And here’s a great tip for if you don’t want to put down your real phone number in the questionnaire: You can use Google Voice. As one addict wrote on the forum:

"Google Voice is a virtual phone number that is forwarded to any phone you want, has text capabilities, also converts voice mail to texts, really cool and it’s FREE by Google. I use it as my anonymous phone number for addiction purposes only, so I can give my phone number without revealing who I am."

Being able to call someone when feeling weak is a cornerstone of recovery for lust addicts. As Dov, who is 11 years sober in SA, recently wrote to someone on the forum:

When I knew I had a pattern of weakness or habitual trouble, having someone to call and talk to – to get current with in a minute or less, really helps me in at least three ways:

1) It ruins the familiarity of the old pattern by adding something very different to the mix (this is something we need to experience to understand).

2) It gets me a little out of my goofy head and back into what I was really supposed to be doing when the lust hit.

3) It helps me learn that there are always consequences to everything I do, whether it’s good, bad or even real close to "parve" (there’s really no such thing as parve, for me). At first it would be the shame (boo-hoo) of having to call and admit to someone else that I didn’t surrender and win this time (i.e. "fell"), but after a while (through the calling) it becomes second nature to me that consequences are inescapable. Eventually, that is what we call "integrity".

Although the questionnaire we supply (above) helps us make matches, it is not necessarily that important for the partners to be the same age-frame or in the same situation. See the following story from the SA White Book, where two people helped each other stay sober when they had no group:

"I found one other member in a Twelve Step program who also wanted sexual sobriety. I was forty-nine and he was twenty-one. He was single and I was married. I was a college graduate and he was a high school dropout. We had little in common, but we started calling each other almost daily. We would get current with our lust temptations, telling each other what we were going through to break the power that experience or fantasy had over us. Then, we also started getting current with our resentments. Lust and resentment thus began to evaporate as we brought them to the light, much as sunlight dispels a fog. I call it the "daily double" – getting rid of both daily. When temptation was especially intense, we’d pick up the phone and call right away. Sometimes we’d pray together. 

Giving up our lust and resentments to one another as they came up turned out to be a very effective form of surrender. What a marvelous freedom and joy it brought. And in the process, we were breaking out of that deadly isolation we had locked ourselves into. I look back on that time as one of the highlights of my entrance into the program. I was beginning to come to life".

We also have a board on our forum dedicated to helping people find partners/sponsors for e-mailing and chatting, and another board dedicated to helping people find "phone partners". It’s called "Speed-Dial".

Eventually, we hope that this whole process will be automated. Users will be able to use their profile page to specify whether they want a partner or sponsor, by e-mail or by phone. And they will have the opportunity to search through the database for a partner that best suits their needs (complete "gender" seperation of-course).