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? Read more
The one best thing to cure a porn problem
When I first begin to see the damage that was happening in my life due to my involvement with porn, I knew that I had to quit right away. I was convinced that porn was a bad thing in my life and I was ready and willing to stop. The problem was, I couldn’t stay stopped! To those who don’t have a porn problem it is hard to understand why someone can’t just stop what they are doing. It doesn’t make rational sense! I was once like them. I thought that once someone made up their mind to quit that they’d stop just like that. So, I made up my mind to quit “just like that” and it worked for a short period of time and then, to my dismay, I would fall away once more and become more involved with porn than ever before. I did this yo-yo thing for a number of years. It never worked. Each time I failed I became more miserable and frustrated with myself. What I have learned is that becoming free of porn is a tricky process that takes some time. I wish it could happen by resolve alone; but, I have learned that it doesn’t work like that. While there are many things that help one get porn out of their life, there is one thing that absolutely must be in place. Read more
Can Porn Be A Good Thing?
The edge of Light and Dark
Is porn really all that bad?
Is there anything about porn that would make us want to recommend it to others? I spent fifteen years of my life looking at porn in an almost unrestrained fashion. I did what I wanted when I wanted–provided I could sneak around and do it without being caught. If the time I spent with porn had been channeled into formal learning, I suppose I could have learned at least 27 languages and 5 doctorate degrees! I obviously have knowledge and experience on this subject. In the next few paragraphs I’m going to tell you what I thought was positive about porn at the time; and, I’ll tell you what I think about it today–now I’ve had a chance to get it out of my life and think about what was happening to me back then. Read more
The layers of a sexual addiction
I think we all know that we act out on our sexual compulsions because we have an addiction; but, there are four main layers to our addiction and sublayers underneath them. The four layers of our addiction are: psychological, emotional, physical and spiritual. If we try and self-treat our addiction we will find that it is more complex and complicated that we realized and our chances for success are very limited. Even if we do seek help, if we don’t seek to understand and treat all four layers of the addiction, we won’t succeed. Our lack of understanding of these layers is one of the reasons that most addicts have tried and failed so many times. Every addict I have known had quit a million times only to start back up another million times. Quitting was not the problem; staying stopped was. The purpose of this article is to overview each of these four layers. Read more
Sexual Compulsions and Denial Pt. I
Show me a person who is addicted to internet pornography, or acts on sexual compulsions that they know they shouldn’t, and I’ll show you a person who is in denial. Denial is defined as
This post was written by teach4him--a member of the Purity Project in Oklahoma City. If you have questions or comments of a personal nature, you may reach him at teach4him@purityproject.comthe refusal to acknowledge the existence or severity of unpleasant external realities or internal thoughts and feelings.1 Read more
