Where Are all the Anon Meetings?
Mar 26, 09- (by Mama MPJ)
- 7 responses
- Family and Friends, Sober Salon
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When I first started going to S-Anon (a 12 Step recovery group for those affected by someone else’s compulsive sexual behavior), I was immediately struck by how small the group was. If we had seven or eight people in the room, it was a big meeting, and ten people was huge. Most nights there were just four or five women (always women) huddle together in folding chairs in a church meeting room. But a few doors down, ten times that many people would be at the Sexaholics Anonymous meeting on the same night.
As I struggled to find this one meeting in an area where my husband had access to a number of different well-established meetings by several different groups, I’d wonder where the other partners, family members and friends of addicts were. Was I only one who needed help? Or the only one sticking around? Or the only one whose loved one hadn’t alienated everyone already?
And those questions held my suspicions as to why our meetings were harder to populate:
- It’s hard to wrap your head around why you need to work on yourself when your loved one has a big, loud, glaringly obvious problem in their addiction.
- The geographic cure — cutting ties with the addict as a way of fixing what ails you — is attractive and (based on my own experience with getting out of bad relationships) really does quickly and significantly reduce the pain (at least for a time).
- Addicts, with their tendency to isolate, cut themselves off from or alienate loved ones, perform their own geographic cure by proxy.
What do you think? Why can 12 Step support be hard to find for those close to addicts?
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I can’t really speak for Al-Anon or Nar-Anon, but it does seem to me that those meetings draw more folks than S-Anon. I think there are two reasons why S-Anon is sparsely attended: 1) Because sex isn’t easily recognized as an addiction, even if the partner stays, she doesn’t think she needs help. 2) Because sex addiction isn’t easily recognized as an addiction, more partners make the decision to leave (a lot of people have the attitude that if there’s cheating, it’s over–period.)
But–and this is where it gets weird, in my experience, most of the women in my S-Anon meetings are no longer with their partners. So I don’t think it all boils down to whether or not someone hopes to keep working on the relationship. I’m separated from my husband for a sort-of combination of numbers 2 and 3 (he increasingly pushed me away and refused to participate in the relationship, so I left), but I’m still plugging away at my meetings. Anyway, all that said, I can’t really figure out what’s going on with poor meeting attendance–there doesn’t seem to be a blanket reason for why people do or do not attend.
I don’t attend meetings other than Al-Anon (plus the occasional open AA meeting). I don’t even think that there are S-Anon meetings in this town. But there are lots of people out there who are affected by alcoholism, yet they never make it to a meeting. Most people simply live with their pain, or are in denial. I lived with an active alcoholic for many years before ever going to an Al-Anon meeting. Most people just don’t go or if they do, they don’t stay. Why? I guess that they might like staying stuck in what they know (pain) rather than having to deal with looking at their role and getting honest.
I think a lot of people get stuck in the “it’s-his-problem-not-mine” place and I agree that they are even more likely to get stuck there if the family member is dealing with sex addiction rather than cocaine or alcohol. It’s so hard to really work a program, and even harder (I think) when you don’t completely own the piece that’s yours. Plus there’s no court-mandated attendance at Anon meetings.
Jay, good point about the court-mandated attendance. There are sex addicts who have to attend group for this reason too, but their friends and family members don’t.
Maybe there are more partners out there that are in a relationship with an addict yet are NOT co-dependant. When I first read Shadows I was confused…was I co-dependant just because I was in a relationship with him??? I had none of the described behaviors. Then I signed up for an on-line COSA group…they sent me a checklist again I had maybe one or two out of a list of like 20 behaviors/feelings. I’ve been to two different therapists and also talked to several friends who go to therapy…and one friend who is a Psychologist. I’m not co-dependant. Go figure. I don’t spy on my husband. I don’t obesess over what he’s doing. I don’t need to. I can see that I would go insane if I was doing those behaviors. If he ever acts out again it will come to light sooner or later. I have faith in that. I am who I am regardless of him and his behaviors. I am who I am regardless of if we are married or not. He is doing a lot of work in therapy and in his 12 step program. I’m doing some work too, but not because I’m a co-dependant.
I believe it takes a lot of discipline and courage to ongoingly look at yourself and what is going on in your life. It’s easier to focus on someone elses addiction, watch TV, have a glass of wine to unwind, yell the kids or your mother, go shopping, gossip about other people, add to your To Do list, or otherwise distract one’s self from being conscious of and in one’s own life.
I think this is particularly true when your life feels like it’s being ripped apart. Trying to stop the pain, like trying to stop the bleeding when an artery’s been severed, can be step one in self-preservation. Staying with the pain goes against our survival instinct.
But I bet the main reason is really just a lack of awareness and understanding about sex addiction among partners of addicts.
Well said, as always, Woman Anonymous. I especially love what you wrote about staying with the pain–it really does go against all our instincts, though it’s the only way to really heal.