(originally posted in 2012)
In Men’s Sexual Purity Recovery, Is it for you? 80/20 Principle – Part 1 I openly discussed the issue with excessive lustful thoughts and self-gratification (masturbation). In Men’s Sexual Purity Recovery, Is it for you? 80/20 Principle – Part 2 I go one level deeper into the viewing of pornography and its effects on the brain and how an addiction can quickly form. In Part 3, I go further “down the scale” of sexual purity and look at situations where a man has crossed the “flesh line” so to speak.
The “flesh line” is best defined as the line that is crossed where a person knowingly has “impure” sexual intercourse with another person. By “impure” I refer to sexual intercourse with anonymous sex partners, affair partners, prostitutes, or other “high-risk” persons that fulfill the fantasy or high. Once this occurs, pornography and masturbation by themselves may never be “enough” to achieve the same sexual high achieved once the line has been crossed. The battle becomes a lot more difficult and the consequences a lot higher once this occurs. Crossing the flesh line now gives the person a taste of how much better the sexual gratification could be with the intense adrenaline rush from doing something “wrong” and also from the Neurochemicals pumping through the brain. The intensity can be as much if not more than while viewing pornography. Now the person can try to reenact the pornography they viewed with another person. Sometimes with the other person’s consent, sometimes without. A lot of times, they dehumanize the person and treat them like an object only for use for their sexual satisfaction, desperately trying to get the same level of high they had in previous acting out experiences.
The diagram to the left shows a progression of the disease beginning with the roots of unmet emotional needs (click on the diagram for a full-sized image). Background information on this diagram and the progression will be discussed in another post. However, this diagram clearly defines where the “flesh-line” (or Flesh Barrier as it is showing the diagram) lies and the resulting behaviors and consequences. There are those of us in Castimonia who have passed the flesh line and have faced severe consequences such as diseases, loss of our jobs, loss of our marriage, violence toward us, prison, and even death! What a man who struggles with sexual purity must understand is that if they do not take hold of the problem early on, they will end up suffering these consequences. No matter how deceptive the man might be in fooling their loved ones, employers, etc… they are only fooling themselves. One day, the truth will come out, and even though the damage has already been done with the sexual acting out, the consequences will come forward and might be more severe than when they were just struggling with lustful thoughts, masturbation, or viewing pornography.
My hope for every man who reads this blog is that it opens their eyes to a problem they might be denying. That it helps them understand the problem and helps them understand that there are others who struggle with this issue and if not confronted, will escalate to the point where the consequences are severe!
In Part 4, I will answer the initial question asked in the topic title, “Men’s Sexual Purity Recovery, Is it for you?”
