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Isn’t It Ironic?

Isn’t It Ironic?

The dilemmas of codependent men aren’t talked about. Unlike women, men don’t discuss their relationship problems with friends and family. Instead, they internalize their pain. Many are in denial, suffer in silence, or become numb to their needs and feelings. They shun attention and try to do the right thing and be good sons, husbands, and fathers, focusing instead on making a living and meeting the needs of their wives and children. These codependent men sacrifice themselves and believe that their needs, including the need for time away from their wives, are selfish. Societal and cultural values have shamed men as weak for expressing feelings or needs, which reinforces codependent traits of control, suppression of feelings, and denial of needs. Often they turn to addiction in order to cope. Darlene Lancer, M.A., MFT, J.D.

Isn’t it ironic? We ignore the ones that adore us, adore the ones that ignore us, love the ones who hurt us and hurt the ones that love us. Unknown

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Substitute For True Feelings

Substitute For True Feelings

One of the dangerous aspects of codependency is the fact that codependents will often substitute physical love for actual love — in other words, accepting sex as a substitute for true feelings. This can lead to undesirable sexual circumstances, when the desire for sex overcomes a person’s “judgment”, and all of the harmful effects of promiscuous sex begin to appear: STDs, unplanned pregnancy, feelings of rejection, etc. These ‘symptoms’ of codependency can push the codependent even further into their mental instability. Besides impact on their own lives, codependent people can negatively affect those around them, attempting to ‘control’ various aspects of their friends and loved one’s lives. A common belief among most people unaware of their codependence is that “other people are incapable of taking care of themselves”. This is a simple case of projection, whereby the codependents feelings about themselves are reflected onto their opinion of other people, perhaps so that they feel more normal. This feeling, however, leads to some truly harmful behavior, such as bullying people into thinking the way a codependent thinks they “should” feel. A codependent may constantly offer advice, even when it is unwanted, or give money and gifts to friends to win their approval. The fact is that the codependent feels he or she has to be “needed” in order to have a healthy relationship with another person. Codependency is a serious issue, affecting the mental health and well-being of everyone around codependent people, not just the individual themselves. By Will Roby from http://www.askdeb.com/love/codependent/

“There is no such thing as a good influence. Because to influence a person is to give him one’s own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such thing as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else’s music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.” – Oscar Wilde

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Feeling Trapped and Fearing Abandonment

Feeling Trapped and Fearing Abandonment
Posted by James Browning on October 23, 2012

If you think your wife is codependent, there’s a good chance you are, too. Often codependent men are attracted to women who are needy, demanding, jealous, or critical. Men become dependent on their wives’ approval, and then feel trapped by their manipulation, demands, or expectations. They’re unable to set boundaries and fear emotional retaliation and/or rejection, including withholding of sex. Their wives may be very emotional, providing a sense of aliveness to the relationship and compensating for the numbness many codependent men feel inside. In the beginning, a man can feel powerful, helping a needy girlfriend or wife and giving her attention or gifts. He conforms to her expectations, while being assured that she won’t abandon him, but eventually discovers that it’s never enough to satisfy her. . Fear of rejection and abandonment are powerful motivators for codependency, usually because of early emotional abandonment by a parent. Consequently, the men never leave – physically – but withdraw to the safety of a self-made emotional prison. After a while, they feel trapped, controlled, and resentful. They may use drugs or addictive behavior to manage anxiety and depression, while some look outside the marriage for validation. However, it’s not their wives that are the cause of their problem, it’s their codependency. Darlene Lancer, M.A., MFT, J.D.

“More people would learn from their mistakes if they weren’t so busy denying them.” –   Harold J. Smith

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Multiple Pornstars Speak Out About The Reality of The Pornography Industry!

The next few posts on Castimonia.org will focus on former female pornstars that have come forward to burst the fantasy bubble and expose the harsh reality of the pornography industry.  I urge everyone who reads this NOT to go searching on the internet for more information on these women as it would most likely bring up old ponographic content and constitute acting out.  Be satisfied about what you read here and praise God for the courage these women have to speak the TRUTH about the porn industry.  A special thank you to Shelley Lubben for her hard work with the Pink Cross Foundation. 

L**** L*******

L**** L******* has much to say about her pornographer:

“When in response to his suggestions I let him know I would not become involved in prostitution in any way and told him I intended to leave, [T******] beat me up physically and the constant mental abuse began. I literally became a prisoner, I was not allowed out of his sight, not even to use the bathroom, where he watched me through a hole in… the door. He slept on top of me at night, he listened to my telephone calls with a .45 automatic eight shot pointed at me. I was beaten physically and suffered mental abuse each and every day thereafter. He undermined my ties with other people and forced me to marry him on advice from his lawyer.”

“My initiation into prostitution was a gang rape by five men, arranged by Mr. T******. It was the turning point in my life. He threatened to shoot me with the pistol if I didn’t go through with it. I had never experienced anal sex before and it ripped me apart. They treated me like [triggering language removed] I have never been so frightened and disgraced and humiliated in my life. I felt like garbage. I engaged in sex acts for pornography against my will to avoid being killed.The lives of my family were threatened.”

J**** J******

“Most girls get their first experience in gonzo films – in which they’re taken to  a crappy studio apartment in Mission Hills and penetrated in every hole possible  by some abusive a****** who thinks her name is Bitch. And these girls, some of  whom have the potential to become major stars in the industry, go home afterward  and pledge never to do it again because it was such a terrible experience.”

A**** C*******

“I have been a performer now for 14 years in the adult film industry in many countries, states . . . all over the place. I have worked for most of these companies, and I was around for the once-a-month HIV-positive outbreak in ’98. Yes, I was, and I got to see those performers that nobody knows about—that nobody claims that got HIV, that are not a part of the statistics—walk out the door as non-performers, not to be counted.”

“Yeah, there are a lot of cover-ups going on. There is a lot of tragedy. There are a lot of horrible things.”

S******** S****

“I was sexually abused the first time by my step grandfather on my dad’s side and the second time by my actual stepdad so my sexuality was messed up from the beginning. I created another personality that was in complete control and didn’t have those things happen and didn’t have to deal with the pain. The industry is not a real accomplishment.  It’s just a false sense of accomplishment.  It covers everything up for what it is.”

B*********

“I like to hide — hide everything, you know?… And I’m not happy… I don’t like myself at all… My whole entire body feels it when I’m doing it and… I feel so — so gross.”

A*** A*******

“After a year or so of that so-called “glamorous” life, I sadly discovered that drugs and drinking were a part of the lifestyle. I began to drink and party out of control! Cocaine, alcohol and ecstasy were my favorites. Before long, I turned into a person I did not want to be. After doing so many hardcore scenes I couldn’t do it anymore. I just remember being in horrible situations and experiencing extreme depression and being alone and sad.” – A*** A*******

A****** B*****

“I honestly felt that if I had to have another strange man in my face, his hands (God knows where they’ve been) all over me, him calling me his “baby”, and having to exude some sort of forged passion for the world to see, I probably would’ve exploded. And what would’ve been stuck to the walls would’ve probably been nothing. Just pieces of skin, bone, the brain of a robot, and what would have been left of a once huge and warm heart.”

T**** T****

“As for myself, I ended up paying the price from working in the porn industry. In 2006, not even 9 months in, I caught a moderate form of dysplasia of the cervix(which is a form of HPV, a sexually transmitted disease) and later that day, I also found out I was pregnant. I had only 1 choice which was to abort the baby during my first month. It was extremely painful emotionally and physically. When it was all over, I cried my eyes out.”- T**** T****

L*** R***

“We should think about these issues right now, to change stuff around to make this a safer f**kin’ business. It isn’t a safe business, and I thought it was, and I would have not did that scene with no condom with Darren James if it would have crossed my mind that those tests weren’t good and that I couldn’t trust him or the people he’s been with. I thought porn people were the cleanest people in the world, is what I thought.” – L*** R***, diagnosed with HIV in April, 2004 along with four other porn stars.

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The Story of Former Porn Star Shelley Lubben

The next few posts on Castimonia.org will focus on former female pornstars that have come forward to burst the fantasy bubble and expose the harsh reality of the pornography industry.  I urge everyone who reads this NOT to go searching on the internet for more information on these women as it would most likely bring up old ponographic content and constitute acting out.  Be satisfied about what you read here and praise God for delivering these women from the bondage of the pornography industry. 

The Story of Former Porn Star Shelley Lubben
by shelleylubben| Sun, 09/18/2011 – 1:09pm

The Story of Former Porn Star Shelley Lubben
by Judith Reisman

I first watched Shelley Lubben on YouTube in early 2009. An “ex-porn star,” she has created the Pink Cross (www.thepinkcross.org) as a public charity to reach out to “adult industry workers, offering emotional, financial and transitional support.” In the YouTube segment, filmed before a church audience, Shelley describes her past life and her current work. A tall, stately woman, she treads the boards, moving her hands to emphasize her words, looking directly and earnestly at her listeners.

As a veteran student of pornography and prostitution, I did not expect to learn anything new from watching Shelley Lubben’s public testimony. I was wrong. Shelley’s description of the sexual violence and degradation of modern pornography was a shock, even to me. It made me think that it made perfect sense to hear that she had left her economically rewarding “star” roles to return to a safer life doing “straight” prostitution. The “glamour” of porn is only a mask:

You have to do what they want on the sets. . . . Girls . . . feel like stars. They get attention. . . . They don’t realize the degradation. . . . Raised on porn, [they] don’t even ask if it’s wrong. . . . They get into drugs to numb themselves. They get their [bodies] ripped. . . . They get HPV and herpes, and they turn themselves off emotionally and die.

Shelley says such women totally lose their identity and live on drugs and alcohol. They cannot plan, save their money, or eat properly. The survivors commonly have only sexual diseases and “fake boobs” to show for their lives in porn. She used to be one of them.

The Back Story

Shelley, born in 1968, notes that she attended “a good church” with her family and that, “as a little girl, I knew and loved Jesus very much.” Unfortunately, her stable if unaffectionate family moved to another location and stopped going to church. Television became the basis of their family life. A creative child, Shelley put on her own plays at her elementary school, with the approval of her amazed first-grade teacher.

Then, at age nine, a classmate and the girl’s teenage brother sexually molested Shelley. With no one to turn to or redress her abuse, Shelley defused her anxiety via autoeroticism and furtive sexual forays with both girls and boys. “It felt good to be wanted by someone and to receive attention, but at the same time I felt dirty. I didn’t recognize until much later that my entire childhood had been sexually hijacked.”

She carried shame and self-blame into her teen years. “It must be something evil in me,” she thought. She “started having sex at age 16” and became a “rebellious resentful teenager who acted out to get attention.” Hoping to keep peace in the home, her parents let Shelley dress up as a Playboy bunny and date strange boys, who led her into drug and alcohol abuse. The family tried counseling to no avail. Unable to understand what to do, her parents “told me to leave home at age 18.”

She landed in the San Fernando valley with no food and no money. “A ‘nice’ man saw I was upset and told me how sorry he was.” Still shocked and angry about being kicked out the house, so “that I didn’t care any more . . . I sold myself for $35.”

Thus Shelley entered the “glamorous” life of prostitution, but the money, jewelry, and gifts soon included bizarre sex with strangers who stalked her, slashed her tires, and threatened to kill her if she demurred from performing certain sex acts. One man tried to kill her with his truck, and she often had to lie her way out of frightening situations. During her eight years as a prostitute and exotic dancer, she had two miscarriages and one birth. Little Tiffany grew up living “with a lewd wild woman.”

Now a single mom, “Jesus kept tugging at my heart,” Shelley writes, “but I ignored him. I figured, God wasn’t taking care of me, so I had to do whatever I could to survive.”

Most of her prostitution money went for drugs and alcohol to blot out the trauma of her life. To avoid the rapes and arrests for prostitution, she turned to pornography because “it seemed safer and more legal.” However, even prostitution did not involve the brutal kinds of rape and degradation that she endured while “starring” in pornography. Soon she was required to do very hardcore scenes.

[O]nly more drugs and alcohol could get me through them. . . . I sold what was left of my heart, mind and femininity to the porn industry and the woman and person in me died completely on the porn set.” After becoming infected with herpes, I quietly left the porn industry but went back to prostitution to survive.

The Rescue

In 1994 Shelley met her husband Garrett at a bar. At first she refused his requests for a date, but when she finally accepted and the two went out, they became instant friends. Garret was raised in a Christian home and had attended a Christian school. He wanted to rescue Shelley. She says, “He was a friend to a prostitute, just like Jesus. We knew God was working in our lives, so we turned back to Jesus and got married on February 14, 1995.”

It was a rough marriage, but Shelley says God sent them to a church called Champions Centre in Tacoma, Washington, where they learned “to live a champion life.”

With God, I had true forgiveness from all my sins and a chance to grow into a whole new person without being perfect first. That was a relief! I learned that God loved me unconditionally, regardless of my past, and even had a plan for my future. God had a plan for my life? It was like someone turned the light on for me.

Shelley says she “practiced God’s principles in everything I did.” She learned web design and operated her own web design business for four years. She also attended college and got a bachelor’s degree in theology and counseling. She had walked into Champions Centre “broken and shattered,” she says. Eight years later, she was a

Champion woman healed and excited to live life! God restored me from drugs, alcohol addiction, painful memories, mental illness, sexual addiction, sexual trauma, and the guilt and shame from my past. . . . He also restored my femininity and healed my sexuality, which is a major miracle for me.

Shelley reports herself cured not only of herpes but also of cervical cancer. In addition, she says, “God also healed our marriage in a remarkable way. Garrett and I have a beautiful and loving relationship and are best friends!” Their “three beautiful daughters are being raised as Champions,” and, says Shelley, her daughter Tiffany has forgiven her and “allows me to be a mother to her.”

The Ministry

As a child, Shelley had dreamed of being a preacher. Having received her bachelor’s of theology degree, she is indeed a preacher now, sharing her testimony of transformation and rescue out of drugs, porn, and prostitution “by the power of Jesus Christ.” Her website says:

Now happily married to Garrett, her husband, and the mother of three daughters, Shelley takes a message of transformation against-all-odds to prisons, TV, radio, film, conferences and rescue missions. She has been a guest on talk shows such as Dr. Phil, Michael Reagan and most recently, FOXNews. Her message is one of exposing the $57 billion porn industry for what it is—full of lies and deceit, addiction and broken lives. Shelley maintains that women who turn to the industry to make money “probably didn’t grow up in healthy childhoods.

“Almost all pornography performers were sexually assaulted as children,” she says, but hide their broken hearts. “That would kill the fantasy, now wouldn’t it?” She told Chris Hedges:

Porn is like any other addiction. . . . First, you are curious. Then you need harder and harder drugs to get off. You need gang bangs and bestiality and child porn. Porn gets grosser and grosser. . . . And meanwhile the addicts make their wives feel like they can’t live up to the illusion of the porn star. . . . He wants what isn’t real. Porn destroys intimacy.

She says, “God now sends me out to proclaim to the world the reality of his awesome love. I also want everyone to know that whatever God did for me, he will do for you. He’ll do this because he loves you and sent his Son Jesus in order to give you a whole new life.”

Shelley tells the women she rescues that God has a plan for their lives and that they “were made for greater things.” Her website offers the real stories of these women, and includes a tragic Dead Porn Stars Memorial.

Shelley’s story is indeed inspirational. “All I wanted was a normal life. Then I discovered the truth. Sure enough, I finally found the life I always wanted.”