i don't want to i have to - part one

'i don't want to i have to' is a joke my husband and i have for those tiny little compulsions you just can't seem to escape. things like placing something in it's 'exact location', straightening a picture or pushing a clear button every time you walk past a public blood pressure monitor at the pharmacy where i used to work. i didn't want to, i had to. compulsions are strange things.

i titled this post purposefully to echo the feelings i'm having in addressing this issue. my sexual addiction. i don't want to blog about it, i have to. breaking the public shame is enormous if the church is ever going to be able to help people trapped in the addiction of sexual behaviors.

james 5:16 says 'confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed.' - i want healing more than anything, so i confess to you of my addictions. please if you are prone to pray, pray for my healing.

as stated below i started masturbating at a very young age, it truly had nothing to do with sex, it was comfort. i had no idea what i was doing. it felt good while i did it, but it brought me natural shame, i mean innate, from within kind of shame. not the kind that comes from others or teaching. somehow within me i knew it was 'wrong'. i didn't do it in public, it was hidden, secret. i don't know how my 11 year old mind knew this, but it did.

pornography was also readily accessible to me from a very young age. my parents became christians when i was 7 (shortly after the rape) and they immediately stopped drinking. they exchanged their alcoholism for most 'christian' addictions like workaholism, religiousity and food.

but i can remember that there were playboy magazines in our bathroom from my earliest of memories. it was the early 70's and women were told by the culture that it was now socially acceptable for their men to publically view pornagraphy.

i can't imagine how my mother survived this. i hate hugh hefner. i pray the grace of god is never extended to that man. i know it's horrible, but i blame him for many of the abuses i have had to suffer as a woman. he made it 'socially acceptable', broke through the stigma and made it 'normal'. but that's another post for another time.

after my parents became christians the pornography was removed from our home (i'm sure my mother was relieved). but i sought it out anywhere i could find it. something about it was titilating, naughty and exciting.

it wasn't about the images, it wasn't about the women, it was just about the obsession i had for sex. somewhere in the brokenness of my childhood sex = intimacy. and that is what i longed for (still long for) more than anything.

that's the diabolical nature of pornography - the devil just distorts things a notch to take was is beautiful and make it obscene. (i don't mean that in the xxx way - but the obscenity that comes from the gross distortion of something beautiful).

because of my own parent's addictions (i suspect they had sexual addictions of their own too) their shame prevented them from ever educating me in any way about this matter. and this is the key here - shame.

shame is what drives every addiction - (i will be posting my theories about shame in detail soon) and what keeps us from talking/teaching/addressing this issue in particular. our own sin in this area makes us feel as if we can't address because it cuts too close to the bone.

the nature of obsessions and compulsions is that we do them without thinking - because thinking is exactly what we are trying to avoid. if we have to think, we have to feel, and the feelings are just too enormous and painful to acknowledge. so we become programmed into the behavior and participate without being able to break through to the why.

and until we get to the 'why' we will never be free. i don't eat because i'm hungry, i eat because i'm lonely. i didn't masturbate because i was horny (sorry, but that's the only word i could think of...) i masturbated because i was ashamed.

it wasn't until i had some victories with my food addictions that i was even able to begin to address my sexual addictions.

the times in my childhood that i used masturbation were times when i was in bed, either daydreaming, fantasizing, feeling afraid or wanting to fall asleep and not have to have silence for my thoughts. my mother was the queen of 'go away, no come back'. it was like i had an elastic band in my back that she would yank any time she wanted me around, and then she would smoke to get rid of me. it worked.

when she smoked the only place i could get away was in my room. i hated cigarette smoke, no really, i HATED it. the man who raped me was holding a cigarette/cigar right next to my head during the whole thing. so any time i was able to gasp for a breath it was smoke filled. smelling smoke makes me fill with a rage that took me a long time to identify.

so time in my room became escape time. my reality was so distasteful that escape was my way of freeing myself. fantasy became my life. the world i created in my head was so much more real and wonderful to me. but it left me very lonely. horribly lonely. and masturbation made me feel (for the minute it took) like i wasn't alone, or like i was 'in control' somehow. (gosh this is harder than i even dreaded it would be).

it wasn't until jr. high (i think the movie porky's was the 'key') that my fantasy life became sexual. and that masturbation was linked (or even defined) for my young mind. (i just googled porky's and it didn't come out until 1981, so it must have been something else... i'll have to ponder what it was).

well, i best get my real life started for the day. i'll blog more later. thank you for your prayers.