Myths about Intimacy and Temptation

 

Ok so Step 4 feels more daunting to me this time around for some reason.  I haven't picked it up.

I should.

I haven't yet.

That's why I haven't posted again in the last little while. But all excuses aside I'm just putting it off.

For now though, I have a few thoughts about being married with addictions present.

This post is going to get into some real detail that some people avoid. But I feel these things must be clarified. I needed them clarified. I know others do too. I'm going to try to keep my wording as appropriate and wholesome as possible and avoid triggering. I'd appreciate it if I make the mistake of writing anything triggering that someone will comment and make me aware so I can adjust it to avoid that the best I can.


I recently had a discussion with a friend of mine who went with me to addiction recovery meeting (the actual addiction recovery meeting, not the one for those supporting loved ones).

From her point of view, being physically intimate with her husband made temptations become more difficult for her because her body was more awake to those feelings. She expressed frustration in trying to balance having a healthy marital relationship but also battling the dirty feelings she sometimes got while being with her husband.  I am only sharing her experience because I don't see it as being too unique. I think there are many of us in the same boat. There have been other ladies in the meetings who expressed similar feelings.

Also those who have a husband struggling with addiction add feelings of responsibility to helping their husbands by being their physical outlet. Many women feel that if they ever say no, they may trigger the bad behaviors in their husbands. Their husbands might have a harder time withstanding temptations if they haven't been able to release that tension with their wives.

Let me just say one thing here.  My husband felt that way a year into recovery. He would always try to tell me it made it harder for him if I didn't feel up to things.  But as much as he was convinced this was true, it wasn't. He knows it now, three years into recovery.

I want to emphasize that point.

It doesn't help. It makes no difference. I knew it because we could be intimate and in the same day he could struggle with some temptation and even fail.

The reason? Because they are completely disconnected experiences.

I know this for myself now as well, with my own addiction.  I could be with my husband and still have temptations on my own because the experience is completely different.

Too many couples then turn to outside help for their marital intimacy to give their time together more "spice" to make it more exciting and so the temptations to go elsewhere will lessen. This is another lie. It doesn't work. It actually triggered my friends addiction now.

So Myth #1 is Physical Intimacy in marriage occurring more often and with more "spiciness" will help an addict withstand temptations.

Nope, sorry.

The next myth goes along to support this one and explain further. I've explained in another post somewhere about the way the body reacts to different stimulation. My body had practiced arousal the wrong way for so long, it was hard for my body to respond the right way to the healthy practice with my spouse. It was so much easier for my body to react when I wasn't with him. It was because of the practice. Things have gotten much better as I have withstood the wrong kind of practice and kept trying with the right kind.

So, what happens when we cross the wrong practice into the right one? If someone's body reacts best with pornography triggers or with self-gratification involved, and that is brought into the practice with their spouse to get things going, it might make things work a little better for a time.  But we are missing something important when we do that.  AND it's the most important thing.

The spirit.

When physically intimate with our spouses, we are engaging in a spiritual activity. SPIRITUAL. It's not just a physical thing.

The first time I heard that I was completely confused because I didn't know what it meant. I had never felt the spirit when I was physically intimate. I didn't know I could.  I didn't know I should!

But with the presence of the spirit, the experience is so much sweeter and more meaningful. It truly is where a husband and wife can become one, both body and spirit.

My friend felt dirty sometimes with her husband. I have had the same feelings. It's because the spirit is not there. Something is wrong. Do you need more excitement? More stimulation? No. You need the spirit.

If or when I feel this way I know I cannot keep participating.
Something has to change.

So I had a discussion with my husband about the need for the spirit when we were together. Because of the discussion, all I needed to say to him was that I couldn't feel the spirit and he'd understand in a much better way then before. It cut out the disagreements we used to have and we didn't fight about the subject anymore when I with-held myself from him. Instead, it drew us to prayer.

Sometimes praying helped us reset and begin again. Sometimes praying led to just cuddles and sleep (which isn't bad, after all). But it always left us feeling loving, and stopped the fighting.

Myth #2 is Self-Gratification or other outside "help" during physical intimacy can help make marital intimacy more fulfilling.

Instead, just make sure the spirit is present. You're welcome. :)

After my conversation with my friend about the struggles she felt, I hope things are going better with her and her husband. She was actually contemplating abstinence for a full year! I didn't judge her for it. Maybe for her personally it would help. However, I knew that would sound very daunting and impossible to her husband, and it very well could have been detrimental to their relationship as a whole. Instead I suggested taking a day at a time, prayerfully, and praying for her spouse.

It's helpful if both spouses are doing that. Praying unselfishly for what is best for the other person. This way, things can be sorted out in the best and loving way. However, I know that it's not always the case. It's hard to balance being unselfish and giving to ones spouse while also drawing boundaries and caring for oneself.

The best advice is to follow the spirit.

I feel rather advice-y on this post. I apologize for that. I usually refrain from too much advice because everyone's experience is different and there is no one right way for everyone. But that is the one thing I feel I can say that would be individual to everyone. Let the spirit guide you in your own decisions and they will be the right ones.

Thanks for your feedback!

Step 5: Confession

 

Admit to yourself, to your Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ, to proper priesthood authority, and to another person the exact nature of your wrongs.

Step 5 Reading

 As I've gone through the process of writing my inventory this time, I feel like I have learned so much about myself!  It's been an awesome learning experience and I really can see that I can grow from doing this, as hard as it is.

Step 5 can seem a little daunting and nerve wracking.  Even more then step 4 was, because now instead of just going over all of the nitty gritty details of my life to just myself, I am opening it up for someone else to react to.  Now, this reaction may be accepting and it may not be and that's the hard part about it.  But if I were to do step 4 without step 5, it would be like acknowledging an infected wound in my leg and just covering it over without cleaning it or taking care of it.

Step 4 is looking over the wounds and acknowledging the infections.  Step 5 is cleaning those infections out so they can be healed.  It's not fun, and can be painful, but it is absolutely necessary or the infections will fester and get worse.

So Step 5 must take place soon after Step 4 is completed.  Because right now it is fresh in the mind.  And since I have taken the time to really complete Step 4 by writing it down, there is a complete and written version of the problems and solutions there ready to be read aloud so nothing is missed.

It says to first confess to the Lord.  This I feel I have been doing while I was working step 4, but before I go to confess to anyone else I plan to kneel before the Lord and confess for everything all during a single humble prayer.  Because then it's serious.

After this, it says to confess to proper priesthood authority anything illegal or sinful that may prevent one from holding a temple recommend.  Of course this will include my self gratification addiction.  I don't know if my recommend will be taken away or not.  I feel like I'm making real progress.  But a part of me feels like perhaps I have been unworthy for long enough while holding a temple recommend that maybe I need it taken away just because of that.  But it's not my decision to make, and I don't want Satan's negativity to enter in and destroy my positive outlook on this.  So I'm going to leave it up to the bishop's inspiration, and trust in his judgement.

Step 5 also encourages me to select another person in which to read my inventory aloud in it's entirety.  I have never done this, even in the last couple of times working the steps.  I did talk to the bishop the first time through the steps, but I didn't feel better afterwards and couple explain why.  Now I understand it's because it wasn't my full inventory after all.  I was so majorly in denial I cannot explain it.  Anyway, I feel like this decision to disclose to another person is completely up to the individual working the step.  To me, I feel like I've been talking with my husband about the details during this entire process so I feel like I have been disclosing it.  However, I may feel inclined to share sometime in the near future if someone at the meetings seems like the right person for me to do this.  I just don't know who yet, and I feel it is very important to select the right person.

I do feel like this other person provides further opportunity for me to grow, because it will allow for another person's perspective to come forth in what I've written.  Maybe through this other person, the Lord would give me even more to learn.  It would further challenge me to be completely honest and open about who I am.

I made my appointment with my bishop for tonight.  I was actually kind of disappointed because I made this appointment on Saturday and wanted to get in for a Sunday appointment but he was fully booked.  Now, however, I feel like I've had the opportunity to add some more thoughts to my inventory.  I've had a couple more moments of heightened understanding since I made the appointment so now I have more to say to him.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.

Confessing my sins helps me to make positive changes because once I have confessed and those mistakes are out in the open, they are suddenly easier to leave in the past.  Now that I've confessed to myself, and to God, it is easier to recognize what is happening when temptation strikes.

I think having someone listen to all of my honest failings and weaknesses and sins and then react with love and understanding helps me heal because it would reinforce God's love and forgiveness as I put forth my best efforts to get better.  Being judged righteously in the way God would see it, I would also finally be able to forgive myself and put things behind me.

More on the Nature of Addiction

What's the most frustrating thing about the nature of my addiction to masturbation (or self gratification) is that I once decided that perhaps when I feel the temptation I could just go to my husband and after practicing a healthy expression of feelings the temptation would go away.  But no.  This is not what happens, sadly.  Because my body is practiced to react only to a certain kind of stimulus, not through healthy intercourse, the only way to satisfy the feelings is to fulfill it in the way my body recognizes.  Because it just doesn't work the same way.  The only way to deal with this is to abstain from the behavior my body craves and so I can develop a more healthy habit and my body can gain more practice in the right way of doing things.

I get so frustrated when I have just been with my husband sometime during the day and even in the same day I find my body giving me carnal signals of desire and temptation strikes.  And there is nothing I can do about it but pray and hope for the Lord to remove the temptation from me.

 I must believe that He will.

One way I have decided to practice is by really fasting.  I have talked about it before in another post.  But fasting is one way to exercise my ability to put the Lord before the natural man.  It strengthens my resolve to put aside my carnal desires and put the Lord first.  This past Sunday was fast Sunday and man was I struggling with it!  Not only was I incredibly hungry while giving my children their breakfast, when I escaped to my bedroom there was a box of See's candies calling to me...and then while I was journaling about it I was hit by another kind of temptation.  Then my husband ate a cinnamon roll of all things (his excuse was because he had to take some medication for back pain...) and I was so hungry and upset!  YET the hidden blessing was that at that point my hunger temptation overcame the other temptation and so I was able to get by.

Still haven't slipped since before I began step 1!  Harrah!

I was thinking more about the nature of my addiction and I realized that the character weaknesses I got because of this addiction bled into other aspects in my life a lot more then I previously realized.  I realized that there are patterns of behavior that reach back to my childhood where I would hide a negative thing about myself, either a deed or a motive, and play the innocent victim so other people would think I was just innocent and take pity on me or feel bad for me.  I did it to my peers and my family members all the time.  I remember thinking to myself that I could get away with anything because no one would suspect angelic me!  I was so prideful and self righteous but deep down I knew I was being wicked and covering it up to other people.

If I would feel bad for not doing something because of laziness, or if I didn't want to take responsibility for something I had done, I would outsource the blame and play the victim.  As a child I got away with this all the time and it reached all the way up into my college life, when I went before the bishop in order to tell him about how my new boyfriend had sinned by "taking advantage of me" and that his bishop needed to know about it.  My bishop had sat before me and looked at me in awe and amazement.  He'd told me that I was headed in a very dangerous direction and I needed to open my eyes.  I didn't understand what he was talking about.  Something in my head refused to get it.  But I was indeed refusing to acknowledge my own responsibility for what had happened.  I was prideful and unrepentant for my own sins, and because of that I WAS headed into a very dangerous place and I got myself into trouble!

Instead, I should have acknowledged my own fault in the situation and felt guilty at least a little bit.  If I had, I could have safeguarded my future a lot better then I did.  I was really in an unsafe mindset.

I realized then that I had entered into the life of college thinking that without my parents to set ground-rules I was just on my own to do my own thing my own way and I didn't need ground-rules because I knew better.  I wouldn't do what I didn't believe was right.  That's what I told myself.  But without setting my own ground-rules I was allowing myself to walk on dangerous ground.  I needed to set clear boundaries for myself!  But I think the way I saw things may even stem from my addiction.  I had been practicing the habit of hiding my own guilt from myself all my life!  I guess it bled into other aspects of my life outside of this one habit.  It prepped me to be more curious and open to perspicuity and sin as a young adult.  Addiction sucks!

Because of my addiction, I have developed character flaws of self-deception and self-righteousness all wrapped up together in a ball of pride and tied with a ribbon of vanity.  I cared more about what other people thought of me then what God thought, and that was bad.

I really hope that taking step 5 this time will help me beat away these tendencies for good.  I know it's just a baby step, however, and I will probably be fighting off these things for the rest of my life.

The Nature of Addiction

Today people say childhood masturbation is natural.  It's ok as long as you teach your child to touch him or herself when others cannot see.  Even parenthood websites and medical advice may point you in this direction.

From my experience, I can testify to you, this mentality is very wrong.  I have seen the effects this can have on the body.  When the brain practices one way of thinking for a long time, the neurons become larger and it creates a highway in your brain.  You have lots of side roads, but those that are used the most become the highways.  Addictive behaviors are highways, and other more natural behaviors become the side roads.  In my case, I have a big highway in my brain now for self gratification.  I don't use it very often anymore, but it's still a highway, and I'm now trying to widen the road of marital intimacy, and it's going to take lots of time.

May I also add that the body practices with the brain.  So, an addicts body has learned to respond only to what it knows best.  It simply won't respond as readily to a side road in the brain then it will to the highway.

I know someone who is married to a military man.  They attended a conference together about military marriage, and the expert there informed them that the advice men were given before to masturbate while away for long periods of time is now becoming more and more apparent to be bad advice because this bad habit is ruining marital intimacies between couples.  Men are coming back having built a highway in their brain and retrained their bodies to respond in ways that are not compatible to a healthy marital relationship.

Furthermore, habits that are also addictive in nature (because they create chemicals in the brain similar to drugs, but are more powerful because they are also natural) also becoming a coping mechanism under stress.  (Pornography can be categorized here, although I haven't ever allowed myself to personally succumb to this temptation I know that because of the nature of my own addiction it would have a strong hold on me if I ever did.)

Much of this information on the brain can be found in this book called He Restoreth My Soul, by Donald L. Hilton, Jr., MD

When a normal brain is met with stress, the natural reaction is to enter fight or flight mode.  When studies have been made on the brain, rational thought is located in the frontal area of the brain.  Fight or flight mode is located in an entirely different place within the brain.  This is why when someone enters fight or flight mode, they are no longer thinking rationally, but are acting purely on emergency instinct.

But the addict under stress, instead of entering fight or flight mode, goes to the addictive behavior.  This is why an addict to something like heroine may do something absolutely unthinkable in order to obtain a fix.  Afterward they may even say "I don't know what I was thinking." and be completely bogged down in guilt and despair, but still completely out of control.  It's because when they enter that stress mode, they leave rational thought and things are completely out of control.  Having this understanding has helped me to understand why an addict needs help and is powerless to conquer the addiction alone.  Step 1.

How "Jane" Began

Hi.  Call me Jane.  It is not my real name,  keeping with the anonymity to go along with the 12-step program and protect myself.  This is my sorry. 

When I was a child, very young, probably around two years old, I showed interest in my own body and my mother wasn't sure how to guide me.  I remember her saying to stop doing it and warning me that it was not a good habit,  but it didn't sink in.   I only became further isolated in my addiction as I hid it from my mother.  People never talked about what I was doing at church so I didn't even know what it was called.  I didn't grasp how bad it was.  I felt dirty and guilty whenever I did this, but I never knew why and I didn't know how to stop.  This continued all through my childhood and into high school.

There was a point in Youth Conference when I was given time on my own and told to pray about something I really wanted to change, a habit I wanted to break.  Immediately this bad habit came to mind because I knew it was something that made me feel bad and I knew if anyone else knew, it would be horrible.  I hadn't wanted to go to my bishop about it because I felt so ashamed.  I had no idea how to approach the subject because no one ever tales about it.  I was supposed to be the good little Mormon girl.  So during this time at conference,  I prayed and deeply repented.  I felt the presence of the spirit so strongly there as I knelt on my own in the middle of the forest.  The leaders had given me a letter and told me to open it only after I was done praying.  I know today they still have no idea how much I got out of that experience they offered to me.  I felt the forgiveness of my God and I made a pact with Him that I would not ever touch myself inappropriately again and that I would keep myself clean through His help.  The letter held beautiful letters of love from both of my parents that made me cry and I treasure them even today.

I am most ashamed to say what happened next.  I can testify that the Lord hears our prayers and answers them.  I can testify that He answered my prayer in a way I never expected.  He took it all away.  He took away the feelings of pleasure and false fulfillment I got from acting out.  When I broke my promise, as I'm sure He knew I would, he held my body aloft and I could not reach any kind of pleasure as I had before.  I knew it was because He was helping me, but instead of taking advantage of His help and using this means to stop, I kept doing it.  I was frustrated that I could no longer gain the release I used to have.  Now, after knowing about the 12-step program, I can understand that because of the nature of my addiction, I was using this habit to cope with things and I didn't replace it with a better more healthy behavior, so I continued.  And then the feelings came back.  I remember the first time I felt it come back I felt absolutely awful because I felt like the Lord was saying, "Ok, you have broken your promise and if you won't stop with my help then you'll have to do it without me."  Of course, the Lord wouldn't have said this to me in those words.  I was just not willing to really let go of the addiction as I should have been. He couldn't force my obedience.  It was a hard lesson for me.

For my seminary graduation interview, my bishop brought up the word "masturbation" and I didn't even know what it was.  But when I asked and listened to his explanation, I knew I was guilty of it.  He informed me that this wouldn't keep me from graduating seminary, of course, but would keep me from the temple.  I had lied and told him that it used to be a problem but it wasn't anymore.  I think this is probably a common out for many addicts.  "I used to do that, but it's alright now.  I have it under control."

Life went on.  I continued to try and fail in my attempts to stop.  I became sexually involved with a boyfriend outside of marriage when I was in college and didn't understand why it didn't feel as good.  After learning about addiction, I understand why now and I will cover that in a future post.  Those were the darkest days of my life.

After repenting the best I could, acting out in self gratification became less common and I was married in the temple.  But the story does not end there.  I continued to struggle to feel within my marriage the way I wanted to feel.  (Further explanation as to why can be found at my next post.)  I was introduced to LDS Family Services' Addiction Recovery Support Group through another need, to support am addicted loved one.   I worked the steps for other weaknesses, as a support person, not even entertaining the idea that i myself was an addict.  I attended the support group meetings as a support person and not the addict.

However after working the steps for over a year I finally can see myself clearly as an addict and am about to take the steps specifically geared to my own addiction to self gratification.  This is the beginning for me.