Christmas Party for Sex Addicts?

I suppose it presents a unique situation when a bunch of sex addicts and their spouses/partners gather together to celebrate Christmas together. This Sunday my SAA group is having a Christmas party in the home of two of our members who have so graciously offered their time and home for the evening to us. It will be a beautiful occasion and I am dutifully excited.

One of the things that myself and the other "old timers" my my SAA group have tried to emphasize is social fellowship between members. In chapter one of the personal stories in the Sex Addicts Anonymous Green Book (p. 109), the author talks about a retreat that the original SAA group went on, where he goes on to talk about how that tradition continued through the years. He writes: "There was almost a magic to the weekend. It deepened our bonding and enriched our program . . . My learning over the years is that groups that spent weekends together did very well. . . The group has to have a life outside of its regular meeting time."

What parties, retreats, etc. create for us is a foothold over the terminal "uniqueness" and isolation that is characteristic of our disease. It makes us far less able to embrace that voice within us that tells us that we are especially evil, unworthy of love, and deserve each and every bad thing that life throws at us. Indeed, we are not alone. Fellowship fosters within us the courage to confront the lies that we tell ourselves.

In the ORIGINAL version of "The Problem" by Roy K in our sister fellowship, SA, the last paragraph is particularly pertinent: "In the solution, by surrendering again and again to the discipline of meeting with each other, people, without knowing it, through the honest revelation of their own lives, confront us with our disease as it really is. Our cry, 'Connect with me' becomes 'Confront me with myself -- the self I'm running from -- in a way that I can accept.' And the healing begins."