I was seriously messed up when I got to AA in the area of sex and relationships and stayed that way for a long time.
There were four issues:
Firstly, compulsive sexual activity.
Secondly, compulsive romantic activity.
Thirdly, relationships with crazy people.
Fourthly, craziness in relationships with sane people.
What I'm going to say may be surprising. With the first three, the answer was ...
STOP IT
The journey to stopping was long and painful, because I didn't want to. It's like drinking. You're not done until you're done. Once I was done, it was straightforward.
Then, I needed to take the first three Steps in these areas.
Step One: Once I start, I can't stop, and, left to my own devices, I start. When I start, it runs my life.
Step Two: God will show me a different path and empower me to walk it.
Step Three: Ask!
That process lasted maybe ... several minutes. It has taken the form of revelation rather than work.
Then, I had to apply bottom lines. I knew this from AA, but they don't call it that. They call it that in SLAA, my SLAA friends tell me. If you hang out at the barber's, you'll end up with a haircut. If I engage in certain activities, the compulsive and crazy activities are sure to follow. So I avoid certain places. I avoid certain activities (e.g. flirting).
Abstinence was the prerequisite for recovery. Then, the Twelve Steps were the answer. There was a small amount of work in Steps Four to Nine, but, since I already had a programme that had cleared out the past and given me the information I needed about what my character defects were, there was little mileage in these Steps. Once I know what my defects are, have confessed them, and have made it up with people, I have to get on with the business of changing in Steps Ten through Twelve. Steps Ten and Eleven are the method; Step Twelve is the substance.
Firstly, Step Twelve: carrying the message. A lot of free time was opened up. I poured that into Step Twelve (sponsorship and other service).
Secondly, Step Twelve: developing other avenues and interests in my life.
Thirdly, Step Twelve: applying the principles of the programme to relationships. This is how the fourth problem was solved ('craziness in relationships with sane people').
All of this was remarkably straightforward in the end.
(a) Devise a sane and sound ideal for sex, romance, dating, and relationships.
(b) Mine all of the materials in the Big Book, the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the Twelve Traditions, and the Twelve Concepts to establish the new principles by which I was going to live.
Postscript:
I tried many other approaches to understand, fix, reconfigure, or recover from the crazy and compulsive activities. I honestly don't know if I was particularly dense, unwell, or unwilling or if the nature of my problem was different. In my case, though, there was 'brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse'. All of the structures remained intact. I was in the same position as the chap on page 27 of the Big Book:
Though experience had made him skeptical, he finished his treatment with unusual confidence. His physical and mental condition were unusually good. Above all, he believed he had acquired such a profound knowledge of the inner workings of his mind and its hidden springs that relapse was unthinkable. Nevertheless, he was drunk in a short time. More baffling still, he could give himself no satisfactory explanation for his fall.
As with drink, the answer turned out to be a psychic change, which started with saying:
I DON'T KNOW
... and letting myself be guided to a an entirely different way of living.
I didn't need to fix crazy-land. I just needed to board the first bus leaving crazy-land. And, fortunately, as soon I was ready, the bus appeared. I have understood a lot about crazy-land in retrospect, but that's of academic interest. The key, as the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions suggests, was willingness. Once I didn't want what I had, I was ready to let go and be given something new by holding out empty hands.