I don't go anywhere fast

You and me we're goin' nowhere slowly

And we've gotta get away from the past

There's nothin' wrong with goin' nowhere, baby

But we should be goin' nowhere fast

This is the problem with addiction , not finding contentment in the place that you are. Not wanting to rest in solitude. Not being comfortable with yourself where you are. At some point when I was younger something in me clicked or snapped or something, I don't know why it did but it did. At this point I don't think that is the most important thing for me to worry about. I think its more important to learn how to deal today. Anyway, after that happened I knew what I wanted and I just wanted it and it didn't matter the cost, and I have been fighting that desire ever since. It is much easier today and I can surrender it away.

I didn't care where I was going, I just wanted to get to it quicker. Today, I care where I go, and I fight to go where I ought and not to wander nowhere fast. Nowhere is the road of addiction, nothing gained and it all becomes lost.

Under the Mercy,

Matthew S

Dealing with expectations and lust

A little advanced warning, this may be a bit long but hopefully I won't ramble too much.

Maybe

Yesterday the odds were stacked

In favor of my expectations

Flyin' above the rest

Never fallin' from the nest

Tuesday came and went and now

I'm in a little situation

Maybe it's for the best

I can live alone, I guess

Maybe I can stand alone

Maybe I'm strong as stone

Even though the bird has flown

Maybe he'll fly on home

Forgive me if I'm keeping you

Apart from Better conversation

Hung up on all my doubt

Trying to sort the whole thing out

Tell me that I'm smart enough

To deal with all the information

Spinning inside my head

Every word he ever said

Maybe I can stand alone

Maybe I'm strong as stone

Even though the bird has flown

Maybe he'll fly on home

I think one of the biggest problems with living life, especially when you have lived a life of erotic fantasy is dealing with expectations. I found this definition here:

The noun "expectation" has 4 senses.
1. expectation, outlook, prospect -- belief about (or mental picture of) the future

2. anticipation, expectation -- wishing with confidence of fulfillment

3. expectation -- the feeling that something is about to happen

4. arithmetic mean, first moment, expectation, expected value -- the sum of the values of a random variable divided by the number of values

As an addict I built a fantasy life. My addiction was taking lust and living out fantasies in my mind. How would sex be this way or that way? Combine this with pornorgraphy (video, magazine, "literature") and the fodder for fantasy just continues. I can take images of people walking past or just delve into my mind, I can perform better than any porn star and have more "glorious" sex than any porn star ever could. I can satisfy every partner and be ever satisfied. Then I step back to reality and find guilt shame and the like.

Well, you say, fantasy is good for a healthy sex life. Yeah, I have used fantasy in my sex life, it worked for awhile and made it "hot" but then shame and guilt crept in, we didn't want to go that way, we didn't really want to do those things and we couldn't see a sign that said this road only goes so far. Who knows where that road ends. As a recovering addict I know that it doesn't, you keep looking for the "perfect" event, the one that lives up to all the expectations, the one that throws you into the perfect union and perfects you as a human being. An addict lost in fantasy trying to connect to the unreal, stuck in the world of the real, resentful.

The fantasy makes my expectations unreal, the fantasies are "perfect" and I am not. The fantasies are all about me and love isn't about me. I have to surrender (that word keeps popping up in recovery) my expectations to the real. Love is sacrificial, its about doing the dishes when I get home and they need done (takes 20 minutes) and not being mad about them for the next two hours until someone else does them or I begrudginly spend an hour washing them.

If I truly believe my higher power is God who made everything (that means he made it to work a certain way) then surrendering to Him means that I have to accept the real, I have to make my expectations fit the way the world works. I can no longer expect to do what I want, but I must do what I ought. As my recovery progresses and my life becomes more real the points that lust used to creep into my life increasingly strike me as odd. I am not saying that in a heartbeat I couldn't fall but it is only through continuing surrender that goes deeper and deeper into every part of my life (work, parenting, friendships, marriage, entertainment) that I am able to keep walking the path of recovery.

I can't play with lust and become disillusioned and let expectations about sex creep into my mind. Real sexuality and sex with my wife is meaningful and more beautiful than anything I could do as the pornstar of my mind. When I am really sacrificially expressing my love for my wife I do want to hold her and cuddle with her and spend time with her in other healthy and meaningful ways (yes, talking with her and helping her with chores). Play the tape to the end.

In my mind the sex is 'glorious' all the way to the end but I don't know what happens when it is done, I only know the shame, guilt and resentment that comes from filling my life with the lust. When I am truly loving I know how it ends, I can play that tape to the end, I feel close to my wife and I love her more and more. I accept her for who she is and how she is made. I am truly free, free to be who I am supposed to be and that is my fulfillment.

Under the Mercy,

MS

The Best Defense is a. . .

. . .Good Offesnse? NO, more surrender. Surrender more: deeply fully, completely and more of yourself.

I had begun to notice that I was surrending more and more of myself but resentment had looked for a door to get back in and found one: expectation of return.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted;
to understand, than to be understood;
to love, than to be loved.
For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.
It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.
It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

When I begin to expect in return then I drain my emotional bank account if I do not receive as I expect. I need to fulfill my duties because they are my duties and not because I believe I will find "happiness" in the form I dictate.

Under the Mercy,
MS

Practical Atheist

Many of the people that I know in the program are practicing members of their faith that will verbally express a faith in God. I do believe that they either really do believe or want to believe in God. However, and for a variety of reasons we act in a very practical matter as if God does not exist when it comes to lust.

It could be a lack of conviction, compartmentalization or a lack of faith. Whatever it is, its painful and the steps are part of the road back. We have to understand that we can't do it (I am not a God), since others have made it, something has to be able to do it (something is more powerful than me) and then we have to let them step in the door (surrender to the higher power).

At first part of me was bugged by the used of the phrase higher power instead of God, however, we have a few agnostics in our group and some people don't realize it but at times the group or something else has to be the higher power when they start, until they can really turn their life over to go, as they know HIm.

Under the Mercy,
MS