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Getting dumped sucks. What sucks even more is getting over the person. But by far the worst part about relationships is listening to that one friend who is addicted to their ex complain and yet they refuse to implement any sane relationship advice you give them. Your poor friend is an Exaholic, someone who has a debilitating addiction to a previous romantic partner, which inhibits them from moving on with their life. There is hope for your sanity though. Exaholics.com is a self-help website that empowers members through a 12-step program of spiritual healing after a break-up with the person they are addicted to. Now all of our attention-seeking friends can live in a world together where they fuel each other’s fires with attention.
Step 1 – We admit to ourselves and fellow members that we are powerless over our thoughts and emotions about our ex and we struggle daily in life
as a result.
Step 2 – We have come to believe that those in our support network, who share in our stress, are the ones to turn to for love and support.
Step 3 – We place our faith in this kindred network of unconditional support and trust that, with their support, we have the power to heal and grow.
Step 4 – We begin to accept our support network as an integral part of our lives, allowing the love and acceptance we find here to help us heal and rebuild our strength.
Step 5 – We use the feedback of our support network to help us develop a more complete understanding of who we are and where we need to grow.
Step 6 – We resolve to become stronger, wiser, and happier people as a result of what we learned from our past relationships, so that we might have more joyful and loving relationships in the future.
Step 7 – We made the decision that we were ready to improve ourselves with the help of our support network and/or our inner wisdom.
Step 8 – We ask our support network to help us identify and remove all of our unhealthy relationship patterns and we commit to practicing healthy new relationship skills with our network.
Step 9 – Make a list of all the persons who our unhealthy relationship patterns have injured in the past and who we must make amends with.
Step 10 – Directly apologize and make amends with these persons, except in cases where doing so might be injurious to them.
Step 11 – We continue our efforts to understand ourselves and admit our character flaws without delay. We continue to strengthen our relationships within our network.
Step 12 – Having had a spiritual rebirth through the practice of these steps, we present these healing steps to Exaholics who are in emotional pain.
Members of the website are encouraged to partake in “Counting Days” because abstinence is a one-day-at-a-time thing. Each day, members log in to state that they have not initiated contact with their ex. What does this mean for you? No more texts saying, “I am not going to text him,” because now there is a place where exaholics will be praised for that declaration by hundreds of other exaholics.
It has plenty of outlets for your friend to use. We all know that the best thing to do after a break up is sit in a room alone on your computer while developing a support system with internet strangers. One way for your friend to do this is by joining in on “Exchat”, an old school AOL-style chat room which is still extremely confusing to follow. Who thought chatrooms were a good idea? Even more helpful is being able to ask a personal growth and relationship expert with the feature “Ask Dr. Bobby”. As of right now she is the only expert, but she is ready and willing to listen to your friend’s problems. Thank you, Dr. Bobby.
Remember, your friend is trying to heal and recover from this break up and addiction and that is what this website is for. “The Team”, as they refer to themselves in emails, makes it very clear that this website is for recovery; it is not a dating or trolling site. They will kick you out and you will lose all of your exaholic buddies. The Team is very serious. They also do not tolerate offensive language.
“We’d like to remind you swearing anywhere on the site is not permitted. Use asterisks. But we also don’t want to see a pattern of asterisks to represent swearing either. Sometimes you use a word because you feel so tormented that the word comes to mind. Anyone who can’t express themselves regularly without swearing is welcome to join other sites which permit it. This one fortunately does not.”
As long as I don’t have to get frustrated with my best friend because she’s not taking my advice to ditch his ass and I don’t have to read attention-seeking status updates of every thought she had today, I am all for Exaholics.com. I love you and I care about your feelings, but seriously it is time to move on.
Respond
