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Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

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Is Your Family Too Friendly?

Genesis 2:23-24 – “The man said, ‘This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called ‘woman,’ for she was taken out of man.’ That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

When some individuals begin to develop boundaries, they say, “But my mother (or father, or sister, or brother) is my best friend.” They often feel fortunate that, in these times of family stress, their best friends are the family in which they were raised. They don’t think they need an intimate circle of friends besides their own parents and siblings.

They misunderstand the biblical function of the family. God intended the family to be an incubator in which we grow the maturity, tools, and abilities we need. Once the incubator has done its job, it’s supposed to encourage the young adult to leave the nest, connect to the outside world (see Genesis 2:24), and establish a spiritual and emotional family system on one’s own. The adult is free to do whatever God has designed for him or her.

Over time, we are to accomplish God’s purposes of spreading his love to the world, to make disciples of all the nations (see Matthew 28:19–20). Staying emotionally locked in to the family of origin frustrates this purpose. It’s hard to see how we’ll change the world when we live on the same street.

No one can become a truly biblical adult without setting some limits, leaving home, and cleaving somewhere else. Otherwise, we never know if we have forged our own values, beliefs, and convictions—our very identity—or if we are mimicking the ideas of our family.

Can family be friends? Absolutely. But if you have never questioned, set boundaries, or experienced conflict with your family members, you may not have an adult-to-adult connection with your family. If you have no other “best friends” than your family, you need to take a close look at those relationships. You may be afraid of separating, individuating, and becoming an autonomous adult.

This devotional is drawn from Boundaries in Marriage, by John Townsend and Henry Cloud.

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Couples Recovering from Sex Addiction Can Reconnect

originally posted at: https://gentlepathmeadows.wordpress.com/2017/04/11/couples-recovering-from-sex-addiction-can-reconnect/

By Dr. Georgia Fourlas, LCSW, LISAC, CSAT, Rio Retreat Center Lead Therapist

There is an indescribable beauty in watching participants move into a deeper level of intimacy after struggling through the destruction of sexual addiction.

We recently held our first session of Discovery to Recovery Part 3: From Grief to Hope, a unique workshop for couples who have already begun a journey of recovery from sex addiction. The workshop focuses on helping the couple make a transition from despair to renewal.

The rebuilding process set in motion during the workshop helps couples move their focus from the individual’s addiction to the couple and their attachment. Many couples come to this session feeling that they are stuck in grief, which can leave them feeling hopeless and helpless. The grieving process that couples embark on together throughout the week allows them to honor the pain caused by other forces in their lives while examining how that pain has kept them emotionally separated.

Through honoring that pain and re-connecting with one another, couples begin to experience the hope that not only can attachment be repaired, but also that they can experience emotional intimacy that can surpass what they ever believed possible in their lives. I like to think of this as intimacy beyond their wildest dreams, which can be experienced regardless of whether or not the couple is staying together.

Some couples decide it is best for them to move forward apart while building on the hope that they can continue to honor one another as healthy co-parents or in another capacity that respects both partners while they go their separate ways. Others decide to make staying together in a mutually fulfilling and loving relationship their goal.

Experiencing Recovery Together

Dr. Ken Adams, the architect of the Discovery to Recovery workshops, has a deep passion for healing couples. He recognized that there was a gap in services for those who were looking for ways to re-attach, seek the next level of change, and achieve deeper levels of recovery together.

Dr. Adams describes how couples survive the chaos of addiction, but do not always have the opportunity to experience full emotional recovery together. They often become stuck in the negative patterns of interaction that are driven by ineffective attempts to feel understood and to have their emotional needs met by their partners. They move from the addiction to a place where they either continue to spin in pain, shame, anger, and resentment, or they disconnect emotionally and feel stuck in a relationship that they feel is emotionally unsafe.

Dr. Adams says that he views the Discovery to Recovery workshop series as “an invitation to integrate recovery concepts as a couple.” This requires a paradigm shift—the perception must move away from the problem of the individual toward the solution that can be provided as a couple. The solution involves healing through emotional reconnection and attachment repair.

One participant who recently completed the workshop said, “This workshop facilitated an 180-degree shift in how we have been relating to each other. We were very much stuck in conflict and separate corners, wanting to come together, but lost as to how to do that. This workshop showed us how to soften toward each other to allow the connection we both wanted to find, a starting place.”

How Change Happens

First order change happens when something, usually a behavior, changes to restore balance. Most recovery work begins this way.

The final phase of the Discover to Recovery workshop focuses on making second order change, which happens when a completely new way of seeing things is created, or when a major paradigm shift is internalized. Some people see it as a shift in how we view and maintain first order change. In that way, second order change in couples supports first order change, while allowing a complete transformation in the system of the coupleship.

Second order change for couples involves rewriting a new narrative for the relationship that includes a deeper level of connection and shifts the focus from the issues in the relationship to the process by which couples can deal with those issues. Learning how to interact in more tender, loving, responsive, and emotionally connected ways can promote second order change through the development of a more secure attachment.

An eclectic blend of therapeutic approaches makes this amazing workshop unique. It provides what many experts feel is the missing piece in sexual addiction recovery. Experiential work helps couples achieve deeper connection and move toward second order change. After the pain of disclosure and the vulnerability of emotional impact and emotional restitution, this workshop offers couples the opportunity to truly heal with one another and to achieve a level of attachment and intimacy that they never thought possible—intimacy beyond their wildest dreams.

“This workshop was amazing!” said one of our recent participants. “The structure of the week and the support and guidance of the facilitators provided an atmosphere that allowed my wife and me to change the trajectory of our marriage. It is not often that I am surprised by anything, but this week blew past my expectations. I am more hopeful for my marriage now than I have ever been.”

For more information on the Discovery to Recovery workshop series call 866-977-8770 or visit www.rioretreatcenter.com.

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Boundaries, Compliance, and the Fear of Saying No

Matthew 9:13 – “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, and not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

“May I tell you something embarrassing?” Robert asked me (Dr. Townsend). A new client, Robert was trying to understand why he had so much difficulty refusing his wife’s constant demands. He was going broke trying to keep up with the Joneses.

“I was the only boy in my family, the youngest of four children. There was a strange double standard in my house involving physical fighting.” Robert cleared his throat, struggling to continue. “My sisters were three to seven years older than me. Until I was in sixth grade, they were a lot bigger and stronger. They’d take advantage of their size and strength and wale on me until I was bruised. I mean, they really hurt me.

“The strangest part of it all was my parents’ attitude.

They’d tell us, ‘Robert is the boy. Boys don’t hit girls. It’s bad manners.’ Bad manners! I was getting triple-teamed, and fighting back was bad manners?” Robert stopped. His shame kept him from continuing, but he’d said enough. He had unearthed part of the reason for his conflicts with his wife.

When parents teach children that setting boundaries or saying no is bad, they are teaching them that others can do with them as they wish. They are sending their children defenseless into a world that contains much evil. Evil in the form of controlling, manipulative, and exploitative people. Evil in the form of temptations.

To feel safe in such an evil world, children need to have the power to say things like:

  • “No.”
  • “I disagree.”
  • “I will not.”
  • “I choose not to.”
  • “Stop that.”
  • “It hurts.”
  • “It’s wrong.”
  • “That’s bad.”
  • “I don’t like it when you touch me there.”

Blocking a child’s ability to say no handicaps that child for life. Adults with handicaps like Robert’s have this first boundary injury: they say yes to bad things.

This type of boundary conflict is called compliance. Compliant people have fuzzy and indistinct boundaries; they “melt” into the demands and needs of other people. They can’t stand alone, distinct from people who want something from them. Compliants, for example, pretend to like the same restaurants and movies their friends do “just to get along.” They minimize their differences with others so as not to rock the boat. Compliants are chameleons. After a while it’s hard to distinguish them from their environment.

The inability to say no to the bad is pervasive. Not only does it keep us from refusing evil in our lives, it often keeps us from recognizing evil. Many compliant people realize too late that they’re in a dangerous or abusive relationship. Their spiritual and emotional “radar” is broken; they have no ability to guard their hearts (see Proverbs 4:23).

This type of boundary problem paralyzes people’s “no” muscles. Whenever they need to protect themselves by saying no, the word catches in their throats. This happens for a number of different reasons:

  • Fear of hurting the other person’s feelings
  • Fear of abandonment and separateness
  • A wish to be totally dependent on another
  • Fear of someone else’s anger
  • Fear of punishment
  • Fear of being shamed
  • Fear of being seen as bad or selfish
  • Fear of being unspiritual
  • Fear of one’s overstrict, critical conscience

This last fear is actually experienced as guilt. People who have an overstrict, critical conscience will condemn themselves for things God himself doesn’t condemn them for. As Paul says, “Since their conscience is weak, it is defiled” (see 1 Corinthians 8:7). Afraid to confront their unbiblical and critical internal parent, they tighten appropriate boundaries.

When we give in to guilty feelings, we are complying with a harsh conscience. This fear of disobeying the harsh conscience translates into an inability to confront others—a saying yes to the bad—because it would cause more guilt.

Biblical compliance needs to be distinguished from this kind of compliance. Matthew 9:13 says that God desires “compassion, and not sacrifice.” In other words, God wants us to be compliant from the inside out (compassionate), not compliant on the outside and resentful on the inside (sacrificial). Compliants take on too many responsibilities and set too few boundaries, not by choice, but because they are afraid.

This devotional is drawn from Boundaries, by John Townsend and Henry Cloud.

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Men of the Bible – Samson

His name means: “Little Sun”

His work: To deliver Israel from the Philistines. His character: Samson’s erotic attachments to foreign women eventually led to his death. A man of mythic strength, he was inwardly weak, given to anger and unfaithful to his Nazirite vows. His prayers as well as his actions against the Philistines seem to have been motivated by the desire for personal vengeance. His sorrow: To have been blinded and imprisoned by his lifelong enemies. His triumph: To have killed more Philistines by his death than he had while living. Key Scriptures: Judges 13-16

A Look at the Man

One of the first Bible stories children hear is the story of Samson, the man who defeated his enemies with a superhuman feat of strength. But it is such an unsavory story that we find ourselves leaving out certain details, for example, Samson’s boasting, his visits to prostitutes, or his murderous rage. Even the man’s prayers were selfish, focused as they were on his own desire for revenge rather than on God’s glory.

Why would God, knowing the future, choose such a person to play such a role, even sending an angel to announce his birth? The question is not easily answered. But it is certainly true that Samson would have been a better man had he paid attention to the call God had placed on his life. Instead, he seems to have squandered the promise of his life by living it in a self-centered, self-directed way.

Ironically, the pattern of his life formed a vivid picture of Israel’s own unfaithfulness during a period when it seemed incapable of resisting the allurement of foreign gods. And so the people God had set apart and called his own, the nation he intended to build up and make strong, grew progressively weaker in the land he had promised.

Samson’s story reminds us of God’s faithfulness, of his ability to deliver his people regardless of the circumstances and despite their sins. It also reminds us of what can happen when we allow ourselves to become attached to things and people, however enticing, that might end in our own self-destruction.

Reflect On: Judges 16:23–31 Praise God: For his sovereignty. Offer Thanks: For God’s strength working within you. Confess: Any promises you have made to God and not kept. Ask God: To make you a person who is strong on the inside.

Today’s reading is a brief excerpt from Men of the Bible: A One-Year Devotional Study of Men in Scripture by Ann Spangler and Robert Wolgemuth (Zondervan). © 2010 by Ann Spangler.

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Boundaries, Self-Control, and the Desire for Revenge

Matthew 5:38–42: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with them two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”

Many of us have known people who, after years of being passive and compliant, suddenly stop acting like a victim. This reactive phase of boundary creation is a first step to get a person out of the powerless, victimized place in which they may have been forced by physical or sexual abuse, or by emotional blackmail or manipulation. We are happy that they are no longer victims. But when is enough reacting enough?

Reaction phases are not the same as maturity; they are necessary but not sufficient for the establishment of boundaries. Even though in finding our boundaries, we might find ourselves reacting. Eventually, we establish connections as respectful equals. This is the beginning of establishing proactive, instead of reactive, boundaries.

In Matthew 5:38–39, Jesus compared reactive persons to those who are freely and proactively setting their own boundaries. Through his teaching, we see that power is not something we demand or deserve; it is something we express. How does withholding a counterstrike after we’ve been harmed show our power? The ultimate expression of power is love. Proactive people are able to love their neighbors as themselves (see Mark 12:31) and respect others (see 1 Peter 2:17). They are able to die to self (see 1 Peter 2:24) and not repay evil for evil (see Romans 12:17). They have gotten past the reactive stance of the law — “eye for eye, and tooth for tooth” — and are able to love rather than react.

When we truly have the power of self-control, another person’s evil does not mean that we “have to” get revenge. We are free to do something more redemptive and more constructive. In that way, we have power to turn bad situations into good ones and not be dragged down into the mire of bad behavior.

This devotional is drawn from Beyond Boundaries, by Dr. John Townsend