When I moved to New York after graduating from college, my first job was as an intern for what’s often referred to as a “laddie magazine,” the kind that caters to a certain type of guy and that focuses on gadgets, sports, cars and beer, but mostly on babes in bikinis. At first, I thought it was weird that they’d hire a girl, considering that I was clearly not in their demographic, but when I arrived on my first day and saw that I was only one among several blonde female interns—not a single guy in our gaggle of coffee-fetching peons—I quickly got the picture. Though I had very few healthy boundaries back then and didn’t hesitate to sell out my values in the name of employment, I still wouldn’t have stuck around if my sole (unofficial) job description was to be some associate editor’s “naughty intern” fantasy. I had some self respect, and I was there to write.

After a few months of crafting tantalizing photo captions (“In the winter, Tatiana keeps the thermostat at 80: ‘I hate wearing clothes,’ she says, licking her lips.”), I was finally given my own little corner of the gadgets section after my supervisor sensed my unmasked lack of enthusiasm. My job was to answer random, wacky questions sent in by readers, queries like “How does a fan work?” or “How does a toilet flush?” Answering these questions involved a lot of research and tricky Internet searches, but, after only a few frustrating attempts, I quickly found that HowStuffWorks.com was an invaluable resource. Nine times out of 10, I could type the question in the site’s search engine, and I’d have the answer in seconds.

After I had answered all the readers’ questions each month, I used the downtime all interns have in abundance to return again and again to How Stuff Works with my own questions: How does a water tower work? How is bubble wrap made? How do solar panels work? I was addicted to that Web site and I reveled in learning the answers to what seemed to be all life’s mysteries. Outside of work, I’d put my newly acquired knowledge to use: Any time some household appliance was broken, I’d use my understanding of how it or something similar worked to fix it. It was an unusual hobby and fascination, but there was something oddly comforting in knowing that no matter how puzzling the process or complicated the gadget, there was always an answer and a solution. Looking back, I’m sure it was an odd attempt at control. There I was, surrounded by a potent male sexuality I—frustratingly—didn’t understand, and I wanted to understand something, no matter how random or trivial that something was. Moreover, my desire to fix was most likely a desire to fix what was broken in me–whatever it was that allowed me to abandon myself to the point that I’d accept that type of job.

I carried the How Stuff Works attitude with me long after that internship was over. I believed that if I worded my questions in just the right way, if I did enough research, and if I sought the answers with dogged determination, I could understand how anything worked and, more importantly, I could use my knowledge and tenacity to fix whatever was broken. I believed that the world was a giant search engine, ready to yield the answer to anything that bewildered me. But then sex addiction—the very thing I couldn’t understand in the first place—came back into my life, and I began to realize just how little I knew about how people stuff worked.

Fast forward to this month: I’ve been working Step Four, and I’ve been gaining a better understanding of how the rusty parts in my half of the sex-addiction machine work. And by understanding how my parts work, I’m seeing how they affect my husband’s parts: When a button on my side is pushed, it trips that lever on his side, which then sets that pulley on my side into motion. But what’s frustrating is that no matter how much understanding I have of how the machine works as a whole, I can only fix my side. And what’s more, so much of the fixing requires a process that’s outside of my control. I can follow the instructions step by step, but the fixing what’s broken is as much the result of a miracle as what I do with my own two hands.

How does someone who once worked for a soft-core porn magazine regain her values and boundaries? How do you let go of the desire to control? How does recovery work? Some questions don’t yield easy, instant answers, and others can’t be answered at all.