Many people have posted that they cannot or are not ready to go to SA meetings because their wives do not know about their addiction issues and they are not ready to involve their wives, so they can't just "disappear" to SA Meetings without explanation.

[I am not about to discuss the pros and cons, and the when and when-nots of sharing addiction issues with one's wife, there has already been much said and written on that, but I want to address the above problem for those who have not (yet) included their wives.]

I would like to suggest that a person with the problem of not being able to explain his absence while attending SA meetings might look back at the time when he had no problem "explaining" to his wife all the time spent on watching pornography, or chatting online, or "staying late at work" (while being involved in whatever his lust/sexual addiction entailed), and maybe for some people here - explaining expensive internationally billed phone calls (to sex related phone numbers), or unusual credit card charges (for lust related spending), etc. etc.
For these things the Yetzer Hora made the person into a "Genius of Explanations".
Also, how he managed to live "a double life" without involving his wife in "his other life".
So maybe one can utilize that experience to figure out ways to deal with the "explanation" issue, or the "double life" issue while in the process of recovery, and if attending SA meetings is what is necessary for his recovery, then he should not allow this to stop him, at least until he is ready to share with her.

wow you hit it on the nail. very well said im inspired by that. i will look into GYE phone meetings. as a step in the right direction. skoyach.

formyself#1 wrote:


There is a passuk in tehilim where Dovid hamelech asks:
Mei'oveiy techakmeini - מאויבי תחכמני - May you make me wiser than my enemies.
There is another explanations that it means "May I become wise from my enemies".
A person can learn wisdom, especially in battle technique, from the way his enemy fights him.
And this is as I said, we can learn methods of victory, from the way we were able to act before, while we were still being guided by "the enemy".

can relate to that when I came to my first meeting I met my contact outside I saw it was in a church so I told him I need to call up my rov( what a hypocrite when was the last time I called to ask him anything)thank g-d he convinced me
as an old timer told me you have to put put everything aside for recovery your religion ,wife ,kids and job because if you don't you wont have any of them

Thanks for sharing!!

We need to remember that everyone's situation is different. Each individual has to be honest with an appropriate rabbinic authority to decide whether he can recover without putting aside religion or not, and even when some religion needs to be put aside, how much.

I'd rather not have to discuss such issues with my Rabbi. So that's another incentive to keep sober.

Hatzlacha

MT