One Day at a Time
Recovery from sex addiction rarely happens overnight. It takes patience – a quality often in short supply for us. Imagining that we have to find the courage to face abstinence from sexual behaviors for indefinite amounts of time can feel overwhelming.
Often at the end of acting out sexually, we said to ourselves, “I’ll never do that again.” It’s not that we weren’t sincere. It’s just that it rarely turned out that way. We always seemed to go back for more. In recovery, we avoid making grand pronouncements about quitting forever. Instead, we just do it for today. No matter how tempted we are, we don’t act out today. We find this approach to be more workable. By looking only at the day in front of us, with the help of others and our Higher Power, the challenge of recovery becomes more manageable.
In particularly challenging moments, committing to our sobriety for just an hour at a time is what we may need to do in order not to give in to our impulses. It is sometimes said that the person who has the longest abstinence is the one who woke up earliest that day.