Yes, I really try to take the high road, but what about the 'sore' issue? I mean, this concerns our health, possibly more, if there's something he's keeping from me, or if there's more to it than just he doesn't know what it is.

If each and every time I try to talk to my H, and he gets angry and defensive within minutes, what do I do?

If he won't have it checked, of course I don't have sex with him, but then he's preventing us from the closeness of intimacy that way, and I just don't understand a man who loves a woman, NOT wanting to check it out and making sure he doesn't pass something on to her.

You guys out there? I really need some input on the situations that are currently going on. Please!

I am saddened for your situation. It also reminds me of times past in my own life. I recall the feelings and pain of those times, yet I want you to know that it can be overcome. From my own experience I know that it's possible to make progress and overcome lust and heal from it's emotional brutalities.

yes it does impact both spouses and you are both suffering. However YOU are the one who is here talking about it and seeking help and support. Understand that when Kayla and I suffered with this I was the one on the other side of dynamic just as your husband is now.

I can only provide you with my perspective from what it's like on the other side of the dynamic, and what I have done and how I have healed on that side. Kayla will have to tell you what she's done on her side of it (your side).

It's not at all uncommon for a man who masturbates to excess to create a sore on his own penis from literally rubbing the skin off. (IF so, then antibiotic ointment and leaving it alone for a time will be enough. If it doesn't clear up in due course of a few days then I'd say get it checked)

It is also very embarrassing for him which is what I sense is happening for him as you confront him about it. I also get the impression he's embarrassed about your confronting him about not being able to be intimate and keep his sexual attentions confined to your relationship alone.

It's pretty clear that he's embarrassed and defensive. He's also in a terrible bind, allow me to explain...

Here is an analogy that I think is a pretty accurate description of the lust infection.

I consider lust to be a spiritual parasite like a tape worm of the spirit. Understand that this parasite is perhaps the most successful spiritual destroyer of our day and age. Let's understand what we are dealing with in the first place.

The parasite enters the spirit thru deception, it entices and appeals to our sense of pleasure. Before one has been infected it appears to them that those who are infected are having more fun. Like they are MORE sexually active and getting MORE pleasure and satisfaction somehow.

To see thru this deception we must understand the difference between being more active and being more satisfied. Once a spirit buys the idea that they are not getting enough or so as it appears to them by their comparison and perceptions, they start pursuing getting more. They focus more attention on getting more, and different, and better. They become obsessed with these three aspects. More, Different, and Better.

As the parasite takes hold in them it also starts consuming their pleasure from the inside. So while they step up their efforts to obtain more, different, and better it independently takes away the satisfaction they get from whatever they generate to feed themselves (and it). It binds itself to them energetically just like a physical tape worm living in their gut would do physically. It does this to them spiritually.

The parasite feeds and enlarges and consumes more and more, demands increasingly different variety and as far as the parasite is concerned better means more potent experiences in a progressive and destructive way. It makes more demands as it enlarges itself within the soul of it's host and generates ever more pressing demanding appetites. Thus it becomes harder and harder to abate it's incessant demands.

This of course starts putting strain on relationships. It will tax a person's relationship with them self. They will find themselves doing and saying things that are actually offensive to their own spirit and sensibilities creating confusion and a sense of hopelessness, depression and despair. Even so that won't be enough to halt the parasite's unrelenting pressure. They will continue to seek more,better and different experiences in the vain attempt to "get it right" or to "get enough" and eventually just to "get temporary relief" they will be doing things they themselves find disturbing. Things like lying, cheating, stealing, and other personally and socially harmful behaviors. These things will develop a need for denial of their true condition.

As self denial continues it forms a protective casing around the parasite sealing it in and locking it's attachment to the soul which is in fact quite painful to the infected host. This increasing pain makes it's own demands on them to anesthetize the pain. So what does the infected host do? The only thing that stops the pain is the only thing that continues to feed the parasite, you guessed it, they seek, more, better and different erotic experiences.

This second phase of the disease however is markedly different. NOW, it's no longer about their own pleasure. The parasite has turned the tables on them and is generating pain inside them which they are now seeking to abate. They are now being driven by the NEED to get relief from the spiritual pain they are in. At this point they are hooked and they begin to lose the power of choice as their pain driven needs become ever more compulsive.

They become more self destructive and their actions are increasingly destructive in their relationships with others. They are driven inward away from self, away from God and away from others into a private hell of insatiable spiritual pain and unmanageability. Blinded by their own denial they frantically seek to get the pain stopped and completely lose their own will as well as any regard for social or healthy boundaries. Biblical descriptions of a lake of fire and brimstone in which their souls are continually burning are actually pretty accurate of this condition. They eventually become unrecognizable to even themselves and are truly lost. They are lost to reality, sensibility and their own feelings. They only exist in torment and desire only escape. Many become suicidal, homicidal, enraged, depressed and filled with despair.

All this has happened inside the cloak of denial, Much like a caterpillar goes thru a metamorphosis in a cocoon and emerges a butterfly, lust too incubates and changes as it increasingly overtakes a soul. What happens however is that lust never does emerge from it's cocoon. It's promise to emerge one day as happiness was just a lie it used to gain entrance. It only enlarges it's protective cocoon of denial demanding ever more space, better controlling and dominating position in a person's attentions and life, and an ever more insatiable variety of experiences, all protected by deeper levels of denial.

Infected hosts will build delusions of happiness around them like a house of cards to support their increasingly distorted, compulsively driven actions. It becomes a full time job convincing themselves that they are really happy and those who are not as compulsively driven are the unhappy ones. Thus begins phase three of the disease, the active promoting and propagation. The drive to enroll, convert, and entrench others into the same disease. Propagation requires propaganda. The world is literally overflowing with it. The gleam, glitz and winks of countless erotic displays grow ever more accessible and intoxicating. This is the world we live in. In globally epidemic proportions this infection is the most spiritually destructive force ever unleashed on humankind. It's ever increasing impact on lives, families, individuals and society are incalculable. It proves the eventual spiritual death of all who succumb to it's enticements.

That is what lust is aprilshowers. It is the worst of the worst addiction. I have heard countless recovering addicts testify now that their addictions to drugs, alcohol, gambling, food whatever else they may be hooked on pale in significance to how hard it is to recover from lust. Lust is often the first to get hold of them and the last to be released from. It takes longer, costs more and extends much farther in scope for them to recover from lust than any other destructive force in their lives. I've heard this from hundreds of people now. I am grateful that I never got entangled in those other things but I accept and believe the testimony of others. It's not a game, It's not about love and it's not harmless as it pretends, nor is it natural.

In terms of Harley's marriage building and meeting emotional needs for SF, we are not talking about 'normal' SF needs, we are talking about distorted compulsively parasitically driven absolutely insatiable demands.

There can be no 'normal' certainly no 'healthy' or 'balanced' SF relationships with these forces in the works. True intimacy was the first thing to go. Infected hosts lost that ability when they lost touch with themselves in the beginning and progressively lost even that awareness as the denial overtook their perceptions of reality.

Infected hosts now awaken to find themselves in a terrible bind. They are not dead, not physically at least, and yet they exist only in incessant emotional pain. The only temporary respite they have is when they can find an increasing kind of more,new,different erotic experience. Perhaps embarrassed that they were deceived but unwilling to admit it, they become self loathing, and the party is over for them. The pleasure or satisfaction they get from it is decreasing even as their activities are increasing. Welcome to addict hell! No biblical description really painted a dreadful enough image of the total demoralization one experiences in this state. The need to keep up the outward pretense of having it all together and being the truly happy person while inside being totally consumed and your soul having been burned up on the alter of lust. Now you are a slave to IT's will and you go about looking only to feed that insatiable hunger. Not unlike the wraith creatures from the the stargate atlantis series on the inside being masked by a cloaking device that makes them appear to be 'ascended beings' on the outside. At least that is the self image they maintain.

Sort of like looking down on the rest of the creatures from your lofty vantages point beneath whale dung and wishing that everyone else could rise to your level. Then going out and as actively as possible seeing if you can elevate them to be with you there. Grooming others to feed on so that you can keep yourself alive even though you have nothing left to live for.

I tell you all this so that you may begin to understand the true nature of lust, the utter depravity and total deception of it's existence. It is the furthest thing possible from the word "fulfillment" it is its' the polar opposite.

AND ironically it has far less to do with sex itself than it would have anyone believe. It merely uses sex among other things to infect it's hosts and to propagate itself.

If you are ever to experience fulfillment in sex or in anything else lust must be eliminated from the equation. It is a destructive counterfeit for all the good things that true sexual fulfillment offers. All the good things you want to feel full filled in thru sex are not empty illusions but they become illusive and voided when lust is part of the agreement with which you pursue them. Remember lust is a parasite, it deprives it's host of the nourishments and satisfactions regardless of how adamantly they feed it. AND it becomes increasingly more efficient at that deprivation at the same time it becomes more efficient at driving it's host to feed it.

That's why I say that your husband is in a bind in the relationship. And why I tell you that it has next to nothing to do with you, nor how much or how devotedly and diligently you attempt to satiate his SF needs, or ask him to bring them exclusively to you. The day will come that no matter what or how much you do to fill those needs you will not be able to. Lust always wants, more, better, and different. It cares not for your devotion, your sacrifices, your health or well being, in fact it cares not for the host it has infected! It's single minded purpose is to grow and consume. That's all it wants. It takes everything it can and gives nothing unless it can see that in so doing it will get to take more than before. That is what lust is and what it does. It eventually removes the moral agency of it's host and drags them around looking to feed itself on others.

Small wonder that after living with this disease for long, so many become suicidal, and homicidal. Small wonder that so many isolate themselves and withdraw from society into secret societies where they can pursue their own fetishes.

Enough about lust then. I think I covered it.

Lastly let me commend you for getting clear about your fear of emotional abandonment as the driving cause of your own unmet emotional needs.

As bad as lust addiction is there is an emotional addiction which is similarly destructive and which targets women more often than men called love addiction. Often a love addict will find themselves attached to a lust addict and they are seeking to feel loved, cherished, valued etc.

I don't claim to understand the inside workings of love addiction as well as I do lust addiction. But from what I can tell listening to those who have love addiction it's every bit as spiritually destructive and tailored to entice a woman's sensibilities and destroy them from the inside as well and effectively as lust destroys from the inside. Driving it's hosts to seek more love while depriving them of feeling loved, every but as counterfeit and every bit as deceptive and following along much the same paths of denial and propagation.

If awareness is the first step then perhaps you are well on your way to proper intervention(s)...at least you are here asking questions, that has to be good.

Keep at it, you're doing well, expect that this awareness if it leads you to take actions toward interventions will precipitate the pains of withdrawals but that not all pains are bad. Withdrawal pains are in fact a good sign, they indicate that healing is in process and there is reason for hope.

There are places where support and healing for even the worst of these infections is available and people who do walk in newness of life and freedom from these most insidious diseases. Together in groups they are spreading the antidotes and sharing in the restoration of intimacy and fulfillments growing ever more free from the destructive effects of the disease. I am one who is grateful to walk among them and share in that grace. Only those who have been delivered from that bottomless pit of addiction can really feel to sing the praises of the higher power that delivered them, restored them to life and continues to restore them to happiness and well being along with the people they have been restored to be in healthier relationships with.

For me and others like me who have been there and back again, the word fulfillment is no longer totally illusive. Neither is intimacy merely an element of a fantasy fairy tale. It is an unfolding amazing immensely rewarding journey.

Going thru withdrawal sucks and it takes years, but it becomes worth it.

The path of lust and love addiction will never be worth the prices they exact and they will always be only the illusionary counterfeits of the real deal. If going thru withdrawal is the price of getting the real deal then I speaking only for myself say, so be it. Bring it on, I will go thru whatever need be to lay claim on the real deal.

take what helps and leave the rest.

and as always, I believe you can do it.

Pojaman, I really want to thank you for taking the time for such a detailed post. I need to read it again and then reply.

I did have one quick question now though. IF the sore is from him masturbating allot, is this something I should know, or ask him about, talk to him about, of find out? Or should I just not mention it at all?

As for myself, I think it's something that I want to know, IF indeed this is what he's been doing. If he's using magazines for that also, it will make a big difference to me, as to how I decide to go from here. As I'm sure you will agree, we all have our own limits, as to what we'll be able to live with, get past, etc. and I need to be able to make that decision, based on what he's been doing.

What do you think?

well, these questions are better answered by someone on your side of it like Kayla. It goes to the choices you make and the reasons you make them.

yes I agree everyone has limits and everyone has the prerogative to set their own boundaries.

I think Kayla is better suited to guide you as to how to gauge your responses and how to determine what sort of disclosures you need/want.

I will say this, regardless of where exactly your husband is in all of that stuff I described, there was/is a person in there somewhere. A person that is likely as baffled and frightened as you are, maybe moreso? Finding that person and sorting out that person from the corruption they are in is not an easy path.

I will always be grateful that Kayla has stood by me and sought the real me out from the ashes.

I generally don't answer 'should' questions because I see that as playing God. I don't think I know what is best for anyone else.

I would suggest (suggest meaning it's your call to do it or not) that you consider seeking out more support for yourself in some kind of anonymous fellowship that is focused on dysfunctional relationships that you feel you relate with or have some sense that you identify with their stated common purpose. Some of those might be either SLAA which focus on love addiction and sex, or ACOA which focuses on adult child issues like emotional abandonment.

you may not know which issues you feel would benefit you most to focus on but I do suggest you do what you can to focus on yourself more than on him and his behavior. Start undoing your own dysfunction issues and if possible don't make any big decisions until you have given yourself a chance to start growing personally in your own recovery. Most 12 step fellowships recommend not making any major life changes for at least a year after you start.

Thank you for your response.

I'm hoping Kayla will be back to reply to my response to her soon, and I will discuss this with her also.

Thank you again for such patience.

Kayla? Are you out there?

Schoolbus? Keepitreal? Howitfeels? Sadbutstrong? Pepperband?

I haven't heard from any of you in awhile, you guys still there?

I really need you experienced MB's to guide me through these rough times! Anybody?

Thanks

Kayla was a little under the weather last night. When she called me after work she wasn't feeling well. She's coming down with the bug that I've had for the last week. She came home an pretty much got dinner an went straight to bed.

Perhaps I can share some more ideas with you? I don't know how helpful they will be.

I dreamed last night about a tiger. It stalked me and just before it attacked I asked it who it was and it said, I am lust. So I'm going to work with this idea today. Let's consider lust is a tiger. The same cold heartless beast that has stalked and bemused itself with people and murdered people since the world began. Now it is stalking me and you.

What is an appropriate response? How prepared are we to face it? In my dream all I had was a tree branch to defend myself with. That wasn't working too well. It was only about 5 feet long and that doesn't help too much, given that it outweighs me and has teeth an claws. I woke up before it came to full engagement with the beast but I know that with my preparations I wasn't going to last long.

Kayla has been much better prepared to face it than I have been. One thing she did was to not present a target in the first place, once she realized she was only being consumed she put a stop to it feeding on her. She made a boundary that she didn't want to engage sexually with me unless I protected her from lust. Basically if I had acted out with lust thru porn or masturbation and was being driven by lust she put a moratorium on us being sexual together until such time as I had sobered again. In the early stages of my recovery this sobering up took months.

We went for extended periods without being sexual and with only limited sexual expression when we did. It was very hard for both of us. But we both knew that it was required. Not just intercourse but foreplay had to be modified to focus on connectedness and love and respect.

I had to learn know the difference between the impatient cold hearted demands of the beast and the patient selfless nurturing expressions of a true husband. There were lots of tentative early experiments of non-sexual touch, of back rubs, massages that didn't lead to sex. Spending time being physically close and just holding her in non-sexual ways and letting her just hold me, sometimes dressed and sometimes not dressed, sometimes in bed and sometimes not in bed.

I had to learn to not obsess about getting sex or feeding lust and to not make an object of her, to find a relationship with her as a person and allow the parasite in me to go unfed and literally starve it to death. It resisted every inch of the way, I had to put away the lustful desires, and accept not getting it thru the eyes. I had to accept her refusal to wear certain clothes and do certain things and she had to learn to not 'play' to my fancies which would only feed lust. That took some doing for both of us because she is a naturally sexy woman. We both had to learn how to redesign sex in a way that made it nurturing to both of us without feeding lust.

I can't tell you what all she did or learned thru all this, but I know she was focused on and made me focus on protecting her. She summoned the character that she deserved and was worth being protected. She maintained this posture regardless of what insane arguments and defiance and propaganda I threw at her, the ranting and ravings of an addict in withdrawal, as the starving lust within me tried everything it could to undermine her determination. It did this sometimes against my will but honestly many times I didn't know myself if I was being driven by lust or something else. I didn't know myself where lust ended and I began. It was terribly confusing to know what healthy sexual attraction without lust was when lustful sexual attraction had become such a huge part of my attraction.

For my part there were hundreds of 12 step meetings. I took my rage and anger and resentments and sorrows and all my other negative emotions and shared them in meetings with other recovering lust addicts, who all had similar feelings and experiences. I listened to them and we struggled together. The 12 steps became my focus and trying to rewire myself and learn to act lovingly and take the actions of love to improve our relationship. Where I was impatient I had to learn to express patience. Where I was cold hearted I had to learn to care again. To put love first again as the guiding principle of how I approached my marriage.

The hardest part for me continues to be self care. I have to take care of myself physically which is hard for me, hardest is for me to eat on an appropriate schedule and appropriate foods and make time for meal prep. etc. When I am on auto-pilot I grab the most convenient food I can whether it's good for me or not. I'm basically thoughtless and lazy. Too many carbs and sweets. Fast food for a fast life. Unplanned, undisciplined and undernourished. Lust creates a lifestyle in ways other than sex. Eating poorly, driving with road rage because I didn't leave enough time to get to my destinations. I had to and still have to make ever more conscious decisions that focus me on living within limits. Going the speed limit, planning trips in advance, taking time to stop and eat breakfast and lunch and even planning these meals in advance, working within the confines of a diet.

My recovery from lust is something that is enlarging to include every aspect of my life. I'm having to learn how to live and love and relate to others. It's a growing up that I didn't get to do before because lust had been driving my life for so many years.

Every day I can ask myself the question, "What would love have me do today?" and then pray for the willingness to do it.

I don't know if any of this helps or not.

Take what helps and leave the rest.

Pojaman, your posts help a great deal! Thank you!

Again, I have many comments on your posts, but need to have the right amount of time to sit and post them. I have a doctor's appt. today, so perhaps when I return.

I would like to ask this, what actually made you WANT to and be WILLING to, do these things, make these changes, look within yourself and admit your addiction?

I have to say, in my H, there is a great denial that anything is wrong with him whatsoever. One of the things he says allot is, "There was nothing WRONG with what I said (did)". He sees himself as not broken at all, or at least this is what he portrays to me, and is insistent on making me see and feel.

He continues to blame me for most things. His anger stops, blocks and hurts me to the core with most communication. Even when I'm working on me and staying loving, filling his needs, etc., his anger is just below the surface and will leap up in a second and can hurt so deep, I feel defeated before I can even express anything to him.

How in the world, can I do ANYTHING about this, if this is what is happening? You are SO right on with what you've been posting, and I really believe this is a big part of his problem. He's lived a very fast, hard and rough life, with women and everything. He has never experienced intimacy, how can he, when he's going through life so fast?

And it's so head-on about me being a very sexual woman, and playing into his lustful side, and him not EVER being able to show 'love' without lust, and how that is just killing "US".

But what, if anything, can I do, to help him get there, to the point of admitting it, seeing it, or even looking at himself at ALL? If I put up ANY boundaries, rules, try to protect myself by not allowing 'lustful sex' and just loving touch, etc. .. I don't see how it will ever work, when in the past I've tried and he just refuses and walks away.

Thank you for your time once again.

April,

You posted over on my thread. Not sure what brought up to ask about MB, but this walk that I have been on this past year has been pretty much all MB - especially ALL the vets who have helped me. I have learned about what was going on, how to implement Plan A and B, and learning to recover myself personally.

In the beginning, I simply wanted to die or drink and use to where I didn't feel anymore. I wanted to fix my WH because he was the one with the problems. But along the road and early on, I realized that I personally had done so much to our M that it nearly destroyed me. I just wanted a second chance to make things up. I didn't get that chance and still haven't. It will be a year tomorrow for D-day. I was willing to look at anything and everything and make those changes in MYSELF that I came to believe that G-d wanted me to change.

I haven't read your thread, and I go to both of my jobs today and am not sure that I will be able to until later tonight, but one thing that is jumping out at me is your concern about fixing your WH and HIS PROBLEM.

There is NOTHING you can do to change or fix him. NOTHING. TRUST me when I tell you that I spent so long learning this. And when even today when I am much stronger, wiser and older I still want to and try to fix him in my own way. But you and I can't.

We can only change ourselves, set boundaries and leave the WH's to G-d.

April - sorry for not replying last night. I can't afford to let this cold gain any ground on me so I dosed up on the vitamin C, and Cold-Eze lozenges and Zicam. My income depends on me being as healthy and alert as I can be.

I think Kasey's radar about your husband being an addict is on-target. However, it does no good for you to put that pronouncement on your husband. For recovery to begin, he has to recognize his addiction and seek recovery.

When I talked with Dr. Harley years ago, he said there can be no marriage building with an active addiction, any more than there can be any true marriage recovery with an active affair.

Plan A and Plan B help the spouse of the addict do what's necessary to recover themselves.

For example, a Plan A in your situation will be very difficult, but it does allow you time to prepare for Plan B.

Candidly speaking, are you ready to remove the word "can't" from your vocabulary? Replace it with "don't want to". But do what you can to reach a higher level of honesty with yourself. I can only offer the path I walked down to recover myself, and with it my marriage followed.

I know you have obstacles. Every person does who's on the betrayed side of this fight. Please don't make excuses and let those obstacles stop you - because we can't help you climb over the boulders you have to get over. But get over them you must if you are to ever experience peace within yourself, let alone recover your marriage.

Plan A for now means doing the things you know that you can to rebuild the marriage, independently of what he does to you. However, that doesn't mean sex with him while he has sores on his privates. How you handle that conflict has to be different than you have in the past - he is sensitized to judgments from you - that's why he reacts to a simple question. For example, instead of asking him (cause he doesn't know), just say - hmmm - let's find a way to be affectionate a different way - that needs to be checked - it must hurt! - if he insists, withdraw - sorry - I don't know what that is - sores on that part of the body are not normal - please get it checked out so we can be intimate again. That way, no accusations - and if he gets defensive, just say - hey - I'm not accusing you of anything. I'm not asking. Just get it checked out.

There are some battles ahead if his addiction is anything like the experience I had with it in my marriage. But the one boundary I refused to allow to be crossed was to be safe from lust. I could tell when Kasey had been into his addiction because he touched me differently which would trigger my radar. I can't describe how I knew, but I just knew. I would withdraw to protect myself - the boundary was about me and for me, and if he wanted to be with me, he'd have to respect it.

Many marriages do not survive addiction, especially the sexual addiction. The only reason why ours has this far is because Kasey took the steps he's taken and works the 12 steps and works on his faith.

April - you can't put your husband on the path to recovery; instead, you must put you on the path to recovery - and that may eventually mean leaving your husband. Your choice is between sanity and insanity. Insanity is what you have now - you live with a "crazy maker" - meaning, you have no intimacy, no conversation that is safe, no dreams, no hopes, and it's all your fault... Because that's how a crazy maker lives - to impose all problems in his life on the one who sticks with him through it all...

I think I posted on the other thread.

My husband's boy parts got dry and scalely because of him mbing. I bought his explanation of "it's just dry skin."

I know the others have spoken more eloquently than I have about your husband's addiction.

I did NOT know my husband was addicted when we got married. I also have children to protect. So when I discovered, I planned B. I told him it was p or me. He chose the marriage, and has been sober for over a year now. He needed therapy to get sober.
I was prepared to walk. I had consulted a lawyer when I gave him the ultimatum and was looking at apartments.

I however was also "lucky" in that my husband recognized he had a problem and wanted to stop. Many men don't.

I think he's going to be done with his therapist within the year. The next step is SA.

I've suggested you looked into COSA, which is the support group for codependants of people with sex addiction. They also have a presence online. You need to heal yourself. You need to figure out WHY you chose him, so that if you do end the marriage, you won't pick the same sort of guy again.

In my case, I have a ton of healing to do with my FOO. I'm in a codependant relationship with them as well as my husband. I'm seeing an individual counselor who deals with sex addiction and codependancy issues specifically. All of my learned behavior from living with my FOO, while not the cause of my H's addiction, certainly hasn't helped. So I need to go through my own recoveries to get myself healthy.

Our marriage did not start being rebuilt until my husband had roughly 9 months of sobriety with NO slips. It took us 9 months to begin communicating again. Our relationship is getting better, but slowly.

If he is willing to go into recovery, please realize this is a long process. After a year, I still do not feel safe with him. I'm a shadow of my former sexual self. His addiction has affected my hopes and dreams that are non-negotiable for me.

I don't know if anyone has mentioned that addictions do tend to escalate. You can't predict how it will escalate, and it sometimes escalates to acting out with real people, rather than fantasies.

I think it was the immense pain of my own broken unmanageable life.

I can't pinpoint an exact event or time but I knew I wasn't happy living in lust, sneaking off to masturbate, hiding stashes of magazines (before internet) and living a duplicity of life. I was keeping up pretenses on the outside that I knew were not real on the inside. It was like jekle and hyde. I would yo-yo thru the cycle of swearing off and then find myself doing it again. I tried everything I could to stop. Wanting to stop would be followed by wanting to try something different in the hopes that this new attempt might be the magic that would finally satisfy at last and free me from the pain once and for all. But the pain always returned and with a vengeance. I would realize after the fact that the actions themselves were causing the pain but after swearing off for a while I would forget the truth and believe the lie that it was innocuous and wouldn't matter. I simply had no mental defense and still don't against the cunning, baffling and powerful disease.

Wanting to straighten up and fly right was probably the result of my religious upbringing and my goals and aspirations for life and afterlife. I wanted a pure life and a holy marriage which would endure for eternity. That became a core desire for me as a youth. I think that desire was like a flower planted in the garden of my soul along with every other righteous desire I was taught. But the garden of my soul unfortunately also had a few weeds planted in it. Lust being the foremost and most noxious weed.

Like you I feared emotional abandonment. My family life was anything but emotionally secure. I was emotionally unprotected and lived with what Kayla calls 'crazy makers'. My family was run by a dictatorial father and a passive aggressive, chronically depressed mother.

What you must understand is that people can do some really insane things and not bad people. My parents are goodly parents yet even so they had issues and aspects of their emotional lives that they themselves could not manage. To this day my parents relationship isn't healthy in some ways that dishearten me. Yet it is THEIR relationship and I have had to learn to leave them be and let God alone help them work thru their relationship as THEY turn to him for help.

My experience suggests that people don't take action until they are motivated by pain or pleasure to act. And of these two pain is the far stronger motivator. It is not until people have enough pain that it is intolerable for them to NOT act that they will act. Then often when they are at that point they don't know what the correct action is.

Suffice it to say that the breakdown of my life got so painful, my inability to work, to relate to others, to have happiness and the admiration of my wife, my own self respect, breakdown of health (compulsive masturbation is very draining to a man), being sick and broke and angry all the time, blaming others for everything, being lost in zombie land with no soul left inside me...failing in business because of my declining productivity. All of it took it's toll. I was suicidal for probably a year at least and was praying to God all the time to just take me because it was all too much. That's called total despair. That is the place I was at notwithstanding WANTING to change I didn't know how.

WILLING on the other hand, willing is another matter. I can pinpoint the exact day I became willing and my life turned around. October 16, 1994 was the day I went to my first 12 step meeting. For two nights previous to that I had this recurring weird dream where I followed my brother (one of the drug addicts in my family) into a pyramid filled with bizarre people and tried to get us both out of it before the people noticed us. It was like the Hotel California where you can check out anytime but you can never leave situation. Then on the 16th my brother appeared on my doorstep out of the blue and asked me if I wanted to go to "a meeting" with him. It was a narcotics anonymous meeting. I had no interest in going to narcotics anonymous, I didn't use drugs. But I DID feel very cut off from life and didn't know what to do about it.

His was the only offer I was getting from anyone to join them in something. Everyone else didn't want to have anything to do with me and I didn't want to have anything to do with myself. Kayla and I were not on good terms and I only felt guilty whenever I was around her, like I'd ruined her as well as myself. She wasn't interested in being sexual with me and we were on the outs. I thought, "what the hell? I'll go hang out with him for an hour and it's not like I've got anything so much better to do...(jack off some more, like that's helping anything?)" so I said, "ok" and I went with him to his NA meeting.

Strangely enough when I entered that meeting it was just like my dream, there were the strange people, motorcycle chaps, leathers, orange hair and green plastic pants, chains, tattoos, men and women old and young that were all pretty well whacked out. And if I thought they LOOKED strange then they started opening their mouths and letting their insides come out...rage rage rage rage....

they couldn't say one sentence without the 'f' word 5 or 6 times. This went on speaker after speaker for little over an hour. I sat there intimidated but secretly bemused with the whole situation. In and thru the midst of all this they spoke of a spiritual way of living and how glad they were to find it. This was NOT church and these were NOT saints and none of it made any sense to me except on an emotional level. Some part of me felt strangely ok being in their company. I didn't condemn them and they didn't seem to condemn each other. It was really weird seeing them vent so much rage, anger, frustration and speak all other sorts of insanity and yet thereafter embrace each other in fellowship and say "keep coming back". If THESE people could accept each other in the face of all that they were faced with and going thru perhaps they could accept me as I was?

I soon discovered that for me to share my sex addiction and experience that kind of acceptance and love would take another fellowship. NA as much as it claims to be uninterested in what your drug of choice is and open to all addictions, nonetheless, sex addiction talk in an NA meeting is like throwing gasoline on a fire. I did find my first recovery sponsor thru inquiry in that fellowship and that sponsor eventually turned me on to alanon. My brother also invited me to his "other meeting" which was sexaholics anonymous. But the first willingness on my part was to follow him thru NA meetings.

My willingness was born of having no other offers and having exhausted all options of my own. I had to admit to myself that my life was messed up beyond my own ability to repair it. When I accepted the invitation to follow my brother I wasn't looking for a solution to my sex addiction exactly. I was simply willing to let go for one hour to follow him to his stupid meeting and keep him company for one hour that evening. I didn't see anything in it for me. According to my dreams I was simply trying to 'save him' if possible (typical alanon) and that was my only idea for going, that an it would give me an hour off from trying to fix myself.

For years I went to alanon meetings and sa meetings together. Started talking about my own family and how messed up it all was, and eventually started seeing how messed up "I" was. It didn't come fast. I wasn't ready to be open to it all very quickly and I didn't have the self esteem to endure the truth about myself either. All I know is that over time and with effort and persistence. I have a different life today.

I do have something of a spiritual connection with a power greater than myself and that connection gives me back life and love and opportunity for growth on the healthy path.

It's a very individual thing and God has his own way and timing to reach each of his lost sheep. I do know that he finds lost sheep and he's very good at it. There is no chasm too deep, no expanse too vast, and no hiding place where he cannot reach and revive those who become willing and give him the slightest bit of willingness to work with.

My recovery is based on willingness today just as it was on October 16, 1994. The only difference is today I know what to call it. Knowing what to call it isn't as important as doing it. The first time I 'did' willingness I didn't know what to call it and wasn't even paying attention really to what I was doing. Now I know that either I live by it or I will start the path back to my active addiction, a place and way of life I never really wanted.

The first time I looked at porn as an adolescent and masturbated I didn't think to myself...let's see if I can destroy everything good I want or every hope to enjoy in life and relationships....I thought instead....this won't really hurt anything or anyone and if it does it won't be very bad or hard to undo...what the heck, it'll be fun! I had spiritual warnings at the time but I chose to ignore them. I simply didn't have the trust base in spiritual leadership.

Getting that trust remains one of the hardest things for me in recovery.

take what helps and leave the rest.

a friend who has a pretty good level of intimacy with me just sent me this and I think it merits passing it on....



Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

I thought you would like this story.
Dave


LAW OF THE GARBAGE TRUCK

How often do you let other people's nonsense change your mood????

Do you let a bad driver, rude waiter, curt boss, or an insensitive employee
ruin your day?

The mark of a successful person is how quickly one can get back their focus
on what's important.

David J. Pollay explains his story in this way....

Sixteen years ago I learned this lesson. I learned it in the back of a New
York City taxi cab.

Here's what happened.....

I hopped in a taxi, and we took off for Grand Central Station.

We were driving in the right lane when, all of a sudden, a black car jumped
out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his
breaks, skidded, and missed the other car's back end by just inches!

The driver of the other car, the guy who almost caused a big accident,
whipped his head around and he started yelling bad words at us. My taxi
driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean...he was friendly.

So, I said, 'Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and
sent us to the hospital!'

And this is when my taxi driver told me what I now call, 'The Law of the
Garbage Truck.'

'Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full
of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment.

As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it.

And if you let them, they'll dump it on you.

When someone wants to dump on you, don't take it personally.

You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. You'll be happy you did.'

I started thinking, how often do I let 'Garbage Trucks' run right over me?
And how often do I take their garbage and spread it to other
people: at work, at home, on the streets?

It was that day I said, 'I'm not going to do it anymore.'

Life's too short to wake up in the morning with regrets.

Love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don't.
Believe that everything happens for a reason.
Have a great day!!!

Never let the garbage trucks run over you !

My AA sponsor told me for months and months, it's not the feelings that will kill us, it's what we do with those feelings that will. We can't make it go away, then we don't learn the lessons. What we can do, is pray, seek G-d, ask his help in moving through and just get through it second by secone if that's what you need.

Pray about it, make a list of those things in yourself that you don't like that YOU want to change. Take one at a time. Did I mention praying?

Controlling things for me was almost like breathing. I didn't realize it either. But this journey can become a journey of self awareness about yourself and learning how you walk around in life. Start journaling about your thoughts, feelings, actions throughout the day. See if you can't see any patterns.

Fortunately for me, I went back to AA and immediately began working with a sponsor and doing the steps. It was when I did my 4th step and 5th step I began to see MY patterns, the destruction they had and were causing and with knowledge comes choice.

Do I stop myself from controlling, NOT ALWAYS, but I am more at choice. And choice is such a freeing feeling.

You are doing GREAT April, hang in there, keep coming back and asking questions. There is a lot about Plan A and B that we think we know, but we really don't until we set our mind out to work it to the best of our ability.