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CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous (COSLAA) – 12 Step Program

What is CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous?

The 12-step program of CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous was formed as an aftereffect of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous. The group was designed to help the individuals who are suffering not as addicts themselves, but for those who are dealing with sex and love addicts. The fellowship was created for individuals over the age of 18 who have been affected by the behaviors of someone who is addicted to love and sex.

Although the members of CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous are not addicts themselves, being negatively impacted by the behaviors of a family, friend, or significant other who suffers from these problems can be detrimental to their happiness. For newcomers, if a loved one is engaging in behaviors such as excessive attendance to strip clubs, Internet sex and porn, phone sex or infidelity, CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous can help.

How is CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous effective?

The purpose of the fellowship is to help individuals find happier ways to live because their happiness is being affected by someone close to them who addicted to sex and love. Even if they are not addicts themselves, addressing their own attitudes and beliefs will help improve their quality of life and help find solutions to some of their problems today. The program brings people together who are suffering from similar issues, so finding a safe place to discuss these issues with other people can be crucial to recovery.

Anonymity is followed in CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous, so everything that is discussed in the meetings will not be shared with anyone else. Because it can be difficult to talk about these issues with people who aren’t in the same boat, CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous brings these individuals together to let them know that they are not alone. Since 12-step programs have proven to be successful for many other self-help groups, CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous focuses on following a 12-step process to help individuals recover.

How does CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous work?

CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous is not for individuals who suffer from sex and love addiction themselves, but rather for those who have a close family member, friend, or loved one suffering from this disease. The program changes the focus for members so that they have an opportunity to work on themselves rather than the addict they are close with. When dealing with a sex and love addict, it can be easy to get caught up in causing, controlling or trying to cure the addict, so the program is intended to help address the issues that they are suffering from instead. Addressing current thoughts, behaviors, and feelings, such as betrayal or abandonment, can help members switch gears and begin finding solutions for themselves, even if their loved one is still active in their addiction.

The program works by providing members 12 steps to begin the recovery process, which allows them to detach from the addicts behavior and start healing themselves. Although the individuals in the program are not addicts themselves, they can still find a way to “get sober.” For members of CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous, sobriety is defined as dealing with the disease of sex addiction and their codependent behaviors to the addiction. The first step provides members the chance to admit their powerlessness over codependency to a sex and love addict.

Working the program requires going through the 12 steps, which can be done much easier by finding a sponsor who has one year or more of sobriety in the fellowship. Once members begin working the steps, attending meetings regularly and building a support system in the fellowship can move forward in the healing and recovery process.

FAQs about CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous

How CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous meetings are started

Starting a CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous meeting can be simple if there isn’t one available nearby. Meeting formats are available here. Once a meeting has been scheduled, letting the helpline know at 860-456-0032 or posting a message on the official website with contact information can help get the meeting spread to other members in the program. For a meeting to begin, it only requires two members of the CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous fellowship. The only purpose for a meeting should be to help others who are dealing with someone addicted to sex and love.

What are the costs for CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous?

Like all other 12-step programs, there are no costs, dues or fees for membership. The only requirement for members to join the program is a desire to stop living in a pattern of codependency and sex and love addiction. The fellowship is self-supporting through their own contributions while declining outside contributions, so members are encouraged to share when they can but are never required to.

Is the program of CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous religious?

The fellowship is not religious in any way, shape or form. Step 3 of the program allows members to find a higher power greater than themselves to restore them to sanity, but the word God is simply used as a description for a higher power. It is up to the individual to find what they consider to be a higher power than themselves. The concept is independent of each member.

What are the gifts of long term sobriety in the program?

Some of the gifts that members have found after obtaining long term sobriety in CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous include:

  1. Living full in the moment, being present.
  2. Living a life free of shame and blame.
  3. Greater self acceptance and being able to do amends when we have hurt others with our behaviors.
  4. Being able to set boundaries clearly and timely.
  5. Communicating our thoughts and feelings effectively with increased self esteem and passion.
  6. Recognizing triggers that bring relapse behaviors and how to learn healthier responses.
  7. Sponsorship and service work to carry the message of hope and healing to newcomers.
  8. Repairing our part in our relationships by using the sober behaviors we are learning.
  9. Being able to embrace one’s past and not want to shut the door on it, but weave it into one’s healing.
  10. Living a day at a time with more serenity, acceptance and grace.

What are the 12 steps of CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous?

1. We admitted we were powerless over our codependency to a sex and love addict, and 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 Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God and 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 Him 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 or ourselves.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His 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 others and to practice these principles in our day to day living.

-coslaa.org/12-steps

What are the 12 Traditions of CoSex and Love Addicts Anonymous?

1. Our common welfare should come first, personal recovery depends upon unity.

2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority-a loving God as this Power may be expressed through our group conscience.

3. The only requirement for COSLAA membership is a desire to stop living our a pattern of co(dependency)-sex and love addiction. The relatives, friends, and significant others, when gathered together for mutual aid, may call themselves a COSLAA group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.

4. Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting another group, or COSLAA or SLAA as a whole.

5. Each group has but one primary purpose-to help families, friends, and significant others of sex and love addicts. We do this by practicing the Twelve Steps of COSLAA ourselves and by welcoming and giving comfort to the relatives, friends, and significant others of sex and love addicts.

6. A COSLAA group or COSLAA as a whole ought never endorse, finance, or lend the COSLAA name or SLAA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, or prestige divert us from our primary purpose. Although a separate entity, we should strive to cooperate with SLAA.

7. Every COSLAA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

8. COSLAA should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

9. COSLAA as such ought never to be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.

10. COSLAA has no opinion on outside issues; hence the COSLAA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than on promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV, film and other public media.
We need guard with special care the anonymity of all fellow COSLAA members.

12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

-coslaa.org/12-traditions-2
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