The Silent Sin

Confession of a sex addict

My addiction to sex started long before I had ever seen pornography or even knew about sex. It started when I learned to avoid pain. Instead of dealing with pain in my life, I learned to hide from it, to pretend it didn’t exist, to push it so far down that I wouldn’t ever have to deal with it.As a child I learned from my parents and friends that pain is best not dealt with and ignoring it was the best way to handle it. By the age of 15 I was an expert at life avoidance. I could click out of life faster than reality could happen. If something happened I didn’t like, I could be in a fantasy world where things did go my way. I could ignore it and be as cool as ice. Nothing got to me. I was so calm that my friends used to call me the “rock”. Not because I had great wrestling moves but because nothing could make me blink. No matter the trauma, I would remain the same. It was meant as a complement and that’s how I took it but only later did I realize that it was a sign of how disconnected I had become.

When I discovered pornography, it only furthered my fall into a fantasy world. With porn came masturbation and the biggest escape of all. The release of masturbation gave me a total escape from my feelings and life. I actually remember thinking that if I started to masturbate I should remember the date so I would know how many years I was addicted to it. Even then I knew I was on a downward spiral… but that didn’t stop me.

Unfortunately the escape was only momentary and required me to build a habit to sustain my “rock” like exterior. I eventually end up masturbating 2 to 3 times a week and had binges where I would masturbate every day or multiple times a day. With so much time spent in a fantasy world, I started to disconnect with reality. I became a hermit in my body and in mind.

I grew up a believer in God and that faith kept me going, but it also grieved me endlessly. Even though I knew God didn’t like my actions, I kept doing them. I felt worthless, loveless and useless to God or anyone. My self esteem took a nose dive and the only way I could escape those feelings was to masturbate more. I didn’t dare tell anyone because I thought I was the only one to deal with this. After all sex was never talked about in my family, and my friends only talked about it from what they saw in porn. So I felt alone and perverted with no way out… I was helpless to my addiction. And I stayed there, in secrecy for 18 years.

It wasn’t until I was 34 that I finally come to terms with who I was and started my recovery, not only with my sex addiction, but with my addiction to avoiding life and pain. The change of heart started 5 years before I actually stopped masturbating. It was in that time that I started to attend a new church and felt that God was showing me who I was made to be. It started when I asked God to give me patience and humility. I had visited a new church with a friend and decided to continue going there. I remember feeling that I would do anything to work there. Something in me told me I had to be a part of it, that I would be able to finally get connected. A desire I had wanted fulfilled for so long. As it happened, there was a job opening a few months after I started to attend.

When I started working at the church I felt God was opening the door for me to finally involve myself, to be more then a wallflower. Looking back I see that it was God opening doors so I would finally understand who I was. The more I involved myself in the church the more of myself came out. I began to have opinions about things and thoughts about God… thoughts that where my own not a regurgitation of my parents beliefs. I think they were always in me but I never let them out or explored them before. My fantasy life never let me find out who I was. My beliefs where challenged; some where changed others where strengthened. For a few years everything was going well for me. I was financially comfortable and was content. My relationship with God was at an all time high. I was reading my bible and talking to him quite often. I was happy and I remember thinking that I had a good relationship with God and that I was doing great… then the thought came to me that I was doing good with God only because things were going well in my life.
I then asked God to help me be happy with him in the tough times of life as well as the good times. I knew what I was thinking… I just wanted to be genuine with God and not just a fair weather believer.

I think it was shortly after that, maybe a 6 months to a year, that I was forced to address the secret sin in my life. A member of my church, who I didn’t know at the time, came up to me and said he wanted to speak to me in private. He told me that he felt he had a word from God for me and wanted to pray over me. This was the first time anyone wanted to pray over me and I was excited to hear any kind of word from God about my life. Then he said that before he prayed he had to ask me a question. Thinking no harm could come from it, I said go ahead. What he asked floored me. He asked if I had ever brought pornography into the church… Right then and there I was faced with the image of when I indeed did bring pornography into the church. It only happened one time when I went to a porn site on my computer. It lasted only a few minutes and I remember telling myself this is God’s house and I should stop. It was a time when I was alone and nobody was there. Nobody ever knew about it… Or so I thought.
I remember having this overpowering fear of telling the truth, after all nobody knew. The thought went through my mind, “Just say no and move on”. But I also had this voice in my head that said “You have to tell the truth, don’t run… tell the truth”. I don’t know why, but it felt like how I answered was going to be a pivotal point in my life. I chose to be honest. I chose to admit my sexual addiction. That choice to be open and honest literally opened my eyes to who I was, who I was supposed to be and who I have always wanted to be. He told me God said because I was honest; he was able to pray over me.

I remember feeling excited about the whole incident. I thought it was all behind me. I confessed my sin to another and the secret was finally out. But what I didn’t know was that God had just started to work. In truth, had it just stopped there nothing would have changed for me. It was by God’s grace that what had happened became known to the elders of the church. I had no place to hide my dirty laundry any more. The deepest darkest part of me that I hated the most was out there for the whole world to see. I was faced with yet another choice that I felt would define who I was. To hide in the shadows or come clean about who I was…again. It was probably the hardest thing I had ever done up to that point in my life, but I went before the elders and was honest.

I thought at that time, that the whole incident was for me to finally get help with my sexual addiction. And I believe it was part of it, but looking back now I believe it was God pushing me into a corner and asking me “Who are you?” What I found out was that I was scared of the man I was created to be. I was created to be an honest man, a man of integrity, a man of conviction. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, a man who had Gods laws written in his heart. Once I accepted that small part of who I was, it made it easy for me to make some changes in my life. I started going to a sexual addiction group and began to fight to be the man I now believed I was. I wish I could say that my whole life went from good to great. God kept putting me in situations that made me answer the question “Who are you”. What it did, was give me the courage to start answering the question. The more I was put in the corner the more I came out with a new understanding and belief of who I was and who God designed me to be. What I gained from it was a heart to not only be that man, but to help others be who they were created to be.

Many things have changed since then. I quit my job and went back to school to get a M.A. in counseling so I could help other men. I currently lead two men’s groups dealing with sexual addiction and sexual temptation. I have found who I am and I have decided to be that man and use the gifts God has given me. The fight goes on in my life and I believe it will be there until I die. But I am finally wining battles and have over three years of sobriety from looking at pornography and masturbation. I’m not afraid to ask for help and do what needs to be done to keep winning. Looking back, it was the biggest blessing in my life when I was forced to deal with my sin and I can honestly say that my worst day with sobriety has been far better than my best day with my addiction.

Do you really want it?

The first question everyone must ask themselves is, “Do I really want to beat my addiction?”. I have been involved in recovery groups for over three years now and the number one factor that predicts success the best, is a real desire to battle the addiction. Some people come because their wife/husband made them or their jobs were on the line if they didn’t get it under control. Others come because they are tired of feeling guilt over their actions. All these are great motivational factors but unfortunately they all eventually fail to motivate. A wife/husband stops being upset with you (or you become upset with them), a job is lost, no consequences are ever given, and a person learns to live with the guilt or ignore it. No matter what your motivation is it will eventually weaken, if its not based on your desire to get better for yourself.

I am a Christian and I believe that my addiction is wrong for me. My beliefs are based on the morals, standards and examples covered within the bible. My fight for sexual sobriety (not masturbating or viewing porn) was a miserable failure for 18 years, because I was always trying to stop the guilt that came after acting out. I never really wanted to stop acting out, I just didn’t want to feel bad afterward. It wasn’t until I actually desired to be pro active that I started to see success. For me, the biblical morals and standards were always just words I spoke, but in reality I didn’t accept. When I accepted them and made them my own, that’s when I started to hate my addiction instead of hating the pain that resulted from it.

It doesn’t matter if you are a Christian, Buddhist, Islamic or Atheist. What matters is that you want to change because you are done being the person that lets pornography and sexual addiction rule your life. A sure sign of this real desire is the willingness to do whatever it takes to defeat your addiction. If need be, will you get rid of your TV? Will you stop driving by the adult book stores (even if it adds 10 min to your daily drive)? Will you tell your spouse the truth? Will you go to an addictions group once a week? Twice a week or more? I have seen addicts go to extreme lengths just to get a fix. From surfing the net for hours just to see a naked picture, to planning a month in advance how they were going to act out. So there is no excuse about not having the ability to put a recovery plan in action. Addicts are masters at planing and are dogged in their pursuit of their objectives. Once you decide your objective is sobriety and not pain avoidance, it can be achieved.

So the first question I ask everyone who comes to a group is “Do you Really want it?”… Do you?