Over the past year, I’ve been going to 12-step meetings for love addiction, sex addiction, co-dependency and the like. I’m trying to figure out when I hit bottom. Perhaps it was the evening 13 years ago that I went searching the internet for beastie vids. Or perhaps it was the time in 2009 that the Torah lecture was so powerful that I just had to Google “rape videos.” Maybe it was my perverse multi-year fearful fascination with white supremacist and Jew-hater William Pierce. I’ve indulged in many depraved pursuits.
On the surface, I’m an upstanding guy. I’ve never been violent. I’ve never committed major theft (a few sloppy time cards, cheating in high school and college, and the like) I’ve never been arrested and never broken a serious law. I’ve never hired a hooker. I’ve never tried illegal drugs. I’ve never tried to seduce an under-age girl and never tried anything illegal in the sex department.
Going to 12-step programs was my idea, not my therapist’s (though he endorsed it). Nobody in my life was pushing it (though some people close to me had suggested it at various times over the years).
For many years, I’d say from 1994-2007, I was frightened by how easily I became unmoored from any moral foundations. Throughout my blogging career, I’ve scared myself with my unhinged postings, like this one. “What will people say?” I wonder when they read about my latest depravity.
I remember my tortured relationship with a photographer and a few months in she told me, “My therapist says I’m a love addict.” I immediately Googled the term and checked out some books from the library on it and recognized a few such tendencies in myself.
I think I got afraid of perpetuating the same type of relationships (which never lasted much longer than a year). I think I realized that religion and therapy and Alexander Technique were not enough. My hatred of women was hardly changed by such noble pursuits. I had to go deeper.
Throughout my life, I’ve had painful flashes of moral clarity where for a few minutes, sometimes hours, I became cognizant of the pain I was wreaking all around me and I felt some of the suffering I was causing.
As a consequence, I’d try to become more empathic in my daily behavior, particularly with my blogging. But this would only last days. Eventually I’d feel a surge inside and go back to my f*** everybody mentality. And then the tide would recede and I’d conclude, it’s hopeless. I’m hopeless.
Having a job is a great thing. This is my first time in 15 years where I report to an office every weekday and work alongside the same people. I can’t be as carelessly cruel in such circumstances (as opposed to when I live alone and communicate primarily through my blogs).
Here’s one amazing thing I’ve encountered through 12-step work — it has even changed my fantasies. Normally, I could go through an elevated day, but when night fell and I crawled into bed, my desires would be as filthy as ever. But after I go to a 12-step meeting or immerse myself in a 12-step book, I find that even my longings –much of the time — are less cruel. I feel less need for women to be humiliated and degraded for me to feel happy. Their loss isn’t necessarily my gain.
I love bigotry (much of the time). I am terribly amused by much racial and religious humor, the crueler the better.
