The Myths About Sex: from A.A. in Nanaimo BC

THE MYTHS ABOUT SEX

Our search for serenity is a seeking for enlightenment about ourselves. The most puzzling problem we face is the riddle of our own minds. Nothing benefits us so much as the reason for our illogical behavior. The things we want are not always the things our efforts provide and the complications of life in this day and age exaggerate the contradictions within our own personality.
We cry for peace while we frantically prepare for war. We yearn for equality of opportunity and at the same time, shut ourselves off in little compartments of race, color, sex and creed. We wish for peace of mind and yet act as though we are afraid of being alone in solitude.
We imagine we control our own lives by our ability to reason, then find ourselves persuaded to buy things we neither want or need by the high pressure psychological tools of “motivation researchers”. Living in an age of unparalleled scientific and material progress, we often fail to recognize that our human relationships are unreasonable. We hide this fact from ourselves with elaborate group alibis. We don’t want to admit how irrational many of our group relationships are and sometimes the excuses for our behavior become so generally accepted that we can only refer to them as myths produced by our culture.
We view with scorn the superstitions of our ancestors yet modern myths, which dominate most of our thinking, are hardly less ludicrous than those of the ancients. We believe we are in control of our lives while a computer programmer puts the tiniest details of our actions into a memory bank, which can be tapped by any nation in the world with the opportunity or necessity of investigating us.
We think we manage our own affairs and the banks of Canada put the cost-of-living up one percent a week by manipulating interest rates without asking us a single question. Those interest rates now have reached levels where the bank may say to a man who has believed for 15 years that he owns his own home, you will now pay six percent more interest than you agreed to when you purchased this property and if you can’t, we will own the property outright. A myth exists that we control our own destiny as a nation, but the financiers of the United States own 91 percent of our oil resources and can actually shut off our supply if we don’t do what they wish.
Those are just a few of our modern myths. And at no point in our lives is the effect of modern myths so apparent as in our sexual relationships. The goddess of love has never been worshipped more devotedly or with more fanciful myths than today. If we are to have a way of achieving lasting growth in our sexual relationships, we must identify those mythical notions which cloud our vision.
There are four of them…modern myths…about sex, which particularly hamper us in our search for the wholesome attitudes we want. We call these four false pictures of reality the myth of strength, the myth of perfection, the myth of evil and the myth of possession. Each of these four myths finds wide acceptance among a large group of our population. All of them distort the objective view of reality.
Most of us have visited the house of mirrors at a fair. You enter a room filled with mirrors, some make you look tall, some make you look fat, some totally distort your image. Our misunderstanding and our wrong ideas give us similarly twisted views of reality. When we view any ideal through mistaken ideas, when we distort reality, we see an image of the truth that is as untrue as any of the house of mirrors distortions. We are unable to deal with our problems constructively because of our false notions about ourselves and about our world. We are so accustomed to the distortions that we may not recognize the truth when it is handed to us.

THE MYTH OF PERFECTION
The myth of sexual perfection is just that kind of distortion. It deludes us into believing that there is such a thing as a PERFECT sexual relationship. The ideal of sex becomes a highly exaggerated goal. We are led to believe that we should discover a mate with whom a complete fulfillment of our dreams is achieved. The plot of this love story is always the same. Boy meets girl. They are fascinated with each other at first sight. An ELECTRIC something passes between them and they are immediately IN LOVE. The courtship is an exciting whirlwind of ecstatic emotion. They are quickly married and THEY LIVE HAPPILY EVER AFTER. We have been sentimentalizing this fantasy in love songs, stories and movies and plays for centuries. (For marriage compatibility see page 119 of the AA 12 steps and 12 traditions).
But whenever two people attempt to build their relationship on this model, the disillusionment usually follows quickly, for they have dreamed unwisely and too well. They have expected the impossible. They have distorted the reality into a fantasy in their dreams.
What passes for perfection is never achieved without struggle, effort and pain. In any reasonably satisfactory marriage there will be occasions when the man and woman will experience happiness quite beyond description. There will usually also be wet diapers, dirty dishes, annoying irritations, hair curlers and muddy shoes.
There will be financial problems, the sudden loss of a job, the unreasonable quarrel at the end of a tiring day. If there is genuine love and a mutual understanding and respect, then the sexual aspect of marriage will probably grow along with the other growths of the relationship.
On the other hand, a frantic struggle for a so-called sexual perfection can only lead to frustration, frigidity and impotence. Sexual perfection sought in and for itself brings only disillusionment. The heat of physical passion will not remove the need for genuine sharing. A warm lover’s kiss cannot substitute for agreement about family budgets, mutual understanding of what discipline is needed for the children. Thoughtless and unkind words must be forgiven before the sex act can achieve its full meaning.
The myth of sexual perfection asserts that the marriage is some kind of special human relationship where strong physical attraction will remove the ordinary problems two people have trying to adjust to each other. It ruins most marriages before they ever get past the honeymoon because no two people ever dream of sexual perfection in quite the same terms.
If the girl dreams of sexual perfection as tenderness and consideration and her boyfriend dreams of it as wild passion, they are both bitterly disappointed. Both are expecting a certain kind of feeling in the relationship. They are unable to see that these feelings can only be produced when both of them allow them to grow. They never married each other anyway. Both married a fantasy in which the person they chose was invested with all the beauty, sexuality, warmth, tenderness, understanding, passion, strength and security. The real human being kept insisting on intruding into that fantasy.
When we first leave home, we don’t really expect perfection from the first roommate we choose. Why then should we expect perfection in the person we marry? Should they be perfect because we want them to be? Should they be perfect simply because they are of the opposite sex? Each of us is full of imperfections and we have always known that. We examine ourselves and we find dozens of things we don’t like about ourselves. But when the myth of sexual perfection is operational, we blind ourselves to the imperfections in the object of our dream. If we were forced to pick a person with whom to share our lives, there would be a million qualities we would examine. We need to seek the same qualities in a partner with whom we share our lives.
If these qualities are present in the partner we choose, the sexual part of the relationship takes care of itself. No amount of high temperature sex can replace tolerance, kindness, justice, courtesy and love, or the enjoyment of another person’s presence. The real test of a sexual relationship is this: do you deeply enjoy each other after the sexual needs have been satisfied? Is it good, is it comfortable, and is it pleasurable just to be around each other? Do you each bring out the better nature of the other person?
It would be foolish to believe that sexual attraction plays no important part in a happy relationship. But when we take one part of that relationship…the sexual part…and exaggerate it to the point of expecting perfection, we seriously warp the substance of reality. We not only place undue importance on sexual perfection, we are also demanding that life fit an impossible condition.

THE MYTH OF EVIL
Almost as troublesome as the myth of perfection, is the myth of evil. We, who have been raised in the Christian tradition, labor under 2000 years of biased thinking about sex. Not all Christian thinking suffers from this bias, but there have always been those in the Christian tradition who have believed that evil resided in the fact that man was born with a body.
From the vermin encrusted hermits of the Egyptian desert, who mutilated their bodies in the mistaken belief that all physical desire was evil, to the Puritanical missionaries clothing naked natives of the South Pacific in Mother Hubbards, we can trace the stream of biased thinking. It has only been within the last few years that some enlightened Christians have been able to raise their children without ingraining the fear of sexuality with images of insanity from abuse, early death or the threat of Hell fire.
To exalt purity of mind and motive is one thing. To debase the body God created is something quite different. Those whose profession it is to provide psychotherapy for disturbed people find that at least half the mentally disturbed people have emotional conflicts complicated by some kind of devoted, but mistaken, religious piety. There is something terribly wrong with child training when a whole adult life can be wrecked by guilt feelings caused by an ignorant parent disapproving of a child’s discovery of his sexual organs when he is three or four years old.
It is a curious kind of twisted thinking which defines purity as a denial of normal physical desire. This kind of so-called purity produces the nastiest variety of narrow-mindedness. It has been said with good reason: “To the pure, all things are impure.” These bigots fail to remember that Jesus did not earn his reputation as a friend of publicans and sinners by an aloof of intolerant attitude toward them. He not only associated with these people because they sought His help; He mingled with them because he knew they were apt to be honest and genuine. He preferred their company to the scribes and learned men of Israel who assumed they were holy because they followed a code of outward behavior without taking the trouble to clean up the sewers of their minds.
The purpose of guilt feelings is to warn us when our behavior is inconsistent with inner ideals. But guilt is not always the product of inner conviction. It is sometimes the result of fear and insecurity. If a child is shown disapproval when he examines his own body because all bodies are a mystery to him, these feelings of being bad usually persist into adulthood. That kind of guilty feeling can become more or less a chronic state of mind unassociated with any specific act. Our problem is that we pass on to our children, not only the good things of our mind, but we also convey to them the effects of our own guilt, fears, insecurities and intolerance.
If we feel guilty about our physical desires, we usually convey these same tensions and conflicts to our children. They will grow up under the ugly shadow thrown by our belief of evil nature when we refer to our sexual urges. Why are we so stupid as to single out one bodily urge, called sex, and call it evil?
If we crave a steak and smell it cooking and our mouth waters, we don’t feel evil about the bodily craving of hunger. If our appetite leads to gluttony we punish ourselves physically and the universe will add punishment called obesity and physical deterioration. But we don’t call a hungry person evil.
Neither is the fact that we are born with sexual desires an evil. We only transgress the laws of the universe when we USE sex as an end in itself, as a means of getting rather than giving, or as an indulgence of self without regard for the rights of others.
We can escape the burden of false guilt and nameless fears when we recognize deep within our minds that our sex powers were God given and therefore good, neither to be abused nor used lightly; not to be despised nor loathed.

THE MYTH OF STRENGTH
In our society a great many people seem unsure of their manliness or womanliness. This is an inner fear which we try for the most part to hide. Some of us frequently attempt to reassure ourselves by proving we are sexually potent.
There are many reasons why sexual ability has become the exaggerated yardstick of strength among the people of our culture. A great many people have expressed thoughtful opinions on the subject. Regardless of the basic causes, we find ourselves in a situation where it is becoming important to us to recognize that manly and womanly strength is composed of other qualities besides sexuality. The second fact is that it has been scientifically accepted that probably 50 percent of all men suffer from some degree of sexual impotency during their lifetime.
Both of these observations indicate that the male population has been exposed to ideas which exaggerate the importance of sexual potency and leave them with the very real fear that any temporary inadequacy in this area of living is a serious threat to their manly integrity. This is not a problem limited to men. The incidence of frigidity among women is also an alarming symptom that something is seriously wrong with our notions about sex.
Many psychologists are seriously disturbed by the current emphasis on the female bosom. Even while this fad is in vogue, we find few mothers who nurse their children. So the psychologists believe that society has tended to make an overly important decorative feature out of what was once a necessary and useful organ, magnificently designed for its purpose.
With 10 and 11 year old girls demanding padded bras, they tend to fear for the emotional future of these girls as they grow up into womanhood. These are only a few of the indications that personal strength is identified in the minds of many people as the preservation of youth and performance of certain sexual rituals. The result is a sexual myth of strength.
It is true that sexual vigor is more pronounced in youth. No one enjoys the prospect of aging and the necessity of adjusting their life to a decline of physical strength. The fountain of youth will always be sought as long as man lives on this earth. Nevertheless, part of emotional maturity is the easy acceptance of the natural aging process without the felling that glands make the person. There is no particular reason why we should measure manhood or womanhood by the activity of the sexual organs. As long as our bodies are functioning normally, we should learn to be content with things as they are. The things that make a person are the mind, the emotions and the character, not the size or strength of the glands.
The myth, in which strength is gauged by sexuality, causes us to be afraid, to inflate the importance of youth and to create needless anxieties about our sexual adequacy within ourselves. This fight against the reality of aging is often lived out to regrettable conclusions by older men and women and confirms that there is no fool like an old fool. If we can learn to accept ourselves as we are, rather than attempting to live up to these myths, we are taking the first steps toward freeing ourselves of our sexual fears and insecurities.

THE MYTH OF POSSESSION
The myth of possession is the root of sexual jealousy. It makes us confuse possession with love. Many marriages shipwreck on this rock. No man or woman has the right to feel he or she can possess another human being. Not even a child. Love and loyalty are things which have to be given, they can never be demanded or possessed. It is true that when a couple are married they make certain promises to each other, but the act of love and of giving love, must be renewed every day.
Sometimes we feel that because a minister, priest, or rabbi or a Justice of the Peace stood before us and pronounced certain words, that this act of wedding gave us the right to be possessive. The words are love, honor and cherish. They are not possess, dominate and suspect.
Usually people who confuse possession with love consider that the process of courtship stops with the wedding. The clergyman may perform the ceremony, but the marriage is made by the people in the union, not by the church or the clergyman. The wedding takes a few minutes. The marriage may take a lifetime to fully blossom. The continuation of love can only be possible if the partners continue to generate it individually and share it with each other.
Possessiveness is the enemy of love. If one partner begins to take the other for granted, if they behave in a domineering and possessive manner, love will begin to wither and die. That is a violation of the first principle of love. Love can only be given spontaneously and voluntarily. Women sometimes treat their husbands as though they thought this man is mine to mould as I choose. He exists solely to serve me, or to pamper my whims. On the other hand, there are men who treat their wives as though they were property, as though the woman existed entirely to satisfy their desires, to decorate the home, care for the children. A woman treated in this fashion is not truly loved by her husband. She will consider that to him she is only a convenient piece of furniture for the home. Love can’t and won’t grow in that atmosphere.
Where love exists, the persons involved give to each other and they overlook the imperfections of each other. They do not blind themselves to the imperfections, or try to correct them, they simply choose to ignore them. They understand and forgive each other’s failures.
If a man loves a woman and she has an affair, he first asks himself: “Where did I fail her so that she needed to seek love elsewhere?” If he cannot find that answer, he has only two possibilities consistent with his love for her. He can either let her go seeking the love she needs, or reach an agreement that they will share whatever companionship there is left. The same applies to a woman who has lost the love of her husband. If both truly want the marriage to work, they will find a way to restore their love, perhaps by resuming their courtship and by forgiving one another.
The key words in partnerships between men and women are the same. Not my and mine, but ours and yours. In partnerships and marriages you can only receive those things which are freely given in love. If one of the partners does not choose to give, there isn’t any way to compel the giving without alienating the relationship.
The myth of possession had its origin in the ancient slave trading days. Neither modern man nor modern woman will accept that standard today. Since women nowadays almost always have to share in the earning of family funds, they insist on equality with their mates. And rightly so. They are not willing to be treated as possessions because they know that human life can’t rightfully be bartered or sold.
Anyone of the modern myths I have mentioned is the enemy of love and a barrier to satisfactory sexual relationships. Fortunately not everyone in our society suffers under the delusion of these myths. There are many that recognize the false character of the myths, which has been governing their behavior. All four of these myths divorce love from sex. They are beliefs that make it difficult, if not impossible, to use sex as an expression of love. They distort the truth, violate the sacredness of the individual and prevent us from facing our inner problems with honesty. They hinder us in our attempt to grow into the kind of people we are capable of becoming.

THE MASK OF DECEIT
The emotional patterns of one’s life are re-enacted in his sexual relationships. Whether a person is brutal, sensitive, frightened, self-centered or censorious is usually mirrored in his lovemaking. In this most intimate of personal relationships, a major part of what we call our personality will be revealed. Strengths and weaknesses of men and women are dramatized in the way they make love. Not only are personality structures revealed by the patterns of sexual behavior, but men and women are also better understood when they know why they make love. Sexual attraction is based upon many things, of which physical desire is only one. Curiosity, emotional tensions, loneliness, and the desire for close identification with someone are a few of the reasons for lovemaking. Fear and anger may even play a part in temporarily heightening sexual desire.
No human relationship brings to focus so many complex emotional patterns as the expression of sexuality. No natural urge is subject to so many possible distortions. At the same time, sexuality offers us enormous potential for growth and emotional maturity. To achieve our fullest adulthood we must grow up sexually. Yet how few are the guideposts which are available to lead us toward such growth! The whole subject is often shrouded in mists of secrecy and smut. Honest discussion of the subject is seldom heard. What passes for sex education often leaves much to be desired. Many books that claim to help are either full of superficial pious advice or else they confine instruction to a listing of sexual techniques.
We are concerned here with the problems of those who seek to remove from their way of living some of the more troublesome distortions of sexuality – those who wish to find some clues to a more satisfactory sexual adjustment in which sex can be used as a partner of growth, rather than a satisfier of limited and narrow emotional needs.
There are four common distortions of sexuality which we shall mention. It will help us to understand problems of sex and suggest workable solutions if we first have a clear understanding of the peculiar twists ordinarily found among those who recognize their sexual problems. Until we have faced ourselves with rigorous honesty, it will be impossible for us to think clearly about any problem. The only tools we need or have for thought are our own minds. The person who attempts to do any constructive thinking without achieving self-honesty will arrive at a distorted conclusion. The mind of the individual suffering from self-deceit is filled with little twists and turnings of which he is not even aware. To attempt thought with a mind like that is like pushing a piece of wire through a twisted metal tubing, as the wire leaves the tubing it assumes the shape of the tube.
In no area of human life is a mask of deceit so carefully constructed as in the mind of the person who misuses nature’s gift of sexuality. The four misuses we will describe are sex used as a means of aggression, as a means of security or reassurance, for the satisfaction of curiosity and as a method of rebelling against authority.

SEX USED AS A MEANS OF AGGRESSION
Sex relationships are normally a way of expressing love. Some people use sex as a means of expressing their anger. Take a young woman of dominant personality who is raised in a home where the father is domineering, irritable, inconsiderate and at times brutal. In most instances the daughter will grow into a woman with an intense hatred of the male. As she reaches adolescence she may discover that by using her sex she can dominate the boys and the man in her life. To her, sex becomes the symbol of her power and of men’s vulnerability. She finds that with little effort she can make fools of men. In each conquest she avenges herself upon the male symbol of her father. If she is clever, most men will be completely fooled by her mask of deceit. They will do what she wants them to. She finds that her sexuality can be used to gain power, money and position as well as revenge. In her heart she will secretly hate all men. In her outward actions and appearance she gives the impression of being seductive, warm and even tender. She respects no man and her repeated conquests will seem to prove that no man deserves her respect. Perhaps inwardly she will hope to find the man who can resist her tricks. Outwardly she wants nothing more than to have a man at her feet. This revenge upon the male may take many forms. Whatever her patterns, whatever the method of behavior, she will go from one conquest to the next, never satisfied even when the man submits to her will. Each man becomes a trophy added to her collection of conquests in her private battle of the sexes.
Many men play the same game, by the same rules and for the same reasons, due to an irritable, domineering sometimes inconsiderate or brutal mother. When sex is used this way, as a means of aggression, the years bring increasing feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction. The pursuit becomes less and less attractive, while higher and higher towers of virtue, in the form of more and more successful men, are assaulted in a never ending cycle leading to inevitable self-disgust. That self-loathing always comes to those who have rated the opposite sex on a scale lower than they are.

SEX USED AS A MEANS OF REASSURANCE AND SECURITY
Some times people find that sex can be used primarily as a means of gaining synthetic love. They are basically insecure and need to reassure themselves continually that they are attractive. They seek through sex the love that has somehow always escaped them or that they failed to receive in childhood. Sexual relationships of one kind and another bring certain feelings of power over their environment. When we use sex this way we have a constant need to prove that we are a lovable and loving person.
Each of us has the need to be loved. If we don’t get love in childhood, we sometimes find a substitute in sexual relationships where a temporary feeling of security and being wanted is possible. Sex then becomes the symbol of love received rather than an expression of love shared. It is a grasping, seeking, urgent king of sexuality. No sexual experience brings complete satisfaction under these conditions. The sense of insecurity remains unresolved always pressing its way to the surface of the mind. A vague feeling of incompleteness constantly threads its way into every day’s activities, even when events turn out favorably for us. When things go wrong and difficulties arise, the pressure of insecurity can become a torrent of uncertainty. That’s when we seek sexual experiences as an antidote to futility.
In addition to sexual relationships, the insecurity often results in a pattern of compulsive masturbation. Through this activity, the uncertainties and fears are momentarily pushed into the background. But it always returns in a more acute state later. A more complete sexual satisfaction is then sought. New sensations, new relationships are pursued in an effort to find new synthetic substitutes for the assurance of being loved.
The ego seeks through sexual experiences a reflection of itself. Because receiving, rather than sharing is the real goal, rejection by intimates is a frequent occurrence. The seeking personality wishes to absorb and swallow up the whole life of sexual partners. The other individual begins to feel smothered in the demanding atmosphere. Eventually they resist the pressure to surrender their whole personality to their partner. Estrangement follows. Disillusionment, self-pity and strong feelings of insecurity again engulf the person who sought only to fulfill their emptiness in the relationship.
The real need is for the fulfillment of a picture of love imagined as the ideal love given a little child in a perfect home. People with this delusion are always suffering disillusionment because they expect the impossible from their human relationships. They find it difficult to achieve any real love. They expect to trade sexuality for love. This kind of love is without limit. It is a bottomless pit and there is no satisfaction that will fill it. Each frustration and shattered illusion only produces a greater need and that need demands an even more frantic attempt to purchase love, something that can only be given.

SEX USED FOR SATISFACTION OF REPRESSED CURIOSITY
When we use sex for the satisfaction of curiosity we are concerned only with the mechanical or biological process of sexuality. The natural curiosity about sex has been thwarted or repressed early in childhood, resulting in a morbid curiosity about the sex organs and their function. The popularity of smutty stories among certain groups is motivated in part by repressed curiosity. Morbid curiosity about sex can ruin a relationship. There is case of a young man whose marital problems began on his honeymoon. He shattered his bride’s illusions on the first night by insisting on a minute and curious inspection of her sex organs. It was evident to the bride that instead of an adult man, she had married a curious little boy who was more concerned with satisfying his morbid interest than with expressing his love. In fact, it seemed to her a denial of love. He was more interested and in her anatomy than in her feelings, her love, or her desires. He seemed to lose interest in her as soon as his sexual curiosity was satisfied and within three months, when she found he was secretly hoarding stacks of nudie magazines and wasn’t interested in normal sexual relations, she divorced him. It is a sad commentary on our society when we consider that in primitive native tribes, where the human nude body is a familiar sight to young and old alike, this misuse of sexuality is unrecorded.

REBELLION EXPRESSED THROUGH SEX
Rebellion expressed through sex is a problem usually related to adolescence. The first order of business of the youthful boy and girl is to become an adult, independent from the authority of his parents. A great many parents make the mistake of attempting to cling to their children, feeling that the children simply can’t take care of themselves. Instead of encouraging them to make their own decisions, parents dominate them under the false notion that they are being responsible parents. The job of a parent with teenage children is to become unnecessary to their children by teaching them to make adult decisions. We have traditionally clung to our children for so many years that we come to believe that a natural part of the development of a child is a period of adolescent rebellion. We fail to recognize that when a child has to rebel against us as parents, that child has not been permitted or encouraged to become an adult. Since teenage is when the dating game begins, and since a great many arguments between parents and children develop about dating, sexual extravagance on the part of the adolescent often becomes one of the symbols of rebellion.
As parents we have said sex is taboo. We tell our children to restrain themselves sexually until after marriage. The child who is seeking to rebel against their authority can assert his independence by indulging in sexual activity of which he knows his parents disapprove. It isn’t the sex the child wants as much as a way to express his desire to be regarded as an adult. Not only sex, but alcohol and drugs, if the parents strongly oppose their use, can become objects for rebellion when parents cling too long to the umbilical cords of their offspring.
Daughters may feel that if they are late coming home from a date, the father and mother will suspect that they have been engaging in some immoral activities. They may feel that if they have the name, they might as well have the excitement and the experience of playing the game.
Some of us carry this pattern of rebellion into adult life. There is the young husband, married before he matures who suddenly finds himself saddled with a bride and she is a symbol of the responsibilities and the controls exercised just last week by his mother. Since he has this need for rebellion, he uses his newfound sexual experience to promote sexual excursions with other women, sometimes the closest friends of his wife. He may be perfectly satisfied sexually at home, but married life brought an awareness that he has only replaced the responsibilities and restraints of his parents with those now being imposed by his marriage. He likes to imagine he is quite a man about town and that this independence is an expression of manhood. Actually he is still an emotional child, rebelling. He has not given up and he continually needs to prove himself through sexual relationships.
Any of these four sexual misuses can produce a pattern of sexual behavior that is regarded as psychologically compulsive. A compulsion expresses itself as an urge so demanding that in most cases it cannot be resisted by an act of will, like our compulsion for chemicals. When you have compulsive feelings, you may partially control them for awhile. But when nothing is done to correct the compulsion or its cause, the individual will eventually yield to the urge despite all efforts of will power.
Compulsion runs in patterns that also affect sexual relationships. A sexual compulsion as a rule results in excessive sexual behavior that is strongly disapproved of by society. He may suffer from a fear that the peculiarity may be discovered. Enormous guilt feelings are sometimes the result because of the possibility of public exposure. When a person discovers that he has no control over this urge, he becomes desperate. Each time his behavior breaks over the boundaries of what he really wants to do, he vows, “Never again!” But will power cannot withstand this imperious urge. Each time the compulsive sexual activity, even when it stays within conventional bounds, offers less and less satisfaction and more misery. There are times when he stops the struggle against this urge and just indulges himself hoping that finally the urge will be satisfied.
When the compulsion is that powerful, wise counseling is usually needed to help the individual straighten out his life, provided he wants to revise his thinking. No one is really capable of changing his basic patterns of feeling unless he wants this change more than anything else in the world, and then the help of a Power greater than himself is usually needed. Compulsive sexual misuses hits the strong and the weak, the rich and the poor, the educated and the uneducated. It is no respecter of persons. Compulsive sexual behavior is almost always accompanied by elaborate sexual fantasies.
Everyone has day dreams; everyone has an imagination in which we spend part of our time. These fantasies become unwholesome only when they serve as a substitute for reality. Somebody wrote: the mark of the genius is the ability to drop the cares and responsibilities of an adult world for a period of childish play. To be able to find relaxation in play is one of the marks of a disciplined mind. When we can’t let go and just play, then we are laced into a straitjacket of dignity and responsibility at all times, it frequently represents the other side of distorted sexuality. It displays an inability to be honest with one’s self.
While day dreams and imagination are a part of the play world, when happiness or satisfaction is sought through the continual reliving of certain fantasies, the individual is in serious trouble. The individual who lives in the depths of a fantasy world, finds that the real world will not surrender pleasure or satisfaction, because he can no longer really distinguish where the reality ends and the fantasy begins. In the case of sexual fantasies, the distortion of inner vision is accented by the hidden guilt feelings that accompany the fantasy world. Our daydreams usually take the form of forbidden, socially unacceptable behavior. We must build more and more elaborate and vivid fantasies with all the details, to hide from ourselves the fact that we are unhappy with our own reality.
When compulsive sexual behavior is strengthened by fantasies it becomes a temporary escape from the present. Addiction to this pattern is frequently more difficult to break than an addiction to alcohol. Whenever the person is threatened or fearful, he will return to the old daydreams and the old compulsion.

THE ONLY SOLUTION IS TO FIND A MORE SATISFYING REALITY

A woman is married to a man, no worse or no better than most husbands are. He is dependable, devoted and under normal conditions would be a good husband. Since childhood this woman has constructed a fantasy in which a handsome, wealthy, glamorous man comes into her daydream, sweeps her off her feet, and deposits her in a beautiful mansion where she resides in leisure and excitement. When the reality of the financial pressures of her real life press home on her, as they do on all of us, she takes to her bottle and her bed, or gives herself a sedative and retreats into her dream world. This only adds to her dissatisfaction with her husband, her irritation with her children. She hates herself while she is doing this, but finds such great satisfaction in the retreat, that although she has reached middle age, she still can’t give up the fantasy. Her days are filled with warm and exciting seductions and love. During such times her average husband seems like a clod, her normal children become brats, her house seems like a hovel and depression settles upon her. With her dream prince, she can flee from all this havoc and live for a time in complete sexual satisfaction, frequently self-administered, in the security of her fantasy world.
The illusions of fantasy are without number. They are as varied as the people who entertain them are. Each of us constructs the dream that gives us the greatest satisfaction, retreating further from the possibility of finding solid happiness based on fact. Many people lead lives of quiet desperation. Others live incredibly exiting lives in the world of fantasy. In this world, the extent of the retreat from life is only limited by the power of our imagination. We need our dreams, but the key is to dream and as Kipling said, not make dreams your master.
Because of strong social disapproval of unusual sexual behavior, the individual suffering from sexual compulsion can often wreck a career or a life if these habits become general information. There will come a time when society will be able to construct a method of informing children at an age where the impact and the effects will be lasting but not traumatic about sex. It is not yet with us, and there is as much misinformation spread around today as there was 25 years ago. Sexual freedom is still an experiment and many of the practitioners have come to understand that nothing is free. They are re-examining the new morals because sexual compulsion is creating the kind of social disorientation in people today, once only credited to alcoholism and drug abuse.
The distinction between normal sexual behavior and compulsive sexual behavior is best known by the person involved. People with normal sexual drives, when confronted with a situation that threatens any of the values they hold, refrain from the act. If their physical or emotional health, their job security or their marriage security is threatened, they abstain. Compulsives do not, because they cannot. Like alcoholism, the problem resides in the mind, not in the glands. Security and freedom from these destructive drives comes from a new understanding of our motivations.
We have to seek out the incidents of our lives that have brought these forces into action. When we trace them back to their source, these compulsions seem to surrender themselves to the Power of our AA program along with our compulsion to change the way we feel by taking something.
We have to find the emotional monkey wrench that is clogging up the works of our progress and clean it out of the machinery. Step Four enables us to do that.