Course Correction

I took the "Days Sober" widget off my blog. I'm sick of it, and it's become an impediment to writing. In church-ese we say "We count people because people count," and it's the same thing here: While the focus should be on *quality* ("progress not perfection"?), you eventually have to measure some kind of *quantity*. In church-land, that's the size of your congregation compared to last year. In recovery it's how long you've been sober.

One day.

A year and a half ago, after everything crashed and burned, I found a counselor who specializes in treating sex addiction. It's been a quite a ride - illuminating and excruciating and encouraging. I feel like I've made progress for the first time in a decade, which isn't true, because that invalidates all the work I did before, which was also exhausting, but not very encouraging. After truly addressing my sex addiction in a structured program with a trained therapist, I made it to fourteen months. In my world, that's relatively awesome.

After a year of working part time, I became over-employed last September. Who complains about having too many opportunities to work? I guess I shifted from a life of recovery (with work on the side) to a life of work (with recovery on the side) and I just can't do that. I relapsed in November, and again last week. This looks depressingly like my old cycle.

That's okay. I have hope. Maybe for the first time in a while. When I would relapse before, people would always say Get a sponsor and work the steps. Get a sponsor and work the steps. Get a sponsor and work the steps. Get a sponsor and blahblahblahBLAHBLAHBLAH

There, I said it. I just lost every single one of my faithful AA readers. (Funny fact: I don't have any more faithful readers!) I know that's blasphemy, and I have the deepest respect for AA. Really - I'm not just saying that. I once read that AA was the most important invention of the 20th century, and I often bring this up to people. For how long have alcoholics faced jails, institutions and death, with no hope at all? Forever, that's how long. 1935 was the first time in history that alcoholics had hope. Ever.

But I kept doing those things and doing those things and I learned incredible things about addiction and recovery, and I still believe that if I'd kept at it I could have found some sobriety in AA - but what an incredible difference to be working with a counselor who truly understands the agony and darkness of my world as a sex addict, and even more so as a sexual anorexic.

But as I was saying earlier I have hope. I'm not going back to the same thing I've done for years, but back to something that really began to change my life in September of 2011. I guess it sounds like I'm proselytizing, but the material put together by Patrick Carnes is the thing I need to get back to. If you happen to be a sex addict who's not sure where to start, www.sexhelp.com is the best place.

Tonight I had another talk with my son James about his success in staying away from internet porn. Not because of some program I installed on his computer - though these can be helpful - or because he's afraid of punishment - though he should be afraid of consequences - but because he's spent the last year learning with me about addiction and healthy sexuality, about managing feelings and urges, about self-care and asking for help, and accountability and "checking in" with other guys. I'm glad that the things I'm learning aren't just for me.

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.

The Last Surrender

Pictured: Not me

 
Every time I try to post about Sexual Anorexia I end up running. There's heartbreak there, shame and denial - but more than anything else - there's fear. A terror I've never felt before, about anything, ever.

This year I said goodbye to many things - hopefully for the last time. Surrendering drugs and porn meant saying goodbye to ecstasy. More recently, surrendering cookie binges and nicotine meant saying goodbye to comfort. As I begin to surrender my sexual anorexia, it's less "goodbye" and more "hello" - to everything I've been avoiding. Vulnerability. Risk. Need.

Sexual anorexia looks more like avoidance than indulgence. Somehow I broke through that avoidance in my last post. Maybe it was lots of quiet time that helped. Maybe spiritual courage. Maybe giving myself permission not to write in prose. (I wouldn't call it poetry.) The result was raw and black and obtuse. A prime example of "elegancelessness." (Finally an excuse to use that word.) But no matter...here's a commentary!

(If you'd like, you can open the original text in a new window and place them side by side. Like a Shakespeare commentary, except not in iambic pentameter and not, you know, good.)

Sexual Anorexia is starvation
My therapist is teaching me to focus on "non-sexual intimacy" - with my friends, my kids, my dogs. (Sounds weird I know.) But a loving relationship also includes sexual intimacy. When it's there, but I run, that makes no sense. I don't understand it either.

Sexual Anorexia is trembling as you type
I don't know why this particular fear lives in my stomach muscles. Talking about sexual anorexia as a thing, to be fixed, makes me spasm into a fetal position. I hate hate hate saying that. It sounds melodramatic. It kind of is.

Sexual Anorexia is never posting for months and months
In addiction, we try to look "fine." In sexual anorexia, I succeed. I don't show up intoxicated and I don't lie about missing work. Everybody's happy. It's interesting that my readers are sometimes the first to notice that I'm not okay.

Sexual Anorexia is an exposed molar nerve
When I'm giving in to my sexual addiction, short shorts arouse me and make me want to act out. When I'm giving in to my sexual anorexia, short shorts make me feel nauseous and I fantasize about killing myself. Seriously, I wish they'd just stop wearing short shorts.

Sexual Anorexia is another bullshit term
No one's ever said this to me, but I fear they're thinking it. Like when a senator gets caught cheating and blames "sex addiction" and the media start writing that it's a made-up disease. I imagine them hearing "sexual anorexia" and saying what'll they think of next? Sheesh.

Sexual Anorexia is a wicked shift
When I'm anorexic, I don't get in trouble for looking at porn. Yay. Instead I spend hours - days - looking for ways to make my sexuality go away. Banders and burdizzos are tools used to castrate livestock. Yes, I've thought about it. Yes, there are forums where guys talk about it. Yes, people have done it. There's also the (somewhat less insane) surgical option. It's all crazy.

Sexual Anorexia is “fuck you”
It's what I mutter, to fight back against the adrenaline and the nausea, when I am triggered.

Sexual Anorexia is option #3
I've written before about living with a sexual abuse survivor. She's sometimes triggered by affection even when it's gentle and safe, and I have this raw wound that just won't heal - and I'm terrified of more rejection. Then I act out (porn) and I make it worse. I fantasize that if we could just get rid of sexuality it would make everything better. We could just play Scrabble and do puzzles.

Sexual Anorexia is my own religious order
I self injure. I know it's not okay. I'm working on it with my therapist. When I read about Silas in The Da Vinci Code, I began to include whipping myself with a belt. Again, crazy. I know.

Sexual Anorexia is a noxious searing flame in your gut
It constantly makes me physically sick, yet I hold on to it for dear life. Kind of like any other addiction. Drugs and porn and food and tobacco feel like the metaphorical onion layers. Sexual anorexia feels like the core. With this addiction, I'm on step #1. It's the best I can do right now.

P.S. Here's the book.

And Finally

Sexual Anorexia is starvation
a gnawing gut and sand-grit mouth
then burning the bread and pissing in the water
because they're mine
and control's more important than being fed

Sexual Anorexia is trembling as you type
convulsions, doubling over, dizzy blurring vision
a sucker punch that never stops
run away now run run run
embarrassment shame
what kind of sick fuck does these things?

Sexual Anorexia is never posting for months and months
and your faceless cyber friends begin to write and ask
are you okay
what your f2f friends may not see
I know through your silence
and I wonder where you are

Sexual Anorexia is an exposed molar nerve
and life is chewing ice
every skirt or thigh or flirty glance that used to be a zing
somehow becomes an ice chip lodged
a deafening pulse of rage and loss and self-loathing

Sexual Anorexia is another bullshit term
for their diagnostic bible version IV
to excuse your bad behavior
ADHD ODD GAD OCD
WTF I act normal why can't you?
my simplistic answers invalidate your agony

Sexual Anorexia is a wicked shift
of fetishes and fantasies
screen-bound phony lesbians give way to
cattle banders and burdizzos
dark hotel rooms and narcotics
could I do it?
shady surgeons reassign me
to the void between the genders
and there I'd find a paradise
exorcised and free

Sexual Anorexia is “fuck you”
muttered vicious acid
when I'm heading for the toothpaste
and pass the condoms and the lubes
the sex scene in the movie
the frisky couple in the park
“it's all a fucking lie”
and I'm safe

Sexual Anorexia is option #3
I tried the right way #1
but intimacy and vulnerability failed
I can't endure the pain I simply can't endure that pain
I tried the wrong way #2
chemicals and images
that made her cry
so many times she cried so many many times
with option #3 I win
and swallow handfuls of herbal supplements
that I think will take the testosterone out of my blood
a slice-free castration

Sexual Anorexia is my own religious order
linking virtue with abuse
my private ascetic monastery
purple bruises on my inner thighs
pinching penance when my eyes have strayed
self flagellation and with each of 40 lashes
a word through gritted teeth
you
will
not
control
me

Sexual Anorexia is a noxious searing flame in your gut
that you shelter and stoke
and you cradle as an infant
because it's yours
fucking mine and you can't take it from me

You won't touch my friend my partner my comfort
my savior and my hope
and when I relent
finally take that cold-sweat step through that last addiction door

That's surrender