Soulshine

Codependents are often very compliant. We often enter recovery with a strong need to please other people in order to earn our self-worth, to earn love. One of the most dangerous compliance patterns for codependents, and sex-love addicts, is that some of us accept sexual acting-out when we really want love. And this acting-out eventually leads us to experience feelings of self-betrayal, abuse, disappointment, shame, guilt and anger. I remember one of the first CODA meetings I attended at the Steps Alano Club in St. Louis, Missouri. A woman stood up and admitted that she felt so unlovable and so worthless that she had developed a pattern of behavior in which she engaged in sex with anyone who showed even the slightest interest in her. It was the only way she knew how to medicate away her emotional pain about feeling like a worthless person. She even admitted to having sex with men she actually despised because she was so desperate for some form of affirmation, of affection, even t...

“Never, ever sacrifice what you want the most For what you want the most at that moment .” James A. Owen, Drawing Out the Dragons Addicts live for the moment. We tend to be obsessive-compulsive. And we are too often anxious to get a fix for all of our needy feelings-- here and now. Unfortunately, this leads many of us to sacrifice what we want most in life for what we want most in any given anxious moment. For example, codependents often accept sex when what they truly want is love. It’s my guess that the average person, from the time that they were a small child, has wanted to love and be loved by one extremely important person in their life. Unfortunately for many codependents, finding that all important soulmate has been a nightmare; primarily because one essential ingredient has always been missing from our codependent love formula. And that missing ingredient is us. Codependents—and all addicts for that matter—want to be loved and accepted for who they are, b...