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Praise6
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Posted: Thu Dec 14th, 2006 11:30 pm |
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Ed Neal wrote: And I agree that it is often an unhealthy coping mechanism... But I am not educated nor experienced enough to really speak to that.
For me, personally, I was always a happy and fairly well-adjusted kid. For me, it was simply curiosity and hormones run amuck. Add to that the adrenaline rush of experiencing the forbidden, and I was hooked for 30 years. Today, I've realized that my curiosity was (and is) good and normal. My hormones are more than adequately satisfied by my wife. And I've rejected the idea that even seeing naked flesh is Scripturally forbidden. All the contributing factors now rendered powerless, I no longer have any desire for the garbage that is pornography.
Ed
Simple hormones and curiosity do NOT keep something like this running for 30 years. You knew it wasn't right. You knew it was hurting your wife or at least she would not approve, and yet for 30 years your were ensnared. That is addiction.
I am glad that you have clicked over and apparently are done. I think that is what happens to everyone who finally becomes free of an addiction. Something clicks over. What worked for you, may not work for someone else.
There is more to this than just forbidden fruit. It may have started that way but something else kept it alive for 30 years.
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Ed Neal
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Posted: Thu Dec 14th, 2006 11:42 pm |
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Praise6 wrote: Simple hormones and curiosity do NOT keep something like this running for 30 years. You knew it wasn't right. You knew it was hurting your wife or at least she would not approve, and yet for 30 years your were ensnared. That is addiction.
I am glad that you have clicked over and apparently are done. I think that is what happens to everyone who finally becomes free of an addiction. Something clicks over. What worked for you, may not work for someone else.
There is more to this than just forbidden fruit. It may have started that way but something else kept it alive for 30 years.
Praise6,
If there is/was something else that contributed to the change, I honestly have no idea what it is. I can think of nothing else that changed in my life, my heart, or my relationships.
The explanation that I offered is absolutely the only thing I can imagine bringing about the freedom. The study that preceeded my change in perspective consumed my life for about a month. My wife and I studied, prayed, talked, and thought about it almost non-stop. I was not free before that time. At the end of it, I was.
So, I have no other explanation.
Pastor Ed
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Praise6
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Posted: Fri Dec 15th, 2006 01:12 am |
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I have no doubt that what caused you to change indeed was just what you describe.
I was addressing your insistence that this simply was about curiosity and hormones. There is something deeper which kept it alive. Don't let what ever that was steal your freedom.
Peace
P
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TimM
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Posted: Fri Dec 15th, 2006 04:28 am |
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I agree with Praise6 here both in accepting your self-understanding of how you came to your current point of recovery, and in thinking that what holds us captive is deeper than your analysis yet reveals. At least people like me who struggled for decades unsuccessfully and in deep shame, and who were clearly aware of just how painful our actions were to our spouses, must have been kept in bondage by something more than curiosity and hormones.
It may be that there are people for whom curiosity and hormones are the whole story, but I think these must be people who just don't think that what they are doing is wrong and who are insufficiently empathetic to see how much pain their actions are causing - and people who can quit rather easily when they first become convinced their behavior is wrong and harmful. For people like me for whom the struggle against addiction is the central moral and spiritual issue in our lives for decades, the causes of our difficulty in behaving better have to go pretty deep, I think.
I wasn't just foolish and thoughtless for 40 years (though I was guilty of both those things too); I was really deeply hooked. I kept acting out while desperately wanting to stop and while significantly aware of how much pain I was causing. One doesn't do that kind of thing for trivial reasons.
Tim M.
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