Journal 20070620

Today my life is a just a little bit harder in some ways than it was yesterday, but it is easier or more normal in other ways. It is time for me to integrate living in a more normal life and keeping up sobriety. This is one of those ways, replacing the old habits, the bad ones, with new ones. Honesty is replaced by deception, reality by a counterfeit. I wish some of my coworkers would learn this lesson as well, I don't want them to learn it as painfully as I did but I wish they would learn it.

Two related articles on addiction, though it just calls it "pornography" addiction and a silent killer, remember that the real problem is lust.

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/living/17394054.htm

and

http://mondaymorninginsight.com/index.php/site/comments/the_silent_killer_in_our_churches/

and

http://stevengibbs.typepad.com/steven_gibbs/2007/06/the_porn_talk.html

Under the Mercy.




lust journal sexaholic pornography addicyion

Jounral 20070618 "The F-word"

Today, my wife and I had our couple’s counseling appointment. I really didn’t want to go, not in the least. Well, not because I am through with my marriage or anything but because I just want everything to be back to normal, I want the magical pill, the Viagra of relationships. I want the magical pill that cures everything wrong between us and makes us magically back together during a 30-second commercial.

Anyway, we are more and more hopeful, less fearful, resentful and angry. The session went
well. However, the dreaded F-word came up. This word is probably the one that a sex-addicts wife has the hardest time with, it is something that an addict truly craves. The F-word is
FORGIVENESS. Forgiveness is something that is hard to define, what does it mean?

Does it mean that we go back to the way it was before we had the blow-up? Does it mean that we choose to love each other anyway without regard for the fault? I am diving deeper into me for this one. When I forgive my wife, I give up any right I have to be angry. I may still be mad
about the situation and I still understand that there are consequences but I forgive the person, not the action.

In some ways it is something I do more for me than for the forgiven. Don’t get me wrong, I know it benefits them but it is for me and for my healing as well. L pointed out that there is a difference between reconciliation and forgiveness. D has always had trouble with what forgiveness means but I think we realized that reconciliation is what we are working on now instead of calling it forgiveness.

As we walked out we looked at the Lilies planted next to wheelchair ramp outside the building, they are bigger plants than the ones I have at home, they have had years to grow and mine are brand new this year. Dawn looked at me and stated that she felt even more hopeful for us. After reading last night’s post she said she felt more hopeful and now she is even more hopeful. Yes, through time we are growing, individually and together, bigger and stronger.

Under the Mercy.

journal diary lust abstinance forgiveness sex+addiction 12+steps

Journal 20071017

Sexual Emotions.

These are not emotions in the truest sense of the word emotion but are desires that can be triggers. In some way they are things that are out of control that sex addicts try to meet or find in lusting.

One of the hardest things about being a sex addict is that the ultimate expression of my addiction is something that is built into every human being. We are made as sexual creatures. Sex itself isn't the problem but misplaced driving forces behind it are the problem.

If I were an alcoholic I would be addicted to alcohol but the consumption of alcohol isn't coded into the very fact of humanity. Sexuality is coded into my very being. It is a strong power that God has given to us so that we can share our very being. It is so strong that it is designed to bring out new life in this world.

The "sexual emotions" are things that I mistake for true intimacy. Sexual intercourse, the marriage act, should be a fruit of intimacy (caring/giving/loving) my wife but I feel that at times my yearning is from these "sexual emotions". Maybe it would be better to call them sexualised desires, for that is what they really are. Emotionally, I have a need to be accepted, loved and wanted and that is a hard thing for me to deal with right now when my wife is sexually unavailable to me by her choice. I have assented to that choice intellectually but I also know that I desire her.

Earlier, I posted about my fear of having lust removed from my being. I wonder in some ways if what I was and still am holding onto is in some ways me wanting to retain my lust in a small way. I want my wife to desire to be with me, I want to feel accepted and loved by her. I wonder if that is in some ways lust. I already know the answer to that question. It is just another form of lust.

I am not saying that it is bad to be comforted by being accepted or to feel loved. What I am saying is that I have to surrender that feeling, that need so that it doesn't drive me. Otherwise, I will just end up lusting after the next fix.

My wife tld me the other night to stop pressuring her for sex. I didn't think I was doing that but now I see that I was. I wasn't telling her that I was struggling or needed her to keep from acting out but I asked her to make love with me. I was trying to have my desire to be loved, wanted or accepted fed.

I hate being abstinate with my wife when it is a choice and not for a "good reason" but I know that it is a good thing for me. It has given me a chance to dig deeper than I ever have before, it is boiling to the surface all the different ways that I have acted and the 'modes' of my addiction. I now know, by trusting in God, that I will not lose desire for my wife by the removal of lust from my being.

All of this is scary but it is making my life deeper and richer. I am understanding more about myself all the time. Eah step seems like it will kill or distort me but it is making me what I truly want. It is making me more and more who I am supposed to be.

I am grateful for my wife. I am grateful for the meeting I attended tonight and eceryone that was in attendance. K used the phrase "sexual emotions" in passing but God spoke it in my heart and it revealed something to me. God bless you. If you are reading this please say a prayer for me and please say one for my wife. Let us both find healing in ourselves and together.

Under the mercy.




sexaholic, sex addiction, abstinance, emotions, desire, lust

Journal entry for the Morning of 6-14-07

Wow, I worked for 12 hours yesterday, skipped going and working out afterwards. Its probably a good thing as I hade to get up about 0900 as my wife had somewhere to go and someone needed to watch the kids. Just sitting here and drinking coffee, the kids are behaving well, just heard the trashman outside and remembered the cart needed to be at the curb and I forgot to do that last night when I came home in the pouring down rain. It wasn't a particularly hard day, I guess their is part of me that finds strength in physical touch. I don't think its lust but their is something about human connection that is comforting. I read something one time ( I will have to look it up) about the reason that some kids have sex at a young age is due to the fact that we no longer have the family bed, they each have their own room and minimal to no physical contact. Their is part of me that would like to have relations with my wife but it is not the driving force, at times their are passing moments that feel more animalistic but I "pray them away" with a prayer for God's will for my wife. Part of me just feels a want for closeness or oneness with her. I do't know if the desire for oneness could be a type of lust in disquise.

Under the Mercy

An Era of Prohibition in my Marriage

"...this meant no sex with themselves or other, invluding not getting into
relationships. For others it also meant "drying out" and not having
sex with the spouse for a time to recover from lust."

--From "The Solution, Page 204 of SA's White Book

This was a really hard thing for me to deal with when it came up almost 2 months back. My wife and I are basically in a co-dependent relationship. She would be in a place in which she wasn't sure if she could trust me but she would give herself to me physically and all would be right for 10 minutes but then she would feel worse about us, herself and the situation.

When I had failed to do the things financially that I was supposed to do (not moving money to savings when it should have been and moving money out for things and not letting my wife know beforehand that savings is how we were affording these activities) I went to be that night in the front room. A few months prior when my "acting out"/fantasy/inappropriate banter had shown up (really it was lust pent up in me) we had been apart for a short period of time but our "need" for each other ended that quickly one night when I was invited back into the conjugal bed.

Now, even though we are at times sleeping in the same bed (more often than not) it has been right about two months. Though I yearn for my wife it is different now than it was before. Before I could have lust filled sex with my wife. Literally lusting after her and wanting sex to go certain ways because that made for the better high. I wanted the high to be with her but the high was for me. She was at best an object of my desire for my benefit.

Now I know something else and I am learning what it is to have physical attraction for my wife and to desire her but to want to do so intimately. I want to give myself to my wife. Words like tender have replaced words like animal. Now, physical intimacy is a fruit that will come from the other types of intimacy. As we plan for school next year, talk about our children's future and our future children, my wife has read this blog and she is free to continue doing so. I just want her to know and I will continue to tell her that she is beautiful and I desire to hold her again and to be able to tell her again, "I don't know where you begin and I end."

Under the Mercy

The problem with our culture isn't that it overvalues sex. The problem
with our culture is that it doesn't have a clue of the value of sex.

--adapted from Christopher West