Unwanted

by Jay Stringer

  Securing your oxygen is about understanding the things that help you “breathe” and making sure they are established on your calendar and understood in your family. Often when my clients begin to secure their oxygen, it can kick up a lot for their spouses as they begin to ask, “What about me?” And, of course, they must secure their oxygen too. Partner with one another to make this a reality.

  When I took a motorcycle training class a few years ago, the instructor spent the majority of our final day teaching the group how to perform a figure eight. He noted that this maneuver is most commonly where students fail the final test. What students tend to do when they enter the arc at the top or bottom of the eight is look down at the ground. This action, though well intended and natural, ends up dropping them to the asphalt, often with injury. “What you have to do instead is counterintuitive,” the instructor remarked. “If you want to go left, you scoot your butt to the right of your seat and look over your left shoulder. You need to look where you want to go, not where you are.”

  The same is true for those who have known lives of addiction. Our natural way of getting through life is to feel chronically behind on tasks, stressed, and ashamed. This is ground we are so accustomed to seeing. What we must learn to do instead is look over our shoulders to find the oxygen we most need. Everything in us will tell us to keep our heads down to the ground of our misery. When we do this, it’s common to hear ourselves say, “I don’t have time” and “I am not worth it.”

  Practice a counterintuitive maneuver when you hear negative self-talk, and know that before too long, this will come more naturally for you. Allow yourself to think about where you want to go or what would be good for your body, even if it seems impractical. For instance, in times that I feel particularly busy, I know that my body needs to surf or hike. But the first thing I hear myself say is “That takes too much time. You are really going to leave your wife behind again? If you are going to be busy, you can’t have that, too.”

  Negative self-talk makes it so easy to foreclose the good desires within us. Burying our desires builds up storehouses of entitlement. The counterintuitive approach is to lean toward what your heart desires. The needs you and your significant other have do not have to be at odds with another. Think “and,” not “or.” I will often say to my wife, “I need six hours on Saturday morning to get into the mountains. If I do that, what do you need for the afternoon? I’d love to come back together in the evening to play games with the kids.”

  Choose Personal Integrity

  Talk of integrity may take you back to those incomplete and inadequate solutions to unwanted sexual behavior that focused on self-limiting practices and accountability to others while neglecting the deep-seated shame and wounds that evil used to corrupt your desire. If the word integrity is a hurdle for you, let’s explore an alternative meaning. Integrity is not about fleeing or burying sexual desire; it is concerned with being unified and honest in pursuing the holistic desires within you. Many people I meet truly long for beauty, wholeness, and creativity in their lives. They also know that these dimensions of life require intentional, iterative work. When we encounter adversity, we are prone to compromise the holy longings burgeoning within us. This pull toward compromised desire is at the core of our struggles with integrity.

  A failure of integrity does not begin when we look at porn; it begins the moment we begin to care less about the things that matter. When we experience anxiety, we need the integrity to work through it rather than flee to our patterned ways of escape. When we want passionate sex lives but sense that our spouses are removed, we need the integrity to stay in kind, intentional conversation. When we find ourselves in mundane jobs we dread, we need the integrity to pursue the vocation that deeply matters to us. Integrity fortifies all aspects of our lives to pursue the desires, talents, and ambitions God wove into our hearts. Unwanted sexual behavior is not the root cause of a lack of integrity but rather one of the many symptoms.

  Anticipate Your Struggles

  As we discussed in part 2, sexual fantasies are road maps. These maps will help you anticipate the struggles you will face. Study the predictable times, places, and themes associated with your unwanted sexual behavior. When you do, you will likely find they are predictable. The most common themes I hear about are loneliness, frustration, futility, and boredom, and the most consistent times of acting out are before people go to bed or in the after-lunch energy dip. Journeying out of your unwanted behavior is not about fearing these themes; it is about transforming them into times of rest and even meaning. If you do not have a plan for these times, you will default to your past behavior. Healing is not about simply saying no; it is about saying yes to the good, the true, and the beautiful.

  One of my clients, Stanley, recognized that his extensive travel schedule needed to be transformed. He noticed he was taking far more business trips than he actually needed to. “Traveling was like a vacation to me, particularly because of how awful my marriage felt. I needed to have the integrity to address my marriage rather than run from it.” Clients like Stanley recognize that many of their patterns of escape can be transformed by anticipating what they want to experience in place of entitlement and shame.

  A year into treatment, it occurred to Stanley that he could ask his assistant to book him at bed-and-breakfasts whenever possible. A home brought him comfort (a reminder of his grandparents), but a hotel triggered him to feel out of control. He also pursued marriage therapy because he knew that if he did not turn to face his marriage, his sexual behavior would consistently entice him to turn away from it. Stanley’s integrity to anticipate his struggles shows us an essential task: to look at the contexts of our most entitled behavior and scheme for ways to bring delight and transformation instead. In other words, we should not just say no but scheme for ways to bring our bodies pleasure in non-orgasmic ways.

  Daily Delight

  Pursuing delight is a daily endeavor. The very best activities to pursue are those that help you engage your senses. Swimming, cooking, music, and the outdoors are all good places to start. One of the most significant things a friend has ever done for me was buy me an expensive set of headphones. He thought it was absurd that I worked in the mental-health field and rarely listened to music. He was even more devastated to learn that when I did listen to music, I would use cheap earbuds. He dropped off a pair of headphones at my house and spent the next few months educating me on various types of music and its history.

  My life and, more importantly, my bus commute transformed. In the past, I’d sit packed like a sardine on a loud bus trying to make out the words to a lecture amidst the cacophony of other noises. Music, through good headphones, was a magical new world. In the past, I’ve cried to the meaning of songs but never to the sound of music. It may seem strange to say, but hearing music led me to a more sensual life. The more I was attentive to music, the more I found myself feeling the breezes against my skin and the more I was able to smell in a way that made my mouth water. If we have ears to hear, eyes to see, and skin to feel, there is a wild and sensual world that awaits us.

  THE BENEFITS OF REPENTANCE

  The joy of repentance is found in turning from entitlement to the pursuit of what we truly deserve. Entitlement is an attitude that we have an inherent right to get what we were deprived of. Repentance refocuses us not on what we demand but on what we deserve. Repentance is faith that God truly desires to give us what is best for us.

  You will notice that entitlement and repentance feel different in your body. Entitlement will make you tense and rigid until you get what you demand. Repentance fills you with anticipation for the joy and rest that are to come. As the years go on, you will be less seduced by counterfeit and entitled comfort.

  Bank tellers will say that the best way to discern a counterfeit bill is to spend lots of time handling real money. The same is true with delight: The more you live a life of holistic integrity with your desire, the less appealing that behavior promising release but concluding in j
udgment will become.

  Here are some ways you can build a routine of joy and delight:

  DAILY TO WEEKLY ACTIVITIES

  Get a yoga or gym membership and go three or four times a week. Focus regularly on your breathing.

  Aim for at least seven and a half hours of sleep. Stop using your phone, tablet, and television a half hour before bedtime.

  Buy an excellent pair of headphones. Make a playlist of beautiful, relaxing music. If you can’t find a list you like on Spotify, ask a friend to compile one for you. Some of us remember what it was like to receive a burned CD from a friend; a playlist can feel the same.

  Unwanted sexual behavior tends to eclipse other problematic behavior. Take an inventory of areas of your life that remain unhealthy. Common issues might involve a disordered relationship with alcohol, tobacco, or food. Discuss these areas with your group, friends, and therapist.

  MONTHLY TO YEARLY ACTIVITIES

  Put four or five things on your calendar each month that bring you delight, and make a special color for them. This could be a vacation, a movie, a new restaurant, a hike, a concert, or a sporting event. Research has shown that anticipation of something pleasurable is the most enjoyable experience (not the memory or the actual experience in the present). Show your updated calendar to your significant other, friend, and therapist.

  Delete any apps that you tend to use primarily for pornographic or dissociative purposes. For example, Instagram and Tumblr tend to be where squatters show up. You may say these apps connect you to others, but there are other ways to connect. In their place, install mindfulness or meditation apps. One I use is Headspace.

  Visit a national park. Spend a day in your city’s art museum. Spend intentional time bringing healthy relaxation and sensuality to your life. If you have the financial means, schedule six spa treatments in the next twelve months. If possible, pay for them now and put the appointments on your calendar so you have no valid excuse not to go. The point is to put your body before beauty.

  If you go on a business trip, research the best places to eat in the city. Instead of going to a familiar restaurant chain, try a local and affordable food craze or, if you want to potentially splurge, a restaurant that has won a James Beard Award. Additionally, a bed-and-breakfast is often an alternative many of my clients (like Stanley above) have pursued when they have had significant personal failures in hotels.

  Schedule a physical and a dental appointment right now if you can’t recall the last time you had them.

  [79] Robert McKee, “Storytelling That Moves People,” interview by Bronwyn Fryer, Harvard Business Review, June 2003, https://hbr.org/2003/06/storytelling-that-moves-people.

  [80] J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1955), 250.

  [81] I addressed this topic in a previous essay: Jay Stringer, “Repetition: Its Essential Role in the Harming and Healing of Our Bodies,” in The Other Journal: Body (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2014), 90–95.

  [82] John 3:14 (NLT): “As Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.”

  [83] Dr. Laaser said this in a personal conversation I had with him in March 2016.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A NEW SEXUAL STORY

  Sexual Healing

  A NEW SEXUAL STORY IS POSSIBLE. You’ve begun exploring the stories that await your sexual healing, and now we will explore what it means to prepare for a new and beautiful sexual future. It is not enough to say no; it is not enough to identify your wounds; it is not enough to solely look at the damage. We have to come back to the core issue of desire. What do you want? Do you believe sex is ever something that could bridge heaven to earth instead of earth to hell? These questions themselves corner us with the issue of faith. Do we believe that God—the giver of all life, beauty, and desire—is truly and radically committed to bringing us what our hearts most deeply long for?

  I believe God is deeply committed to our joy. He gave up his only Son to make that commitment, and I have to believe there is no failure I can carry out that will ever separate me from that promise. To bring us joy, I believe that God joins with us to heal the harm.

  Healing the Harm

  If you were involved in a car crash and your arm was broken, there would be protocol to follow. You would go to the hospital to have your arm set and put in a cast and would remain in contact with your doctor and various insurance companies over the following months. Your car would be towed to a body shop. One of the problems when it comes to addressing sexual brokenness is that we do not take practical steps to address the wreckage. Healing will come to only the degree that you assess the particulars of the damage that years of unwanted sexual behavior have caused. Emotional pain is harder to see than a physical injury, but the process of restoration is not entirely different.

  Sexual healing involves four dimensions: reclaiming your body, leaving sexual sin, forgiving yourself and others, and addressing curses and soul ties.

  Reclaim your body. You are the owner of your body and have authority over what it participates in. This obviously includes your sexual behavior but also the thoughts you have about your body. There are likely parts of your body that you have cursed. Many people I work with have cursed their noses, their thin or thick bodies, their breasts, their receding hairlines, or their penises or vaginas. When we do not practice being kind to our bodies, we become flippant with the behavior they participate in. Choosing a wise guide or therapist will help you journey through the stories that distorted a loving relationship to your body. As you journey, remind yourself of the beauty your body has been given as an image bearer and child of God. It can be helpful to recite certain phrases daily or in the hour of temptation, such as “The Lord is for my body, and my body is for the Lord” and “I am a child of God.”

  Leave sexual sin. Leaving sin is about kicking out the squatters that have no place in your heart. This comes from a conviction that sexual sin has no place in your life, and it is a deliberate turn in consciousness to things that bear beauty and integrity. For some people, this is addressed in a twelve-step program, where you will take inventory of how unmanageable your life has become and explore the full scope of how your behavior affected others. The point of this process is to make you realize how pervasive your struggle is. The data will be painful, but the evidence will prepare your heart to say no to your former way of life and yes to all that God might want to accomplish in you.

  Forgive yourself and others. Forgiveness is not a onetime event but a continual process where we remember, feel, and turn our shame, pain, and anger over to God. Only when you assess the damage will you know the scope of what forgiveness intends to cover. My friend Becky has said, “Forgiveness is like a shovel; it only penetrates as far as the ground will permit.”[84] When we first put the shovel to dirt, we often recognize not only the hostility toward us but also how much hostility we hold for those who have hurt us. Therefore, the most important initial question related to forgiveness of self and others is “How much violence, bitterness, and shame do I want to hold in my heart?” Grief and vulnerability are how we till the earth of our stories.

  End generational curses and soul ties. As you explored your story, you likely recognized that unwanted sexual behavior had a generational component. This could include a mother or father with his or her own involvement with pornography, sexual abuse over generations in your extended family, or other family members dependent on drugs or alcohol. Write down what you know or what you can piece together. Share and reflect on the data with a trusted friend or counselor. I find that when my clients see the long-standing issue of sexual brokenness in their families, they gain tremendous motivation to leave behind different legacies for their own children.

  A soul tie is developed when a person holds erotic or shameful power over your soul and body. This could be a past lover, a past abuser, someone in your extended family, a colleague, or a performer in the sex industry. It is anyon
e your soul remains bound to in unholy fantasy or regret. The purpose of exploring these soul ties is to examine how particular individuals hold you captive in sexual fantasy, hatred, or shame.

  When the apostle Paul addressed the issue of soul ties, the context refers to men in the city of Corinth who were having sex with temple prostitutes. These men, like many of us, greatly minimized how their sexual behavior was affecting their souls and bodies. Paul insisted that joining our bodies sexually with someone else is also a spiritual, soulful joining.

  In a world of sexual availability, abuse, and promiscuity, it is near-impossible to go through life without developing a soul tie to another human being. There is a tendency in our day and age to minimize the way our past sexual behavior has affected our souls and bodies. The apostle Paul claimed that this separation is not only false but also deeply destructive. Writing a new sexual story begins with paying attention to the erotic and psychological noise in your mind. There may be people, scenes, and fantasies that need to be prayed against and abandoned in order to move forward to sexual flourishing. Consider addressing these matters with a therapist, trusted friend, or pastor who understands his or her own brokenness in these areas as well.