What's My Motivation

As I continue to explore the issues at hand and ask God to reveal to me what I need to look for in my heart, my focus continues to stay on the foundational or root issues. And I've realized that my motivation for seeking healing has often been off base.

Like many addicts and habitual sinners, I continue with cyclical behavior until there is a painful consequence, and then I scramble for a time to change my behavior and make others happy. My focus is then on people and the pain, not on pleasing God, which should be my highest priority. Yes, there have been personal reasons for not having God as my highest priority (mainly, not understanding the character and love of God and therefore not trusting Him), and those are discussed in other articles.

But as I connect the links in this chain of healing and recovery and break the bonds of unhealthy behavior, I have to realize that I can't be a "man pleaser" as the bible puts it. My first desire should be to please God, and therefore my repentance from my habitual sin should be with a focus on doing so for my relationship with God, and not because I am living in fear about the lost relationships because of the continued sin. I can't focus on the pain that I'm in, because it is cyclical and fleeting, and I will always rationalize it away and fall back into the cycles of habitual sin.

But if my focus is on healing for myself and my relationship with God, then my attitude takes on more of a spirit of "against You and You alone have I sinned," coming before God to re-establish a right spirit and a real relationship. I look to God first for the answers and the healing power, rather than the old method of applying temporary patches so my wife is satiated while I continue to make God hang out in the outer courtyards of my life. I didn't understand that I was doing that, but I was. The new approach is to then learn to invite God into every room of my life as my Daddy, the one who loves me, and the one who I want to have purview over everything, because He knows what is best for me. When my attitude turns to one of priority over pain, I have experienced different levels of genuine repentance. I want to repent because I have a God who will never leave me and loves me, and I want to please Him. He is not fickle in His love, and He will never abandon nor forsake me. And that makes me want to repent.

That said, I need to turn my relationship with my wife and my entire sexuality over to God. I expect that God will do wonderful things, because He is in the business of doing so. I don't demand it. But He's my Daddy, and I can go to Him continually and ask Him for the change in my heart and in that of my family. Nonetheless, I have to fathom the possibility of divorce and continued pain as a possibility, and realize that I have to leave all of that in God's hands, let go of it, and proceed with my relationship with Him, fully and unabated by the motivation to fear or please others.

In other words, I have to focus on the priority, not the pain. God first, then all else.

God, please be my Father, my Daddy. Forgive me for harming my relationship with You time and again, and help me to seek you with all of my heart. I pray that our relationship would be healed, above all others. I also pray for my wife's heart to be healed, and for you to restore our marriage - it is dead and would need to be resurrected by your healing touch, your power. Please allow me to be the father and husband that I am meant to be, and may your name be glorified above all when everything is said and done.

The folks at Top Addiction Networks (formerly Transformed Hearts) have written a great article on what I'm talking about here:
http://topaddictionnetworks.com/winning-at-recovery-part-one/

I think I'm Ready, But I Need to be Patient

For those of you who are separated from your spouse and family and want desperately to go home, this one's for you...

Boy, am I ready to go home and be with my wife. I may even fool myself into thinking I'm ready to do so. But I am glad that she has drawn a line to ensure that I am fully recovered from my addiction. I am not certain that I will ever be fully 'healed', but I am certain that I am going to have a great relationship with God, and that I'll have some great tools to combat my issues so that I won't slip back into habitual sin. I also want to make sure that I don't objectify my family members, and that I love them to a greater extent and in a Godly way.

I'm not ready.

I realize that there are some foundational issues that I have to meet head-on in my psyche, baggage that I just don't want to carry back into my marriage again. Although I have been clean of porn for a long time, and I am taking the sensuality and lust part of it very seriously now, I realize that I still stare at my wife's body like it was a ribeye steak. And I realize that I would hop in the sack with her in an instant if she needed a 'fix'. The problem with all of this obsessing with sex, even with my wife, is that it lacks intent, purpose, and discipline, things that I desperately need if my marriage and family are going to go well moving forward. I need to learn to never objectify my wife, to not treat her like a thing, to cherish and respect her as a co-equal heir of the kingdom of God. She is my sister in Christ and the mother of my children and the caretaker of our home and my friend before she is my scrumping partner.

Weird as that may sound to some guys, it has to be true. We have to be willing to submit ourselves "one to another" and "consider others as greater than ourselves" before all of the other relationship things can work. I have to desire her heart and her intimate thoughts before I desire her body. It has to be important to me to listen to her because I value what she has to say, not because I think it's going to earn me her respect or time in bed.

I'm working on it. I'm glad for this time, and I pray that God will continue to change my perspective so that I can come back home a more complete man, ready to serve and lead at the same time.

Thank you, Lord for the opportunities to spend time with my family and to serve them. Thank you for the ability to talk with my wife about what is important to her. Help me to value that talk more than sex. Help me to value my wife more for the whole person she is, not the fact that I find her body pleasing. I pray that I would be able to go home before too much longer, but that I would have embedded in my spirit the desire to respect, honor, and cherish my wife. Help me to value playing with my kids and helping prepare them for life in your kingdom above any other form of entertainment. Amen.

Emotional Anorexia

Emotional Anorexia is a seemingly new definition to the addiction scene, and it essentially means this: that you withhold love, affection, and/or intimacy from your loved ones. There are a number of symptoms that are evidenced with this issue, wherein the "withholdings" can vary over time.

I don't think I'd yet be able to provide the best explanation for this issue, so I'm going to send you over to an article at Transformed Hearts that gives it a complete treatment:

http://transformedhearts.com/intimacy-obstacle-2-intimacy-anorexia/

I will say that though one spouse (the one that usually plays the part of judge/jury/executioner) will moreso withhold love than the other, there will invariably be symptoms on both sides of an unhealthy relationship. For example, a wife may exhibit all of the symptoms toward a husband caught in an addiction, but the very addiction itself may be a way to escape the pain and frustration of one's own failures or the failed relationship itself, and the addict is withholding the love and affection that should be due their loved one as a result. Porn addicts, for example, lack the ability to engage in true intimacy with their spouses, because they don't need to navigate the possibilities of conflict, pain, or disappointment if they can select and control all of the fantasies they want in their own little world. So the true relationship suffers while they live for their own pleasure.

Addicts in general have a way of numbing and medicating their pain, avoiding the conflict that might arise from it in relationships. Without healing in the relationship, it will stagnate and die, so both spouses need to find ways to connect, and the folks over at Transformed Hearts have some advice on where to start.

My Story of Addiction

I am writing this to other Christian addicts (habitual sinners that have been enslaved to their flesh, but desire to be free) in the hopes that they understand first of all that they are not alone, and that there is hope for the future.

My earliest exposure to porn was when I was four years old. I remember waking up to strange noises and walking out of my bedroom and down the hall toward my mom and boyfriend's bedroom. I knew that I wasn't allowed in their room, and had caught them in various forms of undress and activities to know that I would get a spanking if I bothered them when they wanted privacy. I could hear them making loud noises, though I didn't fully understand what they were doing. There was a projector running on a big screen, so I sat down in the hallway outside of their room to watch. I remember being bored after a while, and the things going on throughout the movie were just weird, reminded me of the things that I knew my mom did with her boyfriend. And the noises kept weirding me out. So I went back to bed. 

Little did I know that I had just watched my first hardcore porno movie, without even knowing what I was looking at. This was a year before Star Wars first came out, which I was infinitely more interested in at the time, I can assure you. Nonetheless, the images are still there today. And the spiritual bondage was only just beginning to take shape.

At the age of 5 and 6, I was allowed free access to the Playboy magazines that were around the house, and I was curious about the women's bodies that men seemed to ogle so much. I was more interested in the cartoons and made lame attempts to joke with my mom about them. My mom had yet another boyfriend, and they did many of the same things that she did with other boyfriends, sometimes while I was in the same room. I remember one early morning that they were making loud noises; I really wanted to get up and go in another room, so I tried to make noises that indicated I was waking up, but they kept going at it in a manner that indicated that they hadn't heard me, and I had to patiently wait until they were done so I could act like I didn't wake up earlier.

When I was 6, I was molested by an older boy at a babysitters. I just figured that it was normal, and allowed him to strip me down and attempt to penetrate me. I told him that it hurt and to stop. The situation went unreported.

When I was 7 years old, a friend of mine was a Playboy fiend, and was drastically interested in looking at them. I remember sitting with this friend at one of my dad's parties (I moved back and forth between divorced parents much of my life) with stacks of Playboys around us. Some of the women tried to stop us, to which the men present told them to leave us alone. That same friend cornered one of the drunk adult women in the bathroom and attempted to molest her while I stood by, shocked.

Also at the age of 7, I lay with a friend and his sister, as she wanted us to simulate sexual acts with her. I had no idea what I was doing. When the older sister came home, she asked me to come into the other room so she could see my uncircumcised penis because she was a nurse. She stared at me for a while and then let me go.

At the age of 8, I was simulating sexual acts with everything in sight. I had regular dreams about being a super hero and having sex with the heroines of the movies I watched. I still remember some of those dreams vividly.

At the age of 12, I was looking at porn in books and reading the stories. I had access to a pornographic book with hardcore images that my mom had "hidden" in a cabinet that she knew I had regular access to. By this time, my definition of sex was completely distorted to the visions of pornographers. The size of my penis was made fun of when I was in the Boy Scouts during a skinny dipping outing, so I began to have a negative body image of myself, thinking that I'd never measure up to the men that had access to women.

I was circumcised at the age of 13, thinking that I had to be "normal" to be able to have a relationship with a woman. Dating was constantly on my mind. I began relationships with girls, and I was good at the making out part. As soon as they tried to go in my pants, though, I got scared and felt intimidated and shrank away. This fear lasted well into the college years, to the point that I was still a virgin though I had a handful of chances to consummate my pornographic fantasies. 

I met my wife in college and we had unhealthy sexual activities from the very start. She made it clear that she hated the Playboys and pornography, so I hid my activities from her. My activities became fewer and lesser, but were still latent in my blackened heart.

We got married under less than dedicated terms, both of us not even sure we wanted to be married. Six months after getting married, I went to New Orleans, got rip-roaring drunk, and fornicated with a strange woman. This tore my wife apart. In the midst of it, we became Christians, but our relationship was never the same. We decided to become dedicated to God - we threw away our television, all of our secular music, and anything that even seemed worldly. We were dedicated to seeking out God and reading His word. For two years, I was clean from pornography. Then the internet hit us full force.

With my wife pregnant with our first child, I had hooked up our first computer to the internet and on the very first night that I had access, I looked at porn. And my wife caught me. And it killed her. That was 1997. We began an 18-year long swan song where she would try to dedicate herself to me, and I would let her down time and again. She began to hate me, and then she just went numb.

I lost one great job because of porn, my children were exposed to it accidentally, and it continued to wound my sweet wife until she was sweet no longer. And yet I still couldn't walk away from the porn. I wouldn't put into affect all of the drastic measures to completely remove it from my life.

That brings me to our current situation. I am separated from my wife and 8 kids. I am free from porn since June 24, 2015; that's 123 days as of today. It took the threat of divorce to finally realize what I was losing. Have already lost, really. My wife has little hope for our marriage. I find myself hoping beyond what faith I have that things will get better. I'm willing to upend everything to become porn free permanently. I attend Celebrate Recovery and I am counseling at my church, and I hope that my wife will join into the marriage counseling eventually. I think that she's trying. I still struggle with masturbation, but I try to focus on my wife even as I do that stuff. I know that masturbation is sin and I want to get it out of my life as well. I'm trying to formulate escape routines to get out of the house and try to stop the cycle of lust. But I need to just kill every last vestige of this beast that has ruled my life. I realize that now. And I'm willing to do anything, whatever it takes to conquer it.

That's my walk with addiction, in a nutshell. I am a new creation in Christ now. And I realize that I need to run TO Him and run WITH Him and believers now, and that this is a lifestyle of continued combat that I just need to diligently continue working at. I once thought I just wanted to be "normal". Now I realize that I don't want anything to do with the world's idea of "normal", and I want what God wants for my life, wherever that takes me.

Thy Rod and Thy Staff, They Comfort Me

God chastises (punishes) those whom He loves.

I think that we as habitual sinners (my definition of the word 'addict', from a Christian point of view) need to learn to love God's ebb and flow in our lives. Certainly, there are a number of things in our life that have happened merely as a result of a fallen world and because of sin, whether our own or the influence of others. But it is also evident that God works directly in our lives at particular times, especially when the reset button needs to be set. Certainly He allows and even engineers all things to happen, and as a Christian we accept this and realize that all things work for good for those that love God.

For me, I had been addicted to porn for 40+ years, the spiritual bondage starting back to when I was a small child, too young to understand right from wrong. Porn became so inculcated into my life, it became normal, just an average part of my life; and the deception to cover it up was as normal as my mother's deception to cover up her drug habits, or to lie to keep from getting in trouble when I broke the rules, lest I get beaten severely. As an adult, my heart had been hardened to the consequences of my sin because it was so ingrained in me, I didn't see the damage that it was truly doing. I'm not sure I even thought about it logically. There was some level of conviction that what I was doing was wrong, went against God's ways, but the rewards of the flesh at the time were outweighing the rewards of the Spirit - I hadn't learned enough about God's love to realize that there was so much more fulfillment in Him than the pixels on the screen.

So God crushed me. Many times over.

My relationship took many, many hits over the porn thing. My wife, who had an immediate hatred for porn before we were even married, made it clear that she would NOT accept a man that was looking at other women's naked bodies. We continued as a family unit, and I think that my wife held on to a hope that I would change as I matured, but our hearts became hardened toward each other 18 years ago. A handful of explosions happened over the years, and each time my wife cyclically caught me looking at porn it chipped away at any hope that she had for our relationship. My children became exposed to porn several times accidentally, and they sometimes drew pictures of what they saw. I lost a solid job of 5+ years (along with the great benefits, including pension) because I had no self control and viewed porn on the work network. It took very little after that to put my wife further and further into depression and apathy for our marriage, much less anything that needed to be done for our family.

In August 2015, my wife finally put her foot down and said NO MORE. She wanted separation, possibly divorce. In fact, she seemed to be hoping for divorce to be rid of the man that she hated so much. It took me a few months to realize that I shouldn't have blamed her, based on all of the crap that I put her through over the years, as my selfishness evidenced itself in so many other ways than just viewing porn.

I have errantly blamed God for my sin over the years, saying that surely I couldn't help being affected toward porn the way that I have. But I have been missing the boat entirely, realizing that He wants to affect a miraculous change in my heart and that He has so much more to offer me. I was making Him into my enemy, an oppressive tyrant, when He has always been the disciplining Father that was trying to get me to stop my bad behavior and allow Him to heal me.

So I have learned to accept His discipline. I am currently alone, more lonely in a physical sense than I have ever been; but I'm not nearly as lonely as I was in my broken marriage, having viewed my marriage as the center of my joy that had been so utterly destroyed. As I refocus my life on Christ, I am somehow more full and feeling less lonely than I did with a household of people (family of 10).

I take trips home to serve my family as best I can - watching kids while my wife gets chores done, doing some dishes when needed, making dinner, reading to the kids before they go to bed. I am glad that I am allowed to have this interaction. I love my kids. And I love my wife more than ever before. I look in her eyes more, though I feel a sense of guilt that I have taken the glimmer out of her eyes that she once had as a younger woman. I look at pictures of her all the time and think about how each year, her eyes seem to get more dull with the weight of her husband's sins. I hope and pray that God will put that light back in her heart and in her eyes.

There seems to be such a spiritual funk that hangs over my house. I knew it before, but it is even more evident now. I'm working to bring my family before the word of God each time I visit, but it seems to fall on indifferent ears. Nevertheless, God's word will not return void, and I trust that He will do His work in their lives in His own time. I am praying for their healing, that they would seek God and heal from all of the hurt, bitterness, and frustration.

My current societal purgatory and the associated eye-opening revelations as to the impact of my own sin are completely necessary for my repentance and growth. I'm learning not to seek penance to pay for my sins (tetelestai, it is finished), and I am realizing that God brings us low so He can build us back up again. There is no reason to shake my fist at the heavens anymore. Instead, my hands are open, and I hold them up in praise. And I sing songs openly with tears in my eyes. God is so good to me, his rod and his crook bring me back into line with His will for my life, and it has begun to bring comfort to my soul to know that He cares enough to discipline and train me. Glory be to the one true God, who deserves all praise and worship.