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pcpro171
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Posted: Thu Mar 1st, 2007 09:42 pm |
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So, I found this site a while back, I think either through LifeSite or OneNewsNow. I live by myself in an apartment in Wisconsin, and I've struggled with lust (to varying degrees) for the past 12 years. Right now I mainly struggle with porn, masturbation, and lust. I desperately want to be free of these chains, but everything I've tried has failed leading only to increased frustration and another fall. At times there has been limitted success, but it was just that, limitted. I know now why we are told not to awaken love until it so pleases (Song of Solomon). Once it's awake, it cannot be put to sleep again, and it becomes an issue that (I now think) has no solution. It is a problem that must be managed. I'll be highly surprized if someone here has any new ideas, but it can't hurt to try. Right?
You name it, I've tried it (at least once).
At the very least, this may prove as an additional source of accountability. I have a mentor/accountability partner I meet with each week. He's been patient with me, but lately he's starting to hint at church discipline (Matthew 18). This cannot happen. It must not. I will die before resigning myself to a life of isolation. I must escape these chains but I know not how.
For the past three years (or more) it has been my daily prayer that God will deliver me from these sins, but it does not happen. For me, the hardest times to resist temptation is when I'm depressed.
But wait, I've only told you about the tip of the iceberg. After years of searching, I finally found the girl of my dreams, the girl I want to marry. Her father is the pastor of our church...... Yeah. If this goes to church discipline, I can forget about any of that. I'm even entertaining the possibility of getting a roommate, but I really, really don't want to move again. I'm tired of moving, and if he ditches me, like my brother did, rent on a two-bedroom apartment is expensive!
I'd really like to get married. For years, I thought that would mean compromising somewhere on my preferences, but not so! One "perfect" woman is difficult to find, two must be nigh-impossible.
Please help. :-(
____________________
"I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, Do not stir up nor awaken love Until it pleases."
--Song of Solomon 8:4
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SeekHimOut
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 04:48 am |
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Dear Pcpro,
Hang in there brother it will get better.
However my question to you is this..."what is the church discipline" that this accountability partner wants to do? Go public in front of the congregation? Go before the church board? What? I think this needs to be made clear in actual actions to be taken. I am a pastor of a church I would no more take a male in my congregation to the board or make it known public. However the accountability needs to be there.
Let me know,
SeekHimOut
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TimM
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 01:46 pm |
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PCPro,
Welcome! I'm a Mac person, but I'll talk to you anyway.
For me, the central piece of recovery has been realizing that I can't do this alone and that recovery from sexual addiction is a lifetime process of learning a new way to live, a way that faces feelings I have hidden from all my life. For me, learning and maintaining that new way of life has meant doing a bunch of reading on sexual addiction. It has meant working hard at psychological counseling. It has meant attending 12-step meetings for sex addicts, both on-line and face-to-face. It has meant finding a sponsor and working the steps. It has meant being honest with the people around me who need to know about my issues - at this point, my priest, my wife, my mother, my older kids, a couple of counselors, and people at my meetings. It has meant maintaining continual conversation about deep and difficult areas of my life with my wife and with my fellow addicts.
In a nutshell, it has meant surrendering in ways that to me were radical and new to God and to other people, and allowing myself to be ruthlessly honest about myself before God, before others, and (most dangerously) before myself.
For me, this is working. I have a new relationship with God and with other people and a new humility that is bringing me blessings I have never really thought were possible, and I've been sober for the past 15 months. That's a short time, but for me, it's a total miracle. I know addicts from my meetings who have lived lives of calm and serenity and sobriety for periods as long as 10 or 20 years. It's really possible.
You say you've tried everything, so maybe nothing I've said is a new idea. I wonder what you are doing now, though, and whether here is anything more you might do?
- Are you being honest with your girl friend and her father? They obviously have a need to know about your issues, and if you are currently hiding yourself even from people that important to you, it's hard for me to see how you can stay out of the addictive loop.
- Are you working hard with a counselor with real expertise in sexual addictions?
- Are you being as open and honest with other people and with yourself as you can be?
- Are you actively working in a support group with other people? The 12-step program is a lot more than people meeting once a week to share stories about struggles with temptation. It's a program of looking inside ourselves and of healing the divisions we addicts build up between ourselves and other people, between ourselves and God, and between ourselves and ourselves. Are you facing all those things with all the brutal honesty you are capable of? It's hard to get all this by going to one meeting or to a few meetings; so if that's all you've done, then maybe thinking about attending more would be good.
- Are you really trusting God? Is it clear that you cannot recover alone, and that only with God do you have hope, and that you can trust God to act? I spent decades playing at being a Christian before my addiction finally forced me to live my professed beliefs seriously or to die.
If your answers to all these questions are yes, then I don't have any more words for you. You're doing all I have done. Other people I know have spent time in in-patient programs for sex addicts as a way to put serious time into recovery, and you might consider that; otherwise, keep going as you are going. The joy will come.
If for some of these questions, the answer is no, then you might think about which of these things you can take up with more vigor right now. For most addicts, recovery from our addiction is the hardest and most important task we will ever undertake in our lives. We have to pursue it above everything else, with all our energy and all our resources. I am confident that if we really do that, if we really hold back nothing, then the blessings of sobriety and of recovery really will always materialize, just as the promises in the Big Book say.
Keep coming back, and keep working.
Tim M.
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pcpro171
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 03:42 pm |
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Last edited on Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 03:45 pm by pcpro171
____________________
"I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, Do not stir up nor awaken love Until it pleases."
--Song of Solomon 8:4
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pcpro171
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 03:44 pm |
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Hi Tim. Thanks for the suggestions. I will keep them under advisement. I have serious reservations of pursuing a worldly approach to this because psychiatrists generally will advise the exact opposite of what God teaches in the Bible. At one point, I even considered if medication or castration would be feasable options, but both would be running from the problem. It would surely surface again in another form, probably even more destructive.
As I recall from when I originally started using the handle, PCPRO, back in high school. It was a brand name for an IBM (or Intel?) line of processors.
SeekHimOut, thank you for the encouragement. By "church discipline" I am referring to Matthew 18:15-17. I would tend to agree with you. There as been very significant improvement in the past couple years. I used to fall mupltiple times ever day. Now, it's maybe two or three times a week, if that. I've tried explaining that to my accountability partner, but that doesn't seem to matter to him. It seems like he is looking for an over-night, miraculous recovery. Yesterday, I was reading through the posts on here and found a link to this very interesting article comparing sex adiction to heroin adiction. This makes a lot of sense. For a while now, I've been describing it like a drug adiction to those with whom I'm able to talk about it.
http://www.drjudithreisman.com/archives/2005/12/senate_subcommi.html
Current things I am doing to reduce the opportunity for temptation:
- Devotions/Quiet Time: Proverbs in the mornings, and Spurgeon's Daily Devotional, if there's time. Ecclesiastes, right now, in the evenings and whatever book I happen to be reading. Right now. it's Holding Hands, Holding Hearts. This is a very good book. I highly recommend it!
- No TV: Most of the stuff on the networks is smut. I got rid of the television a couple years ago.
- Covenant Eyes: This Internet accountability software has a lot of potential, but it also has some serious bugs/loopholes that its maker refuses to correct. (I've tried emailing and calling them to tell them how these issues with their software can be fixed, yes, I explained how to do it, but their lack of action constitutes a real disregard for the moral safety of their users. They just care about the millions they are raking in.)
- Blockbuster: I shredded my Blockbuster card a month or two ago. That's one minefield that has become increasingly dangerous in the past few years.
- Computer: Use of CovenantEyes, but it's effectiveness for me is limitted. At best, it's only a four-foot fense, easily scalable. I try to leave the computer off in the evenings. If I do turn it on, I turn it off by 9 PM, and go to bed.
Okay, about this girl in whom I'm interested. She's not officially my girlfriend, yet. This situation is complicated. ::sigh:: Her family has a very conservative view of courtship, which means, until I get both her and her father's approval, I can only see/talk to her in public settings. So, far I've asked to court her twice, and been turned down twice, but I don't think that's the end of it. She says she wants to be friends, but does things that indicate otherwise. To make things even more complicated, she's the pastor's daughter. Her father and I have spoken about temptation. I told him I struggle with it. He seemed to understand, and did not press the matter. At my last church, at one of the men's Bible studies, the topic came up of sexual temptation, and every man there, even the elder present, admitted to having at one time struggled with pornography. That's when I first realized that this is a beatable sin.
What do you think of marriage as a means of grace for coping with sexual tempation? Albeit, it's not a total solution, but perhaps as a means of lessenning the burden? (1 Corinthians 7:9)
____________________
"I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, Do not stir up nor awaken love Until it pleases."
--Song of Solomon 8:4
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truthseeker
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 05:48 pm |
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Hi PCPro,
As much as I prefer to be uplifting and encouraging, I feel I must post a serious reality check here. There is NO such thing as the perfect wife. Trust me, I am an imperfect wife, married to an imperfect husband for nearly 24 years, and it is only by extending to one another the grace that has been extended to us by Christ that any marriage can survive beyond the honeymoon phase. If you were telling us that you were ONLY tempted with your girlfriend/fiance, I might agree that the 1 Cor. passage applies, but you are not burning with passion for a particular wife, you are just burning with lust. I suggest focusing more meditation on 1 Cor. 10:13. "No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it." We know who the father of lies is, and it is he who is telling you you cannot escape, in concert with your own choices.
A roommate is not really a solution, because, if I am understanding you correctly, you would be relying on him as an accountability partner, but that is just an attempt to shift the responsibility for your choices to someone else.
If you and/or your accountability partner can afford $40-50 per year, (I don't know if the coupon code I posted in resources is still valid,) I suggest having your accountability partner set up SafeEyes on your PC. It is very highly rated in independent tests, and we have found it quite effective. Can you place something near the computer that would be a powerful reminder of your desire to reclaim your purity? How about making a list of possible diversions that you can turn to the moment a thought begins to form? Exercise, a phone call, etc.?
I do not mean to be harsh, but part of beating this dragon is honesty with oneself, as well as others, as hard as that may be. You need to be whole as one before two can become one.
Praying for your complete surrender to God's best for you...
TruthSeeker
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pcpro171
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 06:11 pm |
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Thanks for the thoughts, truthseeker. I know she's not perfect (hence the quotes). However, she is the only woman I've met who meets all my requirements and preferences for a potential spouse. Yeah, the roommate was a bad idea. I realized that, after making the offer, but he decided to get a small apartment closer to the downtown area. (ugh, I hate traffic) I've tried different things as reminders to stay pure on the computer. They help at first, but after a few weeks they just get ignored as part of the environment.
Is SafeEyes anything like CovenantEyes?
____________________
"I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, Do not stir up nor awaken love Until it pleases."
--Song of Solomon 8:4
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TimM
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 07:03 pm |
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PCPro,
You ask about marriage as a tool in dealing with sexual temptation. Probably every married addict I know went into marriage with the hope that being maried would solve the problem of sexual temptation. I don't know anyone who had the experience of having that work. I certainly spent roughly 25 years married and actively addicted.
I don't criticize you for having this thought - I and everybody I know has had the same thought. It seems reasonable. I just never met anybody it worked for.
This is one of the many reasons it's important that anyone people like us consider marrying needs to know about our issues in advance. We are so prone to think that our fiancees don't need to know because our problems either are over or will be over once we get married. We therefore get married to people with no idea of our histories and only at that point discover that we haven't solved our problems. This seems to me completely unconscionable. I know that in part because I've done it.
This is not to say that our recovery and our marriages have to be disconnected. Marriage per se doesn't heal us because at bottom, sexual addiction isn't about sex. It's about isolation and fear and secrecy and dishonesty and resentment. Working actively with one's wife to maintain open communication, to share honestly, and to be present and to be vulnerable play a huge role in recovery. Maintaining an emotional partnership begins to address the deeper issues beneath our addictions.
Finally, I guess I'd continue to encourage some effort to explore and address the issues within yourself that underlie the temptation to act out sexually. Doing this with a Christian counselor or a pastor with some training on addictions would certainly seem like a reasonable alternative to psychologist if that feels better to you. You're doing a lot of good things right now - thanks for the list! - but mostly they are still in the realm of control of your behavior, rather than changing the sources of your behavior. For me, steps like that never did much, and I needed to go deeper, to seek help from other people, to dare to face and change myself, before I could begin to experience either sobriety or God's love.
Just how it worked for me, of course. YMMV.
Tim M.
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pcpro171
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 07:52 pm |
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YMMV? What's that?
Isolation is a big contributor. To be perfectly honest, I don't even like porn. It's stupid and empty. It's a means of escape from isolation and depression. I also use it as an aid when I'm so horny I can't even think. Running is something I'd like to do, but to date have been unable because of a back injury incurred when I was in high school. My back has improved considerably this past year, and I'm thinking about trying some light jogging this spring when it warms up a little. Gyms are the epitome of boring.
What do you mean by "changing the sources of your behavior?"
____________________
"I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, Do not stir up nor awaken love Until it pleases."
--Song of Solomon 8:4
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TimM
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Posted: Fri Mar 2nd, 2007 10:21 pm |
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"Your mileage may vary." Sorry.
What I meant was that I need to understand why my addictive behavior keeps pulling me back. What is there about a meaningless and empty act that gives it power over me? For me, that amounts to fears I have about myself and others, and a sense of worthlessness about myself. I'm afraid to manifest or feel emotions, and I'm afraid of being a physical and sexual person. I therefore hide and isolate, projecting a calm and asexual exterior while living secretly in lust and in hiding.
When I started into recovery, I didn't know this stuff. I had hid it from myself pretty effectively.
Knowing this, I can start to see myself as I am. I can stand before God as I am. And I can work to find ways to meet the needs that I have met unhealthily through sex addiction in ways that are healthy - ways that really connect me emotionally to other people, to myself, and to God.
For me, that kind of inner work, carried out with other people, is really what keeps me sober. Avoiding things like TV helps, and short-term strateges that keep me from being stupid for the next hour can help, but in the long term, I have to understand and change the patterns of behavior that draw me back to the addictive cycle despite the meaninglessness and pain I ultimately find there.
It's that kind of work at depth that I thnk is awfully useful to anyone working to recover from any addiction.
Need to run now, so I'm leaving without editing.
Tim M.
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