The Program of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous

What is sex and love addiction?

We in SLAA believe that sex and love addiction is a progressive illness which cannot be cured but which, like many illnesses, can be arrested. It may take several forms -- including (but not limited to) a compulsive need for sex, extreme dependency on one person (or many), and/or a chronic preoccupation with romance, intrigue or fantasy. Sex and love addiction may also take the form of a compulsive avoidance of giving or receiving social, sexual, or emotional nourishment. This avoidance of intimacy is known in SLAA as anorexia.

We have found that obsessive/compulsive patterns exist in which relationships or sexual activities have become increasingly destructive to career, family and sense of self-respect. Sex and love addiction leads to ever worsening consequences if it continues unchecked.

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The Twelve Steps of SLAA

We, the members of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous have found that we could not put an end to the negative consequences and mounting risks of active sex addiction, romantic obsession, and fantasy without first stopping the pattern of sex and love addiction in our lives. These are the steps we took to find freedom from the patterns that had enslaved us.

  1. We admitted we were powerless over sex and love addiction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with a Power greater than ourselves, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to sex and love addicts, and to practice these principles in all areas of our lives.

In SLAA, we learn to accept the reality of having this addiction and surrender any notion that we can control it successfully on the basis of our unaided will. Admitting personal powerlessness over this affliction, we cease our addictive behavior and turn to guidance from a Power greater than ourselves, make restitution for harm done to others, and reconstruct our lives physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

How can someone tell who is a sex and love addict?

Only the individual can tell if he or she is physically, mentally, or emotionally addicted to sex and/or love. Going to several meetings will allow them to tell if they can identify with other sex and love addicts. Obtaining the pamphlet Sex and Love Addiction: 40 Questions for Self Diagnosis will help to evaluate sexual activities, romantic behavior, emotional involvements and avoidance behavior. The 40 Questions for Self Diagnosis are also posted on the SLAA website at www.slaafws.org.

Characteristics of Sex and Love Addiction

  1. Having few healthy boundaries, we become sexually involved with and/or emotionally attached to people without knowing them.
  2. Fearing abandonment and loneliness, we stay in and return to painful, destructive relationships, concealing our dependency needs from ourselves and others, growing more isolated and alienated from friends and loved ones, ourselves, and God.
  3. Fearing emotional and or sexual deprivation, we compulsively pursue and involve ourselves in one relationship after another, sometimes having more than one sexual or emotional liaison at a time.
  4. We confuse love with neediness, physical and sexual attraction, pity and/or the need to rescue or to be rescued.
  5. We feel empty and incomplete when we are alone. Even though we fear intimacy and commitment, we continually search for relationships and sexual contacts.
  6. We sexualize stress, guilt, loneliness, anger, shame, fear and envy. We use sex or emotional dependence as substitute for nurturing, care, and support.
  7. We use sex and emotional involvement to manipulate and control others.
  8. We become immobilized or seriously distracted by romantic or sexual obsession or fantasies.
  9. We avoid responsibility for ourselves by attaching ourselves to people who are emotionally unavailable.
  10. We stay enslaved to emotional dependency, romantic intrigue, or compulsive sexual activities.
  11. To avoid feeling vulnerable, we may retreat from all intimate involvement, mistaking sexual and emotional anorexia for recovery.
  12. We assign magical qualities to others. We idealize and pursue them, then blame them for not fulfilling our fantasies and expectations.

SLAA Preamble

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous is a Twelve Step, Twelve Tradition-oriented fellowship based on the model pioneered by Alcoholics Anonymous.

The only qualification for SLAA membership is a desire to stop living out a pattern of sex and love addiction. SLAA is supported entirely through contributions of its membership, and is free to all who need it.

To counter the destructive consequences of sex and love addiction we draw on five major resources:

  1. Sobriety. Our willingness to stop acting out in our own personal bottom-line addictive behavior on a daily basis.
  2. Sponsorship/Meetings. Our capacity to reach out for the supportive fellowship within SLAA
  3. Steps. Our practice of the Twelve Step program of recovery to achieve sexual and emotional sobriety.
  4. Service. Our giving back to the SLAA community what we continue to freely receive.
  5. Spirituality. Our developing a relationship with a Power greater than ourselves which can guide and sustain us in recovery.

As a fellowship SLAA has no opinion on outside issues and seeks no controversy. SLAA is not affiliated with any other organizations, movements, or causes, either religious or secular.

We are, however, united in a common focus: dealing with our addictive sexual and emotional behavior. We find a common denominator in our obsessive/compulsive patterns that renders any personal differences of sexual or gender orientation irrelevant.

What is SLAA?

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who help each other to stay sober. They offer the same help to anyone who has an addiction with sex and/or love and wants to do something about it. Since S.L.A.A members are all addicts themselves, they have a special understanding of each other and the disease. They know what the illness feels like and they have learned how to recover from it through S.L.A.A.'s program of recovery.

See the international page for information about the worldwide S.L.A.A. fellowship.