How I Became Addicted to Porn Pt 4

Dear Jesus, I beg your forgiveness for the many sins that I have committed against you, against my family, and against myself.  I rely only on your mercy and forgiveness.  Please show me the path of righteousness that I may follow you always.  Without you, I am weak and unable to do anything.  I give you my life, my will, my body and soul.  Cleanse me of the darkness that has pervaded my soul.  Shine your light in the dark caverns of my heart that I may be redeemed.  Be with me in my hours of weakness.  I beg you, Jesus. 

Amen

Ok, I promise this is going to be the last post in this series.  It will probably be the hardest for me to write, as it will bring up things that have happend very recently.  Anyways, so here I was, out of the Marine Corps.  I managed to get a job working for a start-up non-profit organization.  I was the only employee and was tasked with getting things going.  I was glad to have the work, although it didn't pay very well.  I wasn't acting out as much, as we had a good filter on our home internet, and I didn't have many opportunities.  However, I still was able to manipulate my way into it occasionally. 

The kicker came when one of the board members offered one of his own offices for me to use.  I had my own computer.  Can you see where this is going?  Yup.  I looked at porn there too.  I even kind of got caught one time when the board member came into my office and saw something on the computer.  He never mentioned it, but I knew that he knew.  I liked the job, and thought it was going to be my life's work, when I was fired all of a sudden without any warning.  It wasn't for looking at porn either.  I won't get into a whole lot of details for legal reasons, but suffice it to say that I was pretty poed.  All of a sudden, I was jobless and broke and really resentful.  That's a good recipe for more porn.

Luckily, I was able to get into the local college for music.  Here it was!  I was saved!  I admit, it was a challenge to go to school with a bunch of recent high school grads.  I was almost thirty!  Plus, the girls were pretty good looking as well.  My wife was wary of it, but I started classes and did pretty well.  I quickly found that I could check out a laptop from the library and find a corner and look at porn.  During the summer after my first year of college, I started to get bored with just porn.  I started looking at Craig's List, I signed up for a couple of adult hookup sites. 

I never actually was able to make something work, but I was actively looking to have an affair at this point.  That's not good.  Things progressed with my porn addiction to the point where, after the first semester of my second year, my wife threatened to leave me.  I was so devastated that I spilled my guts to a girl that I knew at school, who I also told that I wanted to be "friends with benefits."  I soon realized my error and apologized, but I was a little scared that it had actually happened.  I started a twelve step program for sex addiction, and actually saw some results. 

I had a blissful two and a half months of recovery until I got lazy with my prayer life.  It is God that sustains any sobriety, and when you let Him go, so does your sobriety.  I started looking at porn again, and quickly got up to the point where I had left off.  I was looking at it in the library for hours and still checking out ways to have an affair.  I was still unable to make any progress with it, fortunately for my marriage. 

After my sophomore year, I worked that summer and still continued to look at porn when I had the chance.  Things came to a boil when my wife found all the sites that I had joined, all the messages I had sent to Craig's List people, and realized how much I was still looking at porn and not trying to recover.  This was a few weeks ago from this posting, by the way.  She took the kids and left the house while I was at work.  She went to a friends' house and left me a note.  It said pretty much that if I didn't do anything, she wasn't going to come back.  It was up to me.

Here is where I had to make some tough life choices.  I can't tell you the conflict that I experienced.  There was a part of me that WANTED her to just go so I could do whatever I wanted.  That was my addict part, the insane part of me that couldn't stop the addiction.  The part of me that loves my family missed them being away for just one night.  I said a Rosary that night and vowed to go make things right with her.

I got to the friends' house where she was staying.  I was a little awkward and didn't know how to start.  She had some demands.  She didn't want me to go back to school.  I reeled at this suggestion.  This was my passion, my attempt at a real career.  She wanted me to leave?  I also had to attend as many twelve step meetings that I could find, talk to a therapist, and pretty much do everything that I could.  It took me a little while, but I agreed to withdraw from school.  I even quite my job.

I got the feeling that I was supposed to give EVERYTHING up to God.  My life, my finances, my marriage, my kids, everything.  I disenrolled from school, quit my job, and said, "Thy Will be done."  I can't tell you how hard that is.  I am still not well.  I have much work to do.  We just back from the beach.  It was great.  I loved taking my kids to where I went as a kid and giving them some of those same memories.  On another note, I had a hard time dealing with all the visual imagry that was available. 

So that's it.  We're up to present now.  I can't tell you how it's going to end, because the story is still unfolding.  I am still a sex addict and completely powerless over it.  I cannot do a thing to stop it except to completely surrender to God.  Please pray for me and my marriage.  I don't want to lose my family.  I really don't.  My wife can't handle it anymore and will leave me if I can't stop.  I tell you that I can't.  Only God can do anything for me at this point.  St Paul said, "In my weakness I am strong."  If that's the case, I should be able to take on Samson pretty soon, 'cause I am REALLY weak. 

My next post will be a little different in that I will be attempting to explain some of the science behind addiction, and how it affects the brain.  You're right, I'm not a scientist by any means, but I'm going to tell you what some of the guys who actually know what they're talking about have to say.  God bless you and keep you.