| Author | Post |
|---|
MiniMoe
Member
| Joined: | Fri Mar 13th, 2009 |
| Location: | |
| Posts: | 8 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |  |
|
Posted: Wed Jul 15th, 2009 02:18 am |
|
I am a very private person and I am dealing with my issues as best I can without guilt. The question is... if your wife or significant other agrees to help in fulfilling deep seeded needs, do those needs get satisfied? The needs and fantasy never go away totally, but can there be enough at home to not desire it else where? I have realized the needs are not the issue and are not wrong, it is the fulfilling of those needs outside the marriage that is wrong. So, if I totally expressed what I need to my wife and she agrees to help me and keeps me exhausted, will the desire to express myself with others subside?
|
TM2
Member
| Joined: | Thu Jan 8th, 2009 |
| Location: | Rural Midwest, USA |
| Posts: | 473 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: |   |
|
Posted: Wed Jul 15th, 2009 03:07 am |
|
I haven't been in this situation, and I'm not a professional psychologist, so everything I say should be taken cum grano salis. That said, I have a couple of concerns.
My problem lies within myself. It's conditioned by a lot of things in my upbringing and history, but it's my problem, in me, and I have to find a new way to live in order to resolve it. Anything that suggests that someone else is responsible for my problem seems to me an incredibly dangerous piece of misdirection. Part of what I hear you saying is, "Maybe I wouldn't have this problem if my wife . . ." For me, that would send up every possible red flag. I had my addiction before I met my wife. I would still have my addiction if my wife and I were separated. Nothing my wife can do changes who I am. Anything that hints that she has responsibility for my addiction is leading me away from recovery.
I'm trying to put myself in your wife's shoes as you say, "Could you do xyz with me so that I don't have to look for xyz outside my marriage?" or even just, "Could you do xyz with me?" (I think a spouse is likely to insert the second clause for themselves.) As a wife, I think I would feel anger that I was being blamed for my husband's infidelities. I would feel trapped and manipulated by someone in essence threatening me to go outside the marriage if I didn't do something with which I might or might not feel comfortable. I might feel a completely unhealthy self-doubt about whether I really was responsible for my husband's addictive behavior. It's hard to see this conversation being a success.
I'm certainly in favor of open communication between spouses. Learning to express ourselves sexually is not something many of us are good at. (I certainly raise my hand on that one!) But I think that building that communication in the wake of betrayal is a very delicate process, and that it has to be done without the slightest hint in the mind of either party that the husband's sobriety depends on the wife's behavior.
You have a need and a responsibility to get sober whether or not your wife engages in xyz, right? If she says no, your job is just the same as if she says yes. So another course of action might be to do the hard inner work needed to get sober, to build communication and trust with your wife, and only after sobriety and trust and intimacy are so well established that there isn't any possible doubt in either of you about your motives to bring up xyz.
Again, that's just how it seems to me, but I haven't been in your situation. Still, I might be a useful data point. I didn't look at porn because I really wanted from my wife anything I saw there that I didn't have. Despite my satisfaction with our physical relationship, though, I stayed hopelessly addicted for the first 30 years of our relationship.
That's a quick take on a complicated question, though. You might get a better answer from a counselor skilled on sexual addiction who knows you well. Perhaps someone like that might be able to facilitate the conversation you want to have, making sure it happens in ways that are safe and healthy both for you and for your wife, if that conversation is a good idea.
I'd walk with a great deal of caution here, though, and I'd get a lot of advice from people who know you much better than we do and who have a lot more expertise than we have.
Tim M.
|
john
Administrator
| Joined: | Fri Jan 13th, 2006 |
| Location: | Atlanta, Georgia USA |
| Posts: | 174 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Jul 15th, 2009 12:11 pm |
|
There is a fundamental question behind what you are asking as I see it...
Is sex a need?
|
truthseeker
Administrator
| Joined: | Tue May 16th, 2006 |
| Location: | New Jersey USA |
| Posts: | 1322 |
| Status: |
Offline
|
| Mana: | |
|
Posted: Wed Jul 15th, 2009 04:59 pm |
|
Hi MiniMoe,
I bring my wifely two cents worth to your question. I believe that Tim expressed clearly many of my own thoughts.
Having said that, Genesis 2 and 1 Cor. 7 impart the significance that God assigns to the bond of unity, spiritual and physical. Bringing differing physical inclinations to a happy median can be challenging and frustrating for both spouses. I spent years playing tug of war with my husband, not that I didn't enjoy our time together, but that I resisted that time because I felt that yielding to a desire stronger than my own placed too high a value on me as a sexual being, and too little on me as a whole being.
I don't want to quibble over whether or not there is a difference between a habit and an addiction, but I believe my husband's situation before he met me was that he read/viewed magazines to fill the void of loneliness left as a socially disconnected teen. We had no difficulties in the realm of lust/porn for some eighteen years, at which point, when internet temptation hit him after years of our tug of war, he lapsed in to his teenage coping mechanism for rejection.
He, however, was not the one to explain this to me. Rather, as I researched and prayed, the Holy Spirit revealed it to me, humbling and breaking my heart. When God repared my heart, he replaced the hardness with tenderness, and the last four years have been a tremendous blessing. He never blamed me for what role I did play in what he did, and rightly so, because two wrongs never make a right.
Only you know the history of your experience, both with acting out and the dynamics of your marriage. I encourage you to bring Tim's scenario and mine in prayer before the Lord and let Him guide you as to whether there is anything in either one that is close to your situation.
The bottom line is that God's Word is always true, and our final authority for what is right and wrong with our actions. Remember, those whose spouses become unable to engage physically are still required to practice fidelity.
Praying for you,
TruthSeeker
|
newsoul
Member
|
Posted: Wed Jul 22nd, 2009 05:56 pm |
|
| I does not sound like it to me. I know in my fight against porn and promiscuity was because it got me high! My brain is addicted to the rush. That sounds like your case as well? It is good and great that your wife is willing to help you in that way you have to be willing to help both of you and get the mental help you need as well.
|
Current time is 05:04 am | |
|
|
|
RSS