On January 6, 2009 I sat at my desk at work and reread the email. It came the previous afternoon and I read it, but I didn’t give it much thought. Now, the words made sense. The email sent to all of the pastors from our executive pastor was about me. They canceled our normal Tuesday meeting because an issue — my issue — came up and required attention for the entire day.
My mistake resulted in what I feared for so long. No longer could I hide. My secret, now exposed, would be known by everyone close to me. My mind raced. What could I do? For the briefest second I considered jumping off of an overpass. Ridiculous. I couldn’t do that to my family, and besides, I’m too chicken to ever do anything like that. Slowly the truth settled in. I’m caught. What’s going to happen is going to happen. How did I get here?
The beginning of my sexual addiction crept into my life at the early age of eleven. In the eighties, and where I grew up, a boy had to search for pornography. We didn’t have adult bookstores in my hometown. And, of course, the internet didn’t surface yet. So I never had a constant stream of porn flowing into my life, but I got it whenever I could.
My brother hid his magazines and I knew exactly where. Occasionally, he’d bring home a videotape he’d gotten somewhere. I’d make a beeline to the VCR at my first possible opportunity. If porn were as accessible then as it is now I would have been drowning in it. I had plenty of conviction, guilt, and shame. Just no self-control. And no one I felt comfortable opening up to about it. My brother struggled with the same things, but neither of us knew it. We didn’t have a real relationship, and so we both tried to deal with our own stuff with our own strength.
Throughout high school I prided myself as the “good guy.” As a leader in my youth group, I sang in church, and dated Christian girls without going too far sexually. Of course, that was only when people were around. Alone, I masturbated pretty much every day, exposing myself to porn whenever I could. The guilt and shame were there, heavy. But I didn’t have enough will power. I couldn’t stop.
After high school I attended college at home, chaperoned a youth retreat, and by the end of that experience I knew Southeastern Bible College was the place for me. In the fall of 1989, I moved to Birmingham to start what I hoped to be a new life. I behaved myself pretty well, focusing mostly on my study and ministry. I’m sure I looked at some porn here and there, but nothing like I normally did. I still masturbated, but it became so normal that I never considered it a problem.
In the spring of 1990 I met the woman who would become my wife. Stacey and I were already friends, but during that particular semester our relationship turned a new page. By next spring, we were engaged. Let me just say … 9 1/2 months of being engaged is too long. At least it was for us. We were both very affectionate and loved physical contact. As you can imagine, our physical relationship progressed fast. We loved being alone and intimate with each other.
Guilt and shame were present, yes. We knew we were wrong. Stacey also resented me for failing as the spiritual leader in our relationship. I resented her for letting us get into positions for me to fail. We’d pray and try to do better, but the next time we’d end up in the same place. We did, however, enter our marriage as “technical virgins.” We did everything except engage in sexual intercourse, but we didn’t realize the impact this would have on our future.
That’s the thing about our actions. What we so often fail to realize is that the impact of our actions is not limited to the place we are when we do them. My habit of masturbating contributed to my porn intake. My porn intake contributed to my preoccupation with sex. My preoccupation contributed to my behavior with Stacey. All of this contributed to a constant growing shame that I was a phony and a failure. I was not who everyone thought I was. I was not a “good Christian.” But when I would do these things, I’d temporarily forget about my real world. Sexual sins made me feel good, and that was what I wanted. At some point during these years, my sexual acting out became an addiction. Masturbating wasn’t just something I did, it was something I needed to do. Sexual gratification was something that I had to have; otherwise I almost couldn’t focus on other things in life. I was already in trouble and I didn’t know it yet.
To be continued…
