Sponsorship is one of the most effective and personal tools of recovery in SCA. After our introduction to the fellowship at meetings, finding someone who has more experience in SCA than ourselves and asking them to sponsor us expresses our seriousness and willingness to stop having compulsive sex. Sponsors tell us how the program works for them, help us to develop sexual recovery plans, support us in times of crisis and celebrate our successes. In a sponsor/sponsee relationship both share their experience, strength and hope with each other.

The very act of asking someone to sponsor us is in itself important. It was difficult for most of us. We didn’t always know what was involved in the relationship. We may have had reservations about choosing someone because we didn’t want to make a mistake. But the act of asking someone was more important than the person we asked. One of the benefits of having a sponsor is knowing that someone has agreed in advance to listen to us which makes it easier to ask for help and to work the program.

The sponsor/sponsee relationship is not a marriage. If it doesn’t work we simply get another sponsor. However, continuity is valuable. A sponsor who knows our story and has an ongoing sense of our situation is helpful. Keeping in touch frequently with our sponsors is one of the ways we diminish isolation. At first many of us phone daily. Usually the sponsee calls, but sponsors also call. It’s something that gets worked out in the sponsorship interplay.

Confidentiality is an essential ingredient of sponsorship. There are many things about our sex lives that we share about openly at meetings, but there are often other aspects about ourselves that we have great difficulty revealing. Sharing our sexual secrets is a crucial part of the process of healing. We can only do so when we know that our secrets are safe with trusted confidants. The sharing of sponsors, sponsees and other SCA friends is equally confidential.

Sponsorship is acting out the slogan, “To keep it, you have to give it away.” Sponsors benefit as much as sponsees. Our mutual sharing helps us both to recover. When we talk to newcomers, we are reminded how we felt when we had compulsive sex, and how we stopped. When we talk to our sponsors we feel the understanding of fellow sexual compulsives and the hope of continuing recovery.

(Extract from “SCA – A Program of Recovery” © SCA-ISO)

For a more detailed discussion of sponsorship, SCA publishes a longer pamphlet entitled “Sponsorship in SCA” which can be viewed HERE.