Before
men experience victory over sexual sin, they’re hurting and
confused. Why can’t I win at this? they think. As the fight
wears on and the losses pile higher, we begin to doubt
everything about ourselves, even our salvation. At best, we
think that we’re deeply flawed. At worst, evil persons. We
feel very alone, since men speak little of these things. But
we’re not alone. Many men have fallen into their own sexual
pits.
From Fred: Are You Noticing?
These pitfalls happen easily since much of the sexual
immorality in our society is so subtle we sometimes don’t
recognize it for what it is.
One day a fellow named Mike was telling me about renting
the video Forrest Gump. “Boy, it was great!” he exclaimed.
“Tom Hanks was brilliant. I laughed and cried all the way
through it. I know you and Brenda rent good movies for your
kids. You should get this one. It was really clean and
wholesome.”
“No, we won’t be bringing Forrest Gump into our living
room,” I responded.
Taken aback, Mike asked, “Why? It was great movie!”
“Well, do you remember that scene at the beginning where
Sally Field has sex with the principal to get her son into the
‘right’ school?”
"Uh…"
"And how about the bare breasts at the New Year’s party?
The nude on-stage guitar performance? And in the end, when
Forrest finally ‘got the girl’ in the sex scene, she conceived
a child out of wedlock. These aren’t the types of things I
want my kids to see!”
Mike slumped into a chair. “I guess I’ve been watching
movies for so long that I didn’t even notice those things.”
Are you noticing? Think about it. Suppose you drop your
kids at Grandma’s for the weekend and decide to watch Forrest
Gump with your wife. You rent the video, pop some corn, put
your arm around your wife and hit “play.” After much laughter
and tears, you both agree that Forrest Gump was a great movie.
But you got more than entertainment, didn’t you? Remember
the grunting and panting between Sally Field and the
principal? And how, when Sally Field next appeared on screen,
you briefly looked her up and down and wondered what it might
be like to have her under the sheets? You had your arm around
your wife while you were thinking it. Then later, after you
retired to bed for a “bit of sport” with your wife, you
replaced your wife’s face with Sally Field’s and you wondered
why she couldn’t make you grunt and pant like the principal.
“Come on!” you reply. “This stuff happens all the time.”
Could be, but listen to these troubling words from Jesus: “I
tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has
already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew
5:28).
In light of this Scripture, piddling things like objecting
to Forrest Gump may not be minor, legalistic meddling. Such
subtle influences, added to hundreds of others over time,
provide more than a hint of sexual immorality in our lives.
Soon, the effect isn’t so subtle anymore and not so fun.
Let us share some other stories with you.
Thad is recovering from drug dependency at a local
Christian ministry. “I’ve been trying hard to get my life in
order,” he told us. “At the drug center, I’ve learned more
about myself and my addiction to drugs. I expected that, since
that’s why I went there. But I’ve discovered a second,
unexpected thing: I have a problem with lust and impurity.
“I want to be free, but I’m becoming frustrated and angry
with the church. The Bible says that women should dress
modestly, but they don’t. The women soloists are always
wearing the latest, tightest fashions. I look at them, but all
I see are curves and legs. You know, that one who always wears
the slit way up the thigh? That thigh flashes with every step
she takes. I just get enraged! Why do they make it worse?”
Howard, a Sunday-school teacher, described a life-twisting
event in junior high. “I was walking home, and Billy and I
stopped by the store to pick up something to drink. I didn’t
really like Billy, but I felt sorry for him. He didn’t have
many friends, and he was trying so hard to make some. On the
way to the store, he told me about something called
masturbation. I’d never heard that word, and he explained what
it was. He said all the guys had been experimenting.
“I couldn’t get what he told me out of my mind, so that
night I tried it. I haven’t gone more than a week without
masturbating for over fifteen years now!
“I always thought marriage would take the desire away, but
it isn’t any better, and I’m so ashamed. Not so much by the
act itself, but by the things I think about and the movies I
watch while doing it. I know it’s adulterous.”
Joe told us he loves women’s beach volleyball. “At night,
I’ve had shockingly vivid dreams with these women,” he
confided. “Some have been so exhilarating and so real that I
wake up the next morning certain that I’ve been in bed with
them. Heavy with guilt, I wonder where my wife is, sure she
has left me over this affair and wondering how I could have
done such a thing. Finally, as the cobwebs clear, it slowly
dawns on me that it was just a dream. But even then I feel
uneasy. You want to know why? Because while I know it was just
a dream, I’m not at all certain it wasn’t some form of
adultery.”
Wally, a businessman and frequent traveler, told us he
absolutely dreads hotels. “I always eat a long, leisurely
supper,” he says, “stalling before returning to my room
because I know what’s coming. Before too long, I have the TV
remote in my hand. I tell myself it’ll only be for a minute,
but I know I’m lying. I know what I really want. I’m hoping to
catch a little sex scene or two as I search the channels. I
tell myself that I’ll only watch for a while, or that I’ll
stop before I get carried away. Then my motor gets going and I
lust for more, sometimes even turning to the X-rated channel.
“The RPMs are going so high I have to do something, or it
feels like my engine will blow. So I masturbate. On a few
occasions I fight it, but if I do, later on when I turn the
lights out, I’m flooded with lustful thoughts and desires. I
stare wide-eyed at the ceiling. I see nothing, but I literally
feel the bombardment, the throbbing desire. I have no way to
get to sleep, and it’s killing me. So I say, ‘Okay, if I
masturbate, I’ll have peace, and I can finally get to sleep.’
So I do and guess what? The guilt is so strong I still can’t
get to sleep. I wake up totally exhausted in the morning.
“What’s wrong with me? Do other men have this problem? I’m
afraid to ask, really. What if this isn’t how everyone else
is? What would that say about me? Worse, what if this is how
everyone else is? What would that say about the church?”
These men are not weirdoes but your next-door neighbors,
your fellow workers or even your in-laws. They are you. They
are Sunday-school teachers, ushers, deacons. Even pastors
aren’t immune. One young pastor tearfully detailed to us his
ministry and his desire to serve God, expressing in a deeply
moving way his devotion to his call. But his tears turned to
wrenching sobs as he spoke of his bondage to pornography. His
spirit was willing, but his flesh was very weak.
What about you? Maybe it’s true that when you and a woman
reach a door simultaneously, you wait to let her go first, but
not out of honor. You want to follow her up the stairs and
look her over. Maybe you’ve driven your rental car to the
parking lot of a local gym between appointments, watching
scantily clad women bouncing in and out, fantasizing and
lusting — even masturbating — in the car. Maybe you can’t stay
away from Sixth Avenue, where the prostitutes ply their trade.
Not that you’d ever hire one. Or maybe you don’t buy Playboy
back home, but when you’re on a business trip, you just can’t
help yourself. You’re still teaching Sunday school, still
singing in the choir, still supporting your family. You’ve
been faithful to your wife…well, at least you haven’t had an
actual, physical affair. You’re getting ahead, living in a
nice home with nice cars and nice clothes and a nice future.
People look to me as an example, you reason. I’m okay.
Yet privately, your conscience dims until you can’t quite
tell what’s right or wrong anymore, watching things like
Forrest Gump without even noticing the sexual sin. You’re
choking in the sexual prison you’ve made, wondering where the
promises of God have gone. You spin in the same sinful cycles,
year after year.
And nagging you is the worship. The prayer times. The
distance, always the distance from God.
Meanwhile, your sexual sin remains so consistent that you
can set your watch by it.
Rick, for instance, walks down the hall at breaktime just
to glance through the glass doors of another office, where a
bosomy secretary answers phones and directs clients. “Every
day at 9:30, I wave at her and she smiles back,” he says
wistfully. “She’s beautiful, and her clothes — let’s just say
they really accentuate her best features. I don’t know her
name, but I’m actually depressed when she’s absent from work.”
Similarly, Sid races home by 4 p.m. every summer day.
That’s when his neighbor Angela sunbathes right outside his
window. “At four o’clock, she lies out in a bikini, and she
doesn’t know I can see her. I can gaze to my heart’s content.
She’s so sexy I can hardly stand it, and I masturbate every
day I see her.”
Take This Test
Are these men addicted? The compelling sexual cravings are
certainly strong evidence.
Here’s a little test you can take. You don’t need a pencil;
you just need to be honest with yourself. Answer yes or no to
the following questions:
1. Do you lock on when an attractive woman comes near you?
2. Do you masturbate to images of other women? 3. Have you
found your wife to be less sexually satisfying? 4. Are you
holding a grudge against your wife — a grudge that gives you a
sense of entitlement? 5. Do you seek out sexually arousing
articles or photo spreads in newspapers or magazines? 6. Do
you have a private place or secret compartment that you keep
hidden from your wife? 7. Do you look forward to going away on
a business trip? 8. Do you have behaviors that you can’t share
with your wife? 9. Do you frequent porn-related sites on the
Internet? 10. Do you watch R-rated movies, sexy videos or
steamy channels for gratification?
If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, you’re
lurking at the door of sexual addiction. You’re inside that
door if you can answer yes to the following questions:
1. Do you watch pay-per-view sexually explicit TV channels
at home or on the road? 2. Do you purchase pornography on the
Internet? 3. Do you rent adult movies? 4. Do you watch nude
dancing? 5. Do you call 900-numbers to have phone sex? 6. Do
you practice voyeurism?
If you said yes to the last six questions, you very well
could be sexually addicted. When Titus 2:3 admonishes against
being “addicted to much wine,” the Greek word used for
“addicted” means to be brought into bondage, much like a
slave. If you think you’re a slave to your sexual passions,
then you need to get help for your addiction by talking to a
counselor or therapist. (You can call toll-free 1-800-NEW-LIFE
(639-5433) and ask about treatment options. One option is a
program for sex addiction called the “New Liberty Program.”)
From Steve: Strong Appetite or Addiction?
Before we go further, I need to make the point that it’s
easy to confuse normal sexual desire and conduct with
addictive compulsions and gratification. A person can have a
stronger-than-normal sexual appetite and not be a sex addict.
I wrote about the characteristics of addictive sex in my
book Addicted to “Love.” These characteristics are summarized
below. Read the list to help you distinguish between addictive
sex and a stronger-than-normal sexual appetite:
Addictive sex is done in isolation and is devoid of
relationship. This doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s done
while physically alone. Rather it means that mentally and
emotionally the addict is detached, or isolated, from human
relationship and contact. Addictive sex is “mere sex,” sex for
its own sake, sex divorced from authentic interaction of
persons. This is most clear regarding fantasy, pornography and
masturbation. But even regarding sex involving a partner, the
partner isn’t really a “person” but a cipher, an
interchangeable part in an impersonal — almost mechanical —
process. The most intimately personal of human behaviors
becomes utterly impersonal.
Addictive sex is secretive. In effect, sex addicts develop
a double life, practicing masturbation, going to porn shops
and massage parlors, all the while hiding what they’re doing
from others — and in a sense, even from themselves.
Addictive sex is devoid of intimacy. Sex addicts are
utterly self-focused. They cannot achieve genuine intimacy
because their self-obsession leaves no room for giving to
others.
Addictive sex is victimizing The overwhelming obsession
with self-gratification blinds sex addicts to the harmful
effects their behavior is having on others and on themselves.
Addictive sex ends in despair. When married couples make
love, they’re more fulfilled for having had the experience.
Addictive sex leaves the participants feeling guilty,
regretting the experience. Rather than fulfilling them, it
leaves them feeling more empty.
Addictive sex is used to escape pain and problems. The
escapist nature of addictive sex is often one of the clearest
indicators that it is present. Like any addiction, sex
addiction is progressive. It’s like “athlete’s foot of the
mind,” as one person described it. It never goes away. It’s
always asking to be scratched, promising relief. To scratch,
however, is to cause pain and to intensify the itch.
From Fred: A Thunderbolt
Having “athlete’s foot of the mind” was how I felt. I
vividly remember my internal struggles between the
consequences of my sin and the pleasure of my sin. I remember
when those consequences finally got to the point where they
weren’t worth the pleasure of the sin.
But did I qualify as an “addict”?
When I read one author’s description of a four-step
addiction cycle — preoccupation, ritualization, compulsive
sexual behavior then despair — I knew I’d lived that pattern.
I was certain that what I’d experienced, and what these other
men had experienced, was addiction.
But a thunderbolt hit me when the author outlined the three
levels of addiction (keep in mind that this wasn’t a Christian
book):
Level 1: Contains behaviors that are regarded as
normal, acceptable, or tolerable. Examples include
masturbation, homosexuality and prostitution.
Level 2: Behaviors that are clearly victimizing and
for which legal sanctions are enforced. These are generally
seen as nuisance offenses, such as exhibitionism or voyeurism.
Level 3: Behaviors that have grave consequences for
the victims and legal consequences for the addicts, such as
incest, child molestation or rape.
Did you read that list closely? Did you notice that the
examples of Level 1 include not just masturbation, which most
men practice at times, but also homosexuality and
prostitution? We would be willing to wager that the vast
majority of men reading this book do not engage in homosexual
acts or use prostitutes. By the definition above, maybe we
aren’t addicts after all.
But if we aren’t addicts, what are we?
From Steve: "Fractional Addiction
Before we answer that question, let’s think again about
those “three levels of addiction” as described above. From our
Christian perspective, let’s insert another level at the
bottom of the addiction scale. If we categorized being totally
pure and holy as the zero level, most Christian men we know
would fall somewhere between Level 0 and Level 1.
If you’re one of the many men in this area, it probably
isn’t at all helpful to label you as an “addict” or to imply
that victory will take years of therapy. Instead, victory can
be measured in weeks, as we’ll describe later.
Your “addictive” behaviors are not rooted in some deep,
dark, shadowy mental maze, as they are in Levels 1, 2 and 3.
Rather, they’re based on pleasure highs. Men receive a
chemical high from sexually charged images — a hormone called
epinephrine is secreted into the bloodstream, which locks into
the memory whatever stimulus is present at the time of the
emotional excitement. I’ve counseled men who became
emotionally and sexually stimulated just from entertaining
thoughts of sexual activity. A guy dead set on purchasing
Hustler at his local 7-Eleven is sexually stimulated long
before he even steps into the convenience store. His
stimulation began in his thought process, which triggered his
nervous system, which secreted epinephrine into the
bloodstream.
From my counseling experience, I believe it's often true
that those men living at Level 1 or worse have deep
psychological problems that will take years to work through.
But relatively few men live there. Our contention is that the
vast majority of men stuck in sexual sin are living between
Level 0 and Level 1. We can call this a “fractional addiction”
since it represents living at a level that’s a fraction
between zero and one. When we’re fractionally addicted, we
surely experience addictive drawings, but we aren’t compelled
to act to salve some pain. We’re compelled by the chemical
high and the sexual gratification it brings.
Another way of looking at the scope of the problem is to
picture a bell curve. According to our experiences, we figure
around 10 percent of men have no sexual-temptation problem
with their eyes and their minds. At the other end of the
curve, we figure there’s another 10 percent of men who are
sexual addicts and have a serious problem with lust. They’ve
been so beaten and scarred by emotional events that they
simply can’t overcome that sin in their lives. They need more
counseling and a transforming washing by the Word. The rest of
us comprise the middle 80 percent, living in various shades of
gray when it comes to sexual sin.
As I described earlier, I lived in this area of fractional
addiction during my first decade of marriage as well as
earlier in my adolescence and college years. My interest in
the female body had been formed when I was four and five years
old and visiting my grandfather’s machine shop in Ranger,
Texas. I loved walking into that old shop filled with lathes
and presses, where Grandpa made tools to retrieve broken
oil-well pipes. His office wall was adorned with nude pinups,
and I stared at these voluptuous naked women in awe. As I grew
older, I saw women more as objects than people who had
feelings. Pornography became for me an enticement to forbidden
love. Many young women I dated in high school and college were
sexually pure and stayed sexually pure while we dated, but I
was always manipulating and conniving, going for what was
forbidden.
I later tasted the forbidden fruit when I entered the
promiscuous period of my life. When I did have premarital sex,
it gave me a sense of control and ownership, as if these young
women belonged to me. They were objects of my gratification,
just like those pictures on the wall of my grandfather’s shop.
Secrets
When I met Sandy, we made a commitment not to have sex
before we married, and we didn’t. I didn’t tell her about my
past, however, nor did I disclose all the secret compartments
named Past Relationships or Promiscuity. As a result, I
dragged my past into our marriage, which produced problems,
just as she dragged her own set of problems into our marital
union. Our marriage almost didn’t survive the first few
tumultuous years.
The angrier I became at Sandy during those dark times, the
more lustful my thoughts would be. I began living in a secret
world of gratification that came from looking at other
beautiful women, whether they were found in fashion magazines
or women’s magazines. Looking back, I see how those images
broke the connection between us. But I was ignorant — ignorant
of the fact that I was hurting my marriage. After all, I
wasn’t having sex with anyone except her. I wasn’t getting
all-over massages in seedy parts of town or even masturbating
to those photo spreads of barely clad models. But what I was
doing was bringing something into the marriage that didn’t
need to be there. I felt entitled to have this secret world
where I experienced small doses of gratification by looking up
and down at well-built women. That hurt my marriage.
What I, along with Fred, needed to do was train my eyes and
mind to behave. I needed to align my eyes and mind with
Scripture and to avoid every hint of sexual immorality.
Male sexual impurity can be unsettling, even shocking, to
women, which is why we’re including sections from interviews
we conducted with women regarding Every Man's Battle. Deena,
when asked for her reaction to this book’s premise, replied,
“This stuff is crazy. Women don’t have that problem!”
Fawn decided men and women are so different in their sexual
wiring that it defies understanding. “I was surprised to
learn,” she said, “that Christian men have this problem even
after they’re married. I found the intensity of the problem to
be shocking.”
Cathy said, “I did not know the depth that men would go and
the risk they would take to satisfy their desires. I was
unaware of how intense these temptations are and how much
defense a man must muster to avoid stepping over God’s
boundaries.”
Andrea said that, from talking with her father and the
different guys she dated, she knows men are easily attracted
visually. But she never realized the major extent of this
problem until she met her future husband. “At the time, he was
my closest friend in the youth group, but we were not
romantically inclined,” Andrea said. “He did feel safe enough
with me to share his problem with pornography. It was quite a
battle for him, as he had first been exposed to it in third
grade. I was a little amazed by it all because, although I was
attracted to guys by their looks during my dating years, the
physical attraction I felt was nothing compared to what a man
feels when looking at a woman.”
Brenda, Fred’s wife, also participated in the interviews.
She summarized the typical female response: “I don’t want to
sound mean, but because women don’t generally experience this
problem, it seems to us that some men are uncontrolled
perverts who don’t think about anything but sex. It even
affects my trust in men, knowing that pastors and deacons
could have this problem. I don’t like it that men lustfully
take advantage of women in their thoughts, although I realize
that women can be largely to blame because of what they wear.
It’s at least some comfort to know that many men have this
problem. Since most men are affected, we really can’t call you
guys perverts.”
(Gee, thanks Brenda. Actually, you made an important point,
and it brings up additional thoughts from a man’s perspective.
We men understand your shock. After all, we’re often
overwhelmed in the sexual area, and we loathe it ourselves.
That’s why we want mercy, although we know we don’t deserve
mercy. How much mercy can be found in a woman’s heart when she
looks upon this problem? Not surprisingly, it depends upon her
husband’s situation.)
There’s a natural tug-of-war in the hearts of women between
pity and disgust, between mercy and judgment.
Ellen said, “After hearing about this, I was surprised that
married men would have so much trouble. I feel very sorry for
them. When I asked my own husband about it, he was honest with
me that he had some struggles, and at first I was hurt. Then I
just felt thankful that he would share with me. He hasn’t had
a major problem in this area, for which I’m thankful.”
Cathy leans toward mercy as well. “My husband is regularly
bombarded with sexy images, and I was pleased with his honesty
regarding that,” she said. “I want to know the temptations he
faces. It will only help me be more sympathetic to his plight.
I didn’t feel betrayed because he’s proven faithful in this
battle. Other women are not so lucky.”
What about those women whose husbands have been losing big
in the battle?
“When my husband and I talked about this, he was honest,”
Deena conveyed, “and I was very angry with him. I was hurt. I
felt deeply betrayed because I’d been dieting and working out
to keep my weight down so that I would always look nice to
him. I couldn’t figure out why he still needed to look at
other women.”
Women told us that they struggle between pity and anger,
and their feelings may ebb and flow with the tide of their
husband’s battle. Let us direct this advice to women: Though
you know you should pray for him and fulfill him sexually,
sometimes you don’t want to. Talk to each other openly and
honestly, then do the right thing.
