Prodigal Magazine

It’s midnight and just like many other nights each week, I found myself in the home office in front of my computer again. All of my good intentions, the ones saturated with denial and rationalization, are to work on my dissertation. Soon my real intentions take over and a couple of clicks later the screen of boring black and white text changes to bright colors of pornography. I am lost now in the world that is so familiar to me. It’s a world of fantasy and escape. I shut out all the pain and thoughts and feelings of my life. I push aside any sense of responsibility to do something more productive. I lose track of time as I travel deeper into my world of fantasy and escape.

Suddenly I am jarred back to reality with that dreadful sound of my wife’s voice.  “What are you doing?” I have been caught again. My whole being is filled with shame and guilt. There are no words. I was stuck in silence. There was nothing I could say to make it better now. I clicked off the computer. She demanded to see what I was looking at. I just refused. She gives up and goes back to bed.

I am afraid. What will happen now? I have promised to stop so many times before. Just like all the times I promised myself and God in the past, I failed. The pain and shame inside is almost unbearable. I want to run. I want to get away, but how? How can I run from myself? The only way I know is into my world of porn and fantasy. She doesn’t understand. I don’t know how to make her understand. She is so hurt and so angry with me. I don’t blame her but I wish she could understand.

This was the point in my addiction where things changed. She was at the end of her rope. She demanded we get into counseling or she was leaving and taking the kids with her. I didn’t want to lose her or the kids. That fear made it possible for me to agree to counseling. During the counseling process I came to admit I had a problem and I had no control over it. It had been in my life for so long I had just come to accept it most of the time. After all, it was serving a vital purpose in my life. It was keeping me from looking at me and who I thought I really was. I couldn’t even imagine not having that escape in my life. It was my fix, my drug. I needed it.

As a result of couples counseling, I investigated help for sexual addiction. I found Sex Addicts Anonymous and Sexaholics Anonymous. It was off to a 12 step recovery group. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t think it would or could help me. As I listened to the stories of others, I found myself doubting them and questioning their recovery. My efforts at abstinence always failed after just a few days. I kept going every week. If I thought I wasn’t getting help, at least my wife thought I was and that decreased the criticism and disappointment from her. In time, I was able to make more progress. It was always a fight and a struggle each and every day. I was able to share in the group sometimes and that was progress in itself. I had never told anyone my story or even ever shared much of what I thought or felt to anyone. However, the feelings I had about myself did not change. I always felt inadequate and incapable. I was aware that things in my life were in contradiction to those thoughts and feelings but that didn’t change the inescapable negative self image.  Continue to Pt.2

This is part one of a three part series. read Pt.2 here