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I was really hoping for intimacy with my wife, but she is clearly exhausted. My desire for sex is good [self-attunement], and instead of going to porn after she goes to bed, I can unwind with her and invite her to share more with me about the most exhausting elements of her day [self-containment and other-centered attunement]. In the morning, I will reengage the conversation around sexual intimacy and find a time that works best to be with one another. Every relational dilemma we encounter is a place to practice the harmonizing of attunement and containment.
“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”[3]
Before you begin to engage conflict in your relationships, there are three important things to keep in mind: You can do only your part for others. Getting close to others takes iterative work. Every person you meet offers you a mirror that reflects some part of you.
Change is a slow, often mysterious process, and you will need to adjust your sense of timing.
He is deeply afraid of being seen and known. He will warn you, at times with a jab and other times with an uppercut, if you get too close or see him contrary to his neatly constructed identity.
It is vital that you recognize that all relationships, particularly with loved ones, are repaired through a long process, not a singular event.
The task ahead is to reflect on what type of home you set up for your children and explore how this affected them.
I know I’ve been an intimidating father, and I want you to know how much I desire to be a kinder dad.”
honor does not negate the necessity for honesty. Many of us avoid conflict because we do not want to deal with pain.
When practicing strength, keep the tension between pursuing your personal dignity and pursuing the welfare of others.
The fantasies within unwanted sexual behavior often reveal our inability to find what we want and need in reality.
Using anger to intimidate others is not strength; intimidation is bullying. Melissa struggles with the other counterfeit version of strength: abdication of power. When strength is distorted through anger or abdication, relationships suffer.
held his wife
Brent is a rare man who paradoxically experiences grief and joy, the embodiment of godlike vulnerability.
Vulnerability reduces shame and leads to freedom.
“Men talk about sex all the time but rarely about how much difficulty it brings into our lives.”
to write a different story, he would have to let his needs and feelings be known to others.
There is no glory in enduring foolish suffering.
Those are the words of salvation: Guess what? Me, too.[2]
This reveals that the current framework of accountability may reduce some shame and isolation but is inadequate in providing pathways to lasting freedom.
The complexity is that the initial relief, gained through vulnerability, soon shifts to a familiar burden to care for others or present a “changed” version of ourselves far earlier than we should. This ushers us back to one of the core experiences of unwanted sexual behavior from part 2: deprivation. We begin to deprive ourselves of what is beneficial in order to give back to churches or communities what we think they want to see. Please know there is no obligation to give any of your time, story, or resources away because of what you learn. It may be that what you need more than anything is a
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WHEN WE ARE ENTRENCHED IN the ruts of our unwanted behavior, our motivation to change is rooted in a desire to be free from our behavior. Many people live their lives attempting to be free from difficulties such as sin, addiction, anxiety, and depression. This approach sets us up to toil in endless battles, measure our success based upon our win-and-loss record, and ultimately live like prey to the predatory difficulties of life. This method is exhausting and increasingly foolish, as it is rooted in an effort to “manage” sin. The alternative to a freedom-from approach is to ask yourself, What
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When my clients report beneficial experiences with accountability, they tend to tell me two things. First, the group’s emphasis is on the key drivers, past and present, that influence unwanted sexual behavior rather than a heightened focus on maintaining purity. Second, the group emphasizes mutual participation and personal growth rather than dwelling on the powerlessness of their addiction or compulsive behavior.
Therefore, efforts to avoid lust or beat yourself up for a failure to reach purity are null and void. Your purity has already been accomplished and applied to your identity.
Shame aims to convince us that our unwanted behavior must be stopped before we can connect to others. Nothing could be more counterproductive. We connect so that we can heal.
We are not liberated from unwanted sexual behavior because of our obedience; obedience is the fruit of our liberation.
“Empathy doesn’t require that we have the exact same experiences as the person sharing their story with us. . . . Empathy is connecting with the emotion that someone is experiencing, not the event or the circumstance.”[1]
With empathy, there is no pressure to curate the ideal response; a kind and honest presence is enough.
Our God-given need is to be oriented around attuned caregivers, but if those are absent, we turn toward surrogates, such as unhealthy people, premature sexual experiences, or devices.
Pornography was available, far more so than a family or community encouraging him to discover an authentic identity.
meaninglessness escape pain and boredom pursue unwanted sexual behavior as poison, anger, and counterfeit identity feeling unwanted meaninglessness
One way of thinking about these statistics is to see watching pornography as a symptom of an unlived life. If we are trying to get rid of the symptom but do not know what we want instead, our efforts will be in vain.
You can almost imagine him, if he were alive today, heading out to the wilderness of unwanted sexual behavior and calling us Internet search junkies, clicking on any link or image or app with the slightest scent of sex.
What our churches and cities need most are men who want more than to dart their eyes away from lust. We need men who want to step on the neck of evil that promotes violence against women as the antidote to masculine wounds.
Or you might want to be a good dad who spends time with his family but instead get involved with affairs on business trips.
“I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.”[6]
Discovering a sense of purpose is the most powerful way to disrupt a life of sexual brokenness.
And mostly, you get to entertain the very dangerous prospect of hope.
