Hey! Thank you for reading and replying! I really appreciate hearing other people’s thoughts and perspectives about the topic. The “looking” was always a big problem before recovery and I was with my wife for 14 years so now that it’s over I’m just not really sure what to do differently with my behavior. But I see your point and it makes a lot of sense. I’m not currently looking for a new partner. I’ve got a lot of big life stuff coming up and I’m not emotionally any where near being ready to “move on” from my wife, so I have no interest in dating apps or even meeting someone organically. Therefore, I actually do agree with you and @Matt about your inputs and it means a lot to me that you both shared your opinions with me. I don’t want to set myself up for failure and think that “it’s okay, I’m single now so looking no longer hurts anyone.” and then get wrapped back up in fantasy or not seeing people as people again. Thank you again and I’m glad that my post inspired you to post because your post has inspired me lol 
How do i make posts?
Tap the pencil-and-paper icon at the top right of the screen if you want to make a brand new topic (a new conversation thread).
If you want to reply to posts on an existing thread, tap the “Reply” arrow under the post you want to reply to.
Welcome to Talking Sober!
Navigation on this app is difficult i have no idea whats going on. Lol
You’ll figure it out eventually. It’s kind of like figuring out sobriety: it takes time but it’s worth the effort 
Hi Erin,
thank you for your honest post. I’m sorry your marriage ended. That alone is a major life event and going through that while pursuing recovery (we never stop being in recovery but the early days can be rough) is kind of a double whammy. I’m glad you’ve been holding onto your sober goals nevertheless.
For context, I’ve never done SLAA or anything AA related, so I’m not very familiar with their terminology, like the bottom line. I do understand what it means but just FYI to avoid confusion 
Looking is such a multi-layered topic. We can suggest, theorise and learn from experience but the matter of the fact is, that there’s no hard line that fits all. You can close your eyes, but at least I have years worth of material in my head. You told us how exhausting it was to go to places and trying not to look at people. We have twisted view of other people, whom we’ve reduced as objects for our selfish pleasure. However, that’s not the root of the issue. The root is that there’s something broken in us, that needs healing. Addiction is a symptom of something dysfunctional within a person. In my case, it was the lack of love and affection growing up. I was not taught how to manage my emotions so pmo became a release valve. I was very caught up with my imaginary world because my real life was filled with tension and anxiety. Fantasies and pmo became a counterfeit for love that I longed for.
I’m trying to point out that battling with your symptoms, like a lustful gaze, is not the only front. A deeper healing needs to begin that allows the hollow places to be filled. The more whole we become, the more our mindset towards others change and we truly see their value. If you value and respect something, it’s difficult to exploit it. This is an abstract journey that has no maps, no timetables and not even landmarks but people that go with you for a certain leg.
A few thoughts on practical aspects of looking. I’m of the opinion that we as humans can not NOT look. You can train your eyes but you can’t rid the tendency off. Things like 3 second rules and double dipping/looking are elementary safety measurements, literal lines in the sand. Our thought processes happen faster than we can grasp, and whoops, off we go. The more I’ve healed, the less I have lust in my eyes. I’ve tried to teach myself that my thoughts are like water flowing through my fingers. I CHOOSE what I hold onto and what I let go. I do turn my head away from certain things/people when I feel triggered and keep going, letting the water flow. If get caught up, I silently ask for forgiveness from my HP and the person I’ve oogled at. I train my mind to recognise people’s value and that they are not to be objectified. This is not from any book or programme, so I don’t endorse it generally, but share it as something that has worked for me.
Edited to add: I mentioned that we as humans can’t help looking. Having the tendency is still not a “licence to look”. If you take it as such, you are deceiving yourself and your motivation is off. After re-reading my post, it felt important to include this. The internet needs disclaimers.
Thanks for this share, really good to read your take on it. A lustful gaze is something I struggle with, particularly in the summertime when there is more skin on show.
I 100% get what you’re saying about “we as humans can not NOT look”. I think it’s natural to look at people in the street, but I also feel like as sex addicts this is turned up to 11, and not in a healthy way. Recently I’ve noticed myself looking at people before I’ve even consciously made the decision to do so, like I was walking through town the other week and before I’d even seen a couple of women as I walked round a corner, I was already looking at them. It got to the point where it started to really upset me. I don’t want to feel like my eyes are bouncing around treating everyone like a sex object, constantly scanning for potential sexual partners.
I spoke to my sponsor about checking people out/ogling/objectifying yesterday.
He was saying that the 3 second rule to him feels like more of a punishment, which makes it difficult to use and stick to. What he has found helpful is saying a prayer “God, help me find in you what I look for in them”. He’s not religious, neither am I, but I’m going to try this out and see if it helps. It feels like a more positive action than the 3 second rule.
I relapsed on alcohol and sex, and i feel so tired and defeated, wonder if I should even fight this anymore…
Feeling is defeated is understandable. After a relapse such a feeling is even inevitable. But that’s all it is - a feeling. If you look at your life and the things in it, they’re probably NOT destroyed by this relapse. You might have consequences but altogether, life is STILL worth living and sobriety worth pursuing. Not for others but you, because YOU are valuable even when you feel the lowest of the low.
Remember that addiction is a fatal all consuming disease. It does not care what is good for you, your life, your relationships. Addiction gives you nothing in return, it makes you chase shadows that you can never catch. It will eat you alive until there’s nothing left.
Life is worth fighting for, your life is too valuable to be wasted in addiction. Please stay safe.
Sorry to hear about your relapse.
Please don’t allow this to spiral into something worse than it needs to be.
99.9999% of people on here (probably 100%) have relapsed one time or another. It’s not pleasant, but you can learn from it and use it as a positive thing to help protect you from future relapses.
Prior to the relapse, were you triggered? How can you avoid, mitigate, or deal with these triggers in a healthy way in the future?
There’s a great community of sex addicts on here, if you are struggling, please reach out. It’s often said that the opposite of addiction is connection, and this is really true. If you isolate yourself and allow the negative thoughts to build up, you’re gonna spiral and relapse. Keep coming back here, post, chat, and we can all help each other stay sober.
This will probably turn into a long ramble…
Last Thursday was 1 year sober, no acting out.
The last couple of weeks I’ve been coming round to the realisation/understanding that my sobriety from sexual acting out has led to me “acting in” and becoming sexually anorexic.
I’ve been so scared of fucking up and relapsing that I’ve not allowed myself to engage in healthy sexuality. I have been ignoring, minimising, invalidating and beating myself up for having any sort of sexual thought or impulse in order to maintain my abstinence. I put masturbation in my inner circle, but haven’t done any thinking on how masturbation can be healthy, and how it can be done in a mindful way to connect me to my feelings and my body.
I have spoken to both my sponsor and my therapist about this, I need to speak to them a bit more about it and put some work and thought into what healthy sexuality is for me. I feel like this could be me about to do some proper recovery, rather than just blindly putting up walls to any sort of sexual feeling and expression, be it healthy or not.
Now that I’m doing some more thinking around this, I wonder if perhaps my abstinence for the last year has been a form of self-punishment, not allowing myself the good stuff that a healthy attitude towards sexuality can bring.
I’m not about to jump straight back into “bed” and go back to masturbating the way I used to, because that definitely wasn’t healthy. I’m still feeling very anxious about how I can navigate a healthy sexuality while maintaining sobriety, and I have a lot to learn and figure out.
To be honest, the last day of two I was feeling pretty positive about exploring my sexuality in a healthy way. But today I’ve just been feeling weird about it, like I think because I’ve been thinking about masturbation more it’s becoming a big deal and I’m getting worried about what my intentions are and whether I want to masturbate because it’s healthy natural urges, or if it’s the addiction trying to dig it’s claws back into me.
Anyway, yeah. Enjoy that brain dump.
TLDR
Stopped acting out, started acting in, realised after a year that I’m sexually anorexic, confused af.
Are you in a relationship?
If not, than I think choosing a celibate lifestyle would be a viable choice for you right now. In SA, the bottom line set is no sex with self or any other person other than a spouse. So single members of SA would stay celibate until marriage. And I think it’s very possible to embrace celibacy without assuming sexual anorexia. Plenty of members in SA, SAA, SLAA, and TS are not having sex, and are okay with it.
Now if one is being sexually abstinent while in a marriage, that’s a different story. I was sexually anorexic with my wife for a number of years.
I know everyone in the world is going to a have a differing conflict beliefs when it comes to sexuality. But if I was in your position, desiring to experience sexual intimacy, I would start pursuing relationships. Dating. Learning to show up in a women’s life in my own masculine energy. Personally, I think people jump into sex to quickly. I think it’s best to establish commitment first. A commitment such as marriage.
A know of lots of spouses that would NOT be okay if they discovered that their partners had a secret masturbation habit. So if one can demonstrate self control before marriage, it will go a long way to ensure that the sexual intimacy shared is exclusive.
A lot of this is my opinion, but along this journey of mine, it’s forced me to dig deep and embrace good reasons for the choices that I make in my life.
I’m not in a relationship currently.
I regularly go to SAA meetings and have recently switched sponsors, my current sponsor is pretty on it and I’m feeling positive about working the steps with him.
I think abstinence has its place for sure, and I think a period of celibacy is good, but I don’t think 100% celibacy is the solution. With a drug/alcohol addiction of course you’d want to go 100% abstinence, but I think sex addiction has to be more like a food addiction in this respect, to abstain completely is not gonna work. It’s about finding a way to re-engage but in a healthy way that isn’t going to hurt oneself or others.
I’ve been reading a bit around healthy sexuality, and I don’t see why masturbation would be excluded from this. Provided it is done with the right intent, mindfully, without the use of pornography, and not to excess. I’m still working on a more complete “definition” for healthy masturbation to sit in my outer circle.
When I spoke to my sponsor about this he explained how masturbation was in all three of his circles. In mine it is currently only in my inner circle.
I don’t want to date at this moment in time. Does this mean I am to live a sexually unfulfilled life?
When I started my recovery, I decided not to masturbate, not because I thought masturbation was inherently bad or wrong, but because at the time I had no concept of what healthy masturbation was, and saw it only as a slippery slope right back into porn and acting out.
However, with careful thought and practice I believe it can be a way of connecting with oneself, being present in the moment in an act of self care and self love.
If I can’t be present and in the moment with just myself, how am I gonna show up in the same way for a partner in the future?
It’s not about having a secret shameful habit of masturbating. Shame has no place in a healthy sex life. But I don’t think masturbation has to be seen as a dirty secret to be ashamed of, provided it’s done in a healthy, non-compulsive way.
Respectfully, I’m going to disagree with you on no sex before marriage. I think our values don’t align here and that’s okay. If it works for you that’s great but I don’t agree with it.
My intention is not to “gang up on you” but I second Kevin here. I know it’s not a popular pov.
I chose celibacy waaay before I ever even started recovery. I found that sleeping around only corrupted me internally. Pmo was my only “outlet” for years, until I decided to give that up too. I was single when my recovery began and had A MASSIVE battle of giving up “my last resort” of sexuality. Personally, I know I have no way of going back to masturbation. It is so deeply rooted in my addiction that I’m probably never going to be able to untangle it. My therapist even suggested that I could still masturbate but I knew I couldn’t entertain that idea. I knew where it would take me.
So how can you engage with your sexuality then? What is it that we long to have through sex? Companionship, intimacy, pleasure and connection. I believe that a mere physical (sexual) act alone can’t accomplish those, so there needs to be more. I never had those things through one-nighters or masturbation, at least. I discovered in recovery that self-love and acceptance are the birth place for good sex. If I’m disconnected from myself, I can’t connect with others. If I’m content with myself, I’m able to give instead of expecting or chasing something. I built up my self worth in front of a mirror a piece by piece. These not subtitues for sexuality, but the start point.
I embarked on a journey of discovering what femininity is and what it means to me to be a female. My thoughts towards sex and sexuality changed to more positive as I was able to embrace myself wholly. The way I see masturbating is that it’s a counterfeit of love and connection. It’s like taking a short cut in a race and then being disqualified for it.
I understand I’m probably biased in my views since I don’t see much value in masturbation. It would be an issue if I or Hubby started to do it (we have had conversations about it and are on the same page). I’m glad I chose to be celibate until we got married.
No no, all good, I appreciate both your and @KevinesKay responses!
Maybe I haven’t come across in the way I was wanting to. I’m not anti-celibacy per se, but I think in my situation, while it has been a good circuit-breaker to reboot my brain from my addiction, I also feel like I’ve hidden behind it as a (poor) excuse to not crack on with proper recovery (working the steps etc) and possibly been using it as a punishment for what I did when in active addiction.
I’ve felt like any sexual thoughts and feelings are bad, and I don’t think that’s a healthy way to live life. Obviously I don’t want to fall back into addiction, but if I’ve used abstinence as a punishment, that’s not a healthy way to stay sober. Someone in my SAA meeting a few weeks ago said something about abstinence being different to recovery, and it really struck something inside me. I’ve been abstinent, but I don’t feel like I’ve been fully engaging in recovery if that makes sense?
I’m not trying to justify acting out. I don’t want that. I don’t want to go out and sleep around. I don’t want to go back to bingeing porn and cybersex fuelled masturbation “sessions”.
But I also don’t want to just bury any kind of sexuality away, that doesn’t feel like a healthy way to cope with life, just like acting out wasn’t a healthy way to cope either.
I also am not saying that I’m ready to masturbate right now (and maybe I’ll decide I’m not going to at all), like you it was deeply ingrained in my addiction.
However, if I work it through my circles, and talk it through with my therapist, sponsor, and other fellows, then I stand a better chance of figuring it out.
You mentioned intimacy, pleasure, and connection as reasons for having sex. Can one not be intimate and connect with oneself by giving pleasure through masturbation?
I really like what you said about self-love, acceptance, and self-worth though, those things I am trying to work on in order to be and feel better.
I think it also depends on how we look at masturbation. If you look at it just as a cheap means to orgasm, then maybe yeah that’s like taking a shortcut in a race.
But if it’s relaxed, sensation focused rather than orgasm focused, and an expression of self love & self care. That to me sounds more like running yourself a nice hot bath after a long hard day at work.
…But maybe that’s just me making excuses and justifications because someone suggested masturbation might be okay and I’ve latched onto it.
I clearly have more thinking and more work to do on this. But I’ll leave it there for now 
Hey Rich! I actually agree with Livy and Kevin as well. There’s multiple individuals in the SLAA group I attend that have committed to no sexual contact (even with self) outside of a healthy relationship. When my addiction surfaced I participated in a “reboot” where I abstained from all sexual contact (again, even with self) for over a year and this helped with multiple aspects of my acting out. To be completely transparent though, I don’t currently follow this rule myself but only out of medical necessity, which probably sounds like bullshit lol, but I promise it’s not. After my medical thing is finished I plan to return to abstinence outside of a healthy relationship because I also see great value in it.
Just my two cents though!
I really like this, it gives me a great feeling of peace via the ability to just trust in the processes of life. Something bigger than me knows what’s going on and how to make certain that things go as they need to.
Day 19 sober. No PMO. I am longing to be a wholo month sober
@ErinTheSideOfCaution I belong to SLAA and I am of those who have committed to no sexual contact. I agree with your post
I agree with we, acting out irresponsibily is definitely is a problem, but the main problem with some programs is they are about being purist, perfect. This bar is so extremely high and in my view unrealistic. This makes one hate oneself so much more than they already do. And then they are constantly run by fear.
I am bad, horrible.
As when one constantly is hyper monitoring oneself, when they do not have a good foundation of self love and compassion, then it is self-flaggetion.
Ones standards should be realistic, the more away one is from self love the more dogmatic one becomes as it all then becomes of this illusionary image that one invests in. If one is addicted to heroin, one cant just give it up in one swoop. You slowly progress towards it, in baby steps. You cant be on the ground floor and expect yourself to keep trying to get on the top floor immediately.
Being addicted to having all your life consumed by fear of a relapse is a different kind of addiction in itself. As you grow and there is more self acceptance, whatever needs to go will go and whatever needs to stay will stay.
Do not seek so much validation with regards to your actions, thoughts etc.
Pushing and effort in my opinion has never worked, in fact it has made things much worse. Easy does it. Progress not perfection, just for today.
Abraham Hicks says that self condemnation is the foundation for self loathing. Chip at it everyday, you are wonderful and beautiful just the way you are. Acceptance not rejection, my lovely friend.