What was Calvin hoping
to accomplish in therapy? He pressed his clenched his fist into his thigh and said, “I want to get
to the point where temptation doesn’t even faze me.”
Wrong goal.
There may be men who “aren’t
even fazed” by sexual temptation. I’m certainly not in that elite club. I only
know one or two men who claim to be. I dare say very few—if any—of them are
recovering sex addicts.
I let Calvin know
immediately that I wouldn’t be trying to help him with that. I know better. I’ve
seen too many people bang their head against that wall.
In fact, I talk all
the time to new clients who’ve been trying for a long time to get to that
magical point on the horizon. It goes worse for them than staying just as far
from their goal as when they started trying. Unfortunately, they continue to
find themselves ever further from it.
They’ve tried to clamp
down on all thoughts and urges, and they find the task maddeningly difficult.
They can’t even go to work without finding their eyes drawn to body parts,
their minds drawn to sex acts. It’s never been this bad at work before! They
can’t go to church without struggling. So much for having a spiritual
experience! They can’t go to the store. And we’re not talking about the mall
with the Victoria’s Secret displays and the sexy cosmetic counter attendants—we’re
talking Sam’s Club. What should they do, become hermits?
One way to gauge the
effect of an addiction in your life is to assess the “size of the footprint” of
the problem. How much of your time, energy, and focus is consumed by it?
Consumed by lusting—or fighting lust? Spent looking for ways to act out
sexually or spent feeling guilty about what you’ve done in the past and fearing that you'll screw up again in the future? How much
of the pie chart of your life is taken up by all the various aspects of this
problem?
The footprint of
addiction for men who have adopted a zero tolerance policy toward sexual
thoughts tends to be up in the 70-80% range. They may not be acting out very
often, but their life remains dominated by the struggle. Given the heart and
soul they’re putting into their struggle against it, you’d think the footprint
would be shrinking. And yet it keeps growing.
Calvin said to me, “The
harder I try to get rid of sexual thoughts, the worse it goes. Now it’s like a
grizzly bear on my back. I go around with the hope in the forefront of my mind
that I won’t see an attractive woman. I’m living in fear.”
Hellish way to live.
Fortunately, it goes far
better once we 1) understand the power of the “resist/rebound effect,” 2) accept
the way the sexual brain operates, 3) adopt more realistic and
helpful goals with regard to sexual temptation, and 4) broaden the focus of our
recovery to include temptation
management but emphasize emotion management and overall personal
growth.
In the coming weeks I’ll discuss these issues in greater detail. Stay tuned!