Kindness Series #1 - Kindness is Like Oil
Kindness is something your spouse needs daily. Your spouse may not even know he or she needs it or even how to ask for it. It is just very obvious when kindness has run out.
Three Dailies for Marriage Success
Dailies are marriage recovery exercises that every couple can use to build and strengthen their relationship.
Attitude of Gratitude
When the enemy and lust wants to talk about your wife, it’s important to have a tried and true method to defeat this attack. Lust wants you to focus on your wife’s flaws. What you want to focus on is her awesomeness and the strengths she has. She is a uniquely designed woman of God and created just for you. You know her more intimately than anyone and would be the best person to highlight her strengths. Take 5 minutes right now and make a list of 5 to 10 things you absolutely love about your wife. For single guys, list 5 features in a woman of God. She is an amazing person - spiritually, intellectually, emotionally, physically. Place these on a note in your wallet or in your phone. Anytime you hear her being criticized in your mind, pull out your list and say these strengths out loud. You can start thanking God for these strengths in your wife. God loves hearing appreciation for the gift he has given you so freely. When you speak these out loud or thank God for your wife’s…
No More Shame
Guilt and shame are common feelings in early recovery, but as you move forward and begin to get first thirty and then ninety days of sobriety behind you, and actively pursue the steps, I find that most people begin to see and feel the guilt and shame break away. This is especially true after completing Step Five.
Lust Knows Its Voice. Do You?
Lust knows its voice is not nice so it cloaks itself in niceness. The intention is to capitalize on your weak moments for the express purpose of creating weakness in your life. That’s what perpetrators do. Believe the truth the next time lust tries to tell you how nice it is. Simply tell lust it’s lying and that you’ll take your weakness to Jesus where you will always become stronger.
Touch? Talk About It!
If you’re married, talk to your wife about your need to be touched. If you ask for sex every time she tries to be affectionate, you have to take responsibility for your wife not being that excited to touch you because she’s thinking she doesn’t always want to have sex. So separate the need for touch and sex. Ask to be touched, but separate this so that touching you is safe for your wife.
Intimacy Anorexia Recovering Strategies with your Spouse
The third part of recovering strategies with your spouse is setting up consequences. Each person sets up their own consequences for not keeping their sexual agreements. For the intimacy anorexic, especially if this is a primary way they intentionally create pain for the spouse, the consequence needs to be severe. Some intimacy anorexics have set consequences like: · Half day wage to political party they don’t vote for · Sleep in the garage with only a blanket · Cook for a week · Give $200 to the spouse to spend on themselves · Take off a day of work and just spend time with their spouse · No television or computer for one month Any consequence will do, as long as it is “painful” for the intimacy anorexic. This sexual withholding is probably the meanest, cruelest, and most intentional of all the intimacy anorexic characteristics. Any intimacy anorexic that won’t give themselves to their spouse sexually is not sober.
Intimacy Anorexia Recovering Strategies with your Spouse Part Two: Sexual Agreement
There are three components to a sexual agreement. First, establish a weekly frequency. I really recommend no less than once a week. Once you have established a desired sexual frequency, the next thing to do is to decide how this frequency will be accomplished on a weekly basis. You can pick days, split the week into parts, or rotate days, or weeks back and forth.
Intimacy Anorexia Recovering Strategies with your Spouse Part One: Three Dailies
The Three Dailies is the core of your intimacy anorexia sobriety. If you, as the intimacy anorexic, do not initiate this exercise, you have relapsed, and you did NOT have a day of sobriety. Your spouse is to do all these exercises with you; however, they are not to initiate them with you. The only way they would initiate this would be if you are both intimacy anorexic and then you rotate responsibility on a monthly basis to make sure you’re both sober.
Potential to Change the World
God has given you the potential to change the world!
Destined to Soar
There is no need to compromise your destiny by viewing pornography or living a promiscuous lifestyle. Those actions are simply too small for you. You are not called to peck the ground like a domesticated chicken waiting for the slaughter. No, rather, you are like an eagle destined to fly to incredible heights! If need be, humble yourself, so others can be free.
The Need to Escape
Most addicts, have experienced several reasons for their sexual addiction. What I have experienced in working with sexual addicts is that there is a need to escape and not feel the pain they have experienced in the past. Many sex addicts have developed a coping mechanism to escape from the pain of a childhood and/or adolescent trauma. This coping mechanism has been an escape, that has carried the addict through most of his adult life. When things get difficult for the sex addict, he will do something to medicate the pain by taking an emotional aspirin (act out) to avoid dealing with the trauma from the past.
Recognizing Emotional Discomfort
Emotional discomfort is one of the primary pain agents that will move the addict to the first level of the addiction cycle and cause them to disconnect from their feelings. Emotional discomfort is basically a family of origin issue. The sex addict never learned how to identify feelings while growing up in his or her family. Consequently, many sex addicts have very primitive emotional skills. Therefore, when they have a painful feeling, they act out sexually to feel betterI remember knowing that when I felt any kind of emotional discomfort as an addict, whether it was hopelessness, anger or confusion, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it to identify it. Whatever uncomfortable emotional feelings I had, I knew that if I just acted out in some way, it would go away temporarily. The interesting thing about this is, it worked! My addiction did medicate the emotional discomfort I was feeling temporarily. Emotional discomfort for many sex addicts is the pain agent that moves them forward…
Firm Foundation
I live in Colorado. Here we do crazy things that don’t make sense to outsiders. For example, we climb or scale mountains. I don’t mean we hike along a path. I mean we use ropes and scale up massive rocks. When you scale a mountain you learn one rule very quickly. You make sure that what you’re about to put your weight on is secure. If it’s secure, you can rest your full weight on it and move forward. If not, you could get scraped on the rocks, slide down, or even fall to your death. Think of some people or things on which you have placed your “weight,” and how they have affected you, negatively and /or positively. In this journey, recognizing where you can place your weight is significant to your success.
You are Not Your Addiction
You are not your addiction!
Common Lies of Lust Series #10 - My Wife is Not Enough
Lust hates your wife or future wife. Lust will flat out lie and create multiple deceptions about her. Lust will have you focus on every flaw of hers, even if only one, and take you to a place in your mind and heart where she seems not to be enough in some way. Once you are deceived into thinking she is not enough, you can feel entitled to lust, whether by viewing pornography, masturbating, or flirting with other women who have the magical “enough” in them.
Common Lies of Lust #9 - Democracy
I love living in a free society. Democracy is where people’s ideas can be expressed and voted into law. Lust will capitalize on this belief by convincing you that your sexuality is a democracy. Lust will tell you that you get to vote or decide if you want to lust by whispering, “After all, you are the boss and you can do what you want.”
Common Lies of Lust Series #8 - Control
Lust has many friends and uses opportunities to introduce you to these friends on a fairly regular basis. One of these friends is the deception or illusion called control. Lust tells you, “It’s okay to lust or view images, porn, and fantasize because, after all, you can control how much, how long, and even what behaviors you do.”
Common Lies of Lust Series #7 - Yours
Going back to the Garden of Eden, we realize that lust can be very sneaky. Lust tells you every woman is potentially yours and because of that, you are allowed to inspect and assess any woman you want. Lust makes you believe women in general are yours to do with as you please.
Common Lies of Lust Series #6 - Taking Opportunity
One thing I have noticed about men is that they see windows of opportunity everywhere. They see them in business, getting praise, and even in lusting.
Common Lies of Lust Series #5 - I can do it alone
There are some lies lust likes to use more than others. One of the top five is, “You can handle this by yourself.” Once you believe this lie, all hope of you getting better is gone.
Common Lies of Lust Series #4 - Did God Say...
A question I hear often from Christian men is: “Is lust really wrong? After all, I’m not hurting anyone.” Let me address the first part of this question. Think back to the scene in the Garden of Eden. The serpent asked Eve, “What did God say?” He questioned God’s word and has used that tactic successfully since the first sin.
Common Lies of Lust Series #3 - Not Possible
The phrase “not possible” is by far the most paralyzing lie lust has in its arsenal. The lie, “it’s not possible to be lust-free” is quite simple, but its impact can have decades of results.
Common Lies of Lust Series #2 - You Don't Have Enough
Lust is tricky. Even though you don’t deserve the lifelong, increasingly beautiful helpmate in your life, lust will tell you that you still don’t have enough.