Developing Non-Sexual Friendships – Sex and Relationships

A friend is someone you can speak your mind to loudly.

As active sex and porn addicts, we often have very little going on in our personal lives outside of our addictive behaviors and our primary romantic relationships, which can be severely damaged. But we rarely realize this until a few months into our sexual sobriety. Twelve-step support groups and other treatment-based communities can help with this. But we must do more than just attend meetings. We need to connect and build friendships with other group members. This means arriving early, leaving late, and most importantly attending a mixology session (usually for coffee or a bite to eat after the meeting). When this happens, we can talk about recovery, but also about other things we may have in common—movies, sports, gardening, theater, parenting, politics, or anything else that interests us. In short, we develop much needed non-sexual friendships that help us heal and recover.

Today’s Task
Spend at least a few minutes of pure social time with your fellow recovering people.