Creating a Sexual Sobriety Plan

It is not wise to leave a dragon out of your calculations if you live near him.

Many sex and porn addicts new to the healing process openly wonder: “If sexual sobriety doesn’t require lasting sexual abstinence, what does it require?” Interestingly, there is no cut-and-dried answer to this question. Each of us arrives in recovery with a unique life history and set of problems, along with highly individualized goals for the future. Thus, each of us, with the help of our therapist or sponsor, must craft a personalized version of sexual sobriety. To do this, we must first delineate the sexual behaviors that do and do not compromise or destroy our values (fidelity, not hurting others, etc.), life circumstances (keeping a job, not getting arrested, etc.), and relationships. We then commit in a written sexual sobriety contract to only engage in sexual behaviors that are non-problematic (for us). As long as our sexual behavior does not violate these highly individualized boundaries, we are sexually sober.

Task for Today
If you do not have a sexual sobriety plan, create one. If you do have one, review it with your therapist and your sponsor.