It’s most men’s Achilles' heel. For me after about a month of success the flesh starts craving. First women in public and tv start catching the eye. Then maybe annoying relationship issues start popping up. Then fantasies start rolling around inside. Then sometimes a bad attitude creeps in and bang! Don’t care anymore going to dive in! Then regret. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. What I’m saying Will your not alone.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
Romans 7:21-25 ESV
Thanks for your honest share
javajake. I'm that way too.
Last acting out was with inpure thoughts that started with an inappropriate search on YouTube, that started with "I wanted to see gore". The first attack was "I want to see gore" and at that time, it was not good but not healthy either, then, that "lukewarmess" in me, that "desire to not dive in but just wander" is what hooked me line and sinker. The gore junk had all kinds of (fill in the blank) and I fell. That was in February 2021, then after that had a few months, then bam, one month, then bam, I was hooked on some gore fix. I mean, I thought "I wanted to see someone burn" literally, and that is how my last year started.
I'm happy God rescued me from that because the desire to see gore is gone. Thank you Jesus, it's really Jesus that helped me.
2nd thing, I noticed last year, I tried to "help" a suicidal person on a different forum platform called "Reddit" but that did not go well. I was sending her private chats daily and I thought this is too much. I felt a emotional bond to her in a very unhealthy way. I learned from research about "emotional affairs" that I am supposed to be getting my emotional needs met by my wife, not from office lady1 or online lady1, and things like this. God broke this addiction in me and it was painful because I told my wife. She was again re-hurt that I was talking to a women online again. This seems to be my downfall.
It's not women, but my desire to connect to them.
If I can recognize this desire in the form of ...I don't know....whatever had been happening in the past, then I will be better equipped for the next time.
my personal boundaries are this now
1. no personal messages to other women
2. no watching gore
right now, these are more frequent and real issues to me as is like 'porn' since it's lust and adultery all intertwined.
its possible to talk to Christian women, but also knowing the fact of adultery and past experiences and also hearing out it from the news about how other church leaders fall down...it's almost impossible, it's almost like playing with fire.
I give up that, trying to give up that.
My job is difficult because it involved calling, emailing, other customers which are all around me 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, but it's getting easier. For example, one women, I am not lusting after and conversations are with all the office and I'm not checking her out. It's becoming more and more easier like this.
I know God is watching me, but if I try to keep that in memory, and ask for God's help, and surrender my rights to look, and surrender my rights to think freely on her, as a fleshly man would, I put myself with line with God. I have to do this.
Sometimes I'm caught off guard and a women is right there, smiling, but interpreting that smile as "customer service" not as in "she wants to go to bed with me" is key for me. Also, I have to keep in mind that we are all lost unless we are born again by Jesus Christ and that "smiling" might only be her best way to say "I acknowledge your existence" and nothing else.
"that smile" and "that look" is only reserved for my wife and not to be attributed to any other women, even if she is trying to allure me with her eyelids. (Proverbs).
My sick brain, needs to be "brainwashed" by the blood of the Lamb, or better said "renewed mind" Romans 12:1,2.
My sick lust needs to die.
I honestly think, there is like an invisible spirit right there, around me, and in my mind, tempting my heart and mind to think perverted desires.
The body is for the Lord. God made it.
The face is a skin covering for the skull, the skull is holding the eyes and brain and muscles. So the face is not some sex object. These are like little reality checks I'm doing.
The breasts were made for her husband, and skin holding fat, and milk for babies, and her body belongs to the Lord, and to her husband or future husband. her husbands wants to enjoy his wife, not me, the sick, selfish man too.
a realists, sober, process like this, is helping me.
Those body shapes are just skeletons, with blood and skins, covered by clothes, for her to live life until she is done living and dead and buried, and her spirit to be with the Lord, or burning in hell. Now how does that sound? Do I still feel aroused? Do I want to keep looking at her skin? even after knowing all of this? I don't. It's like a though of a cold shower now thrown in my face to say "no, buzzer sounds, wrong, dominic, she is taken, eyes off her, plus your wife is not happy, why don't you enjoy her and not someone elses?
as far as porn actors/actresses,
how would I feel if my family, were poor, was deceived by the devil to make good money making sick porn while other men and women masturbate to her? I would be very sad and the truth is....she is lost and hell-bound, and I would be too, if I did that. Matthew 5:27-30.
these are sobering thoughts, I want to think to wake me up. Not to hurt you, but to help me and help you.
Women, need to know this, they need love, absolute love from God first, and not let their man take God's place, These hurting, lonly women, even if they give you their whole body and soul, are committing adultery and idolatry and God will punish them, so why even try?
If I know this and still try it, I have concluded that I am really insane and I really really need God, even more,
Romans 1 says that God does give us up to a depraved mind, and if God does this, and we are persisting in that way, wow, what help is there? secular recovery? No. Only God, can restore us, this is how I think and tell myself and I'm telling this to me first and then to everyone reading this.
What is God did give up dominic, to his perverted mind? then I would be back into prostitutes, gettings STDS and tested, spreading to my wife, making her so depressed and crushing her soul, then my chlidren would see daddy has a fake Christian, Christian loser, or some guy who couldn't control himself, and went to hell,
I am scared of I lost my mind, go into drapravity mode, there is a line and once it's cross, who knows if there is a way back, why test God? why watch porn? why masturbate? because my body wants sex? why? it's my mind wanting to fantasize? why? because I am spiritually joined to a spirit of prostitution who should be renounced immediately, rebuked, I need prayer, the Bible, and God's Holy Spirit.
Also, another big thing I have learned...I have come to stop relying on my wife for sex. I mean, if we can, great, but I am not going to beg for special favors, quickies, or complain on why she is not interested in me? I asked God to take away my desire for sex. I'm not asking God to give me prostate cancer or some horrible desease, but a changed outlook on my wife, to see her a a slowly healing person, my best suitable partner, whom I want to see her healed of all the hellish pain I have caused her.
I recently found out that my parents had a 25 year no sex. Strange, but when my dad got prostate cancer, I guess, the male part doesn't work, and my mom asked God to take the desire away. Shocking truth for me. Both my parents are still alive and married too. My dad's third marriage. That is my family history and now you know.