose some weight". I couldn't have been much more than 5 or 6, if that.

I think it was around that time that my mom decided to go back to college. We had this gigantic basement full of her depression era pack rat mentality stuff that she never cleaned up. It just piled higher and higher, until it was so unmanageable that she was forced by my father to purge dozens upon dozens of items when I became a teenager. It wasn't until the house was sold in the early 90's that she finally finished cleaning that mess up.

Anyhow, she went back to college in her late 40s/early 50s and during that time a Spanish speaking housekeeper was my primary caregiver, if you could call her that. Mom would be gone from the early morning until late at night. Dad was gone all day as well. My brother J'min and I were left to our own devices from 3:30pm when we came home from school til about 7pm when mom and dad would show up. They'd spend time with each other--kind of--and not so much with us. Dad would come in with his McDonald's bag, ready to eat his second dinner. Mom would find out from the housekeeper what we had been up to and would translate the Spanish for my dad as he munched away on his 2nd large dinner of the night and watched TV, barely making eye contact with any of us while he smacked his lips noisily, which drove J'min up the wall for some reason.

He still has a complex about listening to eating noises--35 years later!

So mom and dad were rarely home during those crucial school aged years, they had the Spanish speaking housekeeper 'watching' us--and she didn't do that really--and J'min and I usually either went to a friend's house after school or we sat at home and watched TV.

And what did I almost always do when I plunked down in front of the boob tube? I ate. Comfort food.

What do I do now as an adult when I come home? I plunk down in front of the computer and surf, while I mindlessly eat.

I do recall a really neat gym teacher in grade school who's parents were prominent in the entertainment industry and he took a special interest in doing exercises after school with overweight kids. He hand picked us to attend a daily exercise session with him.

I spent one session with him and dropped out, humiliated and ready to go back to my friend the TV and the used the soothing effect of my comfort foods to get me to unwind for the day.

Food was my first addiction. The first real 'love' of 'numbing medicine'.

Another attempt at getting me in shape was my mom enrolling me in little league. The experience started when they bought me a T-shirt with the team name on it and we had picture day. Right from the start, they gave me a T-shirt 3 sizes too small. I mean, this was like a 2nd skin and the sleeve cut off the blood supply to my hands. I looked like a 'stuffed sausage' in that shirt. And it was my uniform for the whole season, unfortunately. Kids had a blast making fun of me in that outfit, and my parents, who never came to a game, never did anything about it, nor did they know what was going on.

A couple more anecdotes before sleep.

Halloween is coming. I remember my mom used to buy these pounder bags of little candy bars, M & M's, and of other special treats. She'd say she was going to hide this stuff before the holiday to keep the 'kids from getting into it', but the truth is that she should have hid it from herself, as invariably she'd eat most of the candies before the holiday and she'd have to go out for more.

She also was into fad diets, frequently went to Weight Watchers, to a group called TOPS (Take Off Pounds Sensibly) and she began to bring me to meetings where they 'forced' me to weigh in frequently and to count calories.

Perhaps that's where I've gotten the aversion to weighing and measuring?

I also had this frequent example of yo-yo dieting and compulsive overeating in both parents, which was easy to mimic as a kid. My parents, and just about every kids' parents, are so infallible early in life. I was vulberable to pick up those habits.

More to come in part III...

Food History of the Sex Addict--Part I

2009-10-18T01:23:00.000-07:00

It's the right time to start the first step with Overeaters Anonymous. I've identified a number of triggers of me to overeat and yet I still allow for them to take over my 'sensibilities'.

One thing that works against me is being exhausted. I've been working way too many hours while trying to juggle my religious life, my married life, my recovery life, and my physical health, including eating right and sleeping the most I can.

I have neglected hours of administrative work that is compromising my job, in favor of partaking in recovery work, religious activities, and spending time with my wife. The irony is that none of the things that I have commitents to have been given enough time and I'm still tired. It's a vicious cycle.

So my OA sponsor tells me it has partly to do with the lack of working the program, which includes this writing. I certainly understand that, but my contention is that I'm so frustrated with the mountain of work I have yet to do, I'm so frustrated by my inabilitiy to complete enough in any area, and I'm not getting paid enough to be comfortable yet, let alone what I'm worth, that I have this 'entitlement' of overeating.

That's a great idea, right? "I'm worth it. So let me eat this poison so I can make myself feel better temporarily and then slowly kill myself at the same time".

Anyhow, I'll take a couple of minutes here to share some details of my food history and perhaps over time I'll be able to tell the story that makes up my OA first step.

My earliest recollection of food and my family was really a reminder from my mother that "you used to stuff a whole banana in your mouth as a baby". It's not truly a memory. It's more of a reminder of my mother that may not even be totally accurate, given that she had several children and that she has a real complex around food anyways.

The earliest thoughts I have around food are sitting at the dinner table with a couple of siblings while either my Mom or the live-in housekeeper brought over a gigantic plate of food for each of us. There was always way more than enough to eat, and it more often than not was not consumed as a family around the table. Perhaps I was 4 or 5 when I would wake up in the mornings and watch cartoons with my older brother and eat cereal mindlessly as I watched for hours. I'd keep refilling my bowel, in the absence of any supervision, and I remember feeling quite full on those occasions.

Dinners when I was in grade school often consisted of meat and potatoes, and there were full plates that I'd clear as I was sitting inches away from the television watching whatever show was babysitting me at the moment, as I continued to mindless consume the food around me.

I remember my mother's father feeding me one time, pretending that the food was an airplane coming in for a landing in my mouth. Seems ironic, as I never thought I was one to turn down food.

I remember once in kindergarten we were eating an 'Uncle Sam' shaped cake for the Bicentenial or the 4th of July or something. For some reason, I didn't think I would get 'enough' cake, so while no one was paying attention, I went to the cake and took a finger full of icing, and was caught just as I was going to eat it. The punishment was to separate me from the class and not allow me to eat the cake while the other enjoyed theres. Man that was painful.

There were also kids that started to make fun of me for being the 'fat kid' in first grade and beyond, in addition to my older siblings making fun of me and my parents actually placeing me on diets since my early grade school years.

One thing I remember about my gradeschool years was that I was always picked last for sports in the gym class. It was humiliating. I also didn't fit into the clothes of the normal schoolaged kid, so my mom had to buy me off brands that were the first iterations of 'big and tall', namely the "Toughskins" label from K-mart I believe. I never fit into Lee or Levi's back then. They didn't carry the larger sizes.

Lunch time at school was a time I could trade the non sugar foods my mom was trying to get me to eat for some cookies and candies.

But I learned from professionals. Both my parents were compulsive overeaters. Dad would stop at McDonalds every day before he came home for dinner. He'd essentially have a dinner before dinner. I would get a little sip of his Coke sometimes. He also worked like a dog--like I'm doing now--and it seemed the only times we went out together were mostly for meals. He liked ice cream and he enjoyed bringing me to get a 'special treat' now and again.

The strangest part of the relationship I had with food was likely prompted by my parents. They were like Jekyll and Hyde when it came to their relationship with food. They'd berate each other for overeating, then get into a fight, then make up and take each other out for ice cream, often times with the kids. So I'd get a lecture in the morning--as a kid--that I needed to watch what I eat. I even remember going to TOPS ('take off pounds sensibly) with my mom, +/- my dad, as a kid. I'd be carrying around a book on calories in grade school and would have to fill out lists of portion sizes and calories for weeks and months at a time. I wonder if that's where part of my problems started.

It's late, I'm tired, but I have a lot more to say. Coming up: summer camp eating, food and TV use after school, 'eating buddies', and how I began to yo-yo diet. Also, more on the specifics of my parents.

Now, time for sleep. Going to sleep is one of the best ways to avoid overeating for me.

G'day and see you next time, hopefully with more food sobriety to boot...

Food Glorious Food---the Sex Addict displaces his angst to the kitchen

2009-10-02T02:43:00.001-07:00

It's simple to follow the 12 steps of any program. Simple, but not easy.

I've finally nailed down a decent contract with my employer, I've exceeded my work quota for the 2nd month in a row, and my home life continues to improve steadily.

So why, one would ask, do I still act out with food to any degree? I'm not binging per se. I'm just not sober.

And the food addiction is so much more difficult than the sex addiction for me, now anyways. I can live without porn, without masturbating, and even (G-d forbid) without sex.

But you can't live without food. Not for very long anyhow. My sponsor tells me we 'take the tiger out for a walk three times a day' by going to eat a meal.

I think what it comes down to is following the plan layed out for me. I have this problem--I'll call it laziness and a bit of entitlement--that is keeping me from going out and preparing meals everyday. Part of me wants my wife to make my meals, which she does often anyways, and to weigh and measure the portions I should be eating. But the real me realizes that, while it's nice for Motown Girl to make me food and serve me, I shouldn't come to expect it and, ultimately, she doesn't force me to eat the things that don't fall into my food plan.

It's not going to hurt her when I refuse the dessert or part of the large portion of food she's serving her 'hungry man'. And if she does take it personally for some reason, that's her issue. My issue is to take care of my needs, including my health needs around food.

There's no question that I feel a bit of laziness when I choose not to prepare meals, not to shop for things and not to put the meals together for when I go on the road to work. There's also that entitlement piece that wants it all done for me, and there's the entitlement piece where I deserve to have a big portion, dessert, extra scoop of peanut butter.

While I don't think I've been doing terribly over the food addiction, I'm definitely lax to the point where I think I've been using food to numb some of my pain.

Any amount of that is acting out in OA.

So I don't know how to do this apart from admitting over and over and over that I'm powerless. There's power in being powerless, even with food.

Still to come, a mini first step around food. Stay tuned...

Long on Words, Short on Time--the Sex Addict explores Workaholism

2009-09-13T02:25:00.000-07:00

It's not that I don't have what to say. I've plenty to say. I always have, and G-d willing, I always will.

Work has exploded into a busy full time job and then some. I'm not able to complete my full plate of work in the course of the week, I have cut back on twelve step meetings to about every other week, come to see my kids about two hours after I'm allowed to have them--right in the midst of two busy work days during prime time hours--and because of some foolish financial decisions in the past year, I can't make ends meet despite working like a dog.
The upside is supposed to be a bigger income at some point in the not so distant future. The problem is, I have this nebulous relationship with my company right now. I'm going out and doing the service work that I'm trained to do, I'm creating job opportunities for future employees by forging relationships with other businesses and ours, and my company is sure to make a bundle of cash in the long term if this continues to keep up at the current pace.
My job should improve with respect to hours in the coming months, but it's so difficult right now, and with the inability to cover my current expenses, being tired, and not taking care of my food and exercise as much as is good for me, I'm getting into a little bit of the pity party mode.
This is a dangerous spot for an addict. It usually comes out in some form of acting out--right now it's been with food and lack of self care with exercise.
Food has been an easy go to. I have not wanted to weigh and measure as suggested by my OA sponsor, and I have not planned my meals the way I've said I would.
One good thing--I'm blogging about food, which is one of my homework assignments he gave me. I'm just not going to be able to spend much time at the moment since I have to sleep and then work on Sunday.
What feels good at the moment is that I am indeed seeing the business grow into a beautiful opportunity that will likely employ several professionals in the coming years. That's exciting and I'm in the middle of helping create these opportunities with a real go-getter of an administrative boss.
Another thing that's an interesting outgrowth of my marriage: Motown girl--my wife--visits this website and reads it regularly. While I don't believe this will change my candor here, it will likely influence my conversations with her both before and after entries.
Along that line of thought, our sex life has been wonderful--yes lovie, the best I've ever had--and we've been hoping to get pregnant. Since I knew that I've had problems conceieving with the Ex, I knew that I had a low sperm count then--from what I thought was masturbating too much--and I knew that both of us desire a child sooner than later for many reasons, I agreed to immediately look into infertility.
The experience of submitting a sperm sample was much different than last time. Last time, several years ago in the Midwest, I had masturbated into a cup while looking at pornography and fantasizing about others. This time, there was not only printed porn in the room in the doctor's office, there was a flat screen TV on the wall loaded with several hardcore DVDs. I did manage to look at the cover of the top mag in the drawer, much like an alcoholic would sniff a bottle of whiskey, and amazingly, I didn't look at the porn. I just imagined my wife and I being together. I'm almost certain that's a first for me.
Anyhow, the sample came back as showing about 1/7th the sperm count of an age matched male. Yeesh! Initially my wife was angry that I possibly knew this to be the case and I was hiding it from her, but I reminded her that I knew of the low count, but thought it was due to the addiction.
Long story short, it looks like we're going the route of turkey baster insemination and if that doesn't work after a few tries, we'll go back to the mainstay, in vitro fertilization.
At the moment, while I'm exciting about starting a family with my wife, we're actually negative in the bank account each month unless I work extra, which I can't easily or safely do every month. Thankfully, it looks like between my improved salary (hopefully sooner, not later) and due to the generosity of her parents, we'll likely be able to hold onto our belongings and have in vitro if we need it.
G-d's will, not mine, will determine what happens. I'm just constantly reminding myself who's the Boss, and it ain't me.
So from now, I need to go to sleep and commit to another day of sobriety, to some exercise later today, and to a good day of eating right.
May the Good Lord continue to Bless us with success now and in the future...

Sex, Sex Everywhere, and I'm Still Sober--The Sex Addict Wrestles with New Problems

2009-07-13T01:48:00.000-07:00

I was told that when a sex addict gets involved in a sexual relationship again, even if it's "healthy", there's a chance it can lead to acting out again.

So far, so good. I have earned three months of sobriety since I last acted out (with my then fiance) and I'm still sober from my bottom line behaviors--no internet porn at all, no prostitution, and no masturbating to porn--since 5/21/2006. I did have two slips of masturbation, one in November of 2008 just after my 'sexual deviancy eval' and one after the wickedest case of 'blue balls' that actually prompted me to go to a surgeon the next day to evaluate my testicles for hernias.

Not bad, considering where I came from.

So my new job, in conjunction to wanting to spend time with my lovely wife, has kept me home in the mornings and I've been out working essentially swing shifts from around 3pm to midnight or 1am. I've been completely sober throughout this time, but unfortunately, some past trauma has triggered my wife into becoming very suspicious of my nighttime activities. One night I had to call work and have someone verify I was there when I said I was. Another day, she smelled my underwear (eeww!!!) to verify that I didn't smell like lube or condoms. Still another time, she thought I'd obsconded a thing of whip cream from our home (to use with a prostitute?!) for sexual purposes.

Gratefully, following some lengthy discussions with me and the Rabbi, she's more trusting and she's also committed to going to S-anon meetings and to therapy. We've also made an appointment to go to a marriage counselor this week and she's going to start group therapy.

Meanwhile, the Ex had a baby boy, her parents--my kids' babysitters while the Ex was hospitalist--had an email spat with me that was mostly their stress and frustration coiming out, prompted by me calling to talk with my kids at their house. I was well behaved, but did shoot from the hip that they had no right to tell me not to call my kids when they're at the ex inlaws' house.

Two other issues that came up in the last 24 hours, one of my three cats--the smart one who plays fetch and treats me like his mother--is hospitalized with pancreatitis and is critically ill. This comes at the same time when I have had trouble balancing my finances and I'm nearly in the red due to foolish purchases of an expensive engagement ring and loaded van that I really can't afford.

Oh well, I'm continuing to give it up to G-d and it's still working for me.

Speaking of--have to go to bed.

I hope to be a little more prolific in entries this month. Marriage, the new job, and the new OA program with continuing exercise has been keeping me busy.

May I return with good news on all fronts...

The Sex Addict is Married again--three's a charm or three strikes and you're out...

2009-06-26T00:49:00.000-07:00

It's different this time. Being married to someone that I've disclosed my innermost secrets to--before we became lovers--this set the stage for honest dialog.

We're married for more then a month now. I've stayed sober sexually and I've actually been working an OA program since before the wedding.

My biggest concerns these days include balancing my personal commitments to my wife, my kids, and my religious lifestyle with recovery commitments and commitments to work.

Gratefully, I've been going about it with a 'progress, not perfection' mentality and it's served me well.

Hence the short post and the need to get back to work. I've many things to learn about marriage as a sex addict in recovery, but one thing is for sure--it's much easier to be married while living a life of sobriety...

The Sex Addict and the Slow Fast

2009-05-11T03:34:00.000-07:00

Man o Manischewitz that fast sucked.

I had my last meal around 2am Sunday and didn't eat or drink a thing until 920pm Sunday night at the airport. I had a full day of going to synagogue for prayers, did some learning of some material relevant to the upcoming wedding from a Chassidic Sage (Maamer Lecha Dodi) and did a ton of laundry, much of which I ironed and packed.

I also talked to a bunch of friends, family and recovery folk prior to my departure, and even stopped in at a community dinner when I saw my childrens' mother's wigged head bobbing around, prompting me to run to see the kids for a hug and a kiss goodbye--an extra bonus for me since I was going to spare her a phone call to the kids as my mother's day present to her.

Unfortunately, I think everytime she sees me she gets a little bit of puke in her mouth, but what can I do? I want to see my kids.

That reminds me. I called her on Friday and told her that I was sponsoring the 'Kiddush' (luncheon) at the synagogue in honor of my upcoming marriage this Tuesday night and I gave her the option of not showing up to the services or meal if she felt uncomfortable, which would be understandable. I thought it was a courtesy that, although unnecessary, was reasonable and my rabbi thought so too.

She showed up to the luncheon and I was asked to say a few words.

For anyone who has followed this blog from the early days, they know that I am a smart a** and that I have a sense of humor, or at least I think I do. They also know that I know exactly what to say to make my Ex get the puke to come into her mouth immediately, albeit that she's 8 months pregnant.

So they give me the floor and I start out by saying thanks to everyone for being there and it's an honor to be getting married again. 'Everyone should try it at least once. Maybe even twice or three times, G-d forbid'.

It got a few laughs, a few groans, and I didn't look for her response. Afterwards however, she looked physically sick as she walked past me and didn't give me her usual plasticine smile saying "Hi Daddy" when she walked by with the kids.

The book "The Four Agreements" says don't take things personally, so perhaps she had just eaten a bad snail (which isn't actually kosher but you get my drift), but it's hard for me not to go there sometimes.

Anyhow, I did actually make it to the airport last night two hours early, as opposed to the last time I flew to the Midwest when I missed my plane and paid $1500 cash for a last minute ticket. That bit...

At the moment, I'm sitting in a Starbucks waiting a few hours for my Mom to get here from another city and then we'll go together to our hotel to freshen before going to dinner with my future inlaws.

Tomorrow, the plan is to isolate to read Psalms, pray, learn Torah (Bible) and then to go into my third and final marriage with the best possible spiritual readiness that I have had of the three.

The difference this time is absolutely stunning from my perspective. I'm in recovery for sex, alcohol, and food addictions and I've completely disclosed to my spouse to be. I have concerns about her own stuff, but I have been able to let the go for now and let her own that.

I pray that I can continue in my recovery, that she and I may grow together as a couple, as individuals, and that G-d willing we will build an everlasting edifice built on the principles of Torah and Mitzvahs (Bible and Commandments)...with the help of our Higher Power, the Al-mighty...

Today Sex is Acting Out. Tuesday Sex will Be an Obligation

2009-05-10T00:48:00.000-07:00

I'm drained. I think there's a fairytale side of people's minds that likes to believe that the days preceding one's wedding should be amongst the happiest of your life.

This will be my third marriage.

It's loaded with many firsts however.

It's the first time I've fully disclosed to anyone that I'm a sex addict and that I have multiple addictions. She knows all of the most shameful aspects of my addictions.

It's the first time I've been married as an Orthodox Jew. I'm by no means perfect at it. Far from it as a matter of fact.

It's the first time I am actually afraid of going forward with the marriage, not because of the person I'm marrying or because of my fear of screwing things up, but because I'm overwhelmed by my sense of responsibility of what it means to be married and my overwhelming fear of having to do the right things all of the time.

That's where the 12 steps and my Higher Power come in. It's still one day at a time. I still cannot and will not do it alone. As long as I realize that, I can go forward.

This last several weeks I've been working my new job and learning all of the ways not to do it so that when I live with my new wife, I can come home to her at a reasonable hour and spend quality time with her.

The most important lesson learned since I've started this work is that I too easily slide into the old habit of staying up late, working late, putting off things that should be done at work instead of at home or on another work day, and then I sleep late the following morning due to fatigue.

I also learned that my techie toys that I was so excited actually slow me down. At least for now.

If I could solve just the issues of using my time more wisely, wake up earlier, and come home earlier, I'd be a lot happier and healthier, I think.

It's past midnight here on the Northwest coast. I have plans to fast on Sunday as a spiritual cleansing usually reserved for the day of the wedding, but since it's also a Jewish Holiday this year, I have to do it Sunday or Monday. I also have to pack my bags for my week long trip and finish up some odds and ends like laundry and cleaning up the condo a bit.

I feel incredibly tired though.

I have had so little time to myself in the past six weeks. I didn't take care of myself physically the way I should have and it's affected me emotionally.

My food program is staying together thankfully so that's a good thing. But that's going to be a bit of a challenge this week to, being out of town, going to a bunch of parties with a lot of food available, and my lovely fiance is a great cook and she likes to push the food on me as a show of affection I think.

I'm just going to keep on keeping on, as they say. I have full faith that the One Above will help me stay on the Path.

Thy will, not mine, be done....

Wack a Mole: The Sex Addict tries his hand at tackling Food Addiction--Again...

2009-05-03T00:18:00.000-07:00

Remember that game at the summer carnival with that big 'ol hammer you hold, trying to hit those little plastic moles popping up out of the holes? Each time you hit one, you score some points, but then another one pops out of another hole.

That's what addiction is like for me. I tackled some of the compulsive behaviors I've faced over the years that were most harmful, like the Internet porn addiction, the compulsive spending, the really, really bad compulsive eating, and the compulsive use of prostitutes and pornography.

But there's been this smouldering level of overeating that's been ongoing since forever, no matter what period of my life I've been in. I've gain and lost hundreds upon hundreds of pounds over the years, many of those times were literally all at once.

Let's see--early college years, I lost about a hundred pounds. I gained it back during the first marriage and when I got divorced and started seeing hookers.

I lost a hundred pounds when I stopped seeing hookers and became a more observant Jew and met my 2nd wife.

I gained and lost fifty pounds at least twice in the first few years of our marriage from binges and then fad diets.

From the time we decided to move to the Northwest to my heaviest, I gained another hundred pounds--over about a year's time--and since then I've only lost about forty of it.

It's stayed on partly because I work out with weight a little bit and so that keeps the heavier muscle mass on me, but primarily, it's because I eat more than I need to, so I maintain about 290 pounds of body on a skeleton that should have about a total of 175 pounds around it.

Lately I've been going to OA meetings and I actually have my most successful (sobrietywise) SA sponsees as my OA sponsor. He's coming up on two years of SA sobriety and he has lost about a hundred pounds or so in OA and that's inside of a year.

So now that I've started following abstinent meals and planning my food for the next day, I've discovered the 'wack a mole' concept popping up.

My emotions are coming to the surface more. And I can see how an addict would want to go from one addiction to the next, as I have, since that's really all we have know how to take care of these painful emotions.

The wedding is in about ten days. I'm excited about it. It's wearing Motown Girl down quite a bit. She's a bit anxious to begin with, I think, and she has a severe bronchitis going on and the combo is not going well for her.

I, on the other hand, am enjoying some good health--thank G-d--but I've been working my new job with really long hours and I've been doing things like procrastinating some paperwork that needs to be done before I leave town a week from tomorrow.

I'd like to commit, just for today, to another day of sobriety, to another day of effort of improving myself at work, to another day of being a good father, to another day of doing the right thing, one day at a time.

G-d help me, and help my lovely bride to be. I know neither of us can do this alone...

Passover and Sex Addiction: Breaking Free Whilst Eating the Bread of Affliction

2009-04-13T08:44:00.000-07:00

The irony just doesn't stop, but it's G-d who's in control and sometimes I forget that. That's when I run into trouble.

Why did I have to run into trouble on a high holy day?

It was defective thinking, as usual...

Mom was visiting from So Cal and so was Motown Girl. We all went to the kids' birthday party--I think that was the last post or so.

Since then, Mom left and MG actually stayed here in my condo--thinking error numero uno. She stayed in my bedroom and I stayed in the guest room. We did well for two weeks. Absolutely no problems.

Then came Passover. A time when the Spirit is to be cleansed of all haughtiness by cleaning out the 'chametz' (dough and sugars that can rise) which can also be looked at as a metaphor for arrogance in our lives.

How ironic that the room we decided to put the chametz in pushed me into the extra bed in the bedroom where she was staying--GIGANTIC thinking error number two.

It was all down hill from there. We did okay for another 48 hours and the rest, as they say...

The Rabbi said if I had trouble with my sobriety anymore he'd 'find it difficult' marrying us from here. He didn't say he wouldn't. There was no clear cut ultimatum. But I think he wanted my mind to make a clear boundary, as did I.

He also noted that I should tell my local rabbi instead of him, 2000 miles away, about sobriety breaks, as this will make it more difficult to face such problems in the future.

As it stands, I have one more night here with MG and then she's staying with a friend in a different part of town until she leaves the state and then we get married (G-d willing).

MG is having anxiety fits over whether or not we're actually going to get married at this point since she feels we blew it so bad this time. Yes, she realizes we're both at fault, as do I, but it feels like we're both accepting this higher level of accountability, while at the same time clearly not reaching the level of observance.

The simple answer for us would have been to never be alone together and neither of us were willing to follow that or this wouldn't have happened. What can I say? It takes two to tango.

At this point, I've decided to continue to live my life in recovery and not give up what I have. I also want to do what I can to protect MG from suffering more of the emotional damage that this can cause than she has to. I know she's a big girl and she has to suffer consequences as much as I do, but I have an unusually high tolerance for this scrutiny in light of the problems I've had in my community and around seeing my kids. I don't think subjecting her to this shame is going to serve her positively and it is work she can do with her therapist in a controlled environment if she needs to.

The plan is to tell the local rabbi about our indiscretions in a week, after she leaves. Then I'll likely conference call with my Midwest Rabbi.

MG's biggest fear is that the Midwest Rav will cancel his involvement in our wedding and/or forbid us from marrying, which is all but an impossibility knowing our faith and knowing him. I think he gave me the 'ultimatum', which really wasn't an ultimatum, because he just didn't know what to do with a powerless sex addict who makes bad decisions around these things.

As my support group has said, at least I'm not out there getting hookers, on the internet or looking at child porn. And that's true.

One could also say at least I'm not committing any number of other heinous crimes as well, but it doesn't take away the problem, that I'm powerless over my lust and that I know I recognized signs of being 'in cycle' well before this happened. I knew once MG said she'd stay here with my Mom that there was a likelihood she and I would be together again before the wedding. I didn't know exactly how, but I figured it could happen, and it did, like I thought it might.

So the bottom line is as usual, I continue to struggle, I continue to look for help, I continue to pray for guidance and I hope that the One Above has forgiveness.

As usual, I'm looking forward to Yom Kippur this year...

Countertransferance, Love and Psychosis, and Emotional Immaturity: Another week goes by for the Sex Addict

2009-03-29T23:47:00.000-07:00

And might I add that it's been a sober week? If I make it to April Fool's day, appropriately, it will be my one month of sobriety. It will also be one day shy of nine years to the day that I was married to my second wife.

Just to tie up the last post in a neat little bow, I confronted the group leader last week during our session. I said that I while I am displaying the obstinate lover's attitude to steam ahead with my decision to marry my fiance without delay and without considering the groupthink that I should at least hold off for some time, I felt that he was letting my decision somehow affect him personally.

Interestingly enough, without going into any detail at all, he admitted that he experienced 'countertransferance' and apologized and said he'd watch himself and his responses more carefully.

I felt better about it and I think the group did too. It just felt weird to see how many of us addicts go to the meeting each week, get some input and then often come back ignoring it and we're still embraced by the group, albeit chastised lovingly. That didn't seem to be the case with my decision, but I feel better now that he admitted something else was brewing there for him.

Meanwhile, Motown Girl came back to the Northwest followoing our visit to Motown and my introduction to her family. That went well overall. I enjoyed meeting her family and friends and felt that it reassured me that she's a good person at heart, as many people showed up to our celebrations and shared many stories about her goodness and kindness.

Last week I began my new position with my company and the workload was extemely light, which was alarming to the company but was a relief to me, since it was all new and it was a stress to be working in a foreign environment.

To top it off, MG came in from Detroit and my Mom came in the next day, and all of us stayed together in the condo.

What I learned from this past four days together was that MG is having a hard time keeping herself on a sleep schedule when she's stressed, jet lagged and she's having a tough time staying neat and organized.

My Mom, as usual, is having a tough time finding a filter between her brain and her mouth and she's telling me how much I need to lose weight and how sloppy MG is.

Today we went to my twins birthday party, attended by my former in-laws, the kids' mom, their step dad and all of their close friends. I didn't invite anyone as I really don't have any friends with small kids and I already felt extremely awkward being the supposed pedophile at a kids birthday party.

So there we were, at a gymnastics facility with party rooms and about sixty 4 and 5 year olds between three parties and I'm 'allowed' to be there 'unsupervised'.

Mind you, I'm not a registered sex offender, have never offended a kid, and my crimes have included looking at objectionable material on the internet more than three years ago and inviting a child to participate in masturbation about 27 years ago when I was around 11 or 12.

Nevertheless, my ex wife for sure knows about that, and evidently she told her family and perhaps some other people some degree about my need for supervision around children.

So it felt a bit strange and shaming to be in the presence of all of these friends of the Ex's and her family's, with me and my Mom and my fiance standing off away from 'their' group. And there I was taking pictures of my kids.

Or was I?

Yes, I was, but did they know that? And what about the peripubescent teens who were the party instructors? Were they informed to be careful around me? I'm not sure. I didn't stare at them. I did catch a glimpse of them, noting that they were young and pretty, but I didn't objectify them.

I wonder if any of the other dads did. I wonder if my Ex's dad did. Or if her husband did.

It doesn't matter.

It took many Serenity Prayers to get me to say 'Hello' to my ex in-laws, particularly the ex mother-in-law.

One of the biggest problems I have with seeing her is that she was right about me. She knew that my first marriage was a disaster and wanted to know what I'd done to rectify things. The answer was 'nothing'. And I wasn't willing to look at what the truth was, that I was a sex addict and that I need serious recovery work.

The fact that I had used their daughter, used their home, their money, their computer and internet service, drank their booze, used their car and drove it drunk if I remember correctly, just makes me feel more shameful.

And I spoke with my sponsor about doing an 8th and 9th step around this with her/them. It was a case of possibly harming myself and/or my children so we decided that I should not, but I definitely owe them apologies and I can never repay the damages I've caused to their daughter and their family.

So living sobriety is the only way to go.

And that's what I'm doing, for today.

I'm feeling like cr*p the last couple of days physically. I think the stress of the new job, the trip to Detroit, the boys' party, Mom coming out here meeting MG, and my place being a mess (which I need to talk about with MG--I can't stand to live in a messy house) is wearing me down. I also think I caught a little cold bug from my kids.

So I'm off to bed, but I have to express my gratitude to the One Above. Despite the difficulties I'm having, and I haven't even mentioned the avalanche of bills that I'm barely able to pay minimum payments on right now, I'm keeping my head above water for the moment....

...one step at a time...

Which Sex Addict Knows Best?

2009-03-19T06:39:00.000-07:00

I've always admired my group leader. I trust him. I like him.

I'm going to miss him.

Yesterday he told the group he's transfering his family to the Midwest, not far from where I have my roots. It was surprising news on some level, but I'd known that it's always a possibility that he'd leave our group, as it is for any of us.

What made yesterday's session a bit more 'interesting' than usual, and this year a bit more flavorful than usual, is that I had gone from Super Sobriety Man to Dating Man to Engaged Acting Out Againts My Morals Man in a short several week period.

I think what's more alarming to my group, and this is all they have to go on, is what I have shared with them about my fiance, the Motown Girl.

She's also an Orthodox Jew, but returned from a life of lesser observance about five years ago. During that time, she's continued to have personal struggles with relationships, including having a relationship with a recently divorced Orthodox Jewish man who was about 20 years her senior and she had a full on sexual relationship with him--totally unacceptable by 'kosher standards, but nonetheless, nothing that hasn't been done before by many, including myself, unfortunately.

She had another relationship with a bit of a kook, to say the least, who was an older guy by about ten years from a wealthy family who is living off his family and doing recreational drugs 'for a living'. Evidently she was his 'first' sexual relationship and, again, she had a full on sexual relationship with him. She also dabbled some in recreational drugs 'a few times with him', smoking pot on occasion and using psychedelic mushrooms I think once or twice.

While that sounds pretty out there, I've done the same thing, albeit in my twenties and well before I was a professional and had children. It's a risky behavior I'd never engage in at this point.

And yet I picked up hookers on the street and looked at porn that was ostensibly illegal on the internet. Make sense?

I digress...

So Motown Girl also has had some compulsive overeating problems and problems with bulemia. She's never been in counseling for these things directly. She's 'just stopped'.

She says she's coninuing some degree of counseling for her ADD and that's been ongoing on a monthly basis for over a year it seems. I'm not sure how much that includes talking about the details of anything about how much she's had trouble focusing, knowing how psychiatrists operate these days in a lot of cases.

MG recently disclosed to me that her brother, who is also adopted, and her had a consensual ongoing sexual relationship between the ages of about 9 and perhaps 11. He's around 9 months younger. She didn't go into detail about it. They certainly don't talk about this. She says she's told no one about this. Until now.

When she and I came to this advanced level of disclosure and prior to getting engaged, I had insisted that we go into couples counseling and individual counseling indefinitely if we were going to make a marriage work.

The fact that we accepted each other where we were at and were willing to do this, in my estimation, and the approval of our rabbinical support, was enough for me to go ahead with getting engaged.

The sexual indiscretions with her have been very problematic to my recovery work, affecting my relations with my 12 step support, with my rabbi, and with my moral compass.

Gratefully, I've remained honest and in the light about what's going on, but it doesn't make it better. I still compromised my morals by having sex with my fiance and disappointed myself, my rabbi and went against some central tenets of my religion.

All of this information really seems to have rattled the cage of my departing group leader and my group, who kind of put discussion of my personal life in group on a hiatus for six weeks after it was clear that I was bull headed about my decision and I seemed unwilling to listen to anyone's counsel.

Yesterday, in the midst of our usual group dynamic, the leader announced he's leaving us around the time I'm getting married. Then he asked me to share an update of what's going on in my engagement, despite his suggestion that I just allow the group to 'listen' and 'be supportive' since I didn't seem open to any counsel--which is true.

So I shared. And they called me to the carpet, saying that I should be at the very least postponing my wedding and getting into some heavy duty counseling with my fiance prior to the event and consider allowing that counsel to influence whether I go forward with the marriage.
I'd said, in no uncertain terms, that I'd been through this with my rabbi and that I'd decided I'm moving forward. It's a done deal. The wedding is in mid May. The engagement party is in Motown this weekend and is costing me a few thousand bucks. I just bought my fiance a minivan.

While these financial commitments are the same ones that a divorce, G-d forbid, would have to undo, I don't feel strongly enough about these concerns that we need to postpone the wedding.

We really want to have kids. We really want to be together again. We both feel we're fortunate to have accepted one another. We're both [saying] we're willing to work on ourselves and each other. And let me emphasize that I pray that this is true--I've worked recovery long and hard for almost three years. I don't want to throw mine away and I don't want to burn my precious time in life up with someone who is sick and who is just paying lip service now but who is going back to acting out and who's going to hurt herself and my family down the line. That would be the ultimate nightmare, and I get that this is what my friends in group are telling me to wait for.

But I'm receiving counsel from a trusted source to go ahead and I want to go ahead. I am scared but I'm going on some degree of Faith, Faith in the Higher Power that I will keep my eyes open and live the serenity prayer day by day.

No one wants to get hurt her. Not me, not motown girl, not my group leader, not my rabbi, not the ex wife.

Everyone wants to look out for themselves, their families and their friends, and if they see someone walking across the street and a car is coming, they want to yell "Get out of the way! Watch out!".

My contention: I'm at the cross walk, the light says walk, I'm looking both ways, and I'm being cautious. There may be some drunk driver who barrels around the corner and takes me out, but that's out of my hands. There may be a reckless person coming down the street who hits me, but same deal, out of my hands.

I think it will be interesting to see what happens. If you go by pure 'logic' and 'common sense', my marriage is doomed even before it starts. We're two addicts, one barely in recovery, one never in recovery, diving head first into a marriage. It's her second marriage, my third.

I'll continue the play by play here if I can...should be interesting...

Financial Bailout for the Sex Addict?

2009-03-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

What unbelieveable chutzpah these shameless sons o' guns at AIG and the like have, who are taking millions in tax payer money for their bonuses! Evidently, they are 'contractually owed' these funds (that we're paying for, due to their mistakes), and the fact that it's been said the money, at least in some cases, is a 'retention bonus' to 'keep the best talent', is absolutely nauseating.

Well I'm glad some angry taxpaying Americans are paying attention and speaking their minds.

I have a part of me that's doing the same lately when I look at my bank account and credit card bills and realize that I commited to pay for things in my upcoming marriage that I just couldn't afford without going into more debt, particularly when I was starting a new job with a vague income description.

So that's actually my top plate issue these days. The food is more of a side effect of my financial uneasiness. The sex too, as it was. I recall each time that I acted out with my fiance was close to a situation related to spending money on credit or receiving difficult news about my finances i.e. my boss calling and saying he didn't know how he was going to pay me in the next couple of months.

Thankfully that particular issue has been immediately resolved and it seems that I will be financially afloat if I play my cards right in the coming months, but this was as close as I have come to the brink of total financial implosion based on stupidity that I can remember. And it happened quickly and with very little thought.

It started with getting engaged and being agreeable to pay for some things like an engagement party, the rings, and some odds and ends for the wedding party. Then I decided, on a whim, to buy my betrothed a lease to a fully loaded minivan so she'd have it as soon as she came here.

Last but not least, she reminded me that she's now my family and that I had to pay for her moving across the country, including the movers and paying airfare.

And there was the added cat to the family. She said she didn't want to lose her one connection to her past and that she was moving 2500 miles away, she should be able to keep her cat. With my two cats being declawed and feisty, her cat needed to be declawed--at my expense. I also, naturally, have to pay for the cat's ('first class') ticket to the Northwest from Motown when they move here.

While it's 'all in G-d's hands', the truth is I can continue to screw this up when I continue to leave it in my hands.

So whilst I'm not joining DA (debtors anonymous) just yet, I am actually following twelve stepish principles around not debting day by day.

I just can't believe how many fricking messed up tentacles addiction has in my life.

Oy...

G-d, grant me the serentity
to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can
and the wisdom to know the difference...

Why are my clothes shrinking? The Sex Addict faces Compulsive Overeating--again

2009-03-08T14:21:00.000-07:00

and again, and again.

It's the two worst, toughest and most fatal addictions out there--food and sex. They're portable and socially acceptable. They're easily brought across state lines. They can be acted out with in just about any setting and with just about anyone, anywhere.

My weight has been remarkably stable for the past several years, considering the actual number on the scale, the amount that I eat, and the amounts that I've either exercised or not exercised.

I remember as a kid, my grandmother used to make cakes and tell me I couldn't have any but the other kids could. She said I was too fat.

She was fat...and mean.

My parents were both compulsive overeaters. Dad used to get a full meal at McDonalds before he came home to eat a full meal in the evening. Then he'd snack after dinner until he went to bed, usually late at night after my mom went to sleep so he could masturbate to his porn movies, which I would watch on the downstairs TV while he watched on his TV, mostly but not always unbeknownst to him.

Mom would buy gigantic bags of popcorn and eat them all day long in her car as she compulsively shopped and packed our basement full of things we didn't need. She'd also buy pounder bags of candies and down the whole thing 'before the kids' would eat them--as if she was saving us from the pain.

Mom and Dad would tell me I'm fat, that I should count calories and exercise in kindergarten and grade school, and then they'd go out and get ice cream or candy and buy some for me. Then they'd go on a fad diet and put me on the same one. My weight as a school boy was mostly well above average and I mostly was considered obese.

Worse than that was my body image which was poor, as my parents constantly put themselves down and told me I was just like them and that I'd be just like them since I had their genes and they 'could see it'.

In high school, being the big awkward kid who wasn't very athletic but who had the amazing size of 250 pounds plus at 5'10" got me spots on the football and wrestling teams, but I was never a first stringer. Guys made fun of me and I'd make them laugh, partly at my expense. I also learned that I could be accepted if I'd go to their parties and do what they did--drink booze, smoke dope, and watch porn, and talk about the girls I never had.

My sex addiction was ramping up at the same time.

As I reached college age, I began to exercise compulsively, swimming three times a week initially, then almost every day, then sometimes twice a day. I became a near vegan and dropped from around 300 pounds (I stopped weighing at about 270 or so) to about 170.

It was around then that I met the first wife.

While I led the double life of sex addiction around masturbation to pornography and visited porn shops secretly to masturbate in booths, my food addiction began to amp up as well, shortly after getting engaged to the 1st Ex. I went from 170 pounds when I met her to about 230 when we married.

This concerned her, but she didn't say much. When we separated, I was about 260 or 270 and eating voraciously.

I probably topped out again around 300, although I stopped weighing myself and started exercising compulsively and starving myself again about a year after the divorce. This was when the sex addiction had took me to prostitutes and I had hit my bottom.

Following a year of losing weight, compulsively exercising, eating better, stopping the prostitutes, and getting more religious, I met the second wife.

I'd hit my low of 170 pounds again and felt like life was all right once again. As far as she knew, I was a normal person and that's the way I wanted her to see it.

Little did she know I was just a fragile eggshell decoration with a scrambled inside.

It was within the year of meeting my second wife that we were engaged and I started compulsively eating again. At first I stopped exercising and added in some 'forbidden foods' slowly. That was between '97 and '00. By the time we married I was around 210 or so.

It didn't take long for me to pack on the pounds. By the time we moved from the Midwest to the Northwest I was hovering between 240 and 250. I had not been exercising much, although I did start seeing a personal trainer off and on back then and I'd gone off and on with the Atkins diet, dropping and gaining 20 to 30 pounds a couple of times.

When I moved to the Northwest, the sex addiction went gangbusters and I amped back up to porn shops, strip clubs, started chatting and masturbating on cam, and ultimately had dozens of sexual encounters with prostitutes.

At the same time, I ballooned back up to well over 300 pounds, as far as I could tell. I stopped weighing myself around 290 but I must have been 20 to 40 pounds more than that.

Since getting into sex addiction recovery, I'd read a book about intuitive eating, I'd gone to a couple of different nutritionists, I've gone to several OA meetings, read quite a bit about OA, and I've started to take a medicine that, in theory, should suppress my appetite.

And I've lost some weight, and without a doubt, I've gained quite a bit of muscle. Many people have commented over the last three years about how much weight they think I've lost. I'm about 290 now. But I'm working out 2 or 3 times weekly with weights and using a personal trainer to help me with it.

But my problem has been I just don't want to commit to a program around food. I have an incredibly strong aversion to planning meals. There's incredibly strong feelings around avoiding restricting myself from any foods and I feel like it's my last bastion of acting out.

And yet, if I don't make progress there, it may kill me. It may take years, but it still may kill me.

So I have a sponsee in SA who's lost like 75 or 100 pounds in OA and he's looking like he's found some serenity in his program there. I am going to ask him to sponsor me.

Part of me really wants this and part of me really wants to avoid it.

We'll see who wins....

Codependence and the Sex Addict: I'm Okay if She's Okay?

2009-03-07T23:48:00.000-08:00

I'm not saying that I'm feeling crappy just because my fiance is in a foul mood, but I have to wonder how much of my mood is due to it. I am proud of myself for keeping a healthy boundary when she was getting into a bit of a difficult space in our conversation and I felt uncomfortable.

She's back in Motown and I'm working the Northwest. I'm working the weekend and she is currently unemployed, working fulltime on wedding stuff, getting ready to relocate out here, and she just had her cat declawed in anticipation of the move out here.

She's feeling physically ill this evening, evidentally suffering from some nausea and generalized malaise. She also is concerned that the cat, who is middle aged, is not behaving normally just a couple of days after surgery. Finally, she's annoyed that she has to type hundreds of names into the computer when she has a disability with one hand and is not the best typist to begin with, and to top it off, she can't really get her computer to comply with what she'd like to do for the invitations.

I did try to make life a little easier on her and got her a list of movers with their contact numbers in order of their ranking of reliability and quality, I bought her a new ipod as hers just went kablewy, and I took care of getting some furniture ordered that she wanted me to take care of.

Our chat this evening focused on my ordering a mismatched wood for the furniture, on the cat being sick due to my insisting on her getting declawed, on the computer and ipod being on the fritz, and on how easy I have it not doing anything for the wedding.

No, I didn't remind her that I am working for her income, but the thought crossed my mind. I did mention that I'm sorry she's having a tough time and asked how I may be helpful. She noted that I could have typed the list for her, but it was already 'too late' and she was in the middle of doing it.

I mostly added a few supportive comments, but she just said she felt poorly and had to go. I felt like my responses were different than what they may have been at a previous time in my life. I didn't try to delve into her stuff too deeply. I didn't really take it personally. I didn't let my emotions get caught up in hers. Overall, I think I handled the interaction pretty well.

A short time after we ended the chat, she texted me that she was sorry and that she loved me. I responded that I loved her too and we said good night.

Following our chat, I ate a meal and surfed the web for a while, and felt a little ill overall. I think part of it is that I'm getting through a cold. Another part of it is probably residual codependence that I'd like to think I'm totally free of.

I don't know why, but I sense I may feel less ill if I knew she was feeling better. But the interesting part of this is my awareness that I'm okay despite whatever she's feeling. I don't feel like I'm not okay because she's not okay. So I'm not entirely sure about what to make of how I'm feeling right now.

What I do get is that I'm in tune with myself today better than I have been in my entire life, and that has everything to do with not acting out to my addictions and staying connected with my thoughts and feelings.

Well, we set the clocks forward an hour tonight, so work starts an hour earlier in the morning. Good reason to turn in an hour early.

Perhaps it will help me feel even better when I take care of myself. What a novel concept!

Sexual Addiction and Avoidance: They Fit like Hand in Glove

2009-03-06T14:12:00.000-08:00

Different consequences are attached to avoidance of different issues in life. It seems obvious that avoiding cleaning the ring of rust around the toilet bowl in my condo's master bathroom isn't necessarily going to cause serious problems for me in the near future.

If I was the housekeeper or housekeeping manager of a government dignitary and the master bathroom was kept unclean for too long, I'd probably be sent looking for a new job.

I've actually been good about telling my rabbi about breaks in sobriety. That I haven't put off.

But there's other things that are perennial problems that I have a strong desire to change, and yet it's nearly the same story every year.

Thankfully, I did do some organizing for my taxes in the past year so it should be a little easier than previous years, but it's still the same 'ol, same 'ol.

I went through a fourth step on this a while back.

Part of the pain of it all is the memory of my screw ups financially when I was a teen and in my 20's. I had a set of parents to 'bail me out' (sound familiar, like a sign of the times?) back then.

Well in recent years, despite my increased income and recovery work around procrastination and avoidance, I've still been negligient in the area of keeping a budget. And what amazes me more is that banks as recently as a couple of weeks ago are still lending me money to do things like buy and lease cars.

That's not to say I can't afford it, but I don't have a significant nest egg if I became jobless suddenly.

This became very real to me a few weeks back when my company lost a big contract at a site where I was doing work and my new position, which is caught in a glacially slow corporate hypno-trance suspended animation state, is not ready for me to start working and earning my keep.

My boss approached me in the past month and mentioned that he doesn't see how he can justify continuing to pay me a full salary when I'm not working.

This came when I had just signed the lease and note for the two vehicles and I'm getting ready to get married to my fiance who will be a stay at home domestic engineer.

Gratefully, we came to an agreement that will keep the income flowing at least until I start working the new position in late March and then I'll start working on commission, which is more stressful, but has a better upside as well.

The best way I can look at this whole experience is as a wake up call.

It's time to act on those fourth step evaluations I made last year. Time to make the changes I recognize need to be made. I'm a big boy now. I don't have a bail out sugar daddy (or government!) to give me what I need to stay afloat, so I need to grab my bootstraps and seek the strength of my Higher Power to help me get a move on.

Right now I'm avoiding several stacks of dishes that need to be cleaned, I'm avoiding a shower before going to work, I'm avoiding an errand to pick up an extra house key for the fiance and to replace the one I lost, and I'm avoiding diving into those tax papers, just a little bit, so I can make a tiny bit of progress, just for today...

Time to get moving!

Living Dangerously in Dangerous Times? Sex Addict Antics Revealed

2009-03-05T03:06:00.000-08:00

Not much of a scoop here. It seems that when I'm following the Rabbi's advice, I can stay sober. When I don't, I don't.

This past weekend, I went to NYC with the fiance with every intention of staying sober. Well, almost every intention.

The small detail of where I was going to stay was the part that was the major thinking error. We left the Northwest on Saturday night after the Sabbath ended and landed in New York Sunday morning. The original plan was for me to stay up all night and leave early Monday morning, but the snow storm and my fatigue, along with my desire to be with Motown Girl got the best of me.

We rented a small hotel room near the airport and said we'd remain on our own side of the bed.

Right.

I decided to disclose in the least embarrassing way that I could to my rabbi and he came up with the (*gag*) brilliant idea of me disclosing every detail to him and my local rabbi from here on in for every time I act out.

When I shared this with MG, we both agreed we must remain sober at all costs until the wedding.

Perhaps this tactic of adding a dimension of shame locally will help keep us sober.

It may not, but it's a novel idea and certainly is thinking out of the box.

Meanwhile, the individual therapist and group members continue to seem to question the notion of marriage and are really just looking at me with sidelong glances, saying they'll be supportive but cannot really expect to have a dialog with me at this time when they believe I'm floridly psychotic.

No, I'm not really kidding, they think I have a type of psychosis. The love/infatuation that I'm going through is considered by some in the therapy community to be like psychosis of a sort.

Neat.

Well, I'm not listening to them and I'm listening to my Rabbi, when it comes to the getting married part. I'm following my evil inclination/lust/desire when it comes to the sexual relationship with my fiance. I guess that qualifies as psychotic to them.

Time for sleep for me.

Hopefully my psychosis won't pull me into anything worse in the coming 24 hours. I've much to do and the Sabbath is coming.

More later...

A Rabbi, A Dancer, and An IT Guy Have a Discussions with a Sex Addict...

2009-02-20T01:56:00.000-08:00

Sounds like a bad joke.

Sometimes I think my recovery program is a bad joke. So there's a rabbi, a dancer and an IT guy and they're all sitting at a bar having a discussion.

The rabbi says, "The Sex Addict needs to get married as soon as possible. It's time and she's the one. But I'm not the expert in this area and I want to hear your suggestions".

The Dancer, who's now a therapist of the Sex Addict listens thoughtfully and says, "what I'm making of this is that the Sex Addict has chosen a life of Orthodox Judaism, and in order for him to live his live in that integrity, he must follow the tenets that it requires. If he chooses a different path, it seems he must not hold secrets from his rabbi."

The IT guy says, "it sounds like you're getting advice from a lot of different sources, and it's difficult to see which one is the right one and which one is the one the 'addict' is dressing up for you to choose. Best to keep listening to the rabbi".

So I slipped again with Motown Girl. She flew out here two days ago and we did so well. So well! No kissy, no huggy, no touchy, no nothing.

Then I traded in my car with her and bought a small used car for me and leased a mom mobile minivan loaded up for her and that felt good, but felt a little stressful due to the expense.

Unfortunately, literally the day after this, I get a call from my company and they want to change my salary to a small base with a commission and there's no telling when or how much that commission will be with respect to my current salary. On one hand it could be considerably more, and I tend to think it will be.

But my current immediate boss is painting a grim picture, saying that he thinks that I'm going to take about a 40% pay cut in the coming months for an unforeseeable amount of time. This would make it nearly impossible for me to live in the place where I live or to have the lease that I have. I could moonlight, but it will take some time for me to find the work.

This, in conjunction with the overpowering urge to be close with MG, brought us down from our pedestal of sobriety.

So in terms of recovery, I don't feel terrible now, not at all. But I'm really tired of feeling the guilt of having to go to my group, my individual therapist and my rabbi and tell them all the specifics of my slip.

I think what I'm going to do--and remember, I'm an addict, so I'm a little crazy to say the least--is that I'm going to email the rabbi that I slipped and that I'm keeping accountable with my group and I'd prefer not to go down the shameful road of going into details right now with him. I'm going to stay honest with my group about my acting out with my fiance, but at the moment, I don't want to tell the rabbi every detail of what we did.

I'm in a commited relationship with a woman I'm going to marry May if all goes well.

I don't know how this will fly with anyone, but MG and I don't feel ashamed for the way we are right now. We're born and raised secular, live a religious lifestyle otherwise, but have struggle with sexual sobriety with each other.

I have not answer apart from that I'm powerless. And if this is all my addiction, which I don't think it is, then I'm in deep sh*t like my group says I am.

But if this is me having fallen in love with an intelligent, decent, friendly, lovely woman who comes from the same religious background and with whom there is mutual attraction, I'm not feeling so terrible that I'm having this physical relationhip with a person I'm commited to marry in just a few months.

Well, time will tell.

Till next time, I'm still a sexaholic and I don't pretend to be anything but that...

Succumbing to Reality: Sexual Sobriety Continues

2009-02-12T01:44:00.001-08:00

I'm guessing that part of my emotions that I'm feeling right now have something to do with the fact that Motown Girl and I have been apart for a week and I've been sober for that period of time. No numbing out with acting out.

It was a busy shift at work today, MG and I spoke briefly on the phone a few times and texted a bit, but otherwise I was just immersed in my work.

I saw the movie School of Rock this evening. I'd been avoiding it for unclear reasons--until I finally saw it this evening. I didn't have a problem with it sexually, but because of the recent deviancy eval and all of the talk around that and the shame that went with it, I believe I'm hypersensitive around the subject of children.

Indeed, there were ten year olds in that movie, attractive ones at that, but while I had awareness of their beauty, I didn't have a sexual fantasy around them.

But it bothers me that I even have awareness that there's 'attractiveness' to a ten year old. I don't even know what 'attractiveness' in 'quotes' means, except that I feel that there's some energy I have around seeing those kids because they're kids.

I told my fiance that I need to have people around me when I'm with kids, just for my own comfort level. I don't feel the least bit sexual around children, but what the deviancy therapist said to me burned into my memory deeply. If anything ever happens to a child that I've been around, G-d forbid, people who think I'm a deviant will accuse me, so I always need to have a witness to protect myself legally.

That sucks, but I guess that's life.

It's kind of like the agreement that my Rabbi and my therapists asked me to sign onto until my children are eighteen. That I should have a polygraph (lie detector) every six months to determine if I've violated a child, viewed child pornography, or if I've been with a prostitute. If I know I have that polygraph every six months, one would think I'd be less likely to act out.

But I'm an addict and I still have to live my program one day at a time, and not for a test.

Well, it's time to go to sleep. I'm working swings and I'm getting up reasonably early, so 2am seems late enough.

G-d-

Grant me the Serenity

To accept the things I cannot change

The courage to change the things I can

And the wisdom to know the difference...

Sexually Sober, Still Engaged

2009-02-10T00:36:00.001-08:00

Not that I had any doubts about the engagement. I think that I'm going to be married and I will have a successful marriage.

Reasons behind it? MG and I are committed to staying in recovery and realistic that we're not perfect.

In fact, we're struggling with the notion of remaining sexually sober for the rest of the engagement, although 'one day at a time' will come into play here, like in everything else.

I have been focusing on getting my day job in order, while my company continues to slowly inch it's way forward in getting the new division off of the ground. For me to do this, I decided to employ some nice technology, but with it came the usual tech headaches for the non-technically inclined.

So needless to say, I spent hours upon hours trying to get my Crackberry to activate and connect with my Outlook web access account. I was resentful that my IT guy for the corporation I work for was not putting me as a priority, but I'm sure I'm just a goldfish in the ocean of problems he's having.

It just felt like such a waste of time to sit there and try to figure this stuff out on my own, going to the Crackberry forums, going to the online help sections of my cellular carrier and for the software support company.

Alas, it still doesn't work and I've surrendered to the One Above.

Busy day Tuesday. Starting a week of Swing Shifts to 'earn my keep' with the company while we're starting the new division and prior to billing any clients.

Glad I'm still in recovery, still employed. Still engaged to the lovely lady who is doing an incredible job a putting together a shoestring budget wedding across the country while I'm here working.

Best get some rest. Hard to live sobriety when I'm tired and fighting a cold...

Mazel Tov: The Sex Addict gets engaged, then Acts Out with his Betrothed

2009-02-03T03:15:00.001-08:00

I have skipped a few pieces of the story, as one could imagine from the headline.

On November 9th, I met Motown Lady online through a religious Jewish match site. We chatted, then spoke on the phone within the first two weeks. It was during that time that we disclosed to one another that we had 'problems' with previous relationships. I actually disclosed FULLY about my sex addiction, including the shameful pornography, prostitutes, cheating on my ex-wife, and regarding the childhood abuses. She revealed she'd been involved with what amounted to other addicts who were not in recovery--she seems to have been a co-addict. As we each felt comfortable with one another's story and felt ready in our own recovery to have a relationship, I flew cross country to meet her 12/26 and we had several wonderful dates that week.

Two weeks later, we had several more wonderful dates and began to talk about getting married, an inevitable part of successful Orthodox Jewish dating.

What we also did, which I don't believe I went into detail about, was get into some non graphic but definitely suggestive conversations of a sexual nature. Mostly, they stated that we had the chemistry to be together and wanted to be. There were several vague but definite innuendo 'jokes' about me wanting to 'be' with her.

Once we started seriously talking about the prospect of marriage, I did come out and tell her about some of my desires sexually and that I was concerned about our compatibility prior to marriage but, at that point, we agreed we would not test the waters.

With hindsight of what happened over the past two days, I think both of us tacitly agreed with ourselves that physical contact before marriage was a possibility, particularly because MG said she was in two sexual relationships with men while 'religious' despite the 'unorthodox' nature of such a relationship.

Following a supportive conversation with my rabbi and some recovery buddies, along with MG's and my decision to move forward towards marriage, I went out to buy an engagement ring last week and brought it to my group.

To say it didn't go over well is an understatement. Everyone was describing that 'You have a tail', meaning that I have some problem that I'm blind to but others can see plain as day. I listened, was upset by this because of course I'd already made my decision and they could see how I had dug in, and I left there thinking, "Oh frig, I'm gonna p*ss these guys off anyway".

I went to see Motown Girl over the weekend and gave her the ring. She accepted and quickly put together a little 'Mazel Tov' party with some community friends.

Problems arose on the flight home. She and I sat next to each other and kept gazing into each other's eyes. Finally, we leaned forward and gently kissed. Then a little more, then a little more....then we stopped for a bit. Then we talked about it and said, "No regrets " and proceeded to steal kisses and touches for the rest of the cross country flight.

We went back to my condo on arrival to our destination and had quite a make out session that included over the clothing and lasted minutes, not hours.

I brought her back to her host's home and the next morning, we spoke and decided to reset my sobriety for SA, and I called the rabbi, my sponsor and some group guys and disclosed to them.

When the rabbi's response to me was to do better and don't tell everyone the details and to get married ASAP, I decided to tell my fiance that since we're living cross country and won't be together much in four plus months before our wedding, that we can continue some contact at our discretion and we'll honest about it with others, like group and SA guys, but I'm not volunteering this information back to the rabbi. I will not lie to him, and as an addict, this falls under the 'lie of omission'. At this point, I'm not calling the man to tell him exactly what we did until I discuss it further with MG, group and my support people.

And what happened?

It started out 'innocently enough', but I'm a sex addict and I believe my lovely fiance must have some co-addict in her, which is not helping us now.

WARNING**MODERATELY GRAPHIC SEXUAL CONTENT BELOW**WARNING

We kissed, we touched over the clothes, then we touched under clothes, then we touched genitals with hands, then with mouths, then "nearly" genitals to genitals. In fact, I think the only reason it wasn't "intercourse" is due to a lack of "lube"--pardon me for being too graphic, fellow addicts.

So the irony here--I don't feel toxic, I don't feel high, I don't feel remorseful. Mostly, anyhow. I do wonder how the good folks from my group will react when I give them the bare bones honest account of what happened.

The bottom line is that MG and I, at this point, are going to my personal therapist on Tuesday afternoon for some needed couples counseling and she has an appointment to go to an addiction/co-addiction therapist she's in town.

Our sexual relationship and our relationship in general is up for discussion and consideration for change.

One thing's for sure, I cannot and I will not put my head in the sand over this. I will keep the elephant in the room up for discussion.

And so it goes...

Future Tripping with the Sex Addict

2009-01-24T18:59:00.000-08:00

It's one of the things that we are told to do as a kid--plan ahead. And it's something that we're told to surrender in recovery--the outcomes of future efforts.

Not that we should just say "G-d's going to show me the way and I'm gonna sit on my hands and wait for things to fall in my lap". We have to do what we can to make the best outcomes in our lives. It's the future tripping, making up what's going to happen and having anxiety, anger or resentment around that, that makes things difficult.

Recently the Ex and I have been exchanging emails about making a birthday party for our twin boys. It's the only thing we exchange apart from disturbed glances.

I think what really has me going these days is the fact that I don't know if the 'deviancy exam' that I paid three thousand dollars for is going to help me get access to my kids, and yet it was the only way that she allowed for me to entertain the idea legally.

I have an appointment to discuss my exam results and to set up the next scam--er, I mean polygraph test. Let me digress for a moment. I took a polygraph that asked me all kinds of questions about whether I've had sex with my kids, looked at child porn, had sex with minors etc and I answered everything truthfully to the best of my knowledge. Apart from being waterboarded, in which case I'd probably say anything you want to get me out of the torture, I don't think I'd answer differently under any circumstances.

As I may have noted in a previous post, one of the question was whether I'd had sex with a minor apart from the few prostitutes I thought may have been minors and apart from the girl who was seventeen when I was eighteen. I answered no and flunked the question and therefore the test.

I reviewed the question with the polygrapher, with my therapist, with my group therapist and group members, and with my rabbi. We all agreed that the question was a poor one. Upon further review, we figured my mind believes that a lot of the prostitutes were teens or even preteens that I picked up.

I never asked for ID or a birth certificate when I let them in the car. I did ask a few of them if they were 18 or older and they said yes--I asked because I was pretty sure they were younger than that, but when they said '18', I paid them and received the service.

So three thousand bucks into my investment and I'm freaked out that I've gotten an erection from two hours of illicit pornographic audio descriptions of child sex encounters (and homosexual encounters, which as described also got me aroused). My thought is that I'm screwed. The sex addict therapist will interpret my lie detector as showing me as untruthful and the response to the porn shows me as a lover of child sex encounters and gay sex encounters.

Needless to say, I was hesitant to pay another $150 to meet with the guy to tell me what he thought of the exam (which I think should have been included in the $3000, but who am I to say).

I finally made the appointment for 2/4/9 and I'll learn what the plan is from there. I've future tripped already about that one. That he's going to say I need to be supervised until the kids are eighteen and that I shouldn't be around minors alone--boys or girls.

But who knows? I'll just go and find out.

And I digressed...back to the issue I wanted to discuss today...

The Ex and I have been exchanging emails about a birthday party for the boys. She's already said my family is not allowed around my kids unsupervised because they all witnessed abuse amongst siblings and parents and didn't do anything about it. That bothers the p*ss out of me. She did manage to thoughtfully ask if a certain day in February would work out for me to have the party. I told her I'll have a new job then so my availability may change and asked her to get back to me ASAP on confirming the date of the party. I also asked her to give me the date ASAP so my mom could fly in from So Cal to make the party.

Long story short, I ultimately found out my new schedule conflicted with the agreed upon date. She never got back to me until a month after I'd asked her to--a few times, and thankfully I was allowed to change the birthday to a date that will work for my mom and myself.

But the whole thing left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. And I don't think it was really her fault per se. She was just busy and didn't get back to me. She was pretty understanding about my situation and was flexible in the end. I'm just angry at the restrictions I have against me and my family.

I keep forgetting that I'm not the one in control and that the Good G-d that rules the Universe allowed for this to happen. For me to be too angry about it shows a lack of faith in Him.

I've read that children form their first impression of a G-dly figure via the image of their parents. And my parents, though they tried to the best of their abilities, didn't leave me feeling very good about myself much of the time. There were a lot of times we were made to feel ashamed. There were many times that we were told we couldn't feel emotions, as if we weren't allowed to.

"Stop your crying! You'll get nothing! Go to your room!"

So when it comes to me being upset with my ex wife regarding having these restrictions against me, despite the fact that they're actually understandable, part of me tells myself that I'm not allowed to be angry. I have no right to be angry.

The mean voice in my head says, "You should have thought of that when you were looking at the pictures of the seven year old boys and girls performing oral sex on adults and each other", and "you should have thought of that when you [essentially] molested that boy by exposing yourself and inviting him to participate in a sex act [when you were twelve and he was two, catching you masturbating]".

"You should have thought of that when you were picking up those [possibly as young as 12 or 13 year old] prostitutes while your wife was breast feeding your twin boys and then you potentially exposed your children and her to STD's".

It was okay for my parents to see my kids without supervision prior to my ex finding out about my sex addiction and my history of being molested and the exposure incident when I was 12, but suddenly the kids were in danger around anyone in my family after she found out how I violated her and our marital vows.

The other future tripping that I've done is that when my boys get older, just like she told her parents about my sex addiction, child porn habits, and my "engaging in a form of child molestation" in order to 'to protect her family', she's reserved the right to tell our boys 'the truth' about their father. And I don't have anything to say about it.

Fair? Not fair?

I guess it's fair. But since she lives with them and taints their mind to her belief system to begin with, and since they already prefer to run to their step father in synagogue instead of me when we're both there, what's this going to do to my relationship with them down the line?

I've also future tripped about the time when the boys get married and have kids of their own. Naturally the Ex will have to 'protect' her grandchildren from me and therefore tell her daughters-in-law and my boys' in-laws that the grandfather should 'not be left alone around children'.

It tears me a-f*ckin'-part to think about these things. It's so hard for me to surrender. And yet, based on some of the angry comments I get occasionally in my email and on this blog, I know that some who read this believe I got away with something that I should have been killed for--literally.

And there are societies where death is the penalty for these kinds of acts.

But one of the many things I love about the faith I was born into, Judaism believes that G-d allows all of us to do Teshuvah--to repent--and yes, we will pay for our sins in purgatory (Gehinnom) prior to going to Heaven (Gan Eden), but the Good G-d is a loving and forgiving G-d.

Not the G-d that I felt that was punishing and spiteful that I learned to believe in when I was growing up.

Unfortunately, those were my parents, G-d love them. My father, he should rest in peace, and my mother, tried their best with the tools they had.

I'm just grateful that I'm only 38 and I've realized these things now. G-d willing I'll live to a ripe old age and enjoy a good life, living sobriety....

Memories of Mother 1: The Sex Addict's Childhood

2009-01-20T06:54:00.001-08:00

Well this is a complex relationship to say the least.

I love my mother. She's still alive, thank G-d, living as a widow for more than a year now in southern Cal. I have disclosed little in the way of details about my acting out, but between my vague comments about internet and child porn recovery and my angry sister's comments about me cheating on my wife with whores, she has a pretty good idea of what I've been up to.

I think one of the harshest realities about my mother that I know about, and the one that landed her with a restriction against seeing my children without supervision--just like me--is that she stood by quietly as really terrible stuff took place in our household.

Dad, he should rest in peace, was verbally abusive, at times physically abusive, and he crossed sexual boundaries that, to the best of my recollection, were very much abusive.

The other thing that irks me about Mom is that she would be so distant and caught up in her own life a lot of the time, not giving any love, affection, or even attention, and then she would virtually smother me with questions, evidently trying to make up for lost time. This included giving me the third degree about what was going on in my life after not being there for days or weeks, and then breathing down my neck about doing homework while not taking the least interest in what it was I was learning or how she could help.

She also made a habit of telling me when things ticked her off about other people, including my father, my siblings and especially my father's mother. She was downright inappropriate in the way she lambasted my grandmother with words.

And if she was angry that I was misbehaving, she'd do things like say "I'll leave you here" and she'd leave me standing on the curb of a store as she pulled the car away out of my sight. This happened at least once, but probably a bunch of times, mostly when I was between ages 5 to 10.

So not a lot of joy there, at least regarding those thoughts.

Got to go to work now, but felt compelled to get a start on this.

Hardly an easy subject...

Living Sobriety Returns...still in recovery, and the sex addict may be getting married?!

2009-01-19T04:13:00.000-08:00

Kind of a lot to tell here and not a lot of time right now. Suffice it to say that the Motown girl I met online in early November is an amazing woman who is now doing recovery work of her own--although she didn't really know she was doing it I'm thinking--and we've gotten along famously since our first meetings in December and subsequent meetings here in the Northwest.

The trip to the Midwest took place from around Xmas to New Years and included me driving to see this beautiful young lady (31, not 13!) and we spent several hours a day walking, talking, and enjoying each other's company between two midwestern cities.

When we departed, it was pretty clear to me that I was smitten with her demeanor, her intelligence, her sense of humor and her good looks. I also was struck by her commitment to exploring our relationship despite my full disclosure to her.

What I found out about her is that she'd been in a devastating marriage where she was beaten many times over the short course of their matrimony and ultimately she divorced him and he went to prison, first for beating her and later for child sex offenses--sound familiar?

She became an observant Jew over the next several years and ultimately fully converted to 'Orthodoxy' about five years ago, but did have two sexual relationships with 'orthodox' men since then, one about five years ago and one about a year ago.

It doesn't bother me that she had sex with guys--I've been with probably hundreds of women through my sexscapades, unfortunately. What concerned me was that just a year ago she had been sexual with a guy who sounded like kind of a dead end dude--no job, no aspirations, into drinking, drugs, and although 'orthodox', he certainly didn't act like it. Nor did she, but I can relate to that. I'm orthodox now and I can say that if she would have pushed it, I'd have been tempted to have sexual contact with her.

But we didn't, and for that I'm grateful.

So after numerous discussions with my therapist, group, SA friends, friends, family, Rabbis, and myself, I can't find a good reason to not make a commitment to this person.

I was dating my two previous wives for two years prior to marriage and I'd had sex with them prior to even getting engaged.

The biggest difference here seems to be that I've been honest with this woman from start to finish. She knows my stuff and I seem to know hers, and we're willing to start using the guidance of rabbis and counselors immediately.

To her credit, she's looking to start formal 12 step work in S-Anon (http://www.sanon.org/) and she and I will be meeting with my individual therapist in a couple of weeks.

I've got to run downstairs and finish a little work here at the new job site. I've been busy in a new phase in my career in the past two weeks and all of this change is keeping me away from blogging, although I'm still tightly plugged into my therapy, SA, and friends, thank G-d.

I've been 'assigned' some 'homework' by my therapist that I think I'll do here in the near future. It has to do with my relationship with my mother. He says that 'mother issues' will come up in my new relationship so I need to face them head on.

That's what I've been doing and that's what I'll continue to do.

It feels good to be sober today. Good to be back here. Good to know that I'm not the bad things I've done and that I'm moving in the right direction in my life.

May G-d help me continue, one day at a time...

How Do You Know when the Sex Addict is Lying? His Lips are Moving!

2008-12-16T02:06:00.000-08:00

I can say with the utmost confidence that I have been a world-class liar in my day. That 'joke' about how you know when the sex addict is lying--his lips are moving--is one told to my Ex and myself in our first appointment to 'salvage' our marriage after I disclosed.

I really didn't like the counselor who told it to us, but in hindsight, she was right, albeit a harsh caricature.

The polygraph (lie detector) test that I took on Monday consisted of about 20 questions that I was prepared to answer truthfully and, to the best of my knowledge, I did.

Not so, says the polygrapher, who asked me if I'd ever been involved sexually with a minor apart from the two prostitutes that I suspected were minors.

In my vast experience of picking up about 300 hookers in my lifetime, I'd not had one present me with identification. Most gave me a first name, often that sounded like a 'working name' like 'Destiny' or 'Desire'. So I told the polygrapher that I thought two of the hookers that I'd been with were under 18, but after she asked me the same question two different times, I showed a 'significant' response that suggested I was lying.

I wasn't lying, at least not according to what I believed was ostensibly true.

I'd admitted to the most heinous personal history, including times I masturbated under circumstances I'd care not to recall, so why would I lie about this? Well I guess I have all the reason in the world to lie. I want unsupervised access to my kids, both minors, and if I admitted to having sex with a minor, then I'd possibly lose that right.

So I've since thought about what I may be omitting here. I did go to chat rooms where I believe there were minors. Like many other things that I admitted to, I am not entirely sure that I solicited a minor to engage in actual sex, but I'm 99.99999999...% sure since I don't think I ever asked anyone I chatted with to meet me. Nevertheless, I did engage in sex chat with these people, and there may have been dozens of prostitutes over the years, not just two, who were minors and I just didn't want to believe it.

If I had it to do over, I'd have clarified that. In fact, the polygrapher said that often times a person will be required to repeat the ploygraph to verify his honesty.

I'm certainly willing to do that, which of course will cost hundreds of more dollars.

It seems like such a friggin' racket, this stuff.

But G-d's in control, not me. I just have to surrender this and move on. Unfortunately I can't reschedule this thing for another month or so, plus I have a new job starting with a different schedule.

Oh well. This liar needs some sleep. I pray I pass the next test and get good news on my access to the kids, Thy Will, not mine, be done...

Penile Plethysmography: A F*@king Nightmare Test; The Sex Addict is a Gay Pedophile?

2008-12-13T19:32:00.000-08:00

Well if getting an erection by looking at an adult male with a hard on makes me gay, put me on the list.

And if getting an erection while listening to a graphic audio account of a peri-pubescent boy willfully perform oral sex on me and then have me plunge my erect penis in his lubricated anus, then list me as a gay pedophile.

And if getting an erection while listening to a graphic audio account of a peri-pubescent girl willfully perform oral sex on me and then have me plunge my erect penis in her lubricated vagina, then list me as a bisexual pedophile.

And if listening to the same accounts of graphic sex with boys and girls but adding in a few sentences about me 'slapping them around a bit' and threatening them to perform the graphic sex is associated with me getting an erection tells you that I'm a danger to be in public, then lock me up.

As I was telling the Rabbi in an email a little earlier, they could have put the word "Rabbi" or "goat" or "amoeba" in with the audio of the very graphic, lewd sexual descriptions and I still would have gotten aroused, in my opinion.

And when you look at this link you can learn what some in the legal and scientific community think about this test.

Why did I pay $3000 in cash to do this test that I knew I'd have a very good chance of failing?

For my kids. I did it for my kids.

If one day, fifteen or twenty years down the road, they ask "why didn't you fight harder to get more access to us?", I'll be able to say that I did everything within my power to get access to them.

I was so very sad after I finished that test yesterday, I can't even put it into words. They played about two full hours of graphic sexual audio content for me while I sat there without pants, with a electronic device wired up to my penis. I've not watched or listened to any pornography in the past two and a half years, so this was a real 'treat' (not!) for me.

There is no baseline to compare this test to. I've read that up to 15% percent of registered sex offenders came out with a 'negative' test in one study. There are statistics that say there are large numbers of false positives with this test.

I'd suggested that the Ex's current husband and my rabbi go through this exam to see how they score.

That didn't go over so well.

So I subjected myself to this so that on the outside chance that I'll be able to get a favorable report from the court approved evaluator, I won't have to worry about getting unrestricted access to my kids.

Now I don't know how he'll score my test, but I don't think it takes a genius to tell me that the erections that occurred with the violent gay and heterosexual audio segments and the erections during the gay and heterosexual nonviolent segments will likely seal my fate to supervised visits with my kids until they're 18.

And I'm told that, particularly to a Hasidic Jew, G-d doesn't have thing happen for no reason. Something good will come from this allegedly. It's just hard for me to believe it.

If anything, I know that I'll never allow myself to be alone with a single teenager or child since this shows me that in theory I could be a danger to them, particularly if they come on to me.

It would be such a friggin' nightmare if a beautiful teenaged girl approached me with a sexual solicitation of any kind. I think I'd be fine and be able to call on the resources available to me to avoid a problem, but according to this audio tape and my response, I would engage in illegal behavior.

I'm pretty mortified about this, but I have to keep one foot in front of the other. What else can I do?

G-d, grant me the serentity
to accept the things I cannot change
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.

Thy will, not mine, be done...

You Can Judge a Sex Addict by the Size of his Erect Penis

2008-12-12T02:35:00.000-08:00

They call it the "Peter Meter" or "plethysmograph".

I have an appointment later this morning to watch child pornography and adult pornography while an instrument is connected to my genitals to see if the rigidity and size of my erection while watching is more or less during adult versus child pornography.

The results of that and a lie detector will be used to produce a report that will be submitted to me, my Ex, my rabbi, and possibly the Court either in support of or against me being around my children unsupervised.

I'm not excited about this.

It's actually been a whirlwind week to begin with. I've been off since a week ago Tuesday. I've spent the last four days in the desert Southwest visiting some colleagues who were teaching me about a new job that I intend to do up here in the Northwest. I also met with a friend of mine from professional school and spent some time sightseeing.

When I booked the hotel, I took the cheapest one I could find near the airport. It wasn't until I arrived in that area that I realized that in every city in the country that would be the most likely area to find hookers, adult bookstores and drug dealers.

Nice thinkin' Lincoln...

I didn't act out, but I was tempted without a doubt. I don't carry cash which is the way I add a boundary between me and the smiling, waving whores that were trotting up and down the sidewalk in front of my hotel. I also didn't watch the TV which may have had some pay-for-view porn movies on it. I didn't stop at any porn shops either.

Overall, a sober trip sexually.

I spent some money on some gifts for my kids and on some books for myself, in addition to lots of Starbucks visits. I also ate quite a bit of food, downing a large pizza in two days and a huge calzone with some cheese bread last night. The night I bought the first pizza I also had some ice cream.

But, progress, not perfection seemed pretty good to me. I actually worked out once in the four days, which felt good. I also made it home from the hooker area where I picked up my car this evening when I arrived back in my home city. I made a few phone calls from the road going home to stay accountable, which always helps.

So, overall, I'm feeling pretty good.

I'm going to meet up with this beautiful girl, Badgerette, that I've been talking to, texting, and emailing for the past several weeks. I have some anxiety around whether she's "the one". She is definitely attractive, sharp, and she accepts me where I'm at. If our dates work out, I'm supposing I'll fly her out here to speak with my therapist a few times to see what he thinks of the situation.

But it's in G-d's hands, as it always is. I'm just grateful to be on the path of recovery, living sobriety, one day at a time...

The Sex Addict's Fear = False Expectations Appearing Real

2008-12-07T06:50:00.000-08:00

It's a nice expression. I'm not so sure I totally buy into it. There are things that we are afraid of that are real.

When a person faces certain problems, like health or financial problems, they may have fear around them that is anxiety related to a known consequence.

Obviously feelings like anxiety are complicated. They can occur on a pathological basis or there can be a 'healthy amount' of it that spurs one into action to help the situation resolve or to make plans to get the best possible outcome.

Anxiety can also be destructive, which is the kind that I'm more concerned about.

I'm in the midst of two weeks off from my regularly scheduled shift work. During this 'vacation', I've scheduled a four day business trip to help me learn about my new position. I've also scheduled the lie detector test and 'peter meter' (plethysmograph) to complete my sexual deviancy evaluation.

When I forget who's in control (G-d), I have a low level of anxiety smoldering in the background. Add into that the fatigue of my night/day sleep flip-flop, my on-going conversations with this woman I'm planning on meeting in the Midwest in a few weeks, and my continuing tight financial situation that has some uncertainty tied into my new job coming up, and you've got a recipe for some significant anxiety.

I remind myself that G-d's in control and that I just have to put one foot in front of the other and that seems to help.

Then I revert back to anxiety when 'something else' comes up. For example, last night I received a message from Badgerette on voicemail that I should call her after the Sabbath ends. Well, I was feeling unbelievably tired last night and felt I may be coming down with something or perhaps it's because I missed a dose of 'Vitamin P' (prozac). Whatever the case was, I delayed calling her for perhaps an hour at most after coming home, and I checked my email during that time. Just as I was about to call her, I noticed she signed out of her Y! messenger account. I hadn't even realized she was signed in and I didn't think I was signed in either.

Anyhow, I called her a moment later and both of her phone numbers went right to voicemail. I couldn't remember which voicemail she checks more, although I think it's the cell, so I just wrote her an email expressing an apology that I didn't catch her and that I'd like to talk with her.

Co-dependence still runs deep in this addict it seems, although perhaps not as bad as it used to.

So last night, while I was waiting for her to call or email or text me, I left a post here and then went to sleep, feeling exhausted. I woke up a few hours later only to find that she didn't contact me.

I elected to send a second email, saying I'd just woken up and that I was sad we didn't connect. After a snack, I went back to sleep for about four more hours and woke up spontaneously, anxious about some benefits plan that I have to enroll for in the next two days. I did that by computer, checking text and email intermittently to see if Badgerette returned the contact.

She didn't, so what did I do? I texted her 'good morning. how are u?'.

No answer in the past couple of hours.

Humph. Go figure.

As I think about this from a practical and spiritual standpoint, I realize that her not contacting me does not reflect on who I am as a person. For one thing, I'm fully aware that this could be about a lot of things apart from me. In fact, by definitions, it's not about me.

Things that I know are going on for her include that her dad was hospitalized over the weekend for pneumonia. She's had a backache. She mentioned something on her facebook page about the flu--is she feeling sick?

But, being an addict with some narcissistic tendencies, I can make things up in my head that she saw that I was online and chose not to contact her, which ticked her off. Or perhaps she rethought her involvement with me in light of my addictions. Or perhaps she has found another person.

For gosh sakes, I've not even met this woman and I've got all of this craziness in my head about the situation.

It is impressive and sad.

But, I must say that despite my lengthy rant above, I actually don't have a lot of negative energy going on about her right now. I've been pretty effective at not focusing my energy on why she hasn't contacted me.

The most powerful reminder again--G-d's in control, not me....

Sex Addict Dreams are not always Sexual

2008-12-06T22:50:00.000-08:00

But they are fairly often.

There was a period of years where I didn't remember any dreams. Now that I'm treated for sleep apnea with a device that gently splays open my airway with a continuous jet of air via a mask, I sleep much better and I remember my dreams.

I also don't snore anymore, which would have been a boon to my marriage.

Come to think of it, I have to wonder if my chronic severe fatigue would have been cured before I started acting out on the streets with prostitutes, would I have been able to save my 2nd marriage?

Moot questions to ponder. I digress...

I had a dream last night that was one of the more memorable and the first I've had with my 1st wife in many years.

My recollection is vague at best, but from what I remember, I met her publicly and wanted to go someplace semi-private to disclose to her. She agreed but became quite anxious.

At one point she asked me to wait for her to go to the bathroom since she gets diarrhea when she gets anxious and this was one of those times.

Since someone was in the locked bathroom, she said 'Oh well' and squatted in the middle of the hallway, ripped her panties off from under her skirt, and dropped a load of diarrhea on the floor in the middle of the hallway outside of the public bathroom.

She then stood up, apologized, and we went to sit down in a cafe/convenient store and I intended to disclose at that point.

That's when the dream ended, but from what I recall, I felt like my disclosure was more for her than for me. I had actually contacted her several years ago, early in marriage number two and I wanted her to know that I was married, religious, and felt remorse for hurting her and her family.

I sent her an email at that time that was copied to my parents, her parents, my rabbi, and my brother. as well as to my 2nd wife.

Wife #1's response was "if you're unable to explain why you were so hurtful and so unbelievably different in a bad way after we were married, I never want to hear from you again".

Well, as an addict in recovery now, I feel I was unable to tell her that back then in the midst of my addiction.

Nowadays, I feel that making an amends with her would only hurt her and potentially could hurt me if she decided to publicize my addiction to anyone.

Today I had lunch at a friend's house during the sabbath. He's one of the most respected guys I know, having been an addict himself and then subsequently going into recovery and then developing a monstrously successful career in real estate that made a multi, multi millionaire. He and a friend of his recently approached me about consulting them on a business project that's related to my field.

If things were to 'work out' for me as a consultant, I'm thinking my involvement in the project could be amongst the most lucrative that I've participated in.

Or it may lead to nothing.

G-d is in control of this and all other aspects of my life, so I just choose to go with it for now.

So I don't know what the dream about Ex #1 meant, nor do I know why I've had the (good?) fortune to be asked to consult on a potentially lucrative project, but I'm open minded to see where these things lead.

The best part today, of anything, is that I remain sober. Thank G-d for that...

Who am I to Say? The Sex Addict's criteria for a match

2008-11-23T02:22:00.000-08:00

I remember when the Ex first introduced me to her boyfriend who she ultimately married. Well, she didn't actually introduce us, she just had the Rabbi tell me that he would be at my boys' birthday party and I saw him. It wasn't too many weeks later that I actually spoke to him, and now that he's my boys' stepfather, he's proven himself a mentsch (Yiddish for 'first rate guy').

She filed for divorce around April 2007, the divorce was finalized October 2007, and they were dating some time (how long?) before the boys' third birthday in January 2008.

It's none of my beeswax nor should it matter what criteria the Ex used in finding her bashert (beloved).

Nevertheless, I find it interesting that the guy is nearly a foot taller (and I'm close to six feet!) and most likely weighs a hundred pounds less (I'm around 300).

But, as my group recently pointed out to me, I've yet to mention what the criteria I have for a future spouse.

I think some criteria are absolute necessities and some are flexible.

In terms of absolutes:

-She must be an Orthodox Jew and open to the 'flavor' of my sect that I've chosen to adopt the traditions of.

-She should have at most one or two children. Any more, per most folks who support me and know me, would we too difficult an adjustment. I'd prefer the children be boys, as young girls have been part of my arousal template when I was acting out on the internet.

-She needs to be bright. I'm not looking for a Rhodes Scholar, but I'd like to have someone who can figure out the everyday problems that life throws us, particularly if I'm not available 24/7, given my chosen profession.

-She must accept the fact that I'm a person who has suffered from compulsive behaviors that included some shameful sexual practices both with prostitutes and on the internet. Along the same lines, we have to be able to talk recovery regularly and without reserve.

-She has to be open to counseling for us, for me, and for herself.

-If she has any compulsive problems of her own, she should be in some sort of recovery program, preferably 12 step or at least open to 12 step.

Important things that are negotiable:

-There should be some chemistry between us. I can't speak for anyone else, but I'd like to have some attraction to this person. I bring up the example of Oprah. She's a beautiful woman at her heaviest and at her lightest. I have a sister who is the same way. I understand we age, we may gain or lose weight, but having some degree of attraction seems important to me.

-She should be open to discussing the most important parts of our lives and we should have similar ideals about: home organization/cleanliness, having children (I want more), education (Jewish private school), career options, food and exercise issues, how to save money/invest, how to spend money and discussions around money, and how outside relationships will dovetail with our lives (friends and family).

Things that are negotiable but with little wiggle room:

-How to resolve conflicts. I've been reading books by John Gottman and The Four Agreements and I think that how we argue is as or more important than the content of the argument. It's an area where I absolutely failed in both previous marriages, but I feel like I've come a long way due to recovery and awareness of these important factors that one needs to respect in disagreements.

I'm not sure there's really anything else that's a deal breaker, apart than I expect her to be as honest with me as I am with her.

There's a huge difference in me going into the dating world this time versus other times in my life. I've never been honest with myself nor with the other person.

Regarding an update on my dating, Ms. Toronto has not called me back, I disclosed to a Ms. Philadelphia who seemed interesting and interested, and now I think both of those potential matches are closed.

By far the most exciting and promising conversations are with Badgerette. She's a beautiful woman who was raised in the town where I went to college and we figured out that she was in middle/high school around the time I was in college (she's 31, I'm 38).

I disclosed completely to her and she's still interested in me.

She disclosed about some abusive relationships she was in, about some weight issues that she's had, and about some ADHD that she is treated for. Evidently she also has some mild learning disability, perhaps as evidenced in her spelling in chats/emails, but I think she comes across as being bright, spunky, friendly and sweet.

Initially I was going to buy a ticket to visit her in the Midwest for about two weeks from now, but I realized that my group says I'm moving too fast and they wanted me to print the above criteria and discuss them before making any commitments.

I'm scared on some level that this may be 'the one'. While it's exciting, I have no idea what recovery will turn into when I have someone move into my condo and share my life. It should be interesting to take these steps of meeting someone and talking about compatibility.

Right now, I've spoken to her by phone several times and I find our conversations very pleasant. We've talked about everything from musical tastes, movies and books we like, religion, personal experiences growing up, and we've even discussed what we hope for in a spouse.

I found another great book that I shared with a recovery friend called The Hard Questions written by a Susan Piver. She's an excellent writer and goes through the 100 or so questions she and her boyfriend discussed prior to marriage. She says that they're questions any of us can use at any point in a marriage/relationship with a significant other.

Badgerette and I read the first chapters on the phone and I thought it was really meaningful.

But, G-d is in control. I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, and listen to the wisdom of those around me while making my decisions. Lord knows I need guidance...