A friend of mine recently told me that he's tired of 'screwing up' his sobriety from sexual addiction. He said he had failed so many times that he has concluded that, deep down, he desires a life of pornography, masturbation, and wherever embracing those lusts might lead him.
"Clearly, that is what I want, or I wouldn't keep doing it and thinking about doing it even more."
It was like listening to myself many years ago when I embraced my victimhood and decided that self-indulgence would be my reward for trying to be the good person I was trying to be — except when I was acting out, of course. It was a painful flashback. Thinking about the behaviors that such thinking led me to was another awakening; this guy is where I was.
I still have moments where I think my unwanted sexual thoughts must represent the real me, and all this recovery crap is just civilization's way of keeping me within some artificial societal norms. It scares me that I can keep walking toward that line, even a step.
I've recently applied a decisional tool — that I learned from my daughter — to my addiction. She taught me to picture myself at some point in the future and imagine that I am then living with the results of various available options to my current dilemma. For example, twenty years from now, will I be more likely to be pleased with looking back on my life having immersed my self in sexual debauchery, or will I prefer the version of me that raised healthy children and walked into a new phase of my life with the bride of my youth that still walks with me?
There have been days in my life when I chose to engage in misdeeds and inappropriate sexual acts. There has never been a time when I looked back the next day with pride about those choices. I don't have to picture myself in twenty years to know my true values and desires, even though I still have moments of hearing the lies of my addiction.
I will continue to fight. I will not give in. Not today.
–JR
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