July 22nd Meditation: Seeking Validation

Wednesday, July 22nd

Addiction kept me from any authentic feeling.

For many of us, sex and fantasy served as anesthetics, numbing our pain and sheltering us from the realities we did not want to face.

We may have desperately searched for someone to validate us and make us feel whole. The validation we got from being sexually desired sometimes made us feel worthy and powerful, though such feelings quickly faded. The more we relied on those validations, the less worthy and more incomplete we may have felt.

The aftermath of compulsive sex often increased our sense of emptiness and shame. At some point, we may have realized that our sexual acting out no longer numbed the pain but made it feel worse.

“I tried not to think about my problems and desperately tried to find a personal connection that would make me feel worthy.”

As we work our SCA program, we discover that recovery is more than just stopping our compulsive behaviors. Listening to others share at meetings can provide spiritual nourishment. So does working the Steps and developing trust in a Higher Power. By using the Tools, we can choose new ways of living instead of slipping back into our compulsive habits.

We will let go of sexual compulsion as our Higher Power and discover a faith that works.

DEAR LOVER, RELATIVE, FRIEND OF A SEXUAL COMPULSIVE By Bradley W.

Right about the time of my 30th birthday, I met this gorgeous guy — a mutual friend introduced
us. I manipulated our next meeting and finally got him over for lunch where I learned he had had
“some gay experience.” That was the green light I was looking for. I chose to ignore the subtle
reticence I perceived in him. That reticence turned out to be his particular brand of sexual compulsion
which, without going into detail, had kept him from mature, intimate relationships. I didn’t know
then that the way I kept myself from mature, intimate relationships was to systematically fall in
love with people who had another priority: sexual, alcohol or drug addiction. This way I could be
guaranteed the victim role (a role I’ve been comfortable with since childhood) and blame any lack of
intimacy, sexual satisfaction or joy on him. Very clever: I didn’t take any responsibility for my happi-
ness; it was all up to him. This recipe for trouble is my particular brand of sexual compulsion: I’m a
co-sexual compulsive — someone whose life became unmanageable due to someone else’s sexual com-
pulsion.

This gorgeous guy chose to tell me about his sexual addiction, and the suffering it caused him, at the
beginning of our relationship. My first thought upon hearing his dramatic and painful story was to
make up to him his suffering and pain with my love and compassion. I wanted to save him. Later I discovered that this desire is the top part of the co-addict/addict ratio: GRANDIOSITY over low self-esteem. Needless to say, I didn’t save him. Fortunately for him, he (and perhaps God) saved himself.
Paradoxically, it was this relation-ship that catalyzed MY being saved from a lifetime of unhappiness and
perhaps even suicide.

In the beginning I kicked and screamed. I made ultimatums; I forced him to stop certain relation-
ships; I berated him. I rewarded him with love and I punished him by withholding it. All in all, I con-
tributed to both our low self-esteem and I became a controlling maniac giving up my friendships,
my creative work, my life. I was even becoming physically ill as a result of this obsession with some-
one else’s life. I became a supreme spy. I liked to say that I could tell what he was up to by reading the
molecules upon entering a room that he was in or had been in. To be right became my only objective.

He found SCA, but I didn’t need a program. I was in therapy and that was enough. Yet I was still in extreme pain, slipping further and further from reality.Everything was contingent on his
each and every sign of affection. Sex, and how well he performed it, was the most important sign of his
love for me. I became a different kind of a sex addict, constantly manipulating sex with him. A
friend urged me for six months to try Al-Anon, a 12-Step program for relatives and friends of alcoholics,
for lack of some other place to go. Finally I got there on my hands and knees. Even though it was hard at
first with all the emphasis on alcohol, I saw quickly that the core issues were the same and felt at
home with these people who were getting better. Eventually I met others in the rooms whose lovers were sexual compulsives. Bob R. was one of them. It was his idea to start a meeting based on Al-Anon for relatives and friends of sexual compulsives. I qualified at the first SCA-Anon meeting on November 24,1987. It still meets on Tuesdays at 6:30 PM at the Gay and Lesbian Community Center on 13th Street in Manhattan.

So this is a success story. It’s been a painful and joyous road to recovery. I can’t count the times
I’ve laughed and cried, or the number of friends I’ve made. Today, this man and I are on a Spiritual
path of recovery, even though for us our lover relationship has ended. But I am very grateful to
this partner of four years and I love him very much. Most SCA-Anon members remain in their relation-
ships and are learning that true intimacy is possible one day at a time. SCA-Anon and Al-Anon give us
tools to feel our original feelings underneath the anger and rage, and tools of communication with the
ones we love.

Anyone interested in starting an SCA-Anon meeting can structure it from a combination of literature from Al-Anon and the co-dependency unit of Golden Valley Health Center in Golden Valley, MN.
We recommend that members of SCA-Anon address issues such as low self-esteem, control and shame.

July 21st Meditation: Half Measures

Tuesday, July 21st

The behavior stops first, then the compulsion stops. It is not the other way around.

The AA Big Book phrase “Half measures availed us nothing” reminds us that working a program half-heartedly can cause us to conclude that the program does not work for us. We can choose at any time to recommit and devote time and energy to our recovery. With the help of our sponsors and other program friends, we may use the Steps and Tools to find a path toward freedom from our sexual compulsion.

“So many of life’s lessons involved my lack of commitment. My life had become vulgar and poverty-stricken.”

Without honesty, we remain in denial. Denial tells us that our lives are manageable and that our sexuality is under control. Without commitment, we might drift back and forth through periods of compulsion and withdrawal, holding onto our fears, shame, and resentments.

We may be reluctant to make such a commitment. But we may reach a point where we become able to let go of sexual compulsion as our Higher Power and discover a spirituality that works for us. We can reach that point by examining our lives and becoming willing to accept our Higher Power’s help.

Once we build up some trust that the God of our understanding cares for us, we start taking action to change our lives.

Recovery is a lifelong pursuit and goal, but it is always attainable, one day at a time.

Looking for SCA Members with 6 months or more sobriety to go to Las Vegas

to man our booth at the SASH (Society for the Advancement of Sexual Health) 2026 Annual Conference, October 22-23. Please contact us (sca.iso.outreach@gmail.com) if you would like to be of service to SCA and the professional community. The conference will be held at the at the UNLV Campus in Las Vegas, NV. and attended by mental health professionals, medical professionals, researchers, educators, advocates, and students from across the world.

Did You Know

July 6, 2026 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the inauguration of the SCA online meetings and, stemming from them, the Online Intergroup.

In fact, this month sees Online Intergroup celebrating all of:

30 years of online meetings.
15 years of telephone meetings.
5 plus years of their own, independent website.

The Online Intergroup is the original provider of electronic meetings to the SCA Fellowship, they provide online and telephone meetings, and do not hold any in-person or hybrid meetings.

The Online Intergroup’s online meetings are traditional message board meetings, also known as discussion forums, where members post shares and other members can reply later, where allowed. They are not chat rooms, with real time interactions between participants, but asynchronous platforms.

The Topic Meeting, our oldest meeting, began on July 6, 1996. Organized by John F. of New York and later Paris, the online meetings grew out of the establishment of the main SCA website, SCA-Recovery.org. The first poster was SCA Co-founder Frank H. of New York. He suggested that the new online meeting should have a topic, and the meeting became the Online Topic Meeting. Typically, the meeting has had two topics per month over the years, but we currently have a monthly topic. This month’s topic is a golden oldie, Step One. We are now posting an extract from recovery literature on the topic for members to reflect on as well. Members share on the topic for themselves, and are asked not to comment on what others have said.

The Feedback Meeting, for more general sharing on SCA-related subjects, soon followed the start of the Topic Meeting, and allows feedback from other members. Its formal name is the “Feedback for Recovery Meeting.” It quickly became and remains the most visited online meeting. Feedback is not advice or criticism. It can simply mean identifying with the poster, sharing words of encouragement, or relaying program slogans or tools that have helped the responder. Through these discussions, we deepen our understanding of the subjects raised in order to further our recovery.

The Acting In Meeting is our newest meeting, some 5 years old, and is where members can share experience, strength and hope on subjects relating to acting-in behaviors connected with sexual compulsion as they choose. Again, feedback is not advice or criticism. Broad expressions of acting in can be things like the compulsive avoidance of sex or sexual anorexia, fear and avoidance of intimacy, romantic obsession, love addiction, obsessive preoccupation with sexual or romantic fantasy, over-exercising, social anxiety, social anorexia and similar issues. For some, this might involve sexual codependency, such as a person not paying attention to what they want, or do not want, sexually.

There are other areas of our site separate from the online meetings, such as the Recovery Lounge for socializing and fellowship, and the Chips & Medallions Area where members celebrating a recovery anniversary can request and be awarded a chip or medallion.

Online Intergroup also hosted some very popular daily IRC (Internet Relay Chat) meetings for a number of years, starting in 1999, but those closed down in around 2008.

In July, 2011, Online Intergroup began putting on weekly telephone meetings, beginning on Sundays but soon expanding to Wednesdays and Fridays as well by April, 2014. All three phone meetings are still being held weekly. These are voice calls offered through a telephone and internet conferencing service that is free to members, barring exceptional cases where charges may apply depending on the dial-in number called by the member, if they are not participating via the app online. July 17, 2026 marks the fifteenth anniversary of the telephone meetings.

Online Intergroup hosted its meetings on the main SCA website for 24 years, until June, 2020, when we moved to a separate website. We maintained our original site format for several months, then inaugurated our brand new, independent, modern, custom-designed and custom-built website on September 30, 2020. This hosts all of the above online meetings and the sign-up information and mechanism for the telephone meetings, together with copious recovery resources.

All of our meetings can be reached via our website:

https://onlinesca.org/

Online Intergroup experienced some challenging years during and after the pandemic with the transition from our previous telephone conferencing service to our current, newer-generation one, and persistent technical difficulties with the registration system for the online meetings, but we have now put those behind us and are up-to-date on member registrations and general site functioning. Next on the agenda is to update some texts and restore some degraded content on the site, for which work is getting underway. We are also aiming to add content and return to some planned parts of the website that did not get completed previously.

All SCA members and all those with a desire to recover from sexual compulsion worldwide are welcome to join our meetings. Online Intergroup has had its ups and down over the years, and our meetings are generally smaller and quieter than they have been historically, but we are set on maintaining, restoring and growing our recovery community. We are happy to have reached these milestones in carrying the SCA message of recovery, and look forward to arriving at many more in the coming years!

Happy anniversary to all online and telephone meeting members, past and present!