Understanding and Resolving Sexual Compulsions
Page Three
Example
Mark Laaser, a dear friend of the author, in order to help others gain courage to get the help they need4 has written of his experience with sexual addiction Mark grew up in a pastor’s home. His father, though quite successful in ministry, gradually drew Mark in an emotionally incestuous way into an intense father-son relationship. He would often pick Mark up from school and take him to play tennis. Then they would go out to supper before returning together to the house where his mother and younger brother were.
Mark and his mother eventually grew quite distant from each other, and that gave him difficulty in knowing how to relate to women. His need to relate to women became highly sexualized during adolescence. Though he married a beautiful cheerleader from his high school, by the time Mark reached seminary studies at an Ivy League school, his sexual urges were nearly out of control.
Gradually, he began to visit massage parlors and prostitutes. Though Mark and I were colleagues in a year-long clinical training experience where we shared a great deal about ourselves, none of us in the group knew that Mark was beginning to act out sexually outside his marriage. Later, both of us attained our Ph.D’s and went our separate ways—I to teach in a theological seminary, and Mark to a post as director of a counseling center.
In time, Mark became overextended in his work obligations and increasingly distant from his wife and family. Unfortunately, he became sexually involved with several of his counseling clients, and they took him to court. From that point Mark went into treatment and through a several-year process gained sexual sobriety, preserved his marriage, and eventually began to help other sexual addicts in their recovery process. Today Mark remains sober and has developed a much stronger marriage, spiritual life, and effective life of service to people caught up in this problem.
Cybersex Addicts
With the use of the Internet a whole new level of temptation and accessibility to pornography is suddenly confronting us. A group of researchers recently found that more than five percent of 9,265 respondents to an MSNBC survey spent at least 11 hours or more per week in online sexual pursuits! The researchers estimate that fully 20-30 percent of online users visit sites and engage in some online sexual activities.5
Approximately 20 million people visit sexual sites each month. It is no longer necessary to spend thousands of dollars buying pornographic material, nor is it necessary to secretively search out and enter an “adult” bookshop, fearing being caught by acquaintances. It’s only one click away on our work or home computer.
Once people discover that such temptations overwhelm their better judgment and start filling their emotional void with such emotionally powerful “medications,” they are on the road to compulsive use of the Internet. Women tend to prefer chat rooms to porno sites, and news stories frequently appear about young women and even children being lured through chat rooms into secret liaisons with sexual predators.
 Several addicts are torn
between their desires for temporary
relief and pleasure and their desires
to live a healthy, happy life.
There are multiple dangers for these people and those they love. When addicts encounter high stress or uncomfortable feelings about themselves, they immediately turn away from their friends, spouses, or children to engage in what they know will give them “their trusted antidote to anxiety and pain”: the “high,” or “buzz,” or “rush.” They withdraw from the very relationships that they need for a healthy life. This defensive pattern increases arguments and spats with those they love and often diminishes productivity at work.
Some Internet users (more often these are women) develop emotional attachments to online “friends.” A chat-room acquaintance grows into an idealized fantasy and this becomes a substitute for real life. When a fantasy of a perfect person is compared to real life, of course, real life always loses. And if online relationships are pursued in person through clandestine meetings at motels in distant places, a woman can put herself in danger of physical abuse, STDs, or even death.
Unfortunately, Christians are not exempt from these temptations. In one recent month, 20 percent of the calls received on Focus on the Family’s Pastoral Care Line were about pastors and online porn.
If you are wondering whether you have a problem with cybersex, check out the following questionnaire contained in a groundbreaking new book, In the Shadow of the Net by Patrick Carnes, David Delmonico, Elisabeth Griffin, with Joseph M. Moriarity.6 Ask yourself, have I ever done any of the following?
- Kept sexual activity on the Internet a secret from family members
- Carried out sexual activities on the Net at work
- Frequently found yourself erasing your computer history files in an effort to conceal your activity on the Net
- Felt ashamed at the thought that someone you love might discover your Internet use
- Found that your time on the Net takes away from
- Found yourself in a kind of online trance or time warp during which hours just slipped by
- Frequently visited chat rooms that are focused on sexual conversation
- Looked forward to your sexual activities on the Net and felt frustrated and anxious if you couldn’t get on when you planned
- Found yourself masturbating while on the Net
- Recognized the girls in the interactive online video while they recognized your screen name when you signed on
- Had sexual chat-room friends who became more important than the family and friends in your life
- Regularly visited porn sites
- Downloaded pornography from a newsgroup
- Had favorite porn sites
- Taken part in the CuSeeMe sexual video rooms
- Viewed child pornography online.
What Can I Do?
 Continued on Page Four
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