Step One
Steo One: "We admitted that we were powerless over our intimacy anorexia and that our lives had become unmanageable."
Insight into Step Eleven
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.
Fighting the War Against Lust
In the Old Testament, God gave the Promised Land to the tribes of Israel as an inheritance. But in order to get their inheritance, they had to go to war and kill to receive what God had already given them. In the New Testament, God has given us the lust-free nature of Christ. We just need to go to war with lust in order to receive that nature.
Value Your Marriage
Over the last thirty years, I have observed the following characteristics consistently in those who value their marriage as a miracle:
Importance of Initiating the 3 Dailies
Initiating intimacy is part of healing. Remember, the definition of intimacy anorexia is active withholding, so sobriety is actively initiating connection and intimacy, of which the 3 dailies are a part of. These exercises are to be done daily, regardless of how much you like your spouse, or how much he/she likes you. This recovery exercise is like the cast on the broken bone: it needs to stay on so you can heal from your addiction to withholding. These are to be done with your heart, not just checking off the box. Intentional sabotaging would be to withhold your heart and claim you are staying sober, but not really investing yourself in these exercises. Since the 3 dailies are important toward demonstrating your intimacy anorexia sobriety, you will need a consequence for relapsing or not initiating. This way, if you withhold, you’re the one who gets the pain, not your spouse. If you withhold the 3 dailies, and you get pain through…
Spiritual Authority
When you are tempted, sometimes your mind isn’t working right. So allow me to make this real simple. The next time you’re tempted to look at porn, masturbate, or act out in other sexual behaviors that do not include your wife, consider this, “Your pastor is a spiritual authority over you as a shepherd over a flock.” The next time you’re tempted to do anything sexually inappropriate ask his permission. Since your sex organ does NOT belong to you, you don’t get to make the decisions. If you choose to submit to authority when you are tempted, you can avoid a relapse.
Boundaries around Technology
Technology is a dream come true for many intimacy anorexics, since it can feel as if they are actually doing something or relating to the images on some type of screen. The computer, and especially the internet, is the greatest avoidant strategy of our day. The anorexic may be involved in social networking, shopping, checking weather, chat rooms, pornography, games, gambling, research, etc. This may eat up many hours, while their spouse is in the other room waiting to relate. Take a few minutes today with your wife and set boundaries around technology.
Anorexic Strategies
Intimacy Anorexics have many strategies to avoid intimacy and sexuality. For some anorexics, they use the sexual encounter itself to accomplish avoidance and intentionally give pain to their spouse. If you are punishing or pushing away your spouse through sex, then you can clearly see this as an anorexic strategy to give pain, so you can be avoidant.
America Clean or Unclean?
Sometimes, as a Christian, I feel we are being kicked out of our American culture. Our God has been taken out of our schools and His commandments taken out of our court houses. Even His nativity scene is taken out of some places. I don’t know about you, but it feels like we are being kicked out of our own land.
Tips for Patience
I want to share a tip with you for patience and that is prayer, but don’t just pray for patience. I am sure you all heard the preacher’s story about the guy who prayed for patience, and he lost his job, his house burned down, and he had a flat tire all in the same day. Of course, that’s a myth, but many of us have a concern about praying for this fruit.
Intimacy
Intimacy is the ability for me to let you behold me, flaws and all. I have heard some say intimacy is in-to-me-see. That’s clever and I think you get the point. The intimacy anorexic prefers to be regarded as altogether good. Prior to recovery, the intimacy anorexic has great difficulty letting their spouse see their flawed self. Interestingly, as intimacy anorexia progresses over time in a soul they become less able to see the positives in their spouse. It’s as if they are (the intimacy anorexic) the good of humanity, and their spouse becomes the bad of humanity over time.
Opposite Direction
When we lust we are moving in the opposite direction of God. We take a woman and reduce her to an image or an object. We depersonalize her for our consumption. A loving behavior is to expand her by seeing her as God’s child, a wife, mother, and friend. Love expands who she is. Lust reduces her.
Averting Your Eyes
I want you to picture a clock. Practice picturing a clock in your mind and then averting your eyes to the exact opposite position on the clock. For example, picture the number 12, then avert your eyes clockwise to 6.
The Need for Emotional Connectedness
We all need emotional connectedness- and I do mean NEED. Weary is the soul that has no one wit who, to share. We all need someone who will hear us. Being able to share yourself and to be heard are basic, legitimate God-given needs. Your need for emotional connectedness is no less legitimate than your need for food and water. When you genuinely accept this as truth, you will be able to take responsibility to make sure that your own needs and your spouse’s needs are met on a regular basis.
Your Wife is Yours to Bless
Lust tells you every woman is potentially yours and because of that you are allowed to inspect and assess every woman you want. Lust makes you believe women in general are yours to do with as you please.
Commitment to Connect
Often times after sex an Intimacy Anorexics will begin to sabotage the intimacy the spouse was feeling. Spouses often state that the anorexic “gets cold,” “leaves me physically or emotionally,” “gets angry,” “gets very distant,” “critical” or “picks a fight the next day.”
A Power Greater
The phrase "A Power Greater" was the only change of wording in the Twelve Steps from its original writing. The first writing of the Twelve Steps, which began in an Oxford Bible Study and which birthed AA, read "God" instead of "A Power Greater." The change was made because of the stigma that alcoholics had in the 1930's. To be an alcoholic was very shaming at this time in history. For the alcoholic to go to "God" with his shame was very difficult so the writers of the Twelve Steps made the phrase "A Power Greater" instead to give the alcoholic a little time to develop a God concept. The support groups allow God to patiently reveal Himself to them. Christians can begin to use Christ in their recovery. Bringing Christ into your recovery is also a process, but is necessary for you to effectively walk through your recovery journey.
Leaving a Legacy of Love
I want to encourage you to leave a legacy of love with the soul of your wife. The legacy of love you set up towards your wife, your children will remember. Make every effort to have a marriage that glorifies God so that your children will one day have marriages that glorify God and are intimately satisfying. The joy of knowing that your generation is blessed because of you and the endurance you had relationally is a joy I want as I face the last of my days. I want to leave my generations blessed because I was willing to discipline myself to love Lisa and to be intimate. I want life without the regret of my failures in marriage and parenting, don’t you?
Porn Blockers
The internet is now an integral part of our society. We not only have internet access at home and work, but people are on cell phones almost everywhere. The internet represents the absolute best and worst of humanity. You can discover so much about addiction recovery and so much about addiction in a very bad way.
Awareness of God
Most intimacy anorexics, like many people, have an unconscious contact with God. They rely most of the time on their own thinking and resources, and connect with God only after they have thoroughly botched their lives. Step Eleven in recovery reminds you to keep God in your conscious mind. You are then able to experience the power and love of God in a whole new way. As a result, you will experience life in a whole new way. You will have a higher sense of purpose and joy. The result of this new awareness of God on a moment to moment basis is a better relationship with God. As with any relationship, efforts at improving the relationship require time, energy, and some sort of communication. With time, you will find the method of communication that works best for you. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Just do it.
Self-will
Some of you may be struggling with self-will. You don’t want to submit to a person or a process, even if it could free you from your current addiction. Overvaluing your own opinions and will can make your road to healing longer and more painful for both you and those who love you. Surrendering your will is crucial to success. I encourage you to surrender your will, follow the recovery principles, and being to walk in freedom.
The Power of the Polygraph
The polygraph for a sex addict is a powerful recovery tool. It totally destroys the secret world, past, present and future. No more secrets, shame or guilt. Addicts receive the opportunity of a clean slate to start over again. The polygraph has killed so many temptations to act out or even contact old or new people to have sex with. Many addicts have told me that if it wasn’t for the polygraph, they would not have been able to stay clean, and I believe them. If you are interested in learning more about theraputic polygraphs testing at www.honesttopetepolygraph.com
Boundaries for Those Married
Countless addicts have lost their sobriety through someone of the opposite sex. Someone from the opposite sex can be dangerous especially if he or she was a part of your addiction or you had a romantic or sexual relationship with them. Married people need boundaries around talking badly about their spouse, emotionally supporting the opposite sex (even in recovery), texting and physical contact.
Staying Focused
The author of Hebrews continues to give principles to win in the holiest of competitions. He states, Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.