I was tasked with assessing a man regarding his sexual addiction.  

Unfortunately, his tale was all too familiar.  

As he sat across from me telling me that he is now considered a sexual offender and must register with the local police every time he moves, he started to unfold his story.  He told me that he had found his Dad's stash of Playboy and Hustler magazines when he was just eight years old.  

That is a bad sign...  The earlier a man is exposed to porn the greater are his chances that he will become addicted and the greater are his chances of getting into legal trouble.

The more he looked at porn, the more he wanted to look at porn.  (Interesting cycle, don't you think?)  The more he looked at porn, the more he fantasized about doing what he was watching on the porn movies.  

The more he watched porn, the less developed his social skills became.  This happens because porn causes a man to be selfish and just think about his own pleasure.  Friendships are unnecessary.  Girls are unnecessary because the girls in porn movies and magazines are always accessible and there for a man's pleasure.

It's a terrible cycle that entraps a man.  He wants to approach girls but fears rejection.  He wants to do the things he fantasizes about but he fears she will say no.  Finally, his isolation led him to frustration and he decided he would act upon some of his fantasies.  

A really weird thing about men addicted to porn is that they think that women are turned on by seeing male genitalia.  The porn that men watch gives a terribly distorted perspective of sexuality.  In actuality, women are more attracted to an intimate relationship than the male physique.

This man started to act upon his fantasies from the porn that he had been viewing over the years.  

One of his fantasies was that he would "accidentally" leave his zipper down and a woman would notice and become aroused.   He would walk around in grocery stores with his zipper down, fantasizing about his inevitable sexual encounter.  He was disappointed that no women noticed.

So, he developed another plan.  He decided that he would sit in his car close to the exits of stores with his pants open and hope that women would see and become aroused.  That didn't work either.  

So, his next step would be to call women over to his car, "to ask a question" and hope that with his pants open, they would notice, be sexually aroused and want to be with him.   He continued to be very disappointed.

He thought, because of his distorted perspective of women and sexuality, that what women were wanting to see was that he was sexually aroused, that he was erect, ready for sex.  So, he would sit in his car and fantasize about a woman jumping into his car and they would drive to a secluded place for a sexual encounter.  

One morning, while he was sitting in his car masturbating and fantasizing, he rolled his window down and asked a woman to come over because he had a "question" he wanted to ask her.  She approached his car, looked at him and where his hand was and instantly became repulsed.  She noted his license plate and called the police when she got home.  

She made a report to the police and he was arrested and prosecuted.  His prosecution was made public, his family was embarrassed and he lost his job.  

As he finished his story, I asked, "have you gotten rid of your porn?"  I knew his answer would be "no."  I was right.  The court wanted recommendations at the end of my assessment.  My recommendations were necessary:  no cable tv, no vcr/dvd player, no internet, no smart phone, no porn.  If he was caught in possession of any of these items, he would go to prison.  Also, he needed intensive counseling.  If this failed, then he would need residential treatment.

However, when the judge found out that he had not given up his porn, he acted swiftly.  This man immediately went to prison.  

Wouldn't it be nice if all of my stories ended in a positive note?  

This is a depressing, disgusting story.

Porn wins.

"Behold, you have sinned against the LORD and be sure that your sin will find you out."

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Where can porn take you?  I met a man who confessed to me that he digs thru the garbage dump to collect his porn.  

This man belongs to a very conservative sect of Christianity where one does not use electricity.   Because he is so separated from modern culture, I asked him how he became addicted to porn.  His answer was astonishing.  "I was dumping some trash out of a garbage bin and I saw a Playboy in the dump with the centerfold laying open."  He had never seen anything like this.  He had heard about "centerfolds" and was always intrigued but was thankful that those "worldly temptations" were something he never had to deal with.  Nevertheless, He quickly grabbed this magazine and tucked it down his pants.  Later that day, when he was alone, he ogled this picture and found himself extremely attracted to the naked woman.  He started to fantasize about her and then masturbated to her seductive image.

To me, the message was clear but lost on him:   Porn is garbage.  It belongs in the garbage.  It should stay in the garbage.  Garbage in, garbage out.  

What the garbage collector didn't know is that porn is insidious.  Porn never gives up.  It keeps taking and taking, offering false feelings of comfort until you end up doing things that you never imagined.

It didn't take long before centerfolds were no longer satisfying to him.  He started noticing, at the dump while looking for more centerfolds, other pictures.  In these pictures, there were women posing seductively with animals.  These pictures sparked further prurient interests for him.  He started attempting to have sex with his goat.  Over time, he moved on to other animals.  His addiction finally caught up with him when he found himself naked in the pig pen on all fours.  That's when he came to his senses and realized that he really, really, really had a problem.  

He was fortunate, because if he had been caught during these activities, he would have been charged with a crime.  Zoophilia is illegal in many U.S. states.  The medical issues that can occur are numerous.  However, the legal charges and the medical issues are not as severe as the toll that such behavior takes on a man's soul.  

More than zoophilia is the duplicity that this man lived.   He would go to church regularly and then engage in these detestable behaviors at other times.  That's what the sin of porn does.  It causes a man to pretend to be holy.  His energy ends up being consumed by things that weaken him rather than strengthen him. 

You may be thinking, "Porn will never do that to me.   I can control it."  However, let me assure you, porn will win.  It always does.  

Porn is garbage.  It belongs in the garbage.  It should stay in the garbage.  Garbage in, garbage out.  

If you are looking  at porn, stop.  Get rid of your stash.  Tell your pastor about your decision.  Become accountable to a counselor and a men's support group. 

With God's help, you can stop.  


BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

There is so much more to this question than just a cut and dry answer. I think when Pastors are approached with this question its easier to answer on the spot than in a blog. Answering this question takes having some background and some more information than just saying Yes or No. Lets look at some questions I have been asked through the years.

Is Masturbation OK if we are married?

Many times people get very legalistic about what they can and can’t do with the confines of a marriage bed. As we talk about this the first Caveat is I would never endorse anything that makes someone feel shame or anything that is being forced on one another. Paul uses these words when dealing with our hearts 1 Corinthians 6:12-13

12 “All things are lawful for me,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful for me,” but I will not be dominated by anything. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the other. The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. That being said I think there are ways that manual stimulation can be used between a married couple that are fine and don’t need to bring up thoughts of guilt or shame.

What if my Spouse and I can’t be together?

I get this question from time to time from military members who are deployed or are separated for some reason from their spouse. The Bible is very clear that you should only have eyes for your spouse. If this brings you closer to your spouse during long separations and doesn’t drive a wedge in your relationship I would say that could be OK. I would beware of the wandering mind and if doing it distracts from thoughts of your spouse I would steer clear of it altogether.

My wife isn’t that interested in sex and I am so can’t I do this to tide me over until the next time we have sex?

Although this may seem like its the same question as above I view this differently. Masturbation can distract and be a coping mechanism that isn’t healthy inside of a relationship. I would strongly warn against doing this and labeling it as a need. Sexual appetites are like any others the more you feed them the more they consume us. Excessive masturbation can lead men and women to have a skewed view of sex with your spouse.

I’m single and It keeps me from sleeping around. Isn’t this ok?

I would disagree with the thought process here altogether. Jesus said this when dealing with thoughts of the mind.Matthew 5:27-28 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart. So if your lusting after women its the same thing. Keeping a pure mind is difficult enough in todays world and adding masturbation and fantasy to it is not going to make that any easier. Masturbation is not simply a physical act it also engages the mind as well, and that is where we need to be extremely careful.

Is the act of masturbation alone a sin?

The Bible tells us everything we need to know not everything we want to know. Unfortunately the bible isn’t filled with an FAQ section. The Bible is very specific when it comes to the heart issues that can surround masturbation. The Bible tells us not to worship ourselves, Not to lust after women, That our eyes are the window to our soul, To be careful and guard our hearts and many more things that can relate to this issue. When pressed I don’t think we can say the act in and of itself is a sin but it can cause us to sin and this is why we must be very careful when dealing with this subject.

This post was written by Rod Poepping of XXX Church.  The original post with comments can be found here:  http://www.xxxchurch.com/men/pastorsblog/what-do-i-do-when-asked-if-masturbation-is-ok.html

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.

Despite recent strides in "sex addiction" research, the condition does not make the cut as an official psychiatric disorder, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

On Dec. 1, 2012 the APA approved the latest version of its mental health handbook known as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). The manual includes several new disorders such as hoarding and binge eating.

But guidance for diagnosing and treating sex addiction, formally known as hypersexual disorder, won't be included.

Although the manual has an appendix that includes "provisional" conditions requiring further research, hypersexual disorder will not appear in this section either.

The decision comes after a study published in October in which researchers tested the proposed criteria for hypersexual disorder, and found that physicians generally disagreed on who should be diagnosed with it — a demonstration of the criteria's reliability and validity.

Rory Reid, a research psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who lead that study, said he was not surprised the APA did not approve hypersexual disorder for the DSM-5, because sexual disorders are generally controversial.

There are also still questions the APA may want addressed. Studies of the criteria included only people who were already seeking help for a mental condition, or were referred to a mental health clinic, Reid said. So it's not clear whether the criteria would apply in diagnosing people in the general population, he said.

In Reid's study, hypersexual disorder was defined as "recurrent and intense sexual fantasies, sexual urges, and sexual behavior," that lasted at least six months.

Diagnosis requires that these urges cause the patient distress, and aren't brought on by drugs or another mental disorder. The behavior must also interfere with their life, for instance, some patients in the study lost jobs because they could not refrain from watching pornography and masturbating at work. Developing the criteria was a significant step in the field because it will allow researchers to study the disorder in a uniform way, Reid said.

And although hypersexual disorder is not officially acknowledged in the APA's new manual, Reid said he would see little change in his day to day work.

"People are still coming into the therapist office and saying this is a problem. As a psychologist...I'm going to try to understand what's going on, I'm going to try to help them," Reid said. "That’s true whether it's in the DSM or not."

The original post for this blog can be found at:  http://news.yahoo.com/sex-addiction-still-not-official-disorder-192645302.html

BE HOLY.
BE A MAN.