Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing

by Jay Stringer

Triangulation, or emotional enmeshment, occurs when there is a breakdown in a marriage relationship and a child is brought in to fill the emotional emptiness.

As you can see, the classic example of triangulation is a mother confiding in her children when the father abdicates his emotional responsibility to his wife.

In triangulation, a child is groomed to be the balm for his mother or father, thus developing an identity in reference to the parent’s needs.

Triangulation is a form of emotional incest and has profound effects on the development of one’s individual and relational self.

Children who were groomed to be idols for their parents feel that any choice they make, even if healthy,

will feel like a form of betrayal.

The word trauma comes from the Greek word for “wound.”

scars reveal external wounds, unwanted sexual behavior often reveals internal ones.

For our discussion, there are three features of trauma that should be highlighted. First, as Bessel van der Kolk, a pioneer in the field of trauma, wrote, “We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on

mind, brain, and body.”[1] For example, if you were called stupid as a child, the imprint of the wound may be revealed in your relentless attempts to be competent or the toxic shame you feel when someone realizes you do not know how to do something. Second, trauma affects not only your mind but also your body. This

is why you might hear people say, “I was completely traumatized and couldn’t say anything” or “I was scared stiff after the bang” or “My knees started shaking after I heard that my dad had been...

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“fright paralysis” and a “soul loss.”[2]

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Healing requires you to pivot from condemning your lack of willpower to addressing the role trauma may be playing in your unwanted sexual behavior.

While many religious leaders have recommended prayer, Scripture reading, and other spiritual practices to overcome sexual temptation,

very few have encouraged their faith communities to explore the traumas beneath their struggles.

Trust is the paradoxical foundation of sexual abuse.

Sexual abuse is the biggest driver of unwanted sexual behavior in the clients I work with.

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Whether we find porn with no one else around or are introduced to it in the presence of others, we associate it not only with erotic content but also with the one who originally collected it.

Pornography wires the

Knowing the origins of your behavior is central to the recovery process, but it does not cure you.

You will also need to address why unwanted sexual behavior is an essential component in your present life.

EMILY SAT ON MY THERAPY COUCH and burst into tears. She looked up in desperation and said, “Here I am again. Why am I such an idiot? Why do I stay in this stupid cycle? I keep going back to the thing I know is ruining my life.”

Unwanted sexual behavior forms when six core life experiences are linked together: deprivation, dissociation, unconscious arousal,

futility, lust, and anger. Any of these experiences on their own are not enough to create pervasive damage. Rather, it is when these experiences link and reinforce one another that the stage is set for unwanted sexual behavior to appear.

When the six experiences bind together, the cycle of unwanted sexual behavior begins. To disrupt this cycle, the six experiences must be addressed holistically and simultaneously because they

rarely exist on a linear continuum.

For instance, you could be having a terrible week at work (futility) and come home to watch four random hours of Netflix (dissociation). You are upset with yourself for how unproductive you are (anger) and then fi...

to offer yourself a momentary reprieve from disappointment. The next evening, a friend invites you over to hang out, but you say no to something good (deprivation) be...

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pornography use. Unwanted sexual behavior does not happen out of thin air. There is al...

Ignoring your needs is not virtuous; it is dangerously irresponsible.

One of the primary reasons men and women stay in a place of unwanted sexual behavior for decades is that they have not addressed the areas of self-deprivation in their lives.

The majority of those who struggle with unwanted sexual behavior choose passivity over against asking for what they need or being honest about what they are experiencing. They roam through life feeling overworked or underappreciated, which sets up entitlement for experiences they believe they deserve. Deprivation occurs in both overt and subtle ways. It may appear superficially noble, such as always deferring to others to decide where to go to dinner because of the fear of making the wrong choice,

or taking on extra projects at work because of preferring exhaustion and stress over rest and meaningful relationships. For others, it is a neglect of basic physical care.

If your life is full of failures, lack of motivation, guilt, feelings of being overwhelmed, and anxiety,

you are clearly going to want to flee reality. This flight from reality is known as dissociation.

Dissociation is a psychological term used to describe disconnecting from full engagement with

your body and the relationships around you.

all of us have an arousal map or cocktail, which is a constellation of thoughts, images, fantasies, objects, and situations that sexually arouse us.

the association between pornography and a lack of purpose.