• Skip to content
  • Skip to footer

CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

  • Home
  • About Castimonia
    • Statement of Faith
    • Member Struggles
    • Are You a Sex Addict?
    • About the Leaders of Castimonia
  • Meetings
    • What to Expect at a Castimonia Meeting
    • Meeting Times & Locations
      • Arkansas Meetings
      • Mississippi Meetings
      • New York Meetings
      • Tennessee Meetings
      • Texas Meetings
      • Telephone Meeting
      • Zoom Online Meetings
  • News & Events
  • Resources
    • Books
    • Document Downloads
    • Journal Through Recovery
    • Purity Podcasts
    • Recovery Videos
    • Telemeeting Scripts
    • Useful Links
  • Contact Us

divorce

August 18, 2015 By Castimonia

Don’s Story

https://www.maninthemirror.org/a-look-in-the-mirror/224-dons-story

How Don came to watch another man love his wife and raise his children
by Patrick Morley, PhD

Volume 224

February 18, 2014

Mary divorced Don because he was unfaithful, but she had never been unpleasant about it. If anything she killed him with kindness, which only made him feel even more rotten.

Don was not a scoundrel. He didn’t set out to fail. He didn’t wake up one day and think, “Well, I wonder what I can do to ruin my life today.” Rather, his fall followed on the heels of thousands of small, daily choices he made in his private thoughts over several years.

It all started the day after he and Mary moved into their first home, when he fixed the blinds just right so he could watch the woman next door sunning in her backyard. What began as a single act of curiosity snowballed into a regular habit of lust. He was also a little too huggy-kissy around the office where he led in sales year after year. Don was no Brad Pitt but he could tell women found him attractive. This flattered his ego, especially since girls had not noticed him at all in high school. He tended to let his eyes fix a moment too long on his female associates. Often Don found himself engaging in sexual fantasies as he would creep along the freeway toward home after work.

Evelyn was an ambitious young woman also in the sales department. She was bright, a quick learner, and was already earning more commissions than most of the men in the office. By her ambition she was eager to learn from Don, and by her upbringing she was lonely for love. She had not been hugged enough by her daddy. There was a natural sexual attraction between Don and Evelyn. But for Don this was no more than most men felt toward a physically sensuous woman, which Evelyn certainly was–she had “the look.” Neither of them ever overtly acted on the physical attraction by flirting, but the chemistry was there.

One of the company’s biggest customers was interested in getting a quote for a privately labeled product. If the numbers worked, it could be one of the biggest sales in the history of their company. Four top sales people were assigned to work out the details, including Evelyn and Don. About two weeks into the project it became clear that the four of them needed to travel to the customer’s home office to work out kinks in the pricing.

After checking in at their hotel two of them wanted to hit the downtown entertainment district that night, but Don and Evelyn both declined. Don and Evelyn waved goodbye as their associates’ cab pulled away from the curb. As they walked inside, Don’s senses were alert. There was a sense of danger in the air, and he welcomed it. He said, “I’m going to get something to eat. Would you like to join me?”

She simply nodded as her eyes fell to the carpet, and they walked to the dining room. The maître d’ seated them in a booth near the back of the restaurant. Don had already made his first mistake, but not his biggest mistake. His biggest mistake was mixing wine with dinner. But his real mistake had been made thousands of choices earlier. The wine lowered both of their inhibitions, which led to exploratory questions. The questions became more and more provocative. Each successive answer signaled interest in going further. By the time Don signed the check he had pulled the noose tight around his own neck. They walked to the elevator, went up to her room, and Don became an adulterer.

Don woke up the next morning laden with guilt, remorse, and shame. The balance of the business trip was extremely awkward. He resolved in his mind that it was a one-time tryst and that he was going to change a number of his ways. Unfortunately, that thought came several years too late. Don was addicted, and he couldn’t walk away from his lusty habits.

Evelyn, his correspondent, was equally flustered by the affair but she was single. She was also highly attracted to Don, and that fed his ego. Less than two weeks later Don found himself at Evelyn’s apartment during lunch. For the next three months that became their regular rendezvous two or three times a week.

Meanwhile, Mary had been frustrated several times because she had been unable to reach Don during lunch, which he usually ate at his desk. He explained by lying to her that he had started taking key customers to lunch from time to time. Meanwhile, it didn’t take long for Evelyn’s and Don’s co-workers to add things up. Several of the women in the office felt scandalized. Don naively didn’t think anyone had noticed. One day Mary called and reached Susan, one of the scandalized women. She asked, “Is my husband there?” Susan, who could be vicious as a cornered cat, shot back in a villain’s voice, “No, and you may want look into  it a little further.”

Mary sat with the phone hanging limp in her hand until the phone company’s you-didn’t-hang-it-up-right ringer brought her back to earth.  The next day Mary–she couldn’t help herself–followed Don’s car from the office at lunch. When she saw him go into an apartment she didn’t want to see any more. She sped away sobbing hysterically.

As soon as she arrived home, Mary called her mother and spent ten emotional minutes telling her what she had just seen. “Mom, I’m just so scared. I don’t know what to do.”

“Honey, I am so, so sorry,” her mother began, then followed with twenty questions. After talking out every possible explanation and course of action, they agreed that Mary would tell Don that very evening exactly what had happened step by step, starting with Susan’s offhand phone remark.

After the children were in bed, Mary asked Don into the den and shut the door. She began trembling and tears streamed along the creases of her face. Don knew he had been caught before Mary said a word. The guilt had  been eating away at him. He started crying too. He made it easy for her by asking, “How did you find out?” For the next two hours they covered every angle. Don, a former altar boy, was defrocked. He confessed how it all got started, and hundreds of little sins that led up to the big one.

Mary heard more than she thought she could bear. That night Mary set her course and she never wavered from it once. She was a woman of faith–strong faith–but she would not be married to an unfaithful husband.

The divorce took six months. The awful pain didn’t begin to recede for two years. Then she met Sid. Sid was a lot like Don. After all, she had never found anything wrong with Don’s personality, just his character. At the end of twelve months of dinners and picnics with Mary’s three children, they both started thinking, This might work.

Four years after Don took Evelyn to be his unlawful mistress, Sid took Mary to be his lawful wife.

It took another year or so to work out the details of shared parenting.  Eventually, the children each had two toothbrushes, two beds–two of everything. The children spent every other weekend with Don and he could attend all their contests and concerts, which he faithfully did. One Saturday morning, he arrived a few minutes early to pick up the kids for the weekend. Don’s children–ages 14, 12, and 9–were sitting at the breakfast table when he knocked on the kitchen door.

Mary and new-husband Sid were scurrying around the kitchen fetching more milk and cooking scrambled eggs. Mary went to the door, swung it open, smiled a genuinely friendly smile, and invited Don to come in for a cup of coffee while the kids finished breakfast.

Don came in and, feeling quite awkward–this was their first time all together in the same room–sat down at one end of the kitchen table. The kids were at the other end of the table, with a couple of empty chairs between him and them. The kids didn’t greet him right away because they were arguing about who should get the last piece of toast. He felt like he wasn’t really even there–like he was a ghost, and he felt like a giant horrible, smelly toad.

Mary intervened and calmed the toast storm. Sid said, “Thanks, honey,” gave her a soft kiss on the cheek, then served the kids their eggs and asked if they wanted more milk. Sid tousled Tommy’s hair, and Tommy smiled that toothy grin that always melted Don. But today he was flashing it at Sid. Don was melting anyway, but for a different reason.  Then Sid turned to get the milk bottle and brushed his arm across Mary’s back and gave her a love pat. He poured the milk into Anna’s glass and she said, “Thank you.” Sid said, “You’re welcome, sweetie.” Sid turned toward Don and exhorted the children, “Okay now, kids, your dad’s here. Aren’t you going to say hello?”

I cannot believe this is happening to me, Don thought as he turned numb. Here is “another man” doing what I am supposed to do. Here is “another man” calling my wife “honey, “kissing her face, cooking for my children, tousling my son’s hair, touching my wife’s body, calling my daughter “sweetie,” and my children can’t seem to get enough of him. Meanwhile, it’s like they didn’t even see me come in. There must be some mistake!

There had been a mistake, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Don was going to watch another man love his wife and raise his children.

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: addiction, Affairs, castimonia, christian, divorce, escorts, gratification, healing, Intimacy, Jesus Christ, lust, masturbation, porn, pornography, pornstars, prostitutes, ptsd, purity, recovery, Sex, sex addict, sex addiction, sex partners, sexual, sexual addiction, sexual purity, spouses, trauma

June 9, 2014 By Castimonia

Argue Well

couple-argue1Research shows it’s how we fight—where, when, what tone of voice and words we use, whether we hear each other out fairly—that’s critical. If we argue poorly, we may end up headed for divorce court. Yet if we argue well, experts say, we actually may improve our relationship. “All couples disagree—it’s how they disagree that makes the difference,” says Howard Markman, professor of psychology at the University of Denver and co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies. For 30 years, Dr. Markman has conducted research that looks at how couples deal with conflict. A key finding: Couples who argue well are happier. Or, as Dr. Markman says, “You can get angry, but it’s important to talk without fighting.”

• DO IT: The problem will not go away if you don’t talk about it.

• COOL OFF: Pick a time when you can return to the argument with less emotion—ideally, within 24 hours and in person.

• DON’T ASSUME: You probably don’t know exactly what your partner is thinking, even if you think you do.

• FLEXIBILITY ISN’T WEAKNESS: You can change your position without “losing.”

• SEE THE OTHER SIDE: This is the best way to downgrade a heated conflict into a momentary disagreement.

• HOLD HANDS: Sit close, make eye contact, which can help make your interactions more positive.

• ARGUE IN FRONT OF THE KIDS: Do this only if you’re modeling good argument techniques.

• AGREE TO DISAGREE: Recognize that you are in a partnership. Look for the middle ground.

• CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY: You can never take them back.

By Wall Street Journal columnist Elizabeth Bernstein http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703700904575391013484475040.html

“Any woman who is sure of her own wits, is a match, at any time, for a man who is not sure of his own temper.” – Wilkie Collins

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: Affairs, argue, castimonia, christian, co-dependency, co-dependent, codependency, codependent, divorce, escorts, gratification, healing, Intimacy, Jesus Christ, lust, masturbation, porn, pornography, prostitute, ptsd, purity, recovery, Sex, sex addict, spouses, trauma

February 15, 2014 By Castimonia

Men Mourning Divorce

The sad reality, as a consequence of our acting out behaviors, some marriages will end in divorce.  This post is for those men who have lost their wives in an effort to help them heal.

DivorceRecovering from any major loss requires a mourning period, and divorce is no exception. Grieving a divorce is an intensely personal process and is different for everyone depending on unique situational and personal factors. A healthy mourning process is typically thought to include recognizing and verbalizing the meaning of a loss and its associated feelings. However, men deal with relationships and stress differently than women, and often are not as verbally expressive. Should men really be expected to mourn in the same way as women? The answer appears to be ‘no’ according to Dr. Nehami Baum’s 2003 article, “The Male Way of Mourning Divorce: When, What and How. ” In fact, Dr. Baum found that men generally appear to mourn the end of a marriage quite differently than women. Men tend to start the grieving process later than women, sometimes even after a physical separation has taken place. This might reflect the fact that women are more likely to initiate the divorce process, giving them a head start on processing the emotions associated with it. Men also tend to recognize that a marriage is in trouble later than women, and they might prefer to wait until after they, or their wife, have actually moved out to address the emotional reality of divorce.  Men might not feel that their ex-wife is the greatest loss during a divorce. For a divorced father, losing his family life (owning a home, having a set routine, a sense of identity and security) and daily interaction with the kids can feel like greater losses than the relationship with his wife. Men might need to deal with the anger and other powerful emotions that often accompany a loss of custody before they can mourn a spouse.  They also might need to address the immediate task of adjusting to a very different lifestyle first. Some men never grieve the loss of a spouse directly; expressing it via the feelings of loss they have toward their children instead.
From “For Men: Mourning the Divorce?” by Dr. Tom Rogat
http://www.divorce360.com/divorce-articles/effects/emotional/for-men-mourning-the-divorce.aspx?artid=394

“A divorce is like an amputation; you survive, but there’s less of you.” –  Margaret Atwood

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: addiction, affair, Affairs, anonymous sex partners, call girls, castimonia, christian, divorce, escorts, gratification, human trafficking, Intimacy, Jesus Christ, lust, masturbation, porn, porn star, pornography, pornstar, pornstars, prostitute, prostitutes, ptsd, purity, recovery, resentment, Sex, sex addict, sex addiction, sex partners, sexual, sexual addiction, sexual impurity, sexual purity, STD, strippers, trauma

June 30, 2013 By Castimonia

[Revealed] How Porn Affects Marriages

[Revealed] How Porn Affects Marriages
by evictrapeafrica
http://evictrapeafrica.wordpress.com/2012/10/24/revealed-how-porn-affects-marriages/

Hello buddies! It’s another great time to share some drinks over some real issues. As i said in one of my previous posts, the purpose of discussing pornography on this blog is because it’s been postulated to have links with the unbridled sexual passion that drive many men crazy.

You can check up our archives to catch up with the posts issues on this series. I remember hearing a married man say that he has bought a couple of porn videos to watch with his wife so as to boost her declining libido. Is this really a remedy? Does porn really help to spice up the sex life of couples? We will find out right now. Just as I have been doing so far on this series, I will show you empirical data obtained from thorough research and surveys:

According to the Journal of Adolescent Health, prolonged exposure to pornography leads to:

  • An exaggerated perception of sexual activity in society
  • Diminished trust between intimate couples
  • The abandonment of the hope of sexual monogamy
  • Belief that promiscuity is the natural state
  • Belief that abstinence and sexual inactivity are unhealthy
  • Cynicism about love or the need for affection between sexual partners
  • Belief that marriage is sexually confining
  • Lack of attraction to family and child-raising

According to sociologist Jill Manning, the research indicates pornography consumption is associated with the following six trends, among others:

1. Increased marital distress, and risk of separation and divorce 2. Decreased marital intimacy and sexual satisfaction 3. Infidelity 4. Increased appetite for more graphic types of pornography and sexual activity associated with abusive, illegal or unsafe practices 5. Devaluation of monogamy, marriage and child rearing 6. An increasing number of people struggling with compulsive and addictive sexual behavior

A press release from the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers (divorce lawyers) reported that the most salient factors present in divorce cases are as follows:

68% of the divorces involved one party meeting a new lover over the Internet. 56% involved one party having “an obsessive interest in pornographic websites.” 47% involved spending excessive time on the computer. 33% involved excessive time spent speaking in chat rooms. In 2003, a Focus on the Family poll showed 47% percent of families said pornography is a problem in their home.

In 2004, 42% of surveyed adults indicated that their partner’s use of pornography made them feel insecure, and 41% admitted that they felt less attractive due to their partner’s pornography use.

A brief survey on the effects of cybersex shows how wives of porn users develop deep psychological wounds, reporting feelings of betrayal, loss, depression, mistrust, devastation, anger, and sexual inadequacy. The same survey shows more than half of those engaged in cybersex lost interest in sexual intercourse, and one third of their partners lost interest as well

“I have also seen in my clinical experience that pornography damages the sexual performance of the viewers. Pornography viewers tend to have problems with premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. Having spent so much time in unnatural sexual experiences with paper, celluloid and cyberspace, they seem to find it difficult to have sex with a real human being. Pornography is raising their expectation and demand for types and amounts of sexual experiences; at the same time it is reducing their ability to experience sex.” (Dr. MaryAnne Layden)

“Should pornography sufficiently arouse a biologically determined male predisposition for polygamy, then its informational system may be contributing to contemporary male frustration and even aggressiveness toward the female in general and monogamous patterns of sexuality in particular. It may be argued that if the visual data of pornography encourages distrust of female sexual fidelity and a distorted perception of female personhood, such data could encourage disdain and/or animosity toward heterosexual comradeship and the value of such comradeship for individual and social solvency.”

MY THOUGHTS:

I guess you read through the statistics very well. Apparently, porn hasn’t helped any marriage neither in sexual performance nor in companionship. It rather impedes sexual performance and destroys the marital union. Porn makes its users burn with so much sexual passion but when it gets to the time to ‘do the thing’, their performance is almost equal to zero.

As we have seen also, pornography has been found to be connected to the high divorce rate observed in our times.

Pornography obviously has not done us much good. Don’t you think? Share your thoughts with me if you have a contrary view or an additional point to add.

We still have alot more to share on this series. We will definitely share some helpful tips with people who wanna break free from porn.

QUESTION: What suggestions would you offer a woman whose husband is hooked to porn and online sex merchants that he no more enjoys sex with her and this has left their matrimony at the verge of a break up?

I will be expecting your answers. Thank you for stopping by.

For a better world,

TeeKay

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: addiction, affair, Affairs, anonymous sex partners, call girls, castimonia, christian, divorce, escorts, gratification, healing, human trafficking, Intimacy, lust, masturbation, meeting, porn, porn star, pornography, pornstar, pornstars, prostitute, prostitutes, ptsd, purity, recovery, Sex, sex addict, sex addiction, sex partners, sexual, sexual addiction, sexual impurity, sexual purity, spouses, strippers, trauma

  • « Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2

Footer

Useful Links

Castimonia Restoration Ministry, Inc. is a 501c3 non-profit organization


This site is intended for individuals who struggle with maintaining sexual purity. This information is posted for individuals at various stages in their recovery, year 1 to year 30+; what applies to some, may not apply others. Spouses are encouraged to read this blog with the caveat that they may not agree with, understand, or know the reason for some items posted. As always, take what you like and leave the rest.

Copyright © 2023 · Altitude Pro on Genesis Framework · Log in

 

Loading Comments...