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Today, May 3, 2023 is The Prior’s 23 month Chaste Birthday
It is my 18 month birthday of my new bottom line of “No sex except to create children”.
And it is Nick L.’s first 60 days of Chastity birthday!
PS: Chris has 67 days and Kevin has 18 of Chastity, respectively.
Celebrate, celebrate…dance to the music!
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Is “No sex except to create children” even a thing?
In early 1963, before the Kennedy assassination, before Vietnam, before Muhammad Ali and before the Beatles, in a middle-class military suburb in Fort Knox Kentucky, where they stored all the gold, there was a conversation amongst the junior officers: the captains, lieutenants and majors.
Tolerance amongst the various protestant Protestant groups was limited and the Catholics were being discussed.
They said that the Catholics believed in “No sex except to create children”.
There was a snide, cynical disbelief that the Catholics really practiced that, but there was also a silent, deeper, fear that the Catholics might actually be succeeding…which made the Protestants rather feel shallow about themselves, spiritually… And they intensely didn’t like that.
I was 8 years old and heard that conversation.
I never thought about it again until I was 25 and married a Catholic girl whose father worked for the Diocese and explained to me that the Church had changed the rules and now sex, to keep the marriage together, was just fine.
I was a practicing alcoholic at the time, thought the talk was interesting, but I didn’t really care.
When I got sexually sober June 26, 1990. I had to do 60 days of Chastity or my SLAA home group wouldn’t allow me to speak…or to call myself sober.
I researched sex and found there was a group called the Shakers in 18th century New York who believed in no sex…ever. But they became extinct, so that seemed kind of stupid.
I was trying to figure out how to practice the sexual unselfishness that the Big Book talks about in pages 68-70.
Clearly cheating on my wife was selfish.
Masturbating, it was obvious to me, even at 16 years old, was selfish.
So no masturbating or cheating.
But, after 7 years of the above sobriety I ran across Gandhi and he had decided that using his wife as an object of lust…was selfish.
I knew that was true…but I clung to my right to have sex with wife.
After 20 periods of Chastity of 60 days, or more, in the last 35 years, I am right back in that neighborhood, when I was 8 years old, hearing the Army Officers talking about “no sex except to create children”.
It’s only been 18 months, but, yes it’s a thing….My thing.
Steve D.
Chastity Office 297
Topic for discussion “Relationships in F-Anon”
Hope versus accepting:
In Al-anon, the Third Tradition states that there has to be a “problem in a friend or a family member”…or you can’t get in the front door.
The person that makes that determination is not the alcoholic, but the Al-anon.
That’s tricky stuff because most Al-anons feel pretty hurt and angry…not the best place to be when having to quietly, objectively decide whether or not you have a seat in that particular program…but, it must be done.
Acceptance that I love a Food Addict is part and parcel of “Awareness, Acceptance, Action”.
So, accepting is God’s will.
But, Hope is the second principle that we “practice in all our affairs” and is something God wants us to do, too.
Can those conflict?
With a Food addict entering into a relationship based on “If you will change…I will be with you“ is not accepting. That is controlling.
So how can we hope, yet accept?
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I am grateful for the simplicity of Chastity
All my relationships are about service…nothing more.
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What can I do to make Chastity more comfortable?
Exercise very hard, Super clean food, Play the guitar
On top of the normal 12 step stuff: meetings, sponsorship, Step work, reading literature, prayer and meditation.