Step 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

The idea of surrendering our entire identity to whatever process of change was necessary was only an abstract concept in Steps 2 and 3. Now we were facing the reality of what that meant. Summoning the willingness to let go of every defect we had uncovered in Step 4 was much easier to think about than to accomplish. What was it that was blocking this willingness?

One problem was that it was easy to find ourselves feeling "deprived" once again. Hadn't we given up enough when we stopped all forms of bottom-line addictive behavior? Wasn't our real problem the active addiction itself, and now that we were sober, didn't we have the right to relax and "be human," to go through life guilt-free? Weren't we at least better off than most people we saw around us? Did we have to be perfect to be acceptable? Besides, who wanted to be a saint! 

This attitude was easy enough to justify to ourselves' however, we were actually at a very critical point in our sobriety. In the first five steps we were walking away from the active disese; now we needed to make that first real step toward rebuilding. While it might be true that not every part of us needed wholesale rebuilding, it was true that we could not trust ourselves to direct the project solely on the basis of our unaided will. Our twisted motives, often hidden, could far too easily turn qualities that were quite harmless, in others, into a source of addictive return for us.

Once again, we had to grapple with humility. It would have been a serious error to attribute all of our troubles to the addiction alone, for our character defects affected all other areas of our lives as well. This was not time to relax, for we needed to continue our vigilance against the constant sexual and romantic temptations and the illusion of "the perfect romance." In becoming ready to give up our character defects, we were deciding to give up on that part of ourselves which was capable of "putting on a con," the devices we used to attract lovers or deceive others. Giving up these defects meant not only that we would be stripped of our addictive hooks for others, but that we would have only ourselves to present to friends and potential partners. Addicts that we were, most of us were riddled with insecurity and feelings of inferiority. We were terrified that if we gave up the "con," and the defects which gave rise to and supported it, we would be viewed with contempt and would never find anyone to "love" us again.

Another problem was that as addicts as we had become accustomed to pain. More often than not, pain was a central characteristic of our romantic involvements and even many of our sexual pursuits. Some of us even equated pain with love, so that in the absence of love, we would at least be comforted by the presence of pain. But in sobriety, having gone through surrender, withdrawal, and an inventory, what did we still have of ourselves? Couldn't we at least be left with our pain? If we let go of all our character defects (the source of our pain), what would be left of us? Did we have no choice about what we would be at all? Such was our diseased thinking.

The old emotional habits which were still so much a part of us had subtle payoffs which made them difficult to surrender. Many of us, ourselves victims of emotional deprivation in our early years, had learned to survive by cultivating hatred, anger, and resentment as motivating forces, seeking to insulate ourselves from hrt and fear. Now we discovered that we had crippled ourselves by using this monotonous strategy of distrust and isolation in all relationships, whether they were inherently hostil or not. In the extreme, we had become incapable of trust and authentic intimacy with anyone, even people who now seemed in our recover to be more willing to trust us and to work towards partnership.

But we still seemed unable to respond in kind, often coming up against our own inner blocks, which kept experiences of genuine trust and caring at arm's length. These blocks were painful to recognize, especially since we now knew that we wanted to trust and take risks in sharing ourselves with others. This was all the more painful because we could see that the barriers were within us, and we didn't see how they could be dismantled. The end result of being weighed down by these internal blocks seemed to be the fear of being emotionally steam-rollered by anyone else we let get close to us, or of winding up in inescapable isolation.

As we continued to have to live with ourselves, however, we found the consequences of indulging in our character defects increasingly uncomfortable to endure. Anger could seize us unexpectedly and fill us with murderous rage, or emotional binges would leave us despairing and suicidal, or depression would sap our will to go on, our hope for any future at all. We began to see the fallacy or that logic which said we could be guilt-free since everything we had done was caused by our sex and love addiction. We saw the spiritual bankruptcy behind the cosmetic humility of not wanting to be perfect. It became apparent that it would not work for us to specify just exactly what God could and could not do with us.

Our attitude towards our defects and underlying problems began to change. With new eyes we could see the serious consequences in the lives of others when they could not voluntarily surrender these difficulties. With growing maturity we realized that healthy relationships could only exist if we were human rather than superhuman. We came to understand that sex and love addiction appears to be a disease of actions when viewed from without, but its really a perversion of moral and ethical values as experienced from within. The spiritual dimensions of our dis-ease were now clear.

We now moved from a limited surrender of a specific addiction toward surrender to a life-long process which would refine the qualities we carried within and contributed to life. Underlying this whole shift in our attitude was increasing reliance on the God of our understanding. Indeed, it seemed that we were being given still another invitation to deepen our partnership with God. It was enough that we be willing to do the legwork, and be open-minded about what the result would be. God's grace would give us freedom from the burden of our old self. In humility, we understood that we were only being asked to get out of God's way, so that, with our cooperation, God's work could be done in our lives.

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (book) pp 84-87