Recovering from Intentionally Bad Advice in the COSA-SAA Fellowships
Members of the COSA program—open to anyone who has been negatively affected by compulsive sexual behavior, of any sort, at any time—may simultaneously attend SAA meetings with the intention to "stop addictive sexual behavior."
In these meetings, they may share private advice with the family members, spouses, and romantic partners of any SAA members who attend.
Who thought this would be a good idea?
A program closely affiliated with Sex Addicts Anonymous is COSA, an open fellowship for all those who feel they have been affected by compulsive sexual behavior, whether directly or indirectly, at any time, in any way.
COSA is an international, volunteer-led support group which may be attended by members of any gender. In practice, mostly women attend, and special literature is provided to orient men who attend.
Many COSA meetings run concurrently or interdependently with SAA meetings, so that couples may come to the same building and split off into separate meetings, and then rejoin afterward.
Back-issues of major, national-level COSA publications can be dated just prior to May 1992,[1] although the group originated much earlier than this, and was already having meetings in multiple states, and holding conferences at the regional and national levels at this time. COSA seems to have originated as a nonprofit at the same time as SAA, or slightly later.
Although COSA refers to itself as “steadfastly autonomous,” and insists that “it is not affiliated with any other organizations,” the program is so closely associated with SAA that it is headquartered in the same city, operates under the same nonprofit title “International Service Organization” (although officially, COSA operates as the “International Service Organization… of COSA”) and even shares the same Wikipedia page as SAA.[2]
On paper they are separate nonprofits. In practice, they often run concurrently and advertise as joint programs. As of 2021 the ISO offices of the two organizations are located in business parks about fifteen minutes apart from each other in Houston, Texas. In 2021 and 2022, both SAA and COSA suddenly started scrambling to introduce parallel “12 Concepts of Service,” to supplement their separate Steps and Traditions, to bring an appearance of control and uniformity to individual circles, after 40+ years.
This SAA-affiliated COSA should not be confused with “Circles of Support and Accountability,” (COSA)[3] which is an international, experimental sex-justice group, oriented around “restorative justice” principles.
This Circles-of-Justice COSA is a totally DIFFERENT COSA.
Circles of Justice COSA started its official international activities in 1994, in a formal pilot program in Canada, roughly fifteen years after the other COSA was born—a couple of years after the SAA COSA went international.
Today, this TOTALLY DIFFERENT restorative-justice COSA is coordinated with community, court, and prison systems throughout the United States and other various countries, in an effort to reduce rates of relapse or recidivism.
In this TOTALLY DIFFERENT Circles-of-Justice COSA, a group of inner-circle volunteers—monitored by various outer-circle professionals including therapists, volunteer trainers, probation officers, and volunteer coordinators—surrounds particular sex offenders with different layers of supervision, constantly monitoring them and making it impossible for them to relapse in secret.
The Circles-of-Justice COSA monitors and surveilles offenders inside of support groups identical to SAA and the other COSA, in covenant-style communities which restricts or prohibits the keeping of secrets, as sex offenders reintegrate into society after their release from incarceration, or during their periods of parole or probation.
The stated aim of this COSA is ‘no more victims.’”[4] (The same slogan as MADD, incidentally.)
Officially, to be totally and absolutely clear, Circles of Justice is a totally, absolutely different COSA. A totally. different. COSA.
Not the SAA COSA. (And not MADD. Just the same slogan, and mostly women.)
It would be a shame if someone got them confused.
Or if they got inappropriately mixed up.
Or if one group developed methods which were used by another.
Or actually came to the other COSA without disclosure.
Like my friend in recovery, “Pedro,” who was pressured during his SAA attendance to contact the Circles of Justice COSA… by people in SAA… to mediate a satisfying social justice resolution for his particular case of abuse.
For Pedro, his recovery pathway led him through a COSA-SAA-COSA pileup.
To be fair, it would be understandable if you did get the SAA COSA recovery program mixed up with the other socially-justicey COSA.
There has been vehement debate inside the COSA program about even the name COSA—whether or not the acronym stands for codependents of sex-addicts, or co-sex addicts.
So, to eliminate the debate altogether, and to eliminate the need for self-understanding, the SAA “COSA” acronym is no longer an acronym.
The name of the group now is just “COSA.” It doesn’t mean or stand for anything specific. Apparently.
But, just to be clear, it's still definitely not the other COSA. Even though, technically, COSA could mean technically anything, it DOESN’T MEAN THE OTHER COSA.
That would be an incredibly deceptive irony.
If those two programs got mixed up somehow.
Or if volunteers from one COSA mixed in with the other COSA, to monitor codependents of sex addicts, along with the sex addicts in Sex Addicts Anonymous.
SAA’s COSA
Initially, the SAA COSA program was imagined as a program for the “codependent” partners of sex addicts—in particular, the feminine partners of masculine addicts.
Codependency, speaking generally, is itself an excessive psychological or emotional reliance on a partner—usually one with an addiction or disorder that is enabled by the codependent partner.
According to Merriam-Webster, this term was first used in 1977, and was formally defined in 1979—simultaneously with the emergence of the twin programs of Sex Addicts Anonymous and Co-Sex Addicts in 1977, with men funneled to one program and women funneled to another.
What is the difference between sexual codependency and sexual coaddiction?
In many instances of personal testimony or personal self-description, there is very little practical difference in the behaviors associated with either sexual codependency versus co-sex addiction—especially when the person in question is romantically, sexually involved with a sex addict (as opposed to codependency between family members or friends who are not sexually involved).
A sexual codependent is often portrayed as a subservient partner who is dominated by the addicted partner, and rendered compliant to their addictive demands—in the heteronormative paradigm (a straight couple—I’m talking about a man and a woman), this means the woman bends over backwards (or whatever direction) to fulfill her partner’s fantasies, and gets drawn deeper and deeper into his addiction, as the weaker partner.
Of course, this is somewhat difference than sex addiction as SAA advertises or explains addiction now. But COSA was originally a sex-addiction program for women running parallel to SAA, which was for men. At the outset, it was imagined that women were not so addicted to sex or sexuality, but to their partner's approval. Thus the murky definition of COSA itself allowed for both types of participants: women addicted to sex in tandem with their partners, and women enabling their partners' addictions.
As the years passed and the culture shifted—as we got more honest about our sexual reality—Sex Addicts Anonymous opened itself to different varieties of sexualities and gender roles (increasing the size of the pool of potential program participants).
By the mid-nineties, the heteronormative model made less and less sense. Codependency as traditionally defined between men and women was no longer adequate. It no longer seemed to make to have a totally separate program for "co-sex" addicts.
In real life, wouldn't co-sex addicts just be... sex addicts?
In that case, they would just need the SAA program, and not a separate circle where they could be monitored and steered separately from their male partners.
Appropriate adjustments to the program rhetoric has been made.
Today, you don’t have to be straight to be a member of SAA.
Similarly, COSA today is open to a variety of types of memberships.
But this opens the door to a host of problematic dynamics in an unusual way.
You do not have to be an active sexual codependent, or a co-sex addict, to be a member of COSA.
“The only requirement for COSA members is to have been affected by compulsive sexual behavior,” and this is true “whether or not there is a sexually addicted person currently in our lives.”[5]
This means, in practice, that while the COSA circle is open especially to people in relationships dominated by unhealthy patterns of sexual codependency—survivors of incest, or rape, or children who had parents whose marriages were destroyed by affairs, as well as to people in active relationships with sex-addicted partners—the COSA circle is also open to people who feel they were affected by compulsive sexual behavior of any kind, in the present or in the past.
Compulsive sexual behavior of any kind, ever, at all.
Just like AA is open to anyone interested in "stopping drinking," and SAA is open to anyone with an intention to "stop addictive sexual behaviors," the language of COSA invites anyone interested in policing the behaviors of other people, and fighting social vice, to participate in a free public-service program.
The difference?
The program code explicitly invites people who have already been harmed by the behavior it purposes to address.
Following the letter of the COSA codes, anyone who feels they were victimized in any way by sex addiction, at any time in their lives, can join COSA, and immediately begin self-policing the codependents there.
Because a member of COSA may self-identify as a codependent and a sex addict, it is not impossible for someone to belong to COSA and SAA, and to travel in both circles independently, learning the names and stories of people in both fellowships, and gathering phone numbers from people in both fellowships, under the pretense of offering them support outside of meetings over coffee or dinner or breakfast.
Given the open-ended membership rules of SAA and COSA, this means they can simultaneously police the family members, or sexual partners, of people also attending the parallel SAA program as well, by attending SAA meetings with a desire to stop addictive behaviors.
For example, if someone had a sex-addicted parent who abused them, or who abused a family member twenty years ago, that person could become a member of COSA on that criterion alone.
They could sit in the COSA circles for that reason, to talk about their feelings of trauma and powerlessness they remember from their childhood, and build confidential contacts with other COSA members.
Simultaneously, they could join SAA with a “desire to stop addictive sexual behavior,” and come to as many weekly SAA meetings as they like. They could learn about couples in both circles, simultaneously, with a desire to stop any sexually unhealthy patterns that reminded them of their own parental trauma from years ago.
Or if someone felt that society-at-large was too heavily influenced by the compulsive use of pornography? That's reason enough to join COSA. They're a member of society, after all. So they've been negatively influenced by that sexual compulsion.
Or if someone felt uncomfortable because they learned that a sex offender was moving into the area, they could join COSA for that reason, and also join SAA for that reason, simultaneously—even if the sex offender was in SAA compulsorily, by order of the court, and was required to actively participate in SAA meetings.
Alternatively, someone with their own addiction, who also experienced sexual abuse—someone who was victimized, and has become a predator, or maybe someone who has a pattern of affairs or cuckolding or stalking—may sit in both SAA meetings and COSA meetings, listen to partners in both programs share intimate sexual details about each other’s patterns and histories, along with their registries of grievances and resentments, get the phone numbers of everyone involved for “support,” and just… file that data away for later.
It is also not impossible for a single individual to volunteer as a sponsor, for men or women or both, in either fellowship simultaneously, walking both addicts and codependents through stepwork and disclosures, even gathering information about insecurities, transgressions, vulnerabilities, and shames simultaneously about husbands and wives, or other partnered relationships—couples who are frequently encouraged to attend parallel or alternating COSA and SAA meetings. Such an individual, a dual sponsor, would have no obligation to disclose his or her presence in one circle to the members or individuals in the other circle.
The "Traditions" of Sex Addicts Anonymous and COSA—and any other Twelve-Step fellowship, including especially S-Programs where sex-secrets are confessed in confidence—are not legally binding. Once your secrets, confidences, and details are distributed to an open circle of recovering predators who may relapse, or to individuals with an agenda to combat addiction by their own private methods, your information is no longer truly confidential.
Although 12 Step programs may offer members a warm and fuzzy feeling of safety, and though meetings may even take place inside of hospital spaces and church sanctuaries or halls, the promises of the "12 Traditions" are a far cry from the safety of a priest's confessional—where an ordained priest faces a lifetime defrocking if he breaks the confessional seal—or the censure a licensed, professional therapist faces if he screws up.
Of course, in-program communication in either SAA and COSA is supposed to remain confidential. Hypothetically.
Naturally, people of good conscience may—should—feel honor-bound to keep the specific information at specific meetings to themselves.
If someone breaks confidence, it should be considered a serious breach of trust.
Still, husbands and wives, traditionally, may share with each other what they themselves shared with the circle.
For example, if I come home from a meeting and tell my partner than “Gary” from the Berkeley meeting looked at internet porn again or visited another prostitute, that is considered a definite breach of trust. Don't do that.
But if I tell my partner that I shared about my own slip—like, I looked at some internet boobs when I shouldn’t have or I hired another escort down at the bathhouse, and I told everyone at the Monday night Oakland Kaiser meeting—that is not a breach of program confidentiality.
However, this changes if codependents or co-sex addicts begin participating in COSA.
COSA has an additional clause in its basic program code or ethos, which pressures its members to maintain group confidentiality at all times, in matters of all communication between all members, regardless of what is shared—whether in program circles, or out of program circles, whether members are participating in official program activities or not. This demand for perpetual radio silence between members is absent in SAA.
The additional pressure for constant silence in COSA, at all times, about everything, results in uneven recovery and sponsorship dynamics between partners who choose to participate in the twin programs simultaneously.
What is said between SAA recovery partners is not formally confidential, outside of the meeting circle (although, obviously, it is good form to be discrete).
In contrast, what is shared between COSA partners is always confidential. No matter what. At least on paper.
COSA members are not even supposed to tell their SAA spouses what they disclosed to the circle, or what their sponsors asked them to disclose outside of the circle. No COSA discussion is supposed to float back to SAA at all, even between married partners.
COSA creates secrets.
COSA doesn’t prevent secrets. Or is that the other COSA? The one that surveilled sex criminals.
Naturally, if the matter came up for a public debate, some COSA members or spokespeople might argue that this is not technically true, or that there are reasonable exceptions to their formal mandate for perpetual silence.
Still, other COSA members or sponsors may advise their partners and sponsees that it is true—that only unhealthy, codependent partners feel obligated to tell their partners everything; that total confidentiality, at all times, in every possible way, is a necessary commitment for COSA members to make, so that COSA members can feel safe opening up about what happened to them, what was done to them, or what they are going through with their current abusers or codependents.
In some instances, this could be true.
But a total radio-silence mandate does more than protect COSA members and provide a healing space.
It also creates pressure points, and new gaps in existing relationships, which may be exploited by nonprofessional sponsors or recovery partners who believe particular partnerships to be unhealthy, who may wish to combat "addictive sexual behaviors" in their own way.
By forcing new silence into other people’s relationships, it becomes easier to drive apart “codependent” couples, or couples who are deemed codependent, when sponsors and other recovery partners provide bad or destructive relationship advice to one or the other codependent member, or to the “co-sex addict.”
Codependents attending COSA are discouraged from talking about the specific advice they receive, or anecdotes which they hear, during formal meetings, informal meetings with individual support contacts (like support brunches), or even at informally-arranged group outings or weekend-long retreats out in Marin you assholes.
This is because program confidentially clauses prohibit discussion with outsiders, even if no sensitive recovery information was shared.
This means bad advice can be given at any time by individuals, or even groups of people, who know both partners. The collective can tinker with a relationship behind closed doors, shielded by anonymity and traditions of secrecy.
Good-faith COSA members are pressured not to share with their SAA partners where they are getting their relationship guidance from.
Bad advice may flow from the group to one partner, who is pressured not to explain where his or her new perspective is coming from. Simultaneously, their new perspective is framed as a healthy new independence by individuals inside the COSA-SAA group; either the recovery partners accept the new, emerging relationship dynamic, or the relationship disintegrates. Sometimes it disintegrates either way.
COSA-SAA counts this as a success; in shattering the relationship, the collective has rescued the co-sex addict from addictive and/or codependent behaviors, according to the collective priorities of the “group conscience.” Or group consciousness. Same thing really.
The COSA mandate for total, permanent confidentially between members, at all times, also provides plausible cover for participants who may be involved in group surveillance projects, or traditional homeopathic treatments of deliberate confusion and shock used inside of the recovery circles.
Citing the mandate of silence, members of this type may conceal their real motives from their fellow COSA and SAA members, if anyone ever has reason to ask.
Like the SAA program, the COSA fellowship is supported and staffed by volunteers. The COSA program invites people with real trauma to share the deepest parts of themselves with what is essentially a public circle, where people who have never experienced deep sexual trauma may also sit, on the pretense that they have been “affected” by sexual addiction.
Individuals who participate in good faith sometimes experience deep healing and intimacy, and develop strong feelings of loyalty to the organization or program.
They may find it impossible to believe that there are bad actors with dark intentions at or near the heart of the program, or that the program was designed with the principle of exploitation at its core.
Other people experience radical disappointments, unexplained relationship disintegrations, and traumas that they can never speak about, and never recover from.
Watch your Steps.
[1] Link Archived Aug 7, 2021: https://bit.ly/COSA-BALANCE-AUG-1992
[2] Link Archived Aug 7, 2021: https://bit.ly/Wikipedia-SAA
[3] Link Archived Aug 7, 2021: https://bit.ly/Wikipedia-CoSA
[4] Link Archived Aug 7, 2021: https://bit.ly/Fresno-COSA
[5] Link Archived Aug 8, 2021: https://bit.ly/The-COSA-Program
