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Paulos
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Posted: Mon Aug 27th, 2007 06:04 pm |
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A Christian as far back as my memory goes, raised by believing parents, and still responding to God through Jesus daily, my life-struggle has been with masturbation since I discovered it at the age of 15 in 1970. Neither parents nor church mentioned it until it had become an entrenched habit and I started asking questions. With an uneasy conscience about m., I successfully abandoned it for a year at the age of 18, then foolishly took it up again and have been trapped ever since. At first uncertain because I could not find mention of m. in the Bible, and perplexed by evangelical literature that took a soft line on it, not until 1982 did I discover the centuries-old moral reasoning that solitary m. falls short of the ends of sexuality, which is meant for bonding with a spouse and producing a family. For the next six years I fasted, prayed, and tried to restrain the behavior, with partial success; since I could not throw it off altogether, I also prayed earnestly and specifically for a wife, according to 1 Corinthians 7:9: "If they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." Marriage, which I entered into in 1988, has not been the solution, however. My dear wife is a beautiful person in many ways but because of her temperament lovemaking has not been possible more often than, at the best of times, about once every two weeks, otherwise sometimes many weeks or several whole months apart. When I have suggested counseling she has been resistant and defensive. In this situation, I have opportunity neither to seek the peace of total abstinence, nor to pursue the peace of a satisfying sexual relationship. The way forward is anything but clear. M. is morally unacceptable, but psychologically to face an indefinite future with clamoring desire would require a heroism that I seem unable to summon. So for the time being I am trying at least to reduce the frequency of m., hoping to cool the heat somewhat by stirring the pot less. I am sure my circumstances are not unique. Can anyone offer concrete advice (not to minimize the value of online prayers and encouragements--but the matter has been bathed in prayers, mine and sometimes others', for 37 years).
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truthseeker
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Posted: Mon Aug 27th, 2007 07:14 pm |
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Hi Paulos,
Welcome. I'm afraid that I do not have male perspective answers.
Do you know if your wife has abuse in her past, especially sexual abuse? Is she also a believer? If so, the same chapter that instructed you to marry rather than burn with passion, also instructs that the wife's and husband's bodies belong to one another, and that sexual intimacy is not to be withheld other than during mutually agreed upon times of fasting and prayer. This is not, of course, license to be insensitive and/or unloving, but if she is a believer, without physical ailments that would preclude intercourse, she must consider her disobedience to God's Word. I am speaking as one who has been there, done that. I take as a given that you have contemplated any issues between the two of you that might be a barrier.
You are correct, of course, that her response/obedience does, ultimately, not alter your spiritual relationship to purity.
Praying for you...
TruthSeeker
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Paulos
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Posted: Mon Aug 27th, 2007 08:55 pm |
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Truthseeker,
Thank you for your probing questions. My wife, whom I shall call A., has been a Christian since the early 1970s, and before that she was at least a churchgoer. Our marriage is congenial, if not very warm emotionally, and is free, to my knowledge, of serious conflicts. A.'s family of origin was steeped in conventional Victorian morality, and I have had to teach her just about everything she knows about sex, from the ground up. A. has never told me of any sexual abuse in her past (not even when during our engagement I confided to her my long-standing problem with m.). Her hymen was not intact on our wedding night, but, as she was 34 at the time, that could have been caused by several factors and was not, in itself, an infallible proof of prior sexual activity. It took over a year, including a first pregnancy and childbirth, before she got in touch with the sensations that enabled her, after almost two years in marriage, finally to have a first orgasm. I have wondered whether there was some old experience that proved an impediment. But again, not a word from her on the subject. One unstated reason why I suggested we go to counseling was to seek a safe environment for memories to come out, but she would not have it. I am well aware of 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 and have mentioned it to her on maybe two occasions in 19 years. But I do not want to be the one to press those verses, since the reaction both times was taut and hardly conducive to the brittle sexual relationship. Maybe I should adopt a more "masculine" role and push harder than I do, but that usually provokes an attitude of disengagement: "OK, I'll do it for you, but let's quick get it over with so I can get to sleep." My position is delicate. I keep praying that A. might get into a meaningful conversation with a Christian girlfriend who would express shock at how things are and help her form a more mature outlook on sexuality. Presently I do not see what more it would be wise for me to do to help myself.
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guitarist63
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Posted: Mon Aug 27th, 2007 10:03 pm |
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Welcome, Paulos. I was never married am 44 and single so I can't offer any advice about how to resolve the matter of your wife's frequency of physical engagement. On the "m" subject, I started at 12 in 1975 and apart from a few attempts to stop over the years, haven't yet. If I were you, I would pray to God that you want to stop and have the intention of stopping today and take it a day at a time. Everybody is unique and one's struggle against sins of every kind, is unique to each person. There is bound to be a lot of pain with the healing and we should expect stopping such a sin to be very uncomfortable because of all those years of abuse. It helps me to meditate on the Lord's sufferings and to remember that He took my sins on Himself, my sicknesses, my rebellion and the punishment (with all the pain of that) that I should have suffered if I was paying the price for my sins.
Last edited on Sat Mar 22nd, 2008 10:31 pm by guitarist63
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truthseeker
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Posted: Mon Aug 27th, 2007 10:10 pm |
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Hi Paulos,
You are absolutely right not to push. That is the Holy Spirit's job. I even kidded myself for several years that I was obedient to that passage, because I almost never said no. What I was doing, however, was avoiding bedtime, either going to bed first, unannounced, staying up later on some pretext, or falling asleep reading on the couch. The Holy Spirit used a single sentence in an article to break through my hardened heart, more than 1 Cor. ever had. "When a wife says, "I don't want sex," her husband hears, "I don't want you."" That broke my heart, as I have always loved and respected my husband deeply. What I would tell her if I could is that the abundance of joy when this relationship is brought in to line with God's Word is indescribable. One thing I realized I could do, with my whole heart, was to accept my H's desire as an extension of the cuddling I love, apart from personal sensual arousal. It has taken time for him to be comfortable with that, since the only times I had been a more passive participant were associated with resignation/disengagement.
Lest I could be misunderstood by either men or women here, each person is responsible to God for their own sin, be it seeking fulfillment apart from one's spouse or withholding affection, regardless of whether or not their spouse is behaving obediently to Scripture.
TruthSeeker
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Esperanza
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Posted: Tue Aug 28th, 2007 07:11 pm |
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Dear Paulos,
I'm on the other side of the fence as I'm a wife so I apologize in advance if my input is not what you are looking for. From my own experience with my H who also struggles with M I can tell you that looooong before I really discovered what was going on with him, I already felt something was not right. Deep in my heart I felt there was something in our intimacy that I was shut out of. I can't really express it in words. I had not seen my H masturbate or watch porn or even look at another woman but that feeling of not being the center of his desire was there so at times I would also disconnect myself physically from my husband. I don't know exactly why but in I way I guess I figured when he felt he wanted to be with me he would miss me enough to seduce me with lots of love and details and my "crazy thoughts" would go awaya and that would motivate me to be with him again.
Did it work? No. Because even if we did engage physically I would once again feel there was a wall between us. I now know it was not imagined but real. My H has intimacy issues and even to this day I still feel he would rather M than be with me and we are working on it. I don't know if your wife knows of your struggle. What I'm trying to suggest is that if you have not shared it with her, she may already "feel" aware.
Just my thoughts, I'm sorry if they are not helpful. You'll be in my prayers and I hope you can find resources to help you break free from this long struggle,
Esperanza
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Paulos
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Posted: Wed Aug 29th, 2007 03:56 pm |
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Thank you, guitarist63. Your principle of "a day at a time" (your words) is a good reminder as one faces "an indefinite future with clamoring desire" (my words). Jesus did say, "Each day has enough trouble of its own" (Matthew 6:34), and though Matthew quotes this saying in a context that refers to financial worries, no doubt it applies just as well to a buildup of sexual tension. Still, to be brutally honest, on certain days after periods of abstinence when I am climbing the walls, when I am losing my grip though my knuckles are white, try as I might to flee to Jesus for comfort, the only thing I have found that pacifies is m. But the peace is temporary--like drinking salt water to quench thirst. Maybe the key is to alter one's thinking at a presuppositional level. Instead of viewing unrelieved tension as the problem and m. as the solution, maybe m. is actually the problem, enhancing the tension by a feedback loop, and the solution is long-term avoidance. Rabbi Yohanan wisely said: "A man has [on his body] a small member. If he starves it, it is satisfied; if he satisfies it, it is starved." If so, then the point of critical tension will be reached some time in the first few weeks after stopping; thereafter it should get gradually easier. If only one could hold onto the thought, "this is not forever!'
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Paulos
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Posted: Wed Aug 29th, 2007 05:48 pm |
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Truthseeker, thank you. Yes, it is an axiom of mine, as you have stated twice in so many words, that the ongoing m. is my problem, not my wife's. The habit started before I met her and will be solved between the Lord and me (not necessarily without her involvement as the Lord's agent, however). Where my understanding is not yet fully clarified is here: after so many decades, I feel fairly sure I am not among that group of persons who are graced with celibacy (Matthew 19:11-12; 1 Corinthians 7:7); yet the Lord's gift to me--my wife--and I are on opposite ends of the sex drive continuum, leaving me in a state of frustration so constant that being married has not been very different from being single, with one exception, namely, that in marriage I have opportunity and indeed an obligation to be sexually active once in a rare while, which has the effect of inflaming desire all over again rather than letting it gradually settle over time through unbroken abstinence. Should I be expecting change in myself, or on my wife's part? Can a husband slow down his need so as to match his wife's? Christian authors Clifford and Joyce Penner, in (I think) their book Counseling for Sexual Disorders (if not that one, then in another of their titles), state on the basis of their clinical experience that they have seen only very limited success in that direction. Should a wife be willing to be available even when she has no desire, when coitus seems to her an imposition, a burden? I hate to think of myself and my racing need as a heavy burden on my dear wife. Sometimes I wonder whether the counseling profession, Christian as well as secular, has a point: that m. is not so much a perversion of sexuality as it is an elementary, autoerotic, developmental exercise through which an individual gains a modicum of self-knowledge as the basis for a sexual relationship with a spouse, more analogous (at least for a man) to a nocturnal emission than to intercourse, and therefore not to be compared unfavorably with the latter, as the Christian moral tradition based on natural law has commonly done. I doubt if God intended Adam or Eve to practice m., I doubt if there will be such a thing in the new creation; it obviously does not measure up to the ideal. But is it an evil thing to crawl before you walk, to get your thoughts in order by talking to yourself before you share them with others? Are reflexive behaviors sinful due to their reflexivity alone? And if life pinches us, are we prohibited from falling back on the partial to carry us through until we have matured enough to realize the ideal? Is the silence of scripture about m. an accident, or does God in his providential mercy remain reticent precisely because in some situations it becomes virtually inevitable, and he does not want to make a rule that requires him to judge what cannot be avoided? For a man without the gift of celibacy to abstain even from what is not proscribed in scripture requires an expenditure of such concentration and energy that I wonder whether the victory may be Pyrrhic (Pyrrhus defeated the Romans in battle as Asculum in 279BC but lost most of his army to do so). Biblically, does m. indubitably belong among the "immoralities" we must avoid by having a spouse (1 Corinthians 7:2), or could it conceivably be a constituent and a concrete symptom of that "burning," about which Paul says no more by way of condemnation than that marriage is "better"? These are some of the unanswered questions, personal and theological, that arise out of my anxiety-ridden situation. At the end of it all, I still feel uneasy about m. and am inclined to try to live within the tradition. It is wearing to strive against my inability to do so.
Last edited on Thu Aug 30th, 2007 03:12 pm by Paulos
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Paulos
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Posted: Wed Aug 29th, 2007 06:10 pm |
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Esperanza, thank you for sharing. Yes, my wife knows of my m. issue--I told her about it during our engagement, and have mentioned it many times since. Her main concern seems to be that it makes me feel guilt, and she does not want me to be under that cloud. I think she knows that she is indeed the center of my desire and delight. I, for my part, seek avenues of emotional intimacy with her even when what would be to me its natural physical expression is stymied. Although before marriage m. was the only sexual outlet I had, in marriage it has ceased to be the the core and exists only as the detritus of my yearning for her that so often cannot reach its goal. It sounds as though your husband is still in the process of learning that orgasm is not the end of sexuality in itself but finds its proper place as part--an important part, but only a part--of a body laguage by which a man and a woman in covenant with with each other bond together. The true end of sexual experience is that sense of union, of transcending individuality so as to rest in communion with the other. Apart from this context, a bang in the viscera is meaningless. "Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh" (Genesis 2:24). I shall pray for God's blessing on your common project.
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Esperanza
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Posted: Wed Aug 29th, 2007 06:40 pm |
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Dear Paulos,
Thank you for your prayers. I am also praying for you and your wife. I just wanted to reference the following quotes;
"In this situation, I have opportunity neither to seek the peace of total abstinence, nor to pursue the peace of a satisfying sexual relationship. " "It sounds as though your husband is still in the process of learning that orgasm is not the end of sexuality in itself ..."
They seem contradictory. I hope you are able to see how M places a wall against true intimacy. You are correct about my H. That is why I'm here and why we are seeking help.
Can anyone offer concrete advice ...
I pray that you find counseling for yourself even if your wife does not want to take that step. M does not fill a physical need. There is another area that longs for that "something". I can also suggest reading as much info as you can on M and SA.
I'll continue praying and hope that you do the same for me,
Esperzanza
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Paulos
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Posted: Thu Aug 30th, 2007 04:54 pm |
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Esperanza, I fully take your point that m. can erect a wall to marital intimacy. That is especially the case if a husband who practices it has an addiction that siphons off the cream of his sexual energy into this egoistic and fruitless pursuit and thus robs his wife of his passion. Patrick Carnes, a national leader in defining sexual addiction, in his book Out of the Shadows (Hazelden Foundation, 1992), writes this: "For the addict ... masturbation becomes a degrading event. Masturbating four to five times a day for years on end becomes a secret life. It is the central part of every day. At the least feeling of frustration or loneliness, the addict struggles to find a private place to masturbate. Unlocking the office door, walking out of the bathroom, or driving in the car, the addict is certain that no one else is as obsessed as he is" (p. 28). But not all m. is of this extreme nature. Consider a 14-year-old boy who has never had any instruction on the subject from parents or church until a health teacher at school covers it, and who then tries it out of curiosity to find out how his body works (my own experience). Contrast that to a Catholic youngster whose priest has told him in catechism class that m. is a mortal sin, and whose father questions the lad on the subject every Saturday before confession (Carnes p. 29). Are these two individuals in the same boat morally? How about the woman who after years of marriage is still inhibited from having orgasms, whose therapist prescribes masturbatory exercises first alone, then in the presence of her husband as an aid to developing her sensual capability, not for the purpose of a secret life but precisely to enrich their marital relationship? Or the infertile couple who need to collect a sperm sample for analysis? And then there is the bridegroom whose wife cooperates with him during their honeymoon for a week but withholds herself for the next fortnight, cooperates again for a few weeks till she gets pregnant, then immediately goes off the boil for three months solid, leaving him legitimately awakened sexually but with no recourse other than reluctantly to relieve his own urge if and when his resistance to its mounting pressure threatens to consume his thought-life, as many days apart as he can stretch himself to last (again, my experience). During the first four months of marriage, while all this was going on, I abstained from m. completely; eventually the pain of her rejection and the unremitting inner drive broke me. Is this putting up a wall? M. comes in many forms, many intensities, for many reasons, and with many meanings (Sigmund Freud once said the subject is "inexhaustible"). I wonder whether scripture might be silent about it because of the impossibility of making a single rule that would be valid for every case. Could what you perceive as a "contradiction" between statements of mine reflect the tension in scripture itself between "I will not be enslaved by anything" (1 Corinthians 6:12) and "If they cannot exercise self-control ..." (1 Corinthians 7:9 RSV; cf. NIV). As Christians we are not to serve sex, but to many it is not given to remain wholly abstinent apart from the help of a spouse. And if the spouse does not help ...?
Last edited on Thu Aug 30th, 2007 11:02 pm by Paulos
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