Are you trying to hold a life raft under water?
When you have a secret in your life, it takes more energy than you might think to hide it. Someone once described it to me like trying to hold a life raft under water. Imagine the energy it would take to do that! We only have so much energy in our lives. We can either use our energy in positive ways or we can use it negatively. One of the negative, and most draining, ways we can use our energy is to maintain a double life. One of the first questions that Sexaholics Anonymous asks is: Do you keep secrets about your sexual or romantic activities from those important to you? Do you lead a double life? It only makes sense that it takes twice the energy to live a double life. To live this way we’ll spend great amounts of our personal power to maintain secrecy and hide things from ourselves and others. This drains us of the power that we need to solve our problems and live happy lives. The energy we spend to hide the negativity in our lives comes at a great cost. Are you you using your energies to keep up a double life of secrecy about your use of pornography or other improper sexual behaviors?
Lying
Lying is a big part of the sexually addictive personality. In fact, Dr. Affie Adagio, says that lying is the chief symptom of an addiction. It takes more energy than you might think to be successful at it. We resort to lying because we wish to keep our behavior secret from those we love the most. To maintain our secrecy, we often tell lies to ourselves and others. We lie to those closest to us and say that nothing is wrong with us–when they insist that something isn’t right in our lives. We lie about the websites we visit and tell further lies to explain the pop-ups from sexual websites keep on infecting our computers as well as the unsolicited e-mails that arrive in our mail. We constantly lie to ourselves and claim that what we are doing isn’t so bad. If we get caught viewing a pornographic website, we lie and say that it happened accidentally. If we are confronted about the things we have been doing, we lie and deny that we’ve been doing anything that we shouldn’t. The problem with lying is that we soon begin telling one lie to cover another. Some of us cannot remember the lies we have told. Soon, it is obvious to everyone, except ourselves, that our lives don’t square with what we say. In most cases, our lies eventually catch-up to us; but, if they don’t we become as compulsive in our lying as we are in our compulsive behaviors. We should beware of any person who is good at telling lies.
Sneaking around
It takes energy to sneak around. We wait until people aren’t home to indulge in our habit. We visit places in different parts of the city where we think no one will know us. We meet up with people after hours. We may open secret credit cards accounts or obtain secret mailboxes. We spend a lot of energy thinking about how we can feed our compulsions in ways that others will never suspect or know. We go out of town to indulge our fantasies. We keep late night hours so that when others are asleep, we can feed our insatiable desires.
Hiding things.
We hide our DVD’s, videotapes, magazines, secret computer files and e-mail. We hide the cable bill, the cell phone bill, and keep receipts that might incriminate us. We buy software that hides the websites we have been visiting. We hide all evidence of our behavior and we stupidly believe that no one will ever find out! But children find our hidden things and and lose their innocence as they do so. We may never know the harm we have caused when our deep dark secrets were discovered. We live life assuming that nothing has happened; when in fact, our kids are struggling to cope with information they don’t know how to deal with. Our spouses discover our secrets when we least expect it and the trust between us is broken in an instant. They find our cell phone bills, cyber chat lines, and indisputable evidence of our infidelity. Those that are closest to us are left to pick up the pieces from the things that we think we have hidden.
Covering our tracks
We spend money to buy software and hardware to cover our tracks. We hide websites we have visited from our history files and become paranoid about any evidence that we might carelessly leave around–leading others to discover our crimes. We make up excuses and alibis to tell our loved ones about where we have been and what we’ve been doing. If there is cheating in our life, we use all different kinds of subterfuge. Even though our lives don’t make sense, we try and create an outward appearance of normality.
Hiding our shame and guilt
What we feel on the inside makes us miserable. We use our energy to sooth ourselves. We are convinced that we cannot share our shame with anyone. Each time we give in to our compulsions and act out, we feel a part of ourselves dying on the inside. Outwardly we appear like we have it altogether. We may preach and teach in our churches. We may correct our children and instruct them to not do things that we ourselves are doing. We care very much about our image and what we believe that people think about us. We use the praise of others to tell ourselves that we really aren’t so bad; but inwardly, we wonder what people would think about us if they only knew the things we were doing.
There is a way out
We started out by noting that hiding secrets is similar to holding a life raft underwater. Obviously, we do not have enough energy to keep on holding the life raft under the water indefinitely. There are two ways we can allow the boat to surface. We can wait for our lives to fully unravel so that others discover our secrets against our will; or, we can take positive steps to bring sanity into our lives and use our energy in a positive way.
The first step you need to take is to stop lying to yourself and others. You need to find someone you can share your secret with. Secrets are like burdens. The bigger the secret the heavier the burden. When you find the right person to share with, you’ll notice that a big burden has been lifted. Find someone who can help you overcome your compulsive behaviors and bring sanity into your life.
Stop trying to do this on your own. One of the biggest lies that we tell ourselves is that we can do this on our own. We tell ourselves that we can control what we are doing. The truth is, no one can control an addiction on their own. Help is needed. We here at the Purity Project are here to help you. Our goal is to help you live a life that is burden free and transparent to all. We want you to enjoy the sanity that comes from living the way you know you should. We are not perfect people; but, we are people who have been rescued and now want to rescue others. We hope you’ll contact one of us today.
