CASTIMONIA

Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group

sexual addiction

By

Journal Through Recovery Entry 10: Disclosure Day 2

I woke up today knowing I have one chance. One chance to break out of deception, addiction, and further damaging everyone around me including me.  I have been bargaining with God all night.  Do I really have to tell everything?  If she knows I had or even attempted sexual intercourse with her former friend, she has told me that will be it and she will leave me.  I remember what I heard in my Castimonia meeting last night, the one where everyone knew I was in the midst of an intensive.  I heard and was reminded that my recovery is not dependent on how she responds.

I don’t want to be this way. Not anymore.  I am deep in shame.  I don’t really spend time in emotions and I am being forced to do so now.  I hurt all over from the depth of my depravity.  I didn’t know emotions could hurt so much physically.  I keep breaking out into fits of sobbing and crying, almost like sneezes or coughs.  I just choke up and start crying uncontrollably.  This has never happened to me before.

The polygraph is more anxiety inducing than I expected. Our therapist has left me in the room with the polygrapher.  He explained to me that we are going to go into detail and he is validating what I said in my disclosure and some further questions from my wife and therapist.  He says that his goal is to help me break free from my addiction and lying.  And I believe him.  He is a professional and is approaching this so thoroughly.  I don’t want to let him down. I don’t want to let my wife down, or my kids, or my God.  I have done that all my life.  How can any of them love what I am right now?

I have gone through everything in detail. I have given up the last vestiges of my deception.  The things I couldn’t give up.  I have.  I don’t want those secrets anymore.  I can’t keep them.  They feel like poison that has been extracted from my soul.  I am afraid of the results of what I just let go, but I know I can’t survive if I hold them in my consciousness.

He hooked me up to the polygraph, attached the sensors to my fingers and across my chest. He went through several questions to make sure I had disclosed everything and wasn’t being deceptive.  He gave me the opportunity to take it a third time if I was unsure if I was truthful or was withholding anything.  I politely declined and said lets go see my wife and our therapist.  I had to tell my wife the things I hadn’t told her in the disclosure but had told the polygraph operator before the test.  They were as damaging as I thought.  But she didn’t walk away.  I passed.  Yippee. Not really.  This isn’t a celebration.

We are in the hotel. Its the end of day 2.  I passed the polygraph but have I damaged her beyond repair?  Is our marriage over?

She wants to read me another letter. I am not sure I am ready for a second “I Hate You” letter.  It isn’t that.  It’s a love letter.  She just thanked me for letting go of my sin, my lies and for caring for her enough to pay for the intensive and to tell the truth even though she knew I didn’t want to.  God, how can you work in the darkest places?  Thank you.

By

Anatomy of an Affair- Part One – Origins

Originally posted at: http://applyingmybeliefs.wordpress.com/2014/11/26/anatomy-of-an-affair-part-one-origins/
by applyingmybeliefs

This is the first of a two part blog on this difficult subject.  In this part we look at the origins, or basic cause of affairs, in the second we look at the major factors that go into becoming vulnerable to an affair.

I have long said this about extra-marital affairs:

  • All affairs are emotional and some are physical.

What so many people don’t get about affairs is this:

  • Affairs always involve a search for intimacy.

To demonstrate the reality of this last statement I want to go through the anatomy of an affair; how one is constructed and how it feeds us psychologically.  Because once we understand this we can see how each of us may be unconsciously making contributions to the birth of an affair in ourselves or in our marital partner.

First let’s define intimacy:

Intimacy is the emotional state achieved through the action of being intimate.  Being intimate with another person is the continuous and never-ending action of truly revealing one’s innermost being to them.  Feelings of intimacy occur when (obviously) one person is being intimate with another.  These “feelings of intimacy” include closeness, euphoria, peace, joy, security, restfulness, pleasure, connectedness, support and fulfillment.  (From the book, Emotional Prisons – Prisons, chapter 15 – False Intimacy.)

At the core of every person the need for intimacy exists.  We know this because of the two truths that are contained in these scriptures:

Gen 1:26(a) – Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.  ESV

Gen 1:27 – So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  ESV

John 10:30 – I and the Father are one.  ESV

John 14:11 – Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me.  ESV

John 14:20 – In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.  ESV

I don’t have time or space in this blog to explain what is apparent from these and other related scriptures, so I’m just going to say what needs to be said.

  • God exists as three persons in one entity, which we call the trinity, and this is a mystery. (Notice God uses the word “us” in Gen 1:26)  However, what we can say is that they are in complete unity of being and in this they have total intimacy.  We are created in his image; part of that image is that we are designed to have total intimacy as well.
  • Before the fall we had total intimacy as humans. The man and the woman with each other; and also having intimacy with God.

So then, we were created with the need for intimacy within us.  This drives certain activities or behaviors.  It is the core reason for why God created the simple idea of marriage.  Marriage is the union of two physical non-identical adult humans who are incomplete by themselves, one male, and one female with the additional presence of God through His Spirit.  (Gen 2:24)  The need for intimacy that is built into us cannot be met with any other permutation, contrary to what our current culture suggests.  (Such as two males, two females, one male and several females, and one adult with one or more minors, for example.)

When we have complete intimacy we have connectedness because we share ourselves with our partner.  We share hopes and dreams, strengths and weaknesses, fears and anxieties; there is nothing held back or hidden.  This allows love to flourish between the two human partners, but also allows God to pour His love into the situation.

When we have less than complete intimacy we hide things, we are less than honest about our feelings and we don’t share everything.  This inhibits the freedom to be ourselves in the giving and receiving of love, even from God.  And this, of course is the natural human condition that exists and has existed since the fall.

In their book “The Top Ten Intimacy Needs”, David and Teresa Ferguson spell out 10 emotional components of intimacy that help us to understand a little of what might go wrong in a marriage where an affair takes place.  These are:

  • Acceptance, Affection, Appreciation, Approval, Attention, Comfort (Empathy), Encouragement, Respect, Security and Support.

So then, as we are all hard wired for intimacy, we all have these 10 intimacy needs every day.  I also think it is reasonable to assume that as each of us is unique, our relative levels of the 10 needs will also be unique.  For example some of us may need lots of affection and little support.  There are many permutations of these 10 intimacy needs.

Not only do we have our own unique structure of the 10 intimacy needs, but we all also have a unique structure of our ability to meet those needs in a spouse.  For example I might be fully able to provide comfort to my spouse, but be totally unable to provide affection.

I hope your mind by now is going to the logical place of realization that in every marriage we have a mismatch of needs and ability to meet them.  Some marriages have great big gaps, other small gaps.  In every case though God is there, for those that want Him, to step in and fill in those gaps.

Some of us have been to conferences or heard counselors and preachers speak of allowing God to be your spouse, meaning that God can be a substitute intimacy need provider in emotional areas where the actual spouse may be deficient.  Well, that is not exactly what happens, because God does not take a spouse’s place, He simply helps us by meeting our intimacy needs.  It is when we don’t go to Him that we seek other places to get our legitimate intimacy needs met in illegitimate ways.  Some seek emotional relief with drugs, some with perfectionism, some with gambling and as we are discussing in this blog, some through affairs.

We have come to the place when we can say that at the core of every affair is one or more unmet intimacy needs.  Here are some examples of this:

  • An empathetic man has a high need for encouragement and somewhere inside believes his wife, others and God have not been meeting this need. Along comes a woman who is a born encourager, but need some comfort in her life, and they begin a friendship which later develops into an affair.
  • A woman is neglected by her husband and is not given any affection. Instead of turning to her friends and/or God she turns to the very affectionate and charming man in the office.  It soon becomes a close emotional relationship.

Hopefully, we can all agree that affairs are sourced from inside us through a desire to have that intimacy we were designed to have.  The design is perfect but our fallen nature leads us to seek to achieve intimacy in immoral ways.  We often blame our spouse, blame God or blame the devil when we slip into an affair.  The real truth is that we are all vulnerable because none of us get all our intimacy needs met through our spouse, and we don’t believe God will help us with them, so we choose to commit adultery.  Jesus confirmed this when He spoke these words:

Matt 5:28 – I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  ESV

What Jesus called “lustful intent” here is just another way of saying “wanting and working to get my intimacy needs met.”  So even if we succumb to an intimate emotional connectedness with a person who is not our spouse, we are sinning just as much as if we had a physical connectedness.  This is why all affairs are emotional and some are physical; the physical part does not have to happen for it to be an affair – it is the intimacy connection that counts.

For those that don’t believe this just ask your spouse if you are allowed to have an intimate relationship with a person of the opposite sex as long as there are no physical aspects to it.

In part two of this blog we’ll look at some of the major factors that make us vulnerable to affairs.

 

By

Castimonia Purity Podcast Episode 25: How Does God Talk To Us Today?

Sex Addiction can be a dark place. Pornography and lust can trap us in a dark pit.  Hearing God or our Hgher Power can be difficult, but there are still ways.

Andy and Doug discuss ways that God speaks to us today as well as practices to hear His voice more clearly.

The sheep will know the voice of the shepherd, and we are called to know the voice of Jesus.

Learn ways to not have your hearing clouded with addiction, but open your mind and heart to the care and will of our creator.

For more information on the podcast or to get help please email us at puritypodcast@castimonia.org.

By

Phone Etiquette

I think some of us may need one of these….

By

Sin – Effect, Affect, and Infect

Originally posted at: http://applyingmybeliefs.wordpress.com/2014/11/15/sin-effect-affect-and-infect/
by applyingmybeliefs

This is about what other people’s sin does to us; it is about why we need to pay attention to it, not stick our head in the sand about like a human ostrich.  The sin of others influences our personal world at three different levels; the effect level, the affect level and infect level.

God defines sin here:

1 John 3:4 – Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.  ESV

The word “sin” in scripture is also translated/defined from the original Hebrew or Greek by these English words:

  • A missing, perversity, transgression, evil, miss the mark, transgression with a sense of violence, injustice and unrighteousness.

Sin in our culture is thought of in a myriad of ways, but here we’ll stick to the biblical view; sin is lawlessness, that is, sin is a breaking of God’s law, it is disobedience in action, and that includes our thought/feeling/choosing processes.  (Yes, we can sin in our thoughts, in our feelings about something or someone and in our choices, even if we don’t get to act on them.)

When other people sin against us, directly or indirectly, there is an unholy influence on us.  I have suggested this occurs at three levels which I have called effect, affect and infect.  As we’ll see, some sins influence us in all three areas.

Sin that has an “effect” on us is sin that causes something to change in our circumstances.  For example, if a person runs a red light and hits our car, our circumstances will change.  Or if local politicians pass a law that takes away our personal property against our will for the benefit of someone else, our circumstances will change, it has had an “effect” on our life.  In this last example we should note that the “effect” of this sin on the other person is to also change their circumstances, but presumably to their benefit.

A basic effect sin is usually unavoidable and totally out of our control.  However, there is an aspect of effect sin that we must watch out for.  If we knowingly go into a situation where we can be sinned against, we would have at least a partial responsibility.  For example if we are young woman who goes to a party where there are young men drinking to excess, the risk of sexual assault is high.  They are still the sinners, but the young woman may have unwittingly chosen to put herself at risk.

We live in a fallen world so we all experience “effect” sins and must do our best to deal with the changed circumstance as possible.

The next category of sin is the “affect” sin.  This is the type of sin that gets to us internally and changes our mood state.  Some of the sins committed against us can do that permanently.  Going back to our example above of the young woman this is very likely.  When a young woman is sexually assaulted not only does it change her circumstances but it changes her emotional state.  Most of us would agree that such an event could increase fear, deepen or add depression and raise anxiety in her.

So an “affect” sin will both change external circumstance and internal soul state of someone who encounters it.  Our damaged internal state may be minor and we’ll work through it with God ourselves.  Or, it could be major, as with our victim of sexual assault, and require intervention and help from a support system and most likely a trained therapist.

The last and worst category of sin against us is “infect” sin.  Infect sin is sin that will change our personhood, it will change who we are, it will move us away from being the person that God designed us to be.  A great example of “infect” sin is sexual abuse.  Sexual abuse changes a person’s circumstances, it changes their mood state, but its worst influence is on who a person is.  So often a person who has been sexually abused then “acts out” in some way later on in life.  We may see them become sexually active, or they may drink and drug or isolate.  This is because their inner person, their very being, has been infected with sin.

Healing from infect sin requires supernatural intervention from God, a miracle.  I’m not talking about a sudden change in the inner person of an infected individual; I’m talking about the healing that comes from confession and prayer as described in scripture here:

Jas 5:16 – Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.  ESV

A person with an infection given to them through someone else’s sin will most likely need to work with a counselor who specializes in the area of infection and a godly team of advisors for prayer and support in their healing work.

In case you don’t believe in infectious sin, here is a verse from scripture that speaks of what happens when infectious sin takes over:

Gen 6:5-6 – The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.  And the Lord was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart.  ESV

Every person on the earth, and some estimates say there may have been as many as 6 billion people in existence at that time, was infected except Noah and his family.

We all know what happened after this.  Thanks be to God that He promised not to do that again, because I don’t know if any of us has not been infected in some way.

So there it is, other people’s sins effect, affect and infect us.  It is an unsafe life practice to ignore them.

As they say in recovery, take what you like and leave the rest.