Circles

One of the most useful tools in SAA is looking at your addiction from the perspective of the Circles. There are three circles: the Inner Circle, the Middle Circle and the Outer Circle. The Inner Circle contains all of the activities that you feel are addictive, obsessive, compulsive or out of control. These are also referred to as bottom line behaviors. When you participate in one of these behaviors, you have slipped.

The Middle Circle consists of all of those behaviors that lead to the Inner Circle. Usually when you’re involved with one of those behaviors it feels like “playing with fire, flirting with danger or the dancing on the edge” to use a few different metaphors. The chances are much greater that you will slip when you’re in the Middle Circle. Consequently, a good deal of the energy in recovery consists of avoiding those Middle Circle behaviors or at least being aware when you’re in the Middle Circle.

The Outer Circle is what we strive for as addicts. It is all those behaviors and activities which are positive, healthy, and life-affirming. They are often activities that connect us with others, bring us joy and happiness, or help us work towards goals that we have. They needn’t be fun. Growth often takes hard work and perseverance but is certainly in the Outer Circle. They needn’t even be active. Prayer and meditation are two good examples.

I don’t really want this to turn into a lesson on the Circles but I felt that I wanted to explain them before listing my own circles. This Blog is a new Outer Circle behavior for me. I’m still feeling it out to find out what it means to me and how it can serve my recovery. For one thing, it keeps those people who care about me and my recovery abreast of where I am, people such as my former sponsor and my new sponsor. I also made this available to a friend of mine who has been very helpful. She helps me to get perspective and gives me a reality check from time to time. So, here are my circles:

My Inner Circle
• Masturbating to pornography of any kind—magazines, video, Internet
• Looking at pornography intentionally

My middle circle doesn’t include going to strip clubs even though I’ve done that because I seldom do. However, if I did go, I would probably consider it a slip. The only reason I don’t put it in my Inner Circle is because it’s not something that I’m obsessive and compulsive about. Sometimes I’ll come across some porn accidentally so at those times I need to move on and do something else. If I continue looking at it for more than a few seconds then that constitutes a slip. There’s a little bit of grey area here. I don’t think that I’d consider anything under 10 or 15 seconds a slip but that doesn’t mean that I give myself permission to take a quick peak. That’s intentional viewing.

My Middle Circle
• Using provocative words in search engines on the Net
• Surfing the Web when I’m horny, distracted, anxious or otherwise off balance
• Surfing the Web when I’m Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired (HALT)
• Surfing the Web randomly late at night
• Looking at nude photography, especially at a bookstore, gallery or art museum
• Going out on the town with the intention to “get laid”
• Browsing through books in the Sex Section at bookstores
• Viewing provocative movies or television
• Reading erotic stories
• Visiting personals sites on the Web (besides Match where I am not a member)
• Following women, even if it’s only a few paces
• Getting preoccupied with women that I don’t know
• Opening up spam email

There are more or less in the order in which they are problematic for me. For instance, if I put a particular word in a search engine, it may be too late. Usually by that time, I’m in the bubble. Once I see an image that is triggering I want MORE. It’s very hard not to act out at that point. All bets are off! I don’t care about recovery anymore!! I just WANT to satisfy my CRAVING. So, if can avoid these behaviors, recovery comes more easily, especially if I’m also engaging in some Outer Circle behaviors.

My Outer Circle
• Mountain-biking
• Hiking
• Being out in nature
• Walking outside
• Reading
• Singing
• Playing the guitar or the piano
• Organizing or cleaning
• Exercising
• Going to meetings
• Spending time with friends
• Playing games
• Making program calls (connecting with other addicts)
• Healthy expressions of sex
• Meditation
• Healthy dating

Of course, this list is just a sampling. There are a million things in my Outer Circle. Part of the fun and joy of spending time in my Outer Circle is to discover these things. My Outer Circle also includes all the activities which lead me towards the goals that I set for myself. As I mentioned these may not be fun or easy but they definitely strengthen me and make me grow. It is my intention to write here in the this Blog INSTEAD OF acting out. We’ll see how that goes! It’s only been three or four days since I acted out the last time.

The Circles are only useful if we remain mindful of them. Sometimes things in one circle will migrate to another. After time, people will take things out of their middle circle and move it to their outer circle. In the beginning, it’s helpful to put any and all triggering behavior in there. I hope there comes a day where I can look at artistically done nude photography without the desire, which usually follows now, to look at more graphic stuff. I might find a need at some point to add something else to my Inner Circle but right now the addiction is all about pornography and overwhelmingly about Internet pornography. The circles are meant to be pliable and flexible. It is helpful to go over these circles with a sponsor as I did recently.

Consequences: Sometimes I wonder, as others have who know of my addiction, what the big deal is. I'm not hurting anyone. I'm not cheating on anyone. I'm taking care of my sexual needs in the privacy of my own home. So, what's the big deal?

It's not true that pornography doesn't hurt anyone. It hurts the user. I think it also hurts the providers and especially the men and women, boys and girls whom are exploited by it but that's a topic for another time. How does it hurt me?

As I state in my profile, my life is on hold. I am stuck. It has been said about addiction—not just sex addiction—that people get stuck at the emotional age when they began to act out. When I consider the hormone-crazed, lust-driven, desperate person I become when I'm fully in my addiction, it’s not a stretch to imagine how my emotional pause button got pushed during adolescence.

It’s also not a stretch to consider this when I think that what I want more than anything is to have sex with women. Not just any women—beautiful women, young women, hot women. I don’t know when fucking models became the ultimate goal to strive for

but when I step back and look at it, it seems pretty damn shallow. And from an intellectual perspective I can see how ridiculous it is, but on an emotional level, it is gut-wrenchingly real.

So, what are the consequences? Time! I grieve about how much time I have spent trolling the internet looking for the next big hit. Hours and hours and hours. Holed up and isolated in my apartment, sometimes going without food, often going without sleep. The grief comes when I consider all of the other things I could have been doing with that time: practicing a musical instrument, learning a new skill, furthering my career, developing some of my talents, spending time with friends, dating, exercising, etc.. There are a million things more positive and life-enhancing than looking at porn and masturbating.

How many opportunities with REAL women did I miss? When I could have been out meeting women, I was ensconced in my own little fantasy world. I talked to a guy last night who’s trying to figure out if he is an addict. He told me he’s fucked A LOT of women and always has a woman friend that he can summon for a booty call. Is he a sex addict? His friends tell him he’s lucky. I didn’t have an easy answer for him.

I get a bit jealous when I hear this because I’ve never felt that confident with women, not with the women that I’ve found really attractive anyway. Because of my preoccupation with “getting the girl” I’ve neglected to develop myself in other ways. I don’t really have a career and I’m not even sure what I want to do.

When I say that my life is on hold, what I really mean is that I have no fucking idea what I REALLY want. It seems that the ersatz passion of pornography has eclipsed my real passions—passions that I had when I was younger that got forgotten or neglected. Now those passions from childhoot seem luke-warm to me. The fire in my belly is smoldering. It’s not out but it feels like it will go out if I keep on acting out.

In some ways I feel that indulging in porn is a soul-deadening experience. I become out of touch with my emotions, distant, indifferent. There’s no exchange like there is in real sex. I think that even addictive sex would be better than having an orgasm by yourself to assuage your loneliness. I imagine that there are men whose sex addiction is to prostitutes or other partners who might beg to differ but that is not my affliction so it seems like it would be better. At least there would be some human contact.

I’m pretty much a cheapskate when it comes to acting out so I usually find the free porn on the internet (which seems to be limitless). Of course, much of it is designed to lure you to a paying site but I rarely get hooked that way. And when I have paid, I usually do the 1-3 day trials.

This is not to say that I haven’t lost money to this addiction. Less than a year ago, I discovered that I was being charged by a porn site and had been for months and months at around $30 or $40 a pop. How did I overlook this? I have sometimes neglected my bills for months until my creditors start calling or sending threatening letters. Because I’d waited so long, I couldn’t get reimbursed by my bank. I probably lost $400 or $500.

Again, this is a far cry from the thousands of dollars that some men spend on prostitutes but given my penny-pinching acting out behavior, it was a blow. And often when I’m feeling down, I will turn to porn to “medicate” those feelings. I haven’t learned--or at the very least, I don’t practice--a more skillful way of dealing with uncomfortable feelings.

I have lost my last two relationships to my addiction. I’ve never been able to go as deep as I want in a relationship, especially the last one I had. I feel that my ability to love a woman, deeply and fully, with an open heart, has been compromised by my addiction. How could I when I felt that she didn’t measure up to my distorted physical expectations. She wasn’t a Playboy Bunny! She wasn’t young enough be my daughter!

Although both women were six or seven years younger than I, they still didn’t have the bodies that I imagined they did in their teens and twenties. I found fault with both of them despite the fact that I was enamored with them in other ways. And as much as I found faults with them, I also found faults with myself and with my own body. I wasn’t buff enough, strong enough, cool enough, suave enough, rich enough. When I compare myself to others I’m objectifying myself in a way which is similar to how I objectify women.

The last thing I want to talk about is “the bubble” as a consequence. Whether I’m with other people or not, I can slip into the bubble. This makes me less present and in touch with myself. I’m out of my body and out of touch with reality. When I’m with another person, I become disengaged and disinterested in that person. The bubble is just like a trance. I am en-tranced! At these times, I’ve occasionally gotten the question: “Where did you go?” And when I’m with a women that I’m seeing, she is often aware of my attention waning and, more often than not, offended.

So, these are a few of the main consequences. I wish I could feel the weight of them as I’m about to sit down at the computer for 4 or 5 hours but by then it’s usually too late. I’m already in the bubble.

Not long after I'd written this I spoke with my sponsor to go over my circles. I came across this list which I had written some time ago. It is still as relevant today.

The Price That I Pay for Acting Out:

• It is a faux passion which keeps me from discovering my real passion
• It saps my energy and motivation for pursuing goals and dreams that I want to accomplish
• It keeps me self-centered and contracted, emotionally unavailable to other people
• It dulls my emotional response and keeps me relatively numb
• It warps my perception of women and sexuality
• It keeps me from pursuing more healthy sexual relationships with women
• It keeps me from being in a committed relationship
• It perpetuates the fantasy that if I had “that” I would be truly happy
• It keeps me from being self-disciplined and building my character
• It masks the underlying cause of my unhappiness
• It reinforces the idea that I need something outside of myself—particularly women—to be happy
• It keeps me from tapping my creativity and being more productive with my time
• It keeps me from developing friendships with both men and women

What this Blog Isn't: I have no moral viewpoint on addiction. I have no axe to grind. I have no particular religious perspective. Although I follow a spiritual path, of sorts, I fully acknowledge that there are many paths to recovery, some religious, some spiritual and some secular.

Some paths may involve a “God” or “Higher Power” of your understanding. Neither of these terms particularly appeal to me so I will probably use them sparingly, if at all. I am in a 12 Step program—Sex Addicts Anonymous (SAA) —but I don’t agree with everything that they advocate. So, while I may talk about the 12 Steps, I don’t think that it is right for everybody. I have no agenda and no beliefs to sell.

What this Blog Is: The main purpose of this Blog is for me to explore my addiction and recovery in an open forum and, hopefully, to assist in my own recovery. I will share what has and hasn’t worked for me. I would be delighted if this Blog assists others on their path to recovery but my primary goal is to find recovery for myself. I believe that you can only help others to the degree that you have helped yourself. I have no idea if this Blog will help me or not but I have tried many other things which have not worked.

About My Addiction: My porn addiction has its roots in my childhood. Like many other boys, I was thoroughly intrigued by naked women. My parents had a book of nude photography that I would look at with awe and wonder. The pictures were very tame. Pubic hair was airbushed out and the women were posed “artfully” rather than seductively. I imagine I was about 6 when I came across this book. Around the same time I came across The Joy of Sex in the drawer beside my parents bed. Although not as provocative as the photographs I found, the drawings were just as intriguing.

It was not until a few years later that I discovered the porn magazines that my dad had stashed away. There was a box in his closet hidden under some things. It was mostly full of lesbian magazines. I don’t remember the first moment of seeing that porn but I imagine that it was electrifying. Once I’d discovered porn there I started to search for it in other places. I guess my dad must have archived the stuff in the basement because I remember finding some porn down there over the next couple of years.

Fast forward to my teen years. My memory is kind of hazy but I don’t recall being preoccupied with porn. I looked at it from time to time but not every day. The preoccupation really started after we got our first VCR. I think I was probably around 15 when I discovered the porn videos my dad had stashed away in our family room behind some books. There was a whole wall of books and I guessed that there some books, such as the History of Civilisation that my dad must have figured nobody would ever take off the shelf. Looking back on it, it seems like a really bad hiding place.

Because I went off to Boarding School, my forays into porn were limited to vacations and summers. That is, until I graduated from high school. I spent a year away at college but ultimately ended up commuting to a college not far from home. That’s when my addiction really escalated. I would watch the videos late at night when everyone had gone to bed or when I was home alone. The possibility of being caught added to the excitement. I surmised that my dad must have watched them early in the morning as he was always up bright and early. When I graduated from college I moved away and the addiction subsided to a degree.

There was a period of time in my mid to late 20s where I was relatively free from the compulsion that would come to dominate me in later years. During this time I would occasionally come across a porn magazine and occasionally rent a porn video. And if I couldn’t get my hands on some porn I would sometimes masturbate to nude photography in art books or some provocative image in a mainstream magazine. But because it was less accessible, I didn’t indulge all the time.

Once the web became popular around 1994-95 and porn was piped right into my rental apartment, I became like the proverbial kid in the candy store. I was living alone at the time and had just ended a long-term relationship. There were very few limits on my time or behavior. My recollection of that time is a bit hazy but I do recall the excitement that I felt at the initial rush. It soon became apparent that the supply was inexhaustible. It wasn’t long before I was able to give my particular breast fetish a name. Then I found websites and newsgroups devoted to it. I was off and running.

Around ’96 or ’97 I realized that my compulsion was taking a toll on me. Not only was it taking a toll on my social life but I was also jeopardizing my job. I had a dial-up modem at home but there was a high speed internet connection at work. So, sometimes I would stay late and look at porn despite the fact that I knew that the internet usage might be monitored. It was around this time that I checked myself into SLAA. That was about 10 years ago.


Today: For various reasons, which I will explore over time, I haven’t found much sobriety around my porn addiction. I’ve had several sponsors, gone to many meetings, worked the steps—albeit half-heartedly—and been in individual and group therapy. Nothing I’ve tried has been very effective. Last night I got on my computer at midnight and stayed up until 4am. I’m between jobs now so I didn’t have to be up early. As they say in SAA, this affliction is “cunning, baffling and powerful.” Time and again that reality is staring me in the face as I say I want to be sober and end up looking at porn and masturbating.