The 12 Characteristics of Sex and Love Addicts

1. Having few healthy boundaries, we became 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 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, fear and envy. We use sex or emotional dependence as substitutes 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 obsessions 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.

The Promises of SLAA

“Now we were truly feeling some sense of deep release from the past! We were free of much guilt for our misdeeds, from the shame of having fallen short of our inner values. In many instances, the values we had thought were ours had turned out to be someone else’s. We had shed or changed these to allow the seeds of our own personal wholeness to take root and grow. We were indeed living new, positive, unfolding lives.

Whether in partnership with others or in solitude, we had truly been granted a spiritual release from our sex and love addiction. While vigilance was still important, the choices we had to make now seemed easier. We felt increasing confidence in our developing relationship with God, and were full participants in the fellowship of S.L.A.A. We enjoyed solitude and were unafraid of honesty and openness with others. We could comprehend what it means to have dignity of self.”

The 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 S.L.A.A. membership is a desire to stop living out a pattern of sex and love addiction. S.L.A.A. is supported entirely through the 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 S.L.A.A.
3. Steps. Our practice of the Twelve Step program of recovery to achieve sexual and emotional sobriety.
4. Service. Our giving back to the S.L.A.A. 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 S.L.A.A. has no opinion on outside issues and seeks no controversy. S.L.A.A. 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, which transcends any personal differences of sexual orientation or gender identity. We need protect with special care the anonymity of every S.L.A.A. member. Additionally, we try to avoid drawing undue attention to S.L.A.A. as a whole from the public media.

SLAA Intergroup

Group representatives meet on the last Thursday of each month at 7pm (520 Sherbourne St. Toronto). In the spirit of service, please appoint a group rep and be active in Intergroup.
Messageline: 416-486-8201
info@slaa-ontario.org / www.slaa-ontario.org
Mailing Address: S.L.A.A. Ontario, 473 Church Street Suite 122, Toronto, ON. M4Y 2C5
Literature orders: slaa.ont.lit@gmail.com
Ontario S.L.A.A. Intergroup is affiliated with The Augustine Fellowship Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous Fellowship-Wide Services, Inc. 1550 NE Loop 410, Suite 118, San Antonio, TX 78209
Tel.: 210-828-7900 www.slaafws.org/contactfws

The 12 Steps of SLAA

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 a 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.