Vulnerabilities to Lust

There are some things that can make you more vulnerable to the enticement of lust. When you know these vulnerabilities, you can see red flags before you go off the path of lust-free living.

Soaking in Fun with Your Spouse

Soaking in fun, fellowship, and refreshment can be one of the richest investments you can make in your marriage. Fun can revitalize a marriage like nothing else. Occasionally, Lisa and I visit a very large hotel. This hotel has three pools, a large gym, and five restaurants. We park our car on Friday and don’t drive anywhere the entire time. Such long weekends can feel like a two-week vacation together. We come back replenished with more to give to our children and our work. Begin to plan a time where you and your spouse can sneak away and just enjoy being together!

Spirituality with Our Spouse

Spirituality with our spouse is one of the most sacred things on earth. Regardless of the manifestation of worship, prayer, meditation, or other connecting rituals, when we share this inner person with our spouse, we are sharing our authentic self, more purely than mere words can express.

Becoming a Great Nurturer

When you’re making love to your wife, make an intentional effort to praise and nurture her. Go deeper than just complimenting her body. Speak to her spirit and soul during sex. I will go into this more specifically in a later chapter on intimacy. You can become a great nurturer during your sexual experience by telling her how much you appreciate her in ways that aren’t sexual. Tell her that you love her honesty, her strength and her intelligence. Tell her what her beauty does for you. Tell her she makes you feel masculine and that you love being with her.

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Lying is Counterproductive

When someone believes that they can start lying to their spouse, it instantly creates problems in the marriage. Lying is totally counterproductive to the design of God in this creation we call marriage. Remember, God’s admiration of His final creation, this miracle of marriage, is that they be naked and feel no shame. One thing I know about lying after working with couples for more than twenty years, there is absolutely no upside. Firstly, lying denies the presence and person of God. To lie is to say God, you didn’t see that. God you don’t care that I lie, and God I am not accountable to you. So lying disturbs your perception of who God really is.

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Honoring Emotions

When you decide to honor your spouse emotionally on a regular basis, you will begin to see your spouse as the best person on earth to be with. Your spouse and his or her emotions are ever changing. Honoring your spouse’s emotions without feeling the need to fix them or fix the situation will produce enormous positive fruit in your relationship. So make a decision to travel through honoring your spouse’s emotions and cherish the person he or she is on the inside.

As We Understood God

Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Is Addiction Hereditary (Genetic) | Does Sex Addiction & Intimacy Anorexia Affect Children

Your Destiny

Think for a moment about your destiny. What is the destiny that Christ has made for you? Quiet yourself, close your eyes and ask Him what your destiny is. Write your answer down.

Leaving Lust

I want to address the issue of leaving lust. Paul addressed this issue when he told us to, “Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity” (1 Timothy 5:2).

The Lie That You Are Powerful Over Lust

Men are prone to the idea of “I am powerful.” Lust loves when a man believes he is powerful. Lust lets you believe you are the master as it grows within you. Lust lets you think you control where, when, how long, with who, and how far lust will go.

How We Treat Our Spouse...

In James 4:17: “Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn’t do it, sins.” This is a powerful scripture when it comes to marriage. Earlier I had you write out “If I was your lover I would...” You already know the good to do toward your spouse. Your heart already has a clear roadmap to love your spouse. You not doing it is sin. Not just sin against your spouse but sin against your Father-in-law, God.

The Need for Emotional Intimacy

Everyone in the real world of relationships knows that pain is part of the relationship process. Emotional intimacy isn’t, “I connect, give myself and receive you if you promise never to hurt me, see or mention my flaws, or disagree with me.” This conditional intimacy and irrational belief for safety in intimacy anorexics will need to be addressed. Withholding emotional intimacy says that regardless of how much of my heart I can access and give to you, I won’t share my emotional or authentic self with you. Sadly, this is a choice. True emotional intimacy, regardless of the skill, says to the spouse, “Here is my heart, flaws and all. I open it as much as I can and behold your heart as well.

Saying Goodbye to Your Anorexia

The alcoholic has to one day say goodbye to the long term friendship of alcohol, if he or she intends to have a happier life in sobriety. He or she will have to make a permanent decision, to end forever, their relationship with their survival entity, the bottle.

Lust-Free Living: Freedom in Christ

Hi, I’m Dr. Doug Weiss. Thank you for joining me as we address an issue that impacts both men and women: lust. For many, it feels like an impossible battle, but the good news is this—Jesus Christ offers real freedom. Today, I want to help you understand the nature of lust and how, through God’s Word and His Spirit, you can walk in victory.

Admitting We Are Powerless

We admitted we were powerless over the sex addict and that our lives had become unmanageable.”

The Power of Kindness

Kindness is a fruit of the spirit. It’s a fruit we all need to eat. There is something special in the nutrients of this fruit that makes anyone feel special. Take a minute and remember when someone was kind to you. How did you feel? Did you feel cared for, important, and special? When you eat the fruit of kindness it is so sweet to the soul. Do you remember the last act of kindness your spouse did for you? Do you remember how it made you feel? You have the power of kindness locked inside of you through the spirit of God. As a Christian, kindness is within you, and it wants to get out. Remember inside any act of kindness you plant a seed in the soul of your spouse. Now in time, the seed you planted will eventually grow.

Proactively Love Your Spouse

Marriage is a place to proactively love and serve in humility. If we’re not practicing in this, we’re missing the whole teaching of Jesus on love. Here you want to look at your behavior, not what you might wish or believe you’re doing but what you’re actually doing with excellence with your spouse. This will help you to see if you’re more on the lover-spouse side of that continuum.

Your Worst Picture

A tool that has helped many maintain recovery is to have a negative experience locked in, almost memorized that maximizes the pain and minimizes the pleasure to act out. For some sex addicts this picture could possibly be getting picked up by the police. For others, their worst picture is getting kicked out of the house for good, seeing their child's faces when they leave, seeing their spouse cry, hearing a judge say "no visitation rights," the loss of a job, a flirt with AIDS or abortions. These are only a few experiences. You may have one or more painful moments. You may want to write out these experiences to remind yourself.

Sexual Agreement

It’s very critical that the intimacy anorexic has a severe consequence if sex is not initiated or they say no without medical reasons. If you want more information on the sexual agreement, you can read the chapter on this in the book Intimacy: A 100 Day Guide to Lasting Relationships.