Ryan and Sarah (not their real names) are missionaries. Both were born in Latin America, so they didn’t go through cultural adjustments or have problems learning the language when they arrived in South America. They are having a successful ministry together planting a new church in the city where they live. Following a few days visiting in the home of this couple, Ryan approached me nervously and asked to talk about an issue before I returned to Lima. He began by saying that he had a good relationship with God and good communication with his wife. They never had sex before getting married, but he used to masturbate on a regular basis while he watched pornography. This continued after they got married. In the country where he lives, it is easy to find highly erotic programs on TV late at night, and sometimes he would go to the TV room and masturbate without control. One night, his wife caught him in this activity. In his guilt, he cried and promised not to do it again but he was unable to keep his promise. He tried everything to stop praying, fasting, more Bible study but nothing seemed to work. At one point he concluded that he must have a demon. He rationalized that this was just something he would have to live with, that he was oversexed, and that every male has the same problem. I listened in silence while he opened this door to his intimate and personal life, but when I gently told him that not every man struggles with this problem, he began to sob.
He had convinced himself and his wife that every married man masturbated on a regular basis watching pornography. I am a counselor, but he was coming to me as his friend, talking with a colleague about a personal issue. On the way home, I tried to understand the rationale behind this behavior. I thought of my own teenage struggles with masturbation and pornography. Later, when I worked as a youth pastor I was frustrated with the silence inside the church about sexuality and also with the simplistic answers pastors give to their members, especially teenagers, telling them that the solution is praying more or singing better. I had concluded that masturbation is a symptom of some kind of emotional dysfunction, so my first approach to Ryan problem was to focus on his emotional life.
In an e-mail to me, he replied that he could not think of any emotional problems in his life, but he would like to tell me about his background.
He had grown up on the mission field where many missionaries used to send their children to boarding schools because there were no English speaking schools nearby. Missions have changed dramatically in the last 20 years, and it now is possible to find better schools locally. But at one time (and in many places today), many missionaries were like
Ryan parents, concerned about their kids but convinced that sending their children to boarding school was Gods will, a sacrifice missionaries had to make so they could spread the Gospel message. Most of the children in Ryan missionary school were well adjusted, living in an environment that was healthy and spiritual. Even so, extracting a child from his or her natural environment and inserting the young person into an artificial one has a high price. Children in these schools learn to control and hide their emotions. Some get the message that, if I cry and show sadness, I will be defeating God’s will, so it is better to learn how to control myself.
Ryan reported that growing up in this school was a good experience, but leaving his school was painful. He went to a Christian college in the United States and, for the first time, learned about masturbation and where to find pornography. Soon he was hooked. Several years later on the mission field, he couldn’t control this behavior. As I kept getting his e-mail messages, I was reading about sexual addiction and suspected that the roots of this behavior were someplace in his boarding school experience, but it seemed that there was nothing there. Everything was described as being so perfect that I had some doubts. Then one day, Ryan got up the courage to tell me about an experience when he was seven or eight years old. An older student abused him sexually. He was afraid to tell his parents so he just buried all his feelings. But when he started to explore this he remembered another experience, when he was in college. One day he felt sick and went to the college doctor. His problem was a sore throat but the physician started by asking Ryan how often he masturbated. Then, the doctor asked him to take his clothes off for a full examination and while he was lying on the examination table he noticed that the doctor was having an erection. The young man wanted to run, to hit the doctor, to react, but he couldn’t, and stayed there until the doctor finished his inspection. As he fled from the room, Ryan experienced some of the held-in feelings he had had in boarding school. In that unrealistic world of Christian discipline in the boarding school, they never talked about morals, always assuming that strict rules would control behavior. Ryan had learned how to hide his emotions and feelings even in the face of abuse. He had never learned how to develop close relationships or to build intimacy. Instead he had learned to cope with his emotional needs for closeness by developing fake relationships with fantasy women, finding never-satisfying fulfillment in pornography and masturbation. The key to his recovery was in learning
How to develop intimate relationships, starting with his wife. But at the same time, he needed to stop the behavior. Ryan was communicating with me as a friend, and I thought Sarah should know about our conversations. She was not happy with this knowledge but agreed to talk about it. At this point, Ryan and I had communicated through dozens of e-mails and long distance phone calls, but we all decided that they would come to Lima and stay in our house. We agreed that Ryan had a problem and that our first task was to stop the behavior. We set some external rules similar to what he had experienced in the boarding school so that he could gain temporary control. First of all, Sarah would hide the TV antenna so Ryan could not watch the TV alone. Second, Ryan could not have access to the Internet alone. When Ryan felt tempted he had to tell Sarah or call me. Finally, If Ryan succumbed to temptation, he had to tell Sarah, then call me to discuss his feelings. We also established a system of rewards. For example, if Ryan could go without masturbating for 15 days, I would buy him a present. These rules were very useful for the first few weeks, but they didn’t last too long. They did last long enough, however, for him to work in other areas. The rules gave him more confidence that he could defeat his problem and win this fight. We started to work on the area of intimacy. I pictured intimacy as an emotional muscle. In Ryan’s case, this muscle wasn’t properly developed so he had to work it out by learning to build intimacy with a few friends. But Ryan and Sarah live in an area where they have few friends, so he and I agreed to work on our friendship. This is not recommended, but in the culture where they live there seemed to be no alternatives. At times, I felt we would lose our friendship, but they stayed in our house in Lima and we spent three to four hours a day talking and praying together. After the week together, they returned to their home and we resumed the e-mails and phone calls. Ryan felt more tempted than ever, and it seemed that all the theories we were applying weren’t working. In the part of South America where Ryan lives, there are no Christian counselors, and I doubt that a secular psychologist would pay too much attention to Ryan’s situation. With the theories not working, he returned to Lima. He seemed to be experiencing a kind of withdrawal, like withdrawal from caffeine or other drugs. I had seen reactions like that in friends who had stopped smoking cold turkey. To confirm this, we tried an experiment. We sat at my computer, and together we accessed the Internet. Without his knowledge, I had pre-configured the browser so that it would not be possible for him to see the pictures.
*In Response to Ivan Velasco By Christopher McClusky*
Ivan Velasco is a living example of Galatians 6:1, Brothers, if someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently. All work with sexual addiction requires a powerful commitment to gentle restoration in the Lord. Mr. Velasco has identified the two opposing challenges that make sexual addiction recovery so difficult: Controlling the behavior while healing the woundedness. As soon as behavioral control is established and work begun on the woundedness, temptation greatly increases to deaden the pain of the wounds by engaging in the behavior. He has also identified the critical piece of neurochemical dependency and withdrawal in sexual addiction. The body becomes addicted to endorphine, adrenaline, and other mood-altering neurochemistry generated during sexual arousal and orgasm. A client of mine once commented, Compared with sexual addiction, overcoming drug addiction was a cake walk.
One of the common denominators of all sexual addictions is a flight from intimacy. The individuals do not know themselves beyond the various masks they present to the world. Having little intimate knowledge of themselves, they are unable to be intimate with others, including God. Their lives are a mass of defense mechanisms, performers seeking acceptance and approval. To be affirmed, even for being someone they are not, is their only experience of love outside of the fantasy worlds they create in their minds and through pornography. A 12-step or therapy group can create a safe environment in which to practice the risk-taking required to know oneself, and to develop the skills necessary for true intimacy with others. Ryan would benefit greatly from such a group. I would encourage Mr. Velasco to explore more deeply the incident of sexual abuse in childhood. However, a person can still evidence the emotional vacuum that is the force behind sexual addiction without any trace of childhood sexual abuse. Neglect leaves the same marks on the psyche as abuse. When key ingredients nec- visit an erotic web page. He did this. Then I asked him to open an erotic picture. As he was about to do so, I asked him to stop and describe to me all what he was feeling. He said he felt as if adrenaline was rushing throughout his body, arousing tension and excitement. Though he could not see anything, his body was still reacting. Ryan’s withdrawal period lasted two to three days. After that he felt free of the compulsion and was able to avoid masturbation for more than 50 days life record for him. During these 50 days, he realized the need for deeper relationships. We analyzed the way he had handled our friendship. We talked about ways in which he could change. I suggested that his recovery would be easier if he had another friend to trust, so that I could take the role of counselor, but this seemed impossible so we did the best we could. Since these discussions, Ryan has worked hard on relationships and has improved more than I expected. He is gaining control over his sexuality, and even when he has masturbated again, it’s been after weeks and months of victory. He not only has victory and confidence, but he has a better relationship
with Sarah and, I think, a better understanding of his relationship with God. Ryan story is not uncommon for men who grew up on the mission field. While the boarding school may be a truly healthy and spiritual place, it is often lacking in a daily experience of relational intimacy.
Differing caregivers, nannies, and instructors can never substitute for a parents love. It is the experience of being loved for who we are, rather than simply approved for what we do, that develops an experiential knowledge of intimacy and invites the soul into fullness of relationship. In an effort to assuage the ache of relational deprivation, children quite naturally develop defense mechanisms. Some of the most effective are (1) holding their emotions inside, (2) creating fantasy worlds for escape in which they feel loved and accepted, and (3) becoming performers to gain approval and not embarrass their parents. Having employed these defense mechanisms for years, it is very easy to develop a sexual addiction once adult notions of sexuality are introduced. Whether the introduction is in college through pornography, in adolescence with the start of nocturnal emissions and discovery of masturbation, or in childhood through some form of sexual abuse, the rush of sexual arousal and orgasm seems to temporarily fill their emotional void. Since this discovery falls in the fertile soil of a person already skilled at hiding, escaping, and performing, it can seem a power too tempting to resist. Mr. Velasco should continue to focus on intimacy skills and increasingly bring Sarah into their sessions. She will have her own woundedness and issues that need attention. A great resource for ministering to couples is the intensive workshops facilitated by Dr. Mark Laaser and the Christian Alliance for Sexual Recovery (www.casr.org). These workshops and other Christian texts and workbooks should be used to supplement their work. Finally, there are obvious problems in this case with dual relationship. Unfortunately, in third-world countries our ability to work within strict guidelines of ethical practice is often impaired. Mr. Velasco has done the proper thing as a Christian in ministering healing, while acknowledging the blurring of boundaries. He should continue to actively seek other old resources for healing, while pushing harder for development of a network of friends and accountability partners for Ryan.Web counselor plays a vital role for the welfare of society.
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