I told my wife about my relapse 25 days ago, and I've been in active recovery since. This is probably the longest I've refrained from masturbation and/or pornography in about three years. I've had a few week or two-week stretches, but not this much. Even before then, I don't know that I would consider any porn/masturbation-free time "active recovery," including the first year of my mission. So basically, in the next few weeks I'm going to break my 10-year record for no active self-medication, and I've probably already broken a 17-year record of time spent in active recovery. I almost want to write "Yay!" because I'm cautiously excited about my progress, but I'm also ashamed that I haven't had more success before, so I won't. One month doesn't really outweigh 17 years, so I'll keep my excitement to myself.
The key differences this time is the level of transparency with my wife, the amount of motivation I have, and the outside help I'm seeking. Let me talk a bit about each:
- Communication with my wife: I don't blame her for being crushed last time I told her; it was just hard for me to be transparent with her when it pained her to hear anything about it. I honestly couldn't have expected more from her, and I don't think I was ready to give more. This time, though, we've had nearly nightly discussions about physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy; triggers, temptations, and struggles; plans, repercussions, and progress. I also told her much more about my past. In fact, I told her more, then after I started working on my addiction inventory, I told her even more details that I hadn't thought to tell her before. Lastly, we've been doing nightly vowel check-ins. We read about this in Rhyll Croshaw's book; each night they discuss each of these topics as a couple: Abstinence (triggers, struggles), Exercise, I (what we did for ourselves), Others (what we did for others), Unexpressed Emotions, and Yay! (Success of the day). This makes me more conscious and cautious of where my thoughts go during the day, since I know I'm going to check in with my wife at night.
- Motivation: I honestly don't have an answer for why I've been so much more motivated this time. A part of it was because my wife stepped back and let me take charge more than last time. Another part is that I've found much more inspiring material. No offense to my counsellor, but last time I wish he would have kicked me in the butt until I went to support groups and looked up blogs on the internet (although I don't think there were so many three years ago). I've kind of just run with it this time, though: I've read the SA white book all the way through, and I'm part of the way through it a second time, this time marking it up as much as I can. I read Rhyll Croshaw's book. I've been reading blogs and commenting, something very much out of my comfort zone. I've been working on various other areas of my life, like helping keep the house clean, spending more time with my wife and kids, working harder on my job, and avoiding unproductive/unhelpful media.
- Help from others: One of the big ones has been my bishop. He's been very nonjudgmental or excessively punitive, but at the same time he's taken appropriate steps that work for me. He's been very sensitive to the way my wife is feeling, which I really appreciate. He's also asked me to send him weekly check-ins. Maybe I'll share one of them one of these weeks. I've also been really influenced by blogs. In particular, I was really impressed by rowboatandmarbles.org. A fair amount of the information I found there I also came across elsewhere, but the fact I saw it there first and written so powerfully (you rock, Andrew!), blew my mind, repeatedly. I also was a bit surprised at how repetitive Andrew was about Sexaholics Anonymous...at times I even wondered if he was getting paid by them. :) Still, after going to my first two SA meetings and an ARP meeting, I can see why he endorses them so soundly.
Recovery is painful. At times it feels like juggling each aspect of my life, trying to keep everything up and running. Then I add two more balls--recovery and abstinence--and try to keep all of them still going. At other times it feels like I'm attempting to perform surgery on myself, struggling to dig deep into the problem and cut it out. It's painful and I know it's worth it, but there's a constant desire to just stop. So yes, recovery is uncomfortable and shame-inducing and painful.
But one thing I don't read nearly enough about is how worth it it is. I'm only a few weeks into it, and I'm already noticing a huge difference in my attitude and habits. And not just from an admittedly religiously-biased perspective--I'm more productive at work, I feel better about myself, I spend less time on unimportant or destructive things in general, etc. The argument could be made that I was only debilitated because I've been brainwashed by my religion to believe these things are wrong. But I strongly disagree--I firmly believe there are many things inherently wrong with lust addiction, and, religious or not, life is going to be significantly better without it. If anything, it points to how right religion is and how misguided and unrealistic cultural norms are. They don't know the liberation of being cancer-free and the joy of being able to juggle.
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