Kick Porn with Love

When a guy masturbates to porn, he imagines a little part of him being received into a woman. It's a very entertaining thing to do with his imagination. So exciting, in fact, that it's tempting to go back and repeat the experience again and again.

Of course, there are problems with his porn and masturbation habit. Among others, it's a terrible waste of a fertile imagination. It sucks time and energy but returns very little in the way of true happiness or constructive real life results in our own life or the lives of any other human being.

There is a much more advantageous way to employ the imagination.

The Best Use of Imagination

Applying our imagination in loving and generous ways can be both entertaining AND fulfilling. In contrast to the experience with porn, we take a little part of other people and receive it into ourselves. We watch them closely and listen attentively to discover something about their personality, priorities, or preferences.  We let something they say or do spark our imagination. Then we hold that uniqueness or particular fancy of theirs within ourselves for a time until it can guide a kind word or act of caring that hits the bullseye for the person in a way that goes beyond their expectations.

Simple example: Shane knows his wife, Amanda, loves to cook fancy foods, but she's not an extravagant person. She's used to improvising and making do with what they have. So if her recipe calls for an exotic ingredient, she finds a cheaper, more readily available alternative.

One day she wonders aloud how her shortbread cookies--already delicious--would taste if she used real vanilla beans, as the recipe calls for. Later when she tries out a recipe for custard tarts, she mentions to him that these, too, call for vanilla beans.

A Loving Pursuit and its Payoff

Christmas morning Amanda opens up a little package to find a spice bottle with two vanilla beans inside. That eight dollar gift brought a huge smile to her face and a warmth to her heart that rivaled the time he bought her a five hundred dollar diamond necklace. Watching her, Shane can tell.

Sitting on the couch later among the carnage of wrapping paper and strewn toys, Amanda melts into Shane's arms and thanks him again for the vanilla beans. As she turns her head and looks into his eyes, he feels a jolt of electricity. In her kiss, there's a warmth and wetness that startles him. Already soul mates, it's as though they've melded at new depths. The effect lingers and remains palpable later that night. Never has she felt so receptive and responsive. He thinks, so this is what they mean when they say a woman is like clay in a guy's hands.

Love vs. Lust: What a Contrast!

Here's how porn hijacks our imagination: we can't help but notice clues that something appealing might be available. Our imagination reveals to us a path to fulfill our lusts. If that one gets blocked our ingenuity searches for another. We find a way to indulge in a sexual fantasy that excites and eventually "satisfies" us.

Here's how we take the alternative path and engage imagination deliberately in a loving direction: Keep an eye out for clues about what other people find important and meaningful. Over time, your observational skills and empathy will reveal things to you that you hadn't noticed before. Use your ingenuity to look for ways to offer something that uniquely matches or speaks to them in some way. Find satisfaction in the appreciative look on their face, their increased responsiveness to you in the future, and the deeper and more lasting bond they feel with you in the future.

Your Mission, Should You Choose to Accept It

Think of this not as a technique, but as a discipline that can be integrate into everyday life. It is a process of letting into your heart facets of other people and then building in your heart little "virtual" versions of your loved ones and associates and fleshing them out over time so that you can speak and act in increasingly loving ways that have more perfect fidelity to the real people they are. Living this way will thrill you in ways that you can relish forever.

As usual: If you decide to try out using love to help you kick your porn habit, please let us know how it goes!

Resurrecting Sex After Betrayal Trauma

With Her husband Kyle three years into solid recovery from his sexual addiction, Bridgette wanted to let down her guard in the bedroom. Logically she knew their relationship was on the firmest ground ever. But when he wanted to explore, experiment, or expand their sexual repertoire, she suddenly felt very threatened. 

Irreconcilable Sexual Differences?

Kyle's desire for more seemed like a personal indictment of her sexual style. Was he was failing to appreciate what they shared together, which was already wonderful to her? It had already been a difficult and complicated road getting this far, and if their sex life wasn't enough for him yet... would it ever be? 

Whenever they focused on this topic Bridgette had the sinking feeling that perhaps Kyle was lapsing back into lust, that his old addiction was rearing it's ugly head again. Ugh. At times she felt deflated and defeated by it all. 

How Treatment Can Help

We used a therapy technique called Lifespan Integration to explore the mindset she went into when sex became a difficult issue nowadays. Not surprisingly, it ended up being the very mindset that was set in motion by the trauma of discovering seven years ago that the man with whom she'd always felt safest had betrayed her trust by masturbating to online porn. 

Using the guided imagery of Lifespan Integration, she put herself back into that scene seven years ago when her daughter was playing on the laptop and a smutty image popped up. Then Bridgette envisioned bringing her present-day self into that scene to comfort her younger self. Most important of all, we proved to her younger self that time had passed since then by showing her one or two events per year over the course of those seven years. Going through this timeline just takes a few minutes, and we repeat the process six or seven times during a single Lifespan Integration session. 

A Solid Foundation for Healing

It may sound odd to say it this way, but quite often our "younger self" doesn't even know that time has gone on since the trauma. A part of our brain is responding to life as though time has been standing still since that moment, and the trauma is still happening.

Of course, therapy could only facilitate healing for Bridgette because she had developed a deeper attachment to Kyle and a surer sense of trust in him. He hadn't been perfect, but they'd traveled the recovery journey side-by-side and had developed an emotional intimacy in the process that set the stage for more meaningful sex together. All their studying; work in Sexaholics Anonymous, S-Anon, and other support groups; and counseling both individually and as a couple had really paid off.

The Results for Bridgette and Kyle So Far

When I saw Bridgette last week, it had been two months since our Lifespan Integration session. She no longer viewed Kyle's adventurousness as disapproval. "He's not down on what we have, just eager to keep building this wonderful sexual connection we share."

Bridgette added, "When I changed the way I thought about his motivation, my emotions followed effortlessly. They haven't flipped back even though it's been awhile." 

Bridgette also reminded me of another process that had been key for her. She'd been frustrated and impatient at times with the "part" of her that kept freaking out about sex even though Kyle had proven his trustworthiness over the years. 

However, as she gave voice to that suspicious, scared part, "I was able to see that part of me as a vigilant soldier who'd done so much to bring me to this safe place. She just wasn't up to date on how safe I really am now! Honoring her intentions and all she's done helped me move past the paralyzing fear and see the situation more clearly." 

It's inspiring to see couples like Bridgette and Kyle heal. They climb together out of the hole of addiction, but they don't stop there. They do what it takes to raise their relationship to entirely new heights. 

Need a Tech Cleanse?

Here's a post I did for my latest visit with Brooke Walker on KSL Studio 5. I thought I'd share it here because we can all use a detox from screen time...

When does Social Media Savvy Cross the Line into Obsession?

Cathy remembers the moment she woke up to the downside of her Instagram immersion. It was at her nine year-old daughter, Megan’s, soccer game. When everyone else cheered, Cathy looked up from her phone to see Megan pump her arms in a victory V. “As Megan caught my eye, I gave her a thumbs up. It would be my little secret that I missed her goal because I’d gotten sucked in by that notification ping.”

It’s fun to catch up with friends, unwind and relax. We can even use social media to further our career.

But we’ve all found ourselves wasting time on social media. We know that bitter aftertaste that comes after a binge.

Some Benefits of Scaling Back

• Family balance. We invite other family members to limit their own screen time if we walk the walk.
• Better posture. Avoid the documented dangers of text neck.
• Better sleep. Too much screen time interferes with both our ability fall asleep and to drop into the most restful stages of sleep.
• Less anxiety. Immersion in technology ratchets up our stress.
• More happiness and satisfaction. We get a break from all the comparing and longing for what we don’t have.
• Better love life. If a TV in the bedroom cuts couples’ lovemaking in half, as one Italian study found, then what’s bound to happen when it’s not just one big screen but some little screens getting in the way as well?

Instead of Your Usual Tech Fix…

1. Breathe. Take two or three nice full breaths. Try doing it right before check your phone throughout an entire day. It helps stretch out the space between the urge and the response.
2. Feel. You might just feel the awkwardness that comes with breaking any habit. If your habit is super-entrenched you might feel some withdrawal symptoms. Settle into your boredom. Allow yourself to feel anxious.
3. Move. Take a walk. Your body and brain will thank you, instead of still feeling antsy the way they so often do after a tech fix.
4. Connect. Before there was live chatting, there were real life chats; enjoy more of those. Hug someone, give a foot rub, ask for a back scratch.
5. Express. Don’t give in to the urgency, give it voice. Let the Instagram junkie in you rant about why she needs to look so often and how great it feels to get those likes. Get the urgency out of your system by talking to yourself as you take a walk or writing out your yearnings and hankerings.

Take the Challenge–Do a 15-day Tech Cleanse!

Most people do better with a cleanse than a complete fast. Especially for moms, it’s hard to drop completely off the face of the Electronic universe.

If you’re going to do it, don’t just try a little harder to use your phone a little less. Your screen time will quickly balloon back up. Instead, tell friends and family you’ll going to take a break by cutting WAY back for a couple of weeks, and then do it. Better yet, challenge others to do it with you.

You might keep track of your time on your phone with an app like Moment and have a contest with your kids to see who can use electronics the least.

If, somehow, you manage to survive, we’d love to hear back from you in a couple of weeks about how it went and what you discovered. Studio 5 is considering running a follow up segment, so your input would be greatly appreciated!