So. Much. Better.

Picture Linsey took last night

The innocence I lost on my honeymoon had more to do with naïvety than virginity.

I was probably 17 when my family was walking to Ralphs – which is strange because we never took walks – and my dad said “If you have sex with Linsey before marriage I'll disown you.” It was a joke, a clumsy attempt at a man-to-man talk, but ominous all the same. I guess I listened. Linsey and I did what good Christian teens do: listened for footsteps in the hall while we danced on the edge of the genital sex chasm. You know...everything but.

Those years are a blur of youth group meetings about staying pure, books about God's plan for sex, giant teen conferences with famous speakers – all saying the same thing: If you wait, it'll be so much better. And I really have to give them some credit. It wasn't “if you give in to lust, you're a sinner.” I mean, yeah, that message was there, but the emphasis was always on the promises of God's plan for sex. If you can just wait for marriage, it will be so much better.

Josh McDowell...Tony Campolo...Jim Burns...James Dobson...Charlie Shedd...
All the same, all the time: If you just wait for marriage, if you follow God's plan, sex will be
So.
Much.
Better.

Always the intoxicating slippery slope, the guilt, the swearing to change. But we held the line 'til the honeymoon, which was kind of a nightmare, and it was pretty much downhill from there. Worse before it got better. The gurus never talked about that.

They never talked about incest survivors (which is strange, because it seems like most marriages have one.) They didn't talk about sexual aversion or sexual self-loathing. Sometimes I think: maybe they didn't really have the tools. No one really talked about sex addiction back then either. We've come a long way. But then...they lived in the real world didn't they? They had to struggle in their marriages too, right? Why didn't they give some indication that everyone, at some point along the way, needs help?

Everyone needs help. If there's one thing I'm trying to teach my kids, it's this truth. We're all broken. Along the way, we all get lost sometimes. Practice the words. Say them: “I'm hurting, I'm confused, I need some help.” No one makes it on their own.

Outside my window is Morro rock. The sunsets over the ocean have been breathtaking. We've had beaches all to ourselves and eaten fresh peaches from the farmer's market. But I ache inside. This is where we honeymooned, where I lost my innocence. No one told me what it might be like.

If you follow “God's plan”, there's no guarantee things will be good. It just doesn't work that way.

Update

It's been a life-changing few months. I often want to post about the trees, but I don't think they'll make sense without the forest – so here it goes...

>>>New Therapist

When I woke my parents up and told them I was using in their home, I think the seriousness of my addictions really sank in. We talked the next day about what to do next. First came the difficult acknowledgement that I am, first and foremost, a sex addict. Chemicals are just icing on my porn cake. At this point, they happen to be willing and financially able to help, so we looked into inpatient sex addiction clinics. When we saw how much they cost, paying for a therapist who is specifically trained in sex addiction didn't look so bad, so that's where we started. After some research, I really clicked with a guy in Carlsbad, which is about an hour from my home. We jumped right into Patrick Carnes material, and I knew I was in the right place. So far it's been excruciatingly painful at times, and probably more helpful than anything else I've done.

>>>Marital Separation

I stayed with my parents until the middle of September and went home a couple of weeks before I wrapped things up at the church. The time away from my wife was amazingly helpful. Being there of my own initiative (instead of being “kicked out”) allowed me to grow instead of sulk. I don't think I ever realized how codependent I am with my wife. Even with the lost job and being separated from my family, I felt positive most of the time. Somewhere along the line, I had learned that I wasn't allowed to be happy unless Linsey was happy, which frankly isn't very often. This has been a huge change.

>>>Job Loss

What a complicated, confusing mess. Sometimes in life you have to look a list of truths and let them sit, side by side, even if they seem to conflict with each other. Here are a few of them:

-My (former) pastor (and boss) had encouraged me to ask for more help if I needed it. When I did, he fired me.

-My using had not really affected my job (in any tangible way) but at a church, it seriously affected my integrity.

-Many church members (who knew the whole story, without edits) were crazy mad that I was fired and were ready to fight the decision.

-Whether or not the pastor made the right decision is not what matters. That I lost my job to my addiction is what matters. Let me say it again, in the interest of thoroughly hitting bottom: I lost my job to my addiction.

-My wife told church members not to fight the pastor – that it was time for us to move on and that I needed to feel a consequence. She was right.

-I have been increasingly unhappy with the pastor's leadership decisions in the last few years. He's made some seriously destructive mistakes, become more and more dictatorial, and is showing significant signs of memory loss. He is unwilling to retire. That's not sour grapes, it's just what is.

-I've been in conversation with a few potential employers, but was too afraid of change to leave my position. If I'd been healthier, I would have left years ago. Instead I chose to do it the stupid way.

-Leaving my position in that church has been one of the best things that's ever happened to me and my family.

-Getting fired from my position in that church has been one of the most painful and difficult things that's ever happened to me and my family.

>>>Rehab

Two weeks at Kaiser's Chemical Dependency Rehabilitation Program. Very helpful – lots of good tools and connections. Good use of time in my first two weeks of being unemployed. As the name implies, it's a chemical dependency program, not a sex addiction clinic. But it's all good.

>>>Grief and Divorce Recovery

My aunt happens to run an amazing Grief and Divorce Recovery group. You don't have to be going through a divorce to attend, just grieving something. She told me I would be grieving the loss of my church, and that I should attend. Honestly, I think I've been grieving the healthy church I used to work at for the last three or four years. What I have never dealt with, however, is the gut-wrenching pain in my marriage. I carry debilitating anger and resentment for the first twelve years of our marriage, during which Linsey repeatedly explained to me that we didn't need outside help because there were no problems to work on. I've committed to doing whatever uncomfortable “grief work” this workshop tells me to do – drawing pictures, writing “unsent” letters, and other such things.

And letting go of old marriage-hurts is the right thing to do at this point. Because it's not about Linsey right now, or my marriage, or my career, or anything else. It's about me, a recovering sex addict. And I have hope right now. It feels nice.

Staying Afloat

Kind of felt like throwing in the towel for the last few days. First off, let's get it out of the way - I used last week. Wife and kids were out of town for the day, and I had a "bright idea." Same old stuff - porn and DXM. An hour into the fog, I shut it down. Reemembered this isn't me anymore, I'm sick of feeling like a loser, and for the first time in years, I have dreams. Things that I care about and hope for. I should have blogged about the good stuff before the bad stuff happened, but oh well.

I'm encouraged that I made it more than four months - that's the longest in a while - but feel ashamed and stupid enough that my mind goes to dark places. I've been in dialogue with my psychiatrist and therapist for the past few months about how persistent my thoughts of suicide are. Having to face a relapse fires these up into a frenzy. I won't do it though, because I have kids. It's just discouraging to have it nagging at my brain all the time.

The other option that presents itself is to go out. For good. To just stop trying, get high all the time, live in the porn-bubble, and hide it well enough to fool someone into taking me in. Of course that wouldn't work, duh - but that doesn't stop my addict from bringing it up over and over. Bastard.

So when I land back on earth and realize that I need to keep trying, keep growing, asking for help, listening to others' wisdom, working a program, just basically doing what I'm supposed to do, I've felt kind of blah. It's interesting - usually after a relapse, I feel inspired and freed, ready to get back on the wagon and make something of my life.

This time is different, I think because I called and asked for help instead of getting caught. It's like my addict is sulking in the corner, resenting me because he could have slipped in a few more highs before the crash. I cheated him of that. Even worse, I gave him a taste of paradise instead of asking for help before I used. Now he remembers what it's like - still has the sound of ecstasy echoing in his ears.

I remember an addiction specialist telling me that for many chemical addicts a sexual addiction is hiding as the primary addiction. I'm understanding more and more that I'm that person. I don't start a relapse by craving the chemical high. I start it by slowly moving from perusing fashion sites to stockpiling porn images, and when that's not enough I augment the rush with chemicals.

I love the biblical story of the manna. The Israelites received just enough to sate their appetites, no more, no less. If they tried to save for later, it spoiled. There was no guarantee for tomorrow's food besides faith.
So like I said earlier, I have found myself ready to let this blog go. Ready to either abandon it or delete it. Recovery in real life is a mix of rewards and challenges, and I wasn't sure the ratio here was worth it - more challenges than rewards.

But some manna fell for me recently, in the form of a couple of comments. Patricia Singleton, from Spiritual Journey of a Lightworker, wrote, "Things can get better when and if you both want them too. [My husband's] patience and our combined love for each other has gotten us through the worst of times." How comforting to hear the wisdom of someone who has walked the difficult path of healing from the wounds of incest, and who continues to grow in her marriage. Sometimes I just need to know it's possible - that my efforts to stay sober and her efforts to heal are worth the pain.

And Invisigal wrote, "Your posts have been a great help not only to me but to several SA men that I know. One of those men came to the realization of his addiction after reading your blog when I sent him the link." And that pretty much says it all right there. That makes it all worth it.

Sidetracked

This blog needs to be about sex. But, like my life, it has constantly been sidetracked by my addiction.

I live with an emotional abuse and incest survivor. This fact colors every single day of my life. It taints and poisons the most basic and honest of my human impulses – love, affection, intimacy. I need to be growing in patience and love for my wife, learning how to meet her needs and open her heart. I need to be nurturing a place where she can redefine sensuality, in her own time, with someone who loves and cherishes her. This can't happen when she can't trust me.

Shortly after therapy uncovered my wife's abuse, I bought the book Ghosts in the Bedroom, subtitled “A Guide for the Partners of Incest Survivors.” I was desperately looking for help for ME, the guy who felt like a rapist every time he tried to make love to the woman he adored. Instead, one of the first things I read was that most survivors marry people with serious core issues like addiction. The author didn't know me, but he already knew I was an alcoholic.

I was frustrated and angry. I wanted to get to the part that told me how to FIX my wife so she would have sex with me. Instead, I read that our situation could not improve until I took care of my own core issues. I had to deal with my alcoholism before we could learn intimacy.

Here's why this made me mad: because I believed that my drinking problem was her fault. The reason I drank myself to sleep every night on the living room couch was that she was doing her avoidance thing: falling asleep in the kids' rooms, getting a stomach ache, suddenly remembering unfinished paperwork, getting stuck on the phone with a friend. (Her demons were remarkably creative.)

I began the journey of recovery, only to find it much more complex than I'd anticipated. My addiction was “cunning, baffling, powerful.” And it was permanent. I would either be actively working to beat it, or painfully succumbing to it, for the rest of my life. I also learned that it was not Linsey's fault. She could not stop it nor could she cure it. My addiction was, and is, mine.

I never really read beyond chapter three, titled “My Core Issues.” I had a book about supporting an incest survivor, a book that was supposed to help me be the kind of husband who could love her through her hurts and rebuild her understanding of intimacy. But I got hung up on the chapter about MY problems, MY addiction.

And that's what my life feels like. I am angry and disappointed in my marriage. My sexuality and my adoration of my wife feel like heavy, frustrating liabilities. And our progress as a healing couple is repeatedly trashed by my slips.

You might find it really arrogant for me to be complaining. I know I've been the bastard that keeps fucking up. I'd like to stop now. I'd like to allow the books and marriage therapy to work in our lives. There is no shortcut to get there, just a daily choice to stay sober.

[Photo by oba-bobalina under C.C.License]

Drugs - The Good Kind

This is not what I thought it would feel like to be 35, I told Linsey. She asked what I meant: Did I think I'd be the Composer in Residence for some college orchestra? More successful, career-wise? A better dad?

Not really more of anything, actually. The only way I knew to say it was, I thought I would be less lost.

The weeks after a relapse, even a quickly aborted one, are inevitably brutal. I've screwed up my brain chemistry: things that should feel good feel bland, things that should feel bad feel excruciatingly painful. Food for thought next time I get a “bright idea.”

But this one goes deeper. In this chapter of my life I find myself haunted by some of my more tenacious demons. Sometimes my sobriety feels like a game of Jenga. I think all of the pieces are there, that my stability is secure, and by a mistake of omission I pull a cornerstone. Each time the tower falls, I relearn the importance of vigilance.

I can learn much during this post-relapse period, as I tear away the band-aids that my addiction has plastered over my wounds. When I manage these hurts in healthy ways, I am prone to forget they are there. (I guess that's called healing.) But when I wake up from my addiction, there's a unique opportunity to look at whatever I was running from. What void was I filling with all the wrong things?

So I'm realizing that I've been a little sloppy in treating my depression. First, the usual caveats: depression is not an excuse for my relapse. And I'm not suggesting psychiatric treatment as a substitute for a rigorous 12-step program - depression and addiction are not the same thing. But, in my life at least, they feed into each other, in a wickedly symbiotic manner that leaves me no option but to face them both down, unflinchingly and relentlessly.

A week after I used, I left one of my regular meetings feeling supported and encouraged. I don't know what happened on the way home that night, but the bottom dropped out of my world. I took off my seat belt and took my van past 110 mph, praying to be killed in an accident. I'm either too chicken-shit or too grounded to ever follow through, so I talked myself down from the ledge and went home and called someone. I'm proud that I picked up the phone that night. People came over, we talked, I felt loved. After they left I carved myself up with a razor blade. I've been doing this for years and I never talk about it, because to talk about it seems self-important, like a “cry for help.” The silence has not served me well, so I'm ending it.

Obviously there are pieces of my relapse in that night, shards of guilt and shame and self-loathing that are achingly familiar. There is also a kind of narcissism in any self-destructive act. But I know that there is also a component of under-treated major depressive disorder-recurrent that I cannot afford to minimize. I know this for a fact. I know it because I've been on and off medication for all of my adult life, and I know what the “brain chemistry” part of depression feels like. I know what if feels like to be properly medicated, and this isn't it.

Towards the end of my college years, I gave a composition recital. I also tried to kill myself. My acceptance at that point of the inescapable roll of prescribed psychotropic medications in my life was tinged with sadness. I feared that if I medicated the blackest parts of my mind, the colors would fade as well. They did not. During this time, I fell in love with a child and lost her, and every shade of compassion and heartbreak I experienced was vivid, sharp, saturated. I composed the most honest and moving pieces of my career, all while under the treatment of a psychiatrist.

I guess the “recurrent” in my depression diagnosis was true. I guess it's time to put in some more work on that front.

[Photo by size8jeans under C.C.License]

This post is also at The Second Road.