Every mans battle
I went back in your archives and have listened to every one of your shows. It took a crisis in our marriage 14 years ago for me to start to get strong. He abandoned me for a total of 10 years while he gave himself to his hobby. I felt hopeless except for trusting God for a miracle. In that baptismal pool all of his five senses were stopped (except for his ability to see himself and his needs). My husband’s dad baptized him in the pool of pornography at a very young age. I tolerated the intolerable until I found out that I was worth love. Most of my marriage has been almost intolerable. I cannot thank you enough for what happened to my husband at Every Man’s Battle last weekend.
This is a letter we received from an EMB wife whose husband went to the Every Man’s Battle Workshop in 2014. Posted in Affairs & Infidelity, Blog, Every Man's Battle | Tagged acting out, addiction, affairs, Every Man, Every Mans Battle, Jason Martinkus, lust, porn, pornography, recovery, relationship, sex addict, sex addiction, sexual addiction, sexual integrity, sexual temptation Redemption 2am…groggy and halitosis, they’ll drive to the ends of the earth to help us.Ĭultivate that, and I can almost guarantee you won’t need acting out anymore. Middle of a meeting at work…answer our call if its an emergency. They are on vacation…they’ll answer our call. We need men in our lives who we know, that we know, that we know have our best interest at heart and will be there for us absolutely any time we need them. That’s kind of sick to think, isn’t it? Say it out loud and give it a test drive see how it sits with you when you say: “Porn provides me security”. That sense of guarantee, where you know that you know that you know, that’s called security. We know, even without thinking about it, we just “know” that it’ll be there for us. Taking it a step further, sexual acting out provides a false sense of security. Is there someone you are 100% confident will answer your call if you ring them at 2am? If the answer is no, you’ll consistently revert back to the guaranteed hit. When you have a couple people (besides your spouse) in your life who you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, will be there for you, there is a direct offset to the sexual acting out. There is actually a 1-for-1 offset that doesn’t often get spoken of. For a few moments.īut the real antidote to acting out is intimacy. With a click of a button, a swipe of a screen, an email or a phone call we can instantly inject enough morphine into our system to numb the unpleasant present reality. Where we feel overwhelmed we feel peace for a moment, where disconnected we feel a sense of belonging, where feeling criticized we feel appreciated, where minimized like we matter, helpless – powerful, failure – accomplishment. It’s about the emotional charge, the escape from reality and the offset to the longings of our soul.
To explain further, remember that sexual acting out isn’t about sex. But in the moment, the fix is real and never lets us down. Sure, we all know that in the aftermath of acting out there is zero satisfaction. One of the subtle realities of pornography, affairs, strip clubs and/or prostitutes is guaranteed satisfaction.