Denial – More Freedom Blog

Validate her and apologize for what you did in her dreams

Here are two things I have learned over the years that have helped my marriage a lot.

Validate her feelings

Often, I will expect my wife to change immediately instead of taking some time to change. So, sometimes, she might accuse me of something or get upset with me for something when I feel like I’m doing so much better than I was in the past. I have learned that validating her feelings about me instead of trying to defend myself makes such situations turn out a much better, and it’s actually a lot more honest.

The logic goes like this: My past actions trained her to distrust me, so it makes sense she doesn’t trust me now, regardless of my current guilt or innocence. In this case, I might say, “It makes sense that you feel that way now because of how I’ve acted in the past and how I’ve lied about it.” That’s hard to say, but it’s more accurate and builds a bridge of trust and awareness.

Asking, “What can I do to help you feel more safe,” is another great way to take some positive steps forward. I wish I were better at this one.

And because of all the Denial and Gaslighting I have done, a lot of the time, I’m wrong about the present, being blinded by my denial and shame. So, telling the truth about the past and validating my wife (and kids, coworkers, and everyone) sets a good stage to dig into the present with a little more humility and less defensiveness and denial.

The brains and hearts of our spouses, like those of everyone else, are often deeply affected by past injuries. In an effort to avoid further pain, they cling to unresolved hurts from the past, and harbor fears about present and future pain. Witnessing the ongoing impact of the harm I’ve caused — past, present, and future — can be overwhelming at times. Surrendering and actively participating in the program is the path toward healing.

Apologize for what I did in her dreams

Sometimes my wife will have a dream about me doing horrible things even when I feel like I’m doing good, and it feels like going back to the past again and getting punished all over again. This is a very similar situation. My past actions trained her not to trust me. That’s likely where her dreams came from. I’m not directly responsible for what I did in her dreams because that’s not me, but I am responsible for training her mind to think that way about me based on my actions in the past. So I can say, “I’m sorry that I’ve done things in the past that have hurt you and caused you not to trust me. That’s probably where this dream came from. What can I do to help you feel more safe?”

Darkness to Light

My name is Thomas, and I am a sex addict in recovery. My addiction started when I was 8 years old. Despite being raised by awesome parents who taught me that pornography was wrong, I still fell into its trap. At a young age, I participated in professional stage productions where I found and sought out pornographic images hidden around backstage. For the next several years, as I continued to be involved in these productions, I knew where all the images were hidden and would view them regularly. By age 12, I was acting out physically with others, which was directly related to the images seared in my mind. Before I even reached my teenage years, I was already treating girls and women as objects to satisfy my lustful, selfish desires.

In my youth, I began to master a Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde lifestyle. A “good” son, brother, and “religious” boy by day — but a selfish, pleasure-seeker by night. I kept up this “good-man-bad-man” dynamic for 30 years, which included trying to keep a façade throughout my 16 years of marriage. The more I was rotting on the inside, the more I would attempt grand and showy outward behaviors to hide my true self.

One night in our 16^th year of marriage, my wife finally got the courage to confront me. She said that she could feel that I didn’t love her, that my behaviors had ruined her, and that she was “done.” She said she was going to take the kids and move in with her parents. “You can have the house. I can’t live this lie anymore,” she said. In that desperate moment, I felt a strong inner voice tell me: “Tell her the truth now, or you will lose her.” My wife felt and saw many symptoms of my addiction, but she did not know that I, in fact, did have an addiction. There were so many secrets I had kept from her.

I didn’t want to lose her, so I decided to “come clean.” I started to tell her facts she had never heard before, going all the way back to the time when I was 8 years old. She was so hurt, betrayed, and devasted that she picked up the alarm clock off the bedside table and threw it against the wall. I was terrified. The truth was coming out, and I was on the verge of losing my wife, my children, my church standing, and even my career. This was my rock bottom. This is what rock bottom is – when “the pain of the solution is less than the pain of the problem” (White Book, pg. 27).

Within a few days, both of us met with our church leader. This wise man directed us to the Addiction Recovery 12-Step program offered by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I had a lot of fear walking into my first meeting. But the second time I went, I felt strongly that this was exactly where I was supposed to be and that I truly belonged there. Each 12 Step principle hit me like a lightning bolt. I learned and progressed step by step and began to find true recovery. The recovery process for my addictive behaviors happened in phases, just like it does for drug or alcohol addicts.

I am grateful for the true happiness and peace that I’ve found during my 5 years of sobriety and recovery. The journey has been difficult — but also wonderful — for my wife and me. We share our recovery process in our book Dark to Light: My Recovery from Pornography and Lust which explains specific ways that we have found healing, focusing on 12 Step principles.

My life has never been better than during the last 5 years of my recovery. I am a new man with a new heart. Change is real and possible. True connection with my God, my Savior, and my wife has replaced my old disconnection, discord, and disobedience. Light and truth have truly replaced the darkness of my past.

The Lies That Are Hidden In My Anger and Resentment

I can’t remember where I learned this, but it’s been extremely helpful to me and others in addiction recovery. A lot of it probably came from the ideas that Joe and Charlie cover in their step 4 mp3’s (there are 7-8 mp3’s there, I linked just to the first one), which I highly recommend. They discuss resentment and how we tend to use resentment to cover our own defects by focusing on others’ defects.

Sobriety

Sobriety is where recovery starts. Once I’ve put my addiction down, then I can start recovering. I like the sobriety definition from Sexaholics Anonymous:

“In defining sobriety, we do not speak for those outside Sexaholics Anonymous. We can only speak for ourselves. Thus, for the married sexaholic, sexual sobriety means having no form of sex with self or with persons other than the spouse. In SA’s sobriety definition, the term “spouse” refers to one’s partner in a marriage between a man and a woman. For the unmarried sexaholic, sexual sobriety means freedom from sex of any kind. And for all of us, single and married alike, sexual sobriety also includes progressive victory over lust.”
Sexaholics Anonymous, 191-192

A Lifetime of Addictions

My addiction to pornography, lust, and masturbation started when I was about 12 years old. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I didn’t think I was hurting anyone, so I continued to use these things to escape from depression and loneliness (though I didn’t know it at the time) and to cover up the things I didn’t like feeling. Around age 16, I started drinking alcohol with my friends as well.

I graduated high school and left home to go to college 600 miles away. Free at last! I partied with my new-found friends. My sexual addictions were always there in their various forms, but I kept them very private because I was ashamed of what I was doing to myself and others. They progressed to sex with others, strip clubs and more. It seemed there was no limit to where I would allow my addictions to take me. I isolated from friends at church and eventually stopped going to church completely. I was often around large groups of people, but I felt completely alone. I was nearing rock bottom and would consistently use lust and alcohol to numb my pains and escape from the realities of life.

Addiction – A Chronic Condition

I’ve heard some people who have said, “I’m cured of my addiction to….” When I hear that, I just smile and nod. I congratulate them and keep my opinions to myself. My experience and my opinion though is that addiction to anything (porn, alcohol, drugs, etc.) is a chronic condition. This means it doesn’t go away but only goes into remission.

I am in remission from my addiction to porn, lying, etc. and have to continue to work at staying there. I feel it is very, very dangerous to think you are “healed” of the addiction and go on your merry way. This is a denial of the situation. You can change your habits, you can change your environment, and you can change your heart (with help) but you can’t change that you are and will always be an addict. To refuse to admit this is, in my opinion, akin to lying to yourself in a horrible way. It can lead to denial or justifications about other things and ultimately lead to acting out in a deeper or worse way than you did before.

Self-Sabbotage

During the time between getting into the program and getting some serious sobriety, there was a time of self-sabotage. I just wanted to resort to my addiction and so I’d find ways to do it by crossing boundaries, neglecting my needs (like food, sleep, or scripture study) to make myself weaker, surfing the Internet for seemingly innocent things that I know might accidentally lead me to something bad, but at least it wouldn’t be my fault that I accidentally found something bad, right? Then I wouldn’t have to beat myself up quite as badly. Insanity.

These were attempts by me to resort to my addiction without feeling quite as guilty. As the part of me that wants to quit my addictions gets stronger than the part of me that wants to resort to my addictions, self-sabotage decreases. I just had to be patient and keep going to the meetings and working the steps and it got better.

Addiction Switching

I have found that I can switch between addictions quite easily. Some people switch between abusing drugs and using pornography. Some switch to video games. Books, hard music, caffeine, materialism, and junk food are also very common things to switch to for comfort, numbing, or escape from the pains of reality. I have done it and I know others who have as well.

Other more emotional addictions I can switch to are resentment, fear, codependency, aspiring to or fantasizing about high callings in the church, etc. I have found that as I turn to these various addictions instead of turning to Christ for comfort, it’s as though I am putting other Gods – the Gods of addiction – before Him. That’s idolatry. That doesn’t work for me. Resorting to any of these addictions halts or slows my progression. I have to surrender any and all of my addictions to make progress, because it’s not about the addictions, it’s about me hiding from the shame and pain of reality.

Step 6

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I like to think of step 6 as a way for me to gather up a bunch of my underlying addictions (character defects) and figure out what each one of them is giving me that makes me want to keep holding onto it. I can’t really become ready to have them removed if I’m holding onto them for some reason.

So, I went through my 4th step and gathered up all of my own character defects from the experiences I had documented into one big list. Impatience, anger, grumpiness, hatred, pride, denial, yelling at my kids, shame, codependency, selfishness, etc. Then I wrote next to each one what it gives me. For example, denial gives me a false sense of righteousness and safety from consequences. Yelling at my kids gives me a sense of them being obedient and me being a good parent.

It seems that a lot of these have to do with impatience. I don’t want to wait to do things the hard way, the right way, the way that actually lasts. So I go for a quick and easy way that doesn’t work in the long run.

As I inventory all of these defects and realize that they give me stuff that’s temporary and just makes things worse, in the long run, it helps me to surrender them, let them go, and become willing to have God work with me to get rid of them. A lot of that work to get rid of them happens in step 10, but I have to want to let them go before we can work on getting rid of them.

I share the list of defects and what they give me with my sponsor and let him know whether I feel like I’m ready to let them all go or if I need more surrender first. Once I surrender them, I’m ready to move to step 7.

Step 4

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

There are many resources that go over step 4, including my favorite treatment of the topic by the infamous AA legends, Joe & Charlie, who have multiple mp3’s about step 4 and overcoming resentment. So I’m just going to share my own experiences I’ve had in my own inventory and the inventory of those I’ve sponsored. Continue reading “Step 4”