One Man's Struggle
Shame. It's an emotion we've all felt and all of us desperately try to avoid. In fact, the episodes from my life I'm about to
share with you were so private and shameful to me that at one time I very nearly killed to keep them a secret. I paid a terrible price in my life for these secret shames. Unpleasant and uncomfortable
though it may be for me and my family to look back at these terrible times in my life, I want to help others from having to pay that same price, to live alone with the shame of an escalating addiction to
pornography.
I'm often asked, "Why you? Other people look at pornography without letting it get a hold on their lives. Why were you
different?" Before explaining just why I was open to this kind of addiction.
Let me warn you that I think there are thousands if not millions of men out there who are no different from me at all.
Pornography isn't a multi-billion dollar a year business without some dedicated customers. Many like myself are in the church, secretly struggling. We are only beginning to uncover the enormous numbers
of men and women who are susceptible to this addiction. In my own work with men' s groups, the frequency of men with problems that have a potential to become full-scale addictions is astonishing.
For me, the addiction had its roots in a series of molestation's that occurred beginning at age six and continuing through an
experience at a church camp I attended at age twelve. Between these experiences, the relationship of my sexual nature to my self-esteem was seriously damaged, and off-course.
When I found my cousin's hidden stash of soft-core pornography a few weeks after being molested by an older boy at church
camp, my emotional ground was broken enough for those seeds to sink deep and grow quickly into a devastating force in my life.
I began to introduce other boys to pornography. I spent as much time over at his house as I could. When my cousins stash of
material was no longer titillating, I began to frequent liquor stores that sold pornography. No one at the stores seemed to mind my looking at the magazines I bought them when I could, and when I
couldn't; I would steal them, and sell the pictures at school. I quickly learned that the more graphic and explicit the photos, the more money I made. This began a slow progression from the "men's
magazine" pornography which I had encountered at my uncles to the hardest types of pornography I could find at the liquor stores. Several other boys became my "buddies" in these escapades.
We would dare each other too ever more risky attempts to steal pornography. Often, one of us would occupy the person at the counter so the others could steal what we wanted. The thrill of this risk was
intoxicating to me.
But even this thrill wasn't enough after a while, The pictures in the magazines got old, and I began to look for graphic,
explicit images. To get the same high I had received in viewing the softer images of women. After a while pornography still seemed to lack the punch it once had, so I began to look for more real and
dangerous ways to satisfy my desires. I began to experiment with voyeurism, watching girl's undress through holes in the wall or windows, or sneaking into the girl's showers. I would literally do
anything to see a girl's nude body. Watching girls undress was like having the pictures of my porn fantasies come to life.
The tragedy was that my pornography habit kept me totally alienated from any real relationship with girls. I found it
difficult to relate to real girls, who didn't behave like the girls in pornography, I didn't have girlfriends, because the girls I met or dated reacted with fear and disgust to my pornography-inspired
advances toward them. Pornography had taught me that the way to be accepted and loved was through sex, but in reality my obsession with sex brought me only alienation, loneliness, and shame.
All this continued to escalate moving into harder and harder material and more risky episodes through my high school years
until finally a crucial experience at a church camp motivated me into a recommitment to the God. I dropped my pornography habit cold immediately. I enrolled in Bible College, with a desire to pioneer new
churches. I opened my own roofing business to support my self as I was going to college, and I met this wonderful woman at Bible there at the college. After a 9-month period of dating, we got married. I
firmly believed that I had turned my life around. I didn't view pornography, nor do any unhealthy sexual activity.
But the injury my life had been subjected to had not been dealt with or healed properly, I was like a man walking around on a
badly healed broken leg. There was a fundamental weakness only waiting for an unusual stress for another break to occur.
That stresses occurred eighteen months after my marriage. My wife was pregnant with our first child, and because of her
symptoms and reaction to the pregnancy, our sexual relationship began to evaporate. As I tried to deal with the mounting stress in our marriage, I was driving past an adult bookstore one day, and my
sexual frustration nagged me into going inside.
It's difficult to describe my reaction to my first visit to a hard-core adult bookstore. I was deeply shocked and disgusted
at the material I saw there. I was ashamed of myself and promised myself never to go into a place like that again. But the sight of this hard-core material and my shame at being there was also like a
sudden injection of some incredible drug straight into my veins. In an awful way, it excited me tremendously. And in spite of my vow to myself, I found that as my relationship with my wife worsened, I
went back there - again and again. Using the pornography as a drug to numb the pain of a struggling marriage
Just as it had in high school, my pornography addiction began to consume more and more of my time. I found reasons and
excuses to visit the store for more, and more hours every day. My business and church responsibilities began to suffer as much as my marriage. I would hide money from my wife to spend on pornography;
Finally, I was finally forced into bankruptcy. Still my habit progressed.
Since I went to pornography in the first place to escape, the pain of bankruptcy only increased my need for the escape of
pornography. I often tried to take these problems to God, but God just didn't seem to come through fast enough. I couldn't stand to be left in pain waiting for God to meet my needs; I began to believe
that God wouldn't answer the prayers of a sinner like me- so I continued to meet them myself.
And then came a move to California, and things got better for a time. It's difficult to explain completely, but at each
critical time in the progression of my addiction, I felt I was being given providential opportunities - chances to stop, and turn myself around. But I didn't take them, I was too afraid to let anyone see
the real me. I was convinced that if someone saw the real me, the one that struggled with all this evil stuff, they would find me dirty, disgusting, and would have no other choice, but to reject, abandon
me. The move to California was a chance like that. For several months, I tried to commit myself to making a new start for my family and business.
Then one day my business carried me to an area where there were sexually oriented bookstores and I fell completely back into
my addiction, picking up where I had left off. It became such an easy way out. I felt that I was to dirty to love, inadequate as a man, father, husband and that no woman could accept me and love me. In
my pornographic fantasies, those needs for love and acceptance were seemingly met. Once again, my addiction drew me into more and more graphic and even violent material. Gradually, I found a growing
interest in sadistic pornography. In the ever-increasing violence of my fantasies, I found an outlet for my anger at all the rejection I had faced from women all my life, which wouldn't love me or meet
my needs. Pornography and violence are woven together, as to say sex, anger, power, and violence should be a part of the same experience. Porn glamorized the violence. As my mental scenarios demanded
more graphic expression, I gravitated to more and more twisted and violent pornographic images. This material that once would have nauseated me, now have become my fantasy.
I want make it clear here, before I proceed with the final stages of my addiction, that pornography never FORCED me to make
these choices. But at each stage, as pornography began to have longer and more influential contact with my life, my ability to resist the compulsion for it grew less and less until I was seemingly
powerless to resist it.
I now found myself in this helpless situation. I remember times when I would drive by a liquor store that sold pornography
and force myself, with all of my willpower and every ounce of my mental strength to drive on past . . . only to find myself involuntarily turning around and returning to the store to buy pornography.
By this time, images on paper and film were beginning to lose their power to satisfy me. Increasingly, I craved the
"real thing"; it started out with going to a strip tease joints. Just as with the bookstore, my first visit left me shocked at myself. I left promising never to return again! But I was soon
back, spending hours and hours watching the girls.
From there I progressed to massage parlors, and finally to using prostitutes. Just as at each step before, what was at first
shocking and repulsive became easier and easier to accept. In fact, it was the shock and repulsion that gave me that "rush" I craved.
And I craved it more and more. I would arrange phony business trips to cover my activities, and I would hide or even steal
money to cover the costs of my habits. I laid out elaborate plans to keep myself from being suspected or caught. Even in my own mind I lived a double life. I threw myself with everything I had into
church and business activities (with what time I had left). I became a model of an upstanding, "spiritual" community member, and was a dedicated youth pastor at church. I was desperately trying
to prove to myself that I really was ''OK". I would weep and cry out to God at the altar begging Him to free me of this struggle, but only to find myself within a few hours, days, or some times a
few months back doing what I swore before God I would never do again.
I was - compensating for devastating inner problems. Never letting anyone on the inside to help. I used church activity
(doing bible studies, ministering to youth, reading my bible more, fasting, praying more in an attempt to try and break the hold pornography and sex had on me. My public life was commendable, but the
fruit of my private life was full of bitterness and pain.
This pain only increased as I made futile attempts to draw closer to my wife sexually.
I thought that the way for us to be close was for us to have a better sex life. I was hoping she would be like the women of my pornographic fantasies, she naturally responded with revulsion. Ironically, I even tried to "spiritualize" my requests by appealing to distorted biblical ideas about her duty of "submission", that her body belongs to her husband, and that it was her responsibility to meet my needs sexually. But again my attempts at this kind of closeness only ended in more alienation and anger.
As this anger was building, I found that even my visits to prostitutes didn't dissipate the rage inside me. More and more, I
found myself fantasizing about satisfying myself and venting my rage at the same time. I deserved love, and if I can't get it through the natural channels, then I will have to take it. I began to
entertain thoughts of raping a woman.
At first, it seemed only like a game. I would make intricate plans in my mind about how I would do it without being caught.
Then I began to do "trial runs" of a rape. I would visit dark parking lots around department stores at night and follow women home. Then I would sneak into the back yard to watch them undress
through the window. These games, became real, intricate "trial runs'' of a rape. But always something stopped me. It remained, for the moment, a game. But an ever more serious game.
Finally, as I was getting out of my car at a racquetball club. I saw a woman walking to her car alone in the dark parking
lot. She fit my perfect woman fantasy; she was the one of my dreams. Something inside me said this is your chance, she's yours", and my game became reality.
I followed her to her car and asked directions as I positioned myself in front of her open car door, Then I lunged at her,
and forced my way into her car, my hands on her throat. Terrified, she asked me what I was going to do to her. I told her. All I saw as I looked into her eyes was fear. Those that shocked me like a
someone had hit me with a baseball bat, and woke me up.
Suddenly, with my hands around her throat, I realized what was happening - how far I had come down a horrible road. I came to
the sickening realization that I had intended to kill this woman, if necessary, to keep my terrible secret. Reeling from the shock of my awakening, I released her, muttered something about having made
"a mistake", and walked in a daze straight to my car. I need to emphasize that not until that moment, when I was a razor's edge away from killing someone, was I finally forced to admit that I
had a terrible, uncontrollable problem. Up until that time, even though my will was being increasingly sapped by my addiction, I had still managed to lie to myself. Now the truth descended on my like an
avalanche.
Once the truth was out, it pursued me relentlessly. Naturally, the woman had seen me walk to my car and taken my license
number. As I was home beginning to open my secret up to my wife, the police came to my door and arrested me.
After that came time in jail. I tried to defend myself by pointing to my sterling reputation in the community. This was just
a onetime occurrence, my attorney argued. And so I was given a lenient sentence.
At church I was removed from leadership and made to "confess" in front of the congregation. Unlike problems such as
alcoholism, my problems with pornography and sex were the type of sin that unspoken rules prevented openly discussing - or forgiving. I became a spiritual "leper" and found little support from
some of my former "friends".
Little wonder, then, that I didn't "confess" my entire pornography problem. I was still playing a game of damage
control, and I revealed as little as possible. I bitterly regretted having been caught. But it was not the process that led to my personal catastrophe.
Naturally, the strain on my marriage, already near the breaking point, reached a critical stage during, the aftermath of the
rape attempt. In a last-ditch effort to save my marriage, I took my wife on a getaway to Santa Barbara, CA only to find us in a hot and bitter fight. Deep in my heart, I still resented the rejection I
felt from everyone, especially my wife. In a self-justifying tirade I rehearsed to myself how my entire problem had really been my wife's fault. "If only she had met my needs," I thought.
"If only she had totally accepted me, I wouldn't have had to look elsewhere." I believe that if a woman kept her husband sexually satisfied he wouldn't be looking outside the home. So it was my
wife's fault for never meeting my sexual needs, not realizing that I had this problem way before I met my wife, and that I was the one who was truly responsible for my problems. My marriage, I decided,
was over, and then, something extraordinary happened. God reached down and touched the eyes of my understanding, and like a nearsighted man putting on his first pair of glasses, I suddenly SAW my
situation as God saw it. Like a cornered animal with no where to run, I finally found myself face to face with the TRUTH, and my life started on a different path that was the beginning of my journey to
healing.
Please don't think I was instantly healed of my addiction. It was a process, and not always an easy one. But at that moment,
a door cracked open and lighted up the first step on the road to freedom to control my own life again. Step by step, God began to show me principles out of his word, principles of TRUTH that led me along
the path of freedom from sexual addiction.
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