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July 10, 2015 By Castimonia

Codependency: Getting Better

The leaders of Castimonia would like to present some topics on Codependency in men and how it affects our relationships and how the fear of abandonment and feelings of entitlement from our own codependency led us to medicate these by sexually acting out.  We do not condone codependent partners to leave one another, but to seek therapy and healing for themselves within the marriage or relationship in order to strengthen the couple and their relationship.  The next few topics will strictly deal with male codependency.

Treating Codependency is not something a doctor does to or for a ‘patient’. It is more like having diabetes. The patient has to learn how to take care of themselves every day for the rest of their lives. Recovery starts when a Codependent understands and has insight into their condition. It takes hold when they understand that they have never been victimized in their marriage. They arranged the right marriage for themselves in order to work on their unresolved childhood issues of not having enough power, not being heard, not being good enough, not being taken seriously, not getting enough attention, not being nurtured, etc. I always recommend that my new Codependent client read Melody Beattie’s classic book on the subject Codependent No More. Then I almost always strongly encourage them to join one of our Codependency Recovery groups. Group is like the gym. It is where a Codependent goes to lift weights and get stronger. I will talk more about group in a later chapter, but Group therapy rocks – it is inexpensive, weekly, powerful, fun, insight building and affirming. In my practice the wife is many times the Codependent person and she comes with her husband for couples sessions as well as attending the group sessions without him. In the couple work with a husband who is perhaps not in as much pain or in a place of having much enlightenment about his own issues the Codependent needs to come prepared to work hard at naming the issues that hurt her in the marriage. Actually bringing in a written list is a very good idea. It is a safe environment because the therapist won’t allow reactivity, control, manipulation, defensiveness, blaming, rage, massive denial or shaming to happen without it being named and quickly stopped. From an article by Mark Smith
http://www.familytreecounseling.com/fullarticle.php?aID=278

“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” – Rose Kennedy

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: addiction, Affairs, castimonia, christian, co-dependence, co-dependency, co-dependent, codependence, codependency, codependent, Emotions, gratification, healing, Intimacy, Jesus Christ, lust, masturbation, porn, pornography, pornstars, prostitutes, purity, recovery, Sex, sex addict, sex addiction, sexual, sexual addiction, sexual purity, trauma

July 7, 2015 By Castimonia

How Your Church Can Handle Sexual Sin the Right Way

http://porntopurity.com/blog/2013/02/24/a-church-that-handled-sexual-sin-the-right-way/

Posted: 24 Feb 2013 03:00 AM PST

It is a rare thing for a church to handle sexual sin the right way.  Some of you may have experienced the heavy hand of a church or pastor.  Some may have seen a leader or pastor fall to sexual sin.
I know of some churches that have done it the right way.   They are Hall of Fame churches in my opinion!  Here are some things I have observed about churches that do it right:
1.  They are upfront with the congregation – Churches that do it right do not try to cover up or hide the sin.  They do not dismiss the minister or person quietly.  They realize that truth is better than cover up, even if it’s messy.
2.  They do not share the details – Church members do not generally need to hear names, dates, and specific sexual details.  Those should be shared with the right people (like counselors, and church elders).
3.  They remind the church that we are all sinners – Sexual sin is no worse before God than other sins.  It has different levels of consequences, yes.  But it is breaking God’s standards for godly living.  We all break God’s rules.  We all have junk and need to deal with our junk.  Some of us are in bondage to different things.
4.  They take sin seriously – Churches that do it right rebuke wickedness.  They call the person to repentance.  They do not gloss over it or try to pretend its not serious.  Our sin steps on the holiness of God and defiles us and His name.
5.  They extend love, grace and forgiveness – This has to be the other side.  Deal with sin seriously with one hand.  Extend grace with the other.  Churches that are doing it right surround the person, get in the mud with him, and help rescue him back to health.
Extending forgiveness is not the same thing as restoration or restored trust.  Good churches understand that.  They can forgive trespasses, but consequences will still happen.
6.  They invite others to prayer – A sexual problem in a church affects the whole of the church.  Good churches call for prayer, not just for the individual or couple, but for themselves.  Many others may be in bondage too.  Trust has been broken, hypocrisy exposed, and wounds have happened.  The church body needs healing when a member is caught in bondage to sexual sin.
7.  They provide resources – So many churches fail here.  Good churches have resources, counselors, or programs to help, or they go out and help the sexual struggler find them.
8.  They develop a plan for restoration and oversight – Another major failure of many churches.  Good churches deal with sin, then continue to work with the person or couple.
 
 
I’M CURIOUS WHAT YOU THINK…
There are many, many people in our churches holding on to sexual sin.  Consider your own church.
Q:  Is your church a safe place for people to share?
Q:  Do you as a church leader share your own struggles and invite others?
Q:  What are you doing to resource those who are struggling with sexual sin?
Q:  What are you doing in your own life in the are of sexual sin?

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: addiction, Affairs, castimonia, christian, church, churches, escorts, gratification, healing, Intimacy, Jesus Christ, lust, masturbation, pastors, porn, pornography, pornstars, prostitutes, purity, recovery, Sex, sex addict, sex addiction, sexual, sexual addiction, sexual purity

July 3, 2015 By Castimonia

God Speaks to Marsha Through a Facebook Typo

http://porntopurity.com/blog/2014/01/22/2008-was-history/

Posted: 22 Jan 2014 03:00 AM PST

 This blog was originally posted on April 15, 2009.  Marsha thought it would be encouraging to our readers to repost.  The original name for this blog was “2008 was His)tory”

My world fell apart in August 2007 when my husband’s pornography addiction was discovered , forcing us to step out of ministry.  That year included selling our home, saying goodbye to dear friends, moving to a new state and finding new jobs outside of ministry.

THE HARDEST YEAR OF OUR MARRIAGE As devastating as all that was, it was nothing compared to the pain I experienced in 2008.  I’ve often thought that it was interesting that the year “it all hit the fan” wasn’t the most difficult year of our journey.  It was the following year that shook me to my core.  When I think back though, it’s not really that surprising.  When our world first began to crumble, we were in in an extended state of shock.  Our life had become a train wreck, but  we were numb from the pain. That “deer in the headlights” phase didn’t begin to wear off until we settled into our new life in 2008.

And then I started to feel.  I started to grieve.  Jeff and I began the very difficult process of identifying the junk in our marriage that was preventing us from enjoying the intimacy and wholeness that God had intended.  That experience was like picking through trash looking for what stinks most.  It was awful.  Even worse, we would begin to make some progress and then take a step backwards.  Like most marriages in recovery, it was constantly two steps forward, one step back.

Guided by the skilled hands of our Christian counselors, we sought the Lord’s healing.   But healing, I’ve learned, can be painful.  I often felt like I was on the surgeon’s table without painkiller as the Great Physician uncovered destructive lies firmly rooted in my life.  There were days when I would say, “Enough. I can’t take it anymore.  Ignorance was bliss.  I’m done.  This pain is too much.”

Patiently, the Lord would wait on me to lie back down on the table, to get back up on the potter’s wheel, so he could finish this mighty work of mending, restoring and rebuilding.

A FACEBOOK REVELATION At then end of 2008, I was typing my status update on Facebook when I accidentally inserted a hyphen which resulted in an amazing discovery.  I wrote, “Marsha is so glad 2008 is his(tory. ” When I read it, it took my breath away – 2008 was His Story.

The Lord had not abandoned me in 2008.  In fact, I had never experience d his presence more clearly.  2008 was His Story in my life.  A story of amazing grace, tender mercy, deep healing and soul restoration.  I had spent the entire year asking him to take away the pain. Instead, he worked in and through and with the pain.  If I had missed that experience, I wouldn’t know him the way I know him now.

If I had to do it all over again, I would.  Every single agonizing step. Why? The truth I know…the healing I’ve experienced…the joy that has come on the other side far outweighs the agony of my darkest days.   My heart sings with David’s “Weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalms 30:5)

Yes it does!

 

– fisherEmail:  marsha@puritycoaching.com 

She offers help to spouses of sexual strugglers through phone coaching and online spouses’ support groups.

Check out our site:  www.puritycoaching.com

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

July 1, 2015 By Castimonia

Baby Steps – VIDEO

I love movies that deal with mental health in a comedic way.  When I entered recovery, I used to get offended by this type of comedy as making fun of people like me, but now, thanks to significant healing, I can watch them and laugh along with others and understand exactly what is going on.  One of the items I like about this movie is the term the “Baby Steps” that is used by Richard Dreyfuss’ character, Dr. Leo Marvin.  This is the same term I use with the men who attend Castimonia regarding any progress that is made in a positive direction no matter how small.  Sometimes we need to take “Baby Steps” to move forward in our recovery, not huge leaps.  Even a small step in the right direction is progress.   Another way we use the term “Baby Steps” is to learn to live in the present, one minute, one hour, one day at a time and take small baby steps towards our goal of a full day of sobriety.

The plot of this movie has been pasted below courtesy of Google:

Before going on vacation, self-involved psychiatrist Dr. Leo Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss) has the misfortune of taking on a new patient: Bob Wiley (Bill Murray). An exemplar of neediness and a compendium of phobias, Bob follows Marvin to his family’s country house. Dr. Marvin tries to get him to leave; the trouble is, everyone love Bob. As his oblivious patient makes himself at home, Dr. Marvin loses his professional composure and, before long, may be ready for the loony bin himself.

What I saw in this movie was the comedic, yet truthful, evidence of living life one small “Baby Step” at a time, learning not to get overwhelmed by everything that occurs in our life all at once, but looking at these events in small manageable parts.

I hope you enjoy watching this video as much as I enjoyed creating it.  As always, take what you like and leave the rest.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This video may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for purposes such as criticism, comment, teaching, & education, etc. This constitutes a ’fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED! All trademarks and copyrights remain the property of their owners.

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts, Videos Tagged With: addiction, Affairs, alcoholic, castimonia, Character Defects, christian, co-dependency, Emotions, escorts, gratification, healing, Intimacy, Jesus Christ, lust, masturbation, porn, pornography, pornstars, prostitutes, purity, recovery, Sex, sex addict, sex addiction, sexual, sexual addiction, sexual impurity, sexual purity, spouses, strippers, trauma

June 30, 2015 By Castimonia

Tanja’s Story: “For You, Who Buy Sex”

http://purposefullyscarred.com/2014/01/17/tanjas-story-for-you-who-buy-sex/

Dear Sex Customer,

If you think that I ever felt attracted to you, you are terribly mistaken. I have never had any desire to go to work, not once. The only thing on my mind was to make money, and fast. Do not confuse that with easy money, it was never easy. Fast, yes. Because I quickly learned the many tricks to get you to come as quickly as possible, so I could get you off of me, or from under me, or from behind me.

And no, you never turned me on during the act. I was a great actress. For years I have had the opportunity to practice for free. Actually, it falls under the concept of multitasking. Because while you lay there, my thoughts were always elsewhere. Somewhere where I was not confronted with you sucking out my self respect, without spending as much as ten seconds on the reality of the situation, or to look me in the eye.

If you thought you were doing me a favour by paying me for thirty minutes or an hour, you were wrong. I would rather have had you in and out as fast as possible. When you thought yourself to my holy saviour, asking what a pretty girl like me was doing in a place like that, you lost your halo when you proceeded to ask me to lie down on my back, and then put all your efforts into feeling my body as much as possible with your hands. Actually, I would have preferred if you had gotten down on your back and had let me do my job.

When you thought you could boost your masculinity by getting me to climax, you need to know that I faked it. I could have won a gold medal in faking it. I faked it so much, that the receptionist would nearly fall off of her chair laughing. What did you expect? You were perhaps number three, or number five, or eight that day. Did you really think I was able to get turned on mentally or physically by having sex with men I did not choose myself? Not ever. My genitals were burning. From lubricant and condoms. And I was tired. So tired, that often I had to be careful not to close my eyes for fear of falling asleep while my moaning continued on autopilot.

If you thought you paid for loyalty or small talk, you need to think again. I had zero interest in your excuses. I did not care that your wife had SPD, and that you just could not go without sex. Or when you offered any other pathetic excuse for coming to buy sex with me. When you thought I understood you and had sympathy for you, it was all a lie. I had nothing but contempt for you, and at the same time you destroyed something inside of me. You sowed the seeds of doubt in me. Doubt as to whether all men were just as cynical and unfaithful as you were.

When you praised my appearance, my body, or my sexual abilities, you could just as well have vomited on me. You did not see the person behind the mask. You only saw that which confirmed your illusion of a raunchy woman with an unstoppable sex drive. In fact, you never said what you thought I wanted to hear. Instead, you said what you yourself needed to hear. You said that, which was needed to preserve your illusion, and which prevented you from thinking about how I had ended up where I was at twenty years of age. Basically you did not care at all. Because you had one goal only, and that was to show off your power by paying me to use my body as it pleased you.

When a drop of blood appeared on the condom, it was not because my period had just come. It was because my body was a machine, one that could not be interrupted by a monthly cycle, so I inserted a sponge into my vagina, when I menstruated. To be able to continue on the sheets. And no, I did not go home after you had finished. I continued working, telling the next customer exactly the same story that you had heard. You were all so consumed with your own lust that a little menstrual blood did not stop you.

When you came with objects, lingerie, costumes or toys, and wanted erotic role-play, my inner machine took over. I was disgusted with you and your sometimes quite sick fantasies. The same goes for the times when you smiled and said that I looked like a seventeen-year-old girl. It did not help that you yourself were fifty, sixty, seventy, or older.

When you regularly violated my boundaries by either kissing me, or inserting our fingers into me, or taking off your condom, you did it knowing perfectly well that it was against the rules. You were testing my ability to say no. And you enjoyed it when I did not object clearly enough, or when I too often would simply ignore it. And then you used it in a perverted way to show how much power you had and that you could cross my boundaries. When I finally told you off, and made it clear that I would not have you as a customer again if you could not respect the rules, you insulted me and my role as prostitute. You were condescending, threatening and rude.

When you buy sex, it says a lot about you, your humanity, and your sexuality. To me, it is a sign of your weakness, even though you confuse it with a sick sort of power and status. You think you have a right. I mean, the prostitutes are out there anyway, right? But they are only prostitutes because men like you stand in the way of healthy and respectful relationship between men and women. Prostitutes only exist because men like you feel you have the right to satisfy your sexual urges using the orifices of other people’s bodies. Prostitutes exist because you and your peers feel that your sexuality requires access to sex whenever it suits you. Prostitutes exist because you are a misogynist, and because you are more concerned with your own sexual needs than the relationships, in which your sexuality could actually flourish.

When you buy sex, it reveals that you have not found the core within your own sexuality. I feel sorry for you, I really do. That you are so mediocre that you think that sex is all about ejaculating into a stranger’s vagina. And if one is not handy, it is never further away than down the street, where you can pay an unknown woman to be able to empty yourself into a rubber while inside of her. What a petty and frustrated man you must be. A man unable to create profound and intimate relationships, in which the connection runs deeper than just your ejaculation. A man, who expresses his feelings through his climaxes, who does not have the ability to verbalise them, but prefers to channel them through his genitals to get rid himself of them. What a weak masculinity. A truly masculine man would never degrade himself by paying for sex.
As far as your humanity goes, I believe in the good in people, also in you. I know that deep down you have a conscience. That you have quietly wondered whether what you did was ethically and morally justifiable. I also know that you defend your actions and likely think that you treated me well, were kind, never mean or did not violate my boundaries. But you know what? That is called evading your responsibility. You are not confronting reality. You delude yourself in thinking that the people, you buy, are not bought. Not forced into prostitution. Maybe you even think that you did me a favour and gave me a break by talking about the weather, or giving me a little massage before you penetrated me. It did me no favours. All it did was confirm to me that I was not worth more. That I was a machine, whose primary function was to let others exploit my sexuality.
I have many experiences from prostitution. They enable me to write this letter to you. But it is a letter, which I would much rather not have written. These are experiences I wish I could have avoided. You of course you thought of yourself as one of the nice customers. But there are no nice customers. Just those who confirm the women’s negative view of themselves. Take my hand and see me for the person I am on the inside. Let us go together to make a difference in the future. Let us raise our voices to our friends, our girlfriends, our business associates, our bosses, our politicians, and last but not least, to the prostituted. Let us raise our voices together and say that sex is private. Let us shout that sex is not a product on a shelf, but that it can cost dearly if it is treated as one. Let us scream to the world that money and sex do no belong together, and that sex belong to all together different and mutually reciprocal relationships. Because in this case, you will re-concur my respect and I will see you as the person you are, and not just as a buyer of sex, seduced by an illusion.
Yours truly, Tanja Rahm

Filed Under: Sexual Purity Posts Tagged With: addiction, Affairs, call girls, castimonia, christian, escorts, gratification, healing, human trafficking, Intimacy, Jesus Christ, lust, masturbation, porn, pornography, pornstars, prostitutes, ptsd, purity, recovery, Sex, sex addict, sex addiction, sexual, sexual addiction, sexual purity, STD, strippers, trafficking, trauma

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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.

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