by Jay Stringer
I have paid close attention to how men become seduced and entangled in lives of sexual addiction and struggle. I have found a number of thematic predecessors that mark the lives of my clients long before their sexual behavior leads them into lives of crisis. One of the most difficult things about working with people is that we are more comfortable talking about how screwed up we are than carefully studying the why behind our unwanted sexual behavior. This will require us to survey landscapes that many of us hold as sacred, if not off limits: family and community.
Over the next few chapters, we will explore five key childhood drivers of unwanted sexual behavior: rigid and/or disengaged family systems, abandonment, parents who were emotionally enmeshed with their children, a history of trauma, and sexual abuse (both overt and subtle forms of it). Although these five key drivers may not immediately resonate, I encourage you to read each of them, as they are more widespread than you may have originally thought.
FOR REFLECTION:
Do you find yourself bent more toward honor or honesty with your family? If you are bent more toward honor, what did you experience that you feel a need to be dishonest about?
At this point in your journey, what past stories or present dynamics do you think most influence your involvement in unwanted sexual behavior?
[33] WITW Staff, “Study Finds That 1 Out of 3 Women Watch Porn at Least Once a Week,” Women in the World, October 22, 2015, https://womenintheworld.com/2015/10/22/study-finds-that-1-out-of-3-women-watch-porn-at-least-once-a-week/.
[34] David Kinnaman, “The Porn Phenomenon,” Barna (blog), February 5, 2016, https://www.barna.com/the-porn-phenomenon/. This article provides an overview of Barna’s 2016 report, The Porn Phenomenon: the Impact of Pornography in the Digital Age. Studies conducted for this report revealed that 33 percent of females ages thirteen to twenty-four and 12 percent ages twenty-five and older admitted to seeking out porn daily, weekly, or monthly.
[35] Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 193.
[36] Jodi A. Mindell et al., “Behavioral Treatment of Bedtime Problems and Night Wakings in Infants and Young Children,” Sleep 29, no. 10 (2006): 1263–1276.
[37] I do not have a source for this interpretation, but if not my own, it could be attributed to Dr. Dan Allender or Dr. Tim Keller.
[38] In addition to John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (New York: Bantam, 1952), this is a reference to the “land of Nod” (Genesis 4:16), where Cain was exiled by God after he murdered his brother Abel (see verse 8). Nod is the Hebrew root word for “to wander.”
[39] I am indebted to Dr. Dan Allender for this insight. For more information on how to practice honor and honesty in your life, check out the Allender Center’s story workshop: https://theallendercenter.org/offerings/workshops/the-story-workshop/.
[40] Ishaan Tharoor, “How Somalia’s Fishermen Became Pirates,” Time, April 18, 2009, http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1892376,00.html.
CHAPTER THREE
DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY SYSTEMS
THE FIRST KEY CHILDHOOD DRIVER of unwanted sexual behavior is having a family system that was characterized as rigid and/or disengaged. Dr. Patrick Carnes, one of the leading researchers on sexual compulsivity, found that 77 percent of those who struggle with sexual addiction report coming from a rigid family, and 87 percent report coming from a disengaged family.[41]
Rigidity: When Rules Are Weapons
A rigid home has excessive regulation. There is often one parent who rules the family with an iron fist. The parent demands compliance, but he or she is compliant to no one. As a child, you may be under considerable surveillance, all the while having a front-row seat to your parent’s glaring hypocrisy.
Rigid family systems see everything in black and white. Even when an issue has immense complexity, the parent with the power will make a dogmatic decision to reinforce his or her control. This dogma could be in regards to behavior such as dating, curfew, what television shows or movies a child is able to watch, or requiring the house to be perfectly clean before a guest arrives. Children in these homes learn that rules are not like barriers around the Grand Canyon to keep people from dying; they are more like scarlet letters given to shame others into compliance. To survive, you comply or depart, often in dramatic fashion.
Growing up in a rigid family system begets children who are often split off as either good or bad. Whether you become the golden child or the black sheep, your life reveals the pathology of a rigid family system. The black sheep of the family may look out of control, but if you listen to what drives his behavior and defiance, you will hear an honesty that rivals the truth-telling capacity of a biblical prophet. He refuses to live in a family that demands unquestioned loyalty to the tyranny of rigidity and, sadly, often squanders much of his life in defiant protest long after he leaves home. The consequences of his actions will certainly need to be engaged, but the recovery process of the black sheep is far easier than the golden child’s journey out of a life of self-righteousness and hiding.
One client, whose family role was to be the scapegoat, recently disclosed to her family the difficult news that she had been involved in multiple affairs over the course of her marriage. Later that spring, at a family reunion, my client’s father gave a speech to more than twenty family members about how grateful he was that he and his wife had remained faithful for five decades and how much of a blessing it was for them to know that “some” of their children had followed in their footsteps. My client, although hurt by her father’s remark, was able to see that this shaming was a consistent tactic her family used to keep themselves in a position of power and authority over her. What no one named was that her father was emotionally abusive to his family and spent the majority of those fifty years on business trips.
The golden child’s strategy is to deny the truth of a rigid family through presenting a perfect image to the world at the cost of his soul. He learns that compliance and competence allow him to maneuver as a saint within the rigid borders of the family. Although he may be struggling with depression or pornography, he correctly discerns that revealing these struggles would be far too costly. He defaults to presenting a perfect public self and elects to keep the painful and troubled dimensions of who he is beyond detection.
The need a child feels to be “good” rather than honest creates a relational template that has ruined many marriages. How often has a spouse appeared kind, hardworking, even sacrificial, but in private indulged in unwanted sexual behavior? The issue may be hypocrisy, but far more often, the person is recreating the original dynamics from childhood. The script he received was to present a tame and sacrificial version of himself to the world. Tragically, his sexual desire and personal opinions remain buried. Devoid of care, his thoughts and emotions were unable to mature.
Rigid family systems shape the particular sexual fantasies and behavior men and women pursue. Fifty-three percent of my survey respondents said their fathers were too strict and focused on rules. Men who grew up with strict fathers were more likely to develop fantasies of power over women in the type of pornography they pursued. This included women who were younger, with smaller body types, and women from another race who appeared, to them, submissive. The implication was that sons who were powered over tended to grow up to be men who desired power over others.
About 50 percent of my survey respondents said their mothers were too strict and focused on rules. Women who wanted to be used or have harm done to them in their sexual fantasies were two and a half times more likely to have had a strict mother. The implication was that daughters who were powered over tended to grow up to be women who pursued fantasies where harm and cruelty were reinforced. In men and women alike, family systems of rigidity set children up to be adults who wanted to either reverse or repeat the power dynamics of their youth.
Anger escalates in rigid family systems. Rigidity sets the stage for anger because it consistently exposes us to the hypocrisy of
the ones in the family, community, or workplace who have power. Like the client who was shamed by her dad during the family reunion speech, those who are scapegoated develop a highly tuned radar for the double standards of others. My client struggled immensely with her parents’ marriage because she knew that her father was far more alive around his secretary and used work to consistently escape from his needy wife of five decades. My client later remarked to me, “Never in a million years would my dad own up to his departure from our family. Instead, he gets to be perceived as the faithful husband. He tells a story he needs to believe.” Bottom line: Anger escalates in any system that does not tell the truth.
Rigidity puts you in a bind. On one hand, you are powerless, and on the other hand, you have so much evidence against your dysfunctional family system. If you speak, you will be exiled and orphaned. If you don’t speak, you reinforce how powerless you feel. When you are powerless, you should be on high alert for anger. Feeling anger at the hypocrisy of others is like a tropical storm entering the warm waters of the Caribbean. A hurricane is going to ensue, and you will wreck either your family, your own life, or both. Pornography appeals to powerless people precisely because it gives their anger an arena to be on full display. In reality you may feel powerless, but in the world of the Internet, you can have whatever you want. This is the razor edge of recovery: Your unwanted sexual behavior must change, but it also needs to be honored as a symbol of all the unprocessed anger of living in a dysfunctional system.
Disengagement: When Care Is Neglected
Another hallmark of homes of children who grow up to struggle with unwanted sexual behavior is disengagement. Disengagement occurs when parents choose to withdraw from their children’s lives. In my research, 63 percent of the respondents wanted more of their fathers’ involvement, and 39 percent wanted more of their mothers’ involvement. Examples of disengagement are parents’ workaholism, choosing to avoid necessary conversations related to themes every child needs to learn about (self-care, nutrition, sex), or choosing to ignore attunement (being aware and receptive) with children when they are experiencing anxiety, sorrow, or anger. When this happens, children grow up with a profound sense that they are not prepared for the world they are encountering and roam through life never fully knowing they are loved and delighted in. These children learn that life is not found within a family but outside one. In adulthood, this belief remains operative. The adults may be in marriages or committed relationships, but they can never trust them to offer what their hearts so desperately desire.
Children who have known disengagement may have some experiences of connection with their parents, but only if they are making good grades, taking their vitamins, and offering some type of needed support to parents. Their compliance and denial of emotional needs allow the family system to continue without the need for change. The moment these children have opinions or reveal unpleasant emotions, conflict ensues and the perks of their previous roles evaporate. To survive, disengaged children may grow up to become successful professionals who detach from their families, as their parents before them did. Or they roam through life like nomads, trying to find leaders or lifestyles they can tether themselves to.
Children who were ignored by their parents are incredibly susceptible to various forms of sexual abuse, including the introduction to pornography. This does not mean your parents were desiring you to be abused, but it does mean they made an intentional, maybe even necessary, decision to direct their focus to someone or something else. We will explore this in much greater detail in chapter 7, but when children were neglected by their parents, the innate desire they have to be enjoyed and pursued was picked up by their abuser or their peers. Children who wanted more involvement from their mothers and fathers were more likely to have adults touch them inappropriately and were more likely to be asked to act out something they saw in pornography. A parent’s passivity is not neutral; the neglect sets the stage for harm.
Consider the following for women respondents in my survey:
The risk tripled of being introduced to pornography by someone older for those who wanted, to a very great extent, more of their mothers’ involvement.
The risk quadrupled of being asked to sexually stimulate someone during or after pornography for those who wanted, to a very great extent, more of their mothers’ involvement in childhood.
Women were two times more likely to be introduced to pornography by someone older when they, to a very great extent, wanted more involvement from their fathers.
The risk of being introduced to pornography by someone older increased from 9 percent to 38 percent when they reported that their fathers showed a very great deal more interest in the respondents’ siblings.
Disengagement Intensifies Lust
Lust blooms in the soil of disengagement. Disengagement plants the seeds of lust because the child, who is made to experience tenderness and delight, recognizes that familial love is not something that can be depended on. This is often because the parents have become more preoccupied with work, showing affection to another sibling, or their own distractions or addictions. If you recall Jeffrey’s story from the introduction, he recognized that his mother would be gone often, working to put food on the table. Jeffrey concluded that home would not be a place for his needs or desires to be met. He would need to cruise in order to find the eyes to attach to. Such is the case with so many men and women who exist within disengaged families. They are faced with the choice to live with hunger inside the home or search outside it to ensure connection and sustenance. The madness that most people find, however, is that the solutions we pursue apart from God and community leave us more alone than we were at the beginning. Here, we double down our bet on lust and end up bankrupt.
Olivia, a nurse, came into a session after having a disturbing encounter with a patient’s family that reminded her of her childhood. A teenage boy arrived in the emergency room with his friends after breaking his arm. When he got to the hospital, the staff asked him about notifying his parents. The boy gave permission to call his mom but not to call his dad, who was having a “really busy day.” Olivia remarked that she felt enraged at the boy’s dad and it did not occur to her until coming into therapy as to why. “My mom always stressed the importance of making good grades and not fighting around my dad because he worked so hard during the week and needed to have a ‘rest haven’ when he got home. She was so rigid about this. I learned to just keep all the other stuff that was happening in my life far from their ears, even if it was about wanting my dad to show up to my events at school. My family functioned better when I didn’t ask for anything or give them anything to worry about. But then it came out that my dad was having an affair and would schedule these meet-ups with the woman at the same time as my events at school because he knew my mom would be gone then. I remember feeling so stupid that I wanted my dad involved in my life, when he was filled with so much deceit.”
Olivia’s story highlights an exposure to a very rigid and disengaged family system. You may have experienced something very similar to Olivia’s story or have had a life marked by even higher levels of rigidity or disengagement. The point I want to make here is that your anger and your lust, which have grown in these types of family or communal systems, must go somewhere. Unwanted sexual behavior is one of the most common avenues we pursue to reverse or reinforce the negative experiences we endured in childhood. Our goal is to study and grieve the conditions that led to our sexual brokeness, thereby reducing their power over our present.
Study Your Anger and Lust
Anger and lust are easy to scapegoat due to the harm they produce in our lives. The more generative approach, however, is curiosity. At this point in your journey, lust exposes your demand to be filled. But if you listen to your lust, it will reveal a holy desire for belonging. Anger now exposes your demand for control. But if you study your anger, you will find that it produces a remarkable radar for injustice. The journey out of unwanted sexual behavior begins by recognizing that
your struggles may be the most honest dimension of your life. Your sexual struggles reveal your wounds, but they also reveal the trafficked longings of your heart.
FOR REFLECTION:
Would you characterize your family as either rigid or disengaged (or both)? If so, what examples do you recall?
Recall a memory that represents the dysfunction in your family, perhaps at a family dinner table. Attempt to see the scene as if you are watching a movie before you formulize any thoughts. Do you see cruelty or rigidity on family members’ faces? What do you think they wanted you to feel in their presence?
If your parents were disengaged, why do you think they preferred to ignore or remove themselves from the family? How did they let you know they were emotionally or physically leaving?
[41] Patrick J. Carnes, PhD, The Making of a Sex Addict, 1998, https://www.iitap.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ARTICLE_The-Making-of-a-Sex-Addict_PCarnes.pdf.
CHAPTER FOUR
ABANDONMENT
A Life in Exile
CHILDREN WHO GREW UP in rigid or disengaged homes often end up feeling abandoned. They realize that the delight and respect they desire will not come to pass. To survive, they must develop resiliency and find surrogate sources of comfort, or they will die. Abandonment can be experienced in overt ways, such as when a parent leaves the family in the midst of immense marital conflict. But it can also occur in subtle ways, such as when you recognize that one of your siblings has more of the affection and delight of your parents than you will ever receive.