Chapter 8 - You Need Good Boundaries Out of the Gate
When I began my journey of recovery from pornography addiction, I was tormented. I had tried everything I could think of trying to stop acting out to no avail. I wanted to stop this destructive obsession, but the temptation to act out was so strong that at times I wanted to die so I could be rid of it. Fortunately for me, one of the first lessons I learned on my journey of recovery was how to set good boundaries.
By setting good boundaries, I immediately saw my level of temptation to act out with pornography plummet. In so doing, I gained some much-needed breathing room that allowed me to focus on getting healed and becoming whole instead of fighting a momentum-draining and almost unbearable level of temptation to act out. Boundaries don’t cure you of your addiction, but they help remove you from the front lines of the battle with temptation so that you can begin the healing process that will eventually result in your freedom from addiction.
So what is a boundary? In the paradigm of a recovery program, a boundary is a rule of behavior that helps prevent you from acting out. Good boundaries help prevent you from reaching a level of temptation that is almost guaranteed to result in acting out (i.e. using pornography in this case) and instead helps keep you in a safe space where you can live in sobriety. Sobriety, in this case, means not acting out with pornography or participating in other damaging sexual behavior.
In my years of recovery, I have discovered that the best boundaries are those that are highly tailored to the specific addict. For instance, a friend who attended the same sexual addiction recovery group as I did was a serial adulterer. He said pornography didn’t tempt him, only the real physical acting out with another person. Boundaries that kept him away from pornographic websites were next to useless for him because that wasn’t his temptation. One of his most effective boundaries was staying away from the part of town where all of the clubs and bars were where he used to pick up women. I could frequent those same areas all day long with no real temptation, because a) I don’t drink or smoke, and b) I would never go to a bar or club in the first place – not my thing. We both had sexual addiction issues, but our boundaries needed to be tailored to our particular temptations in order to be effective.
I began recovery when the VHS rental stores were still around. Whenever I went to rent a video in one of those stores, it was almost a 100% guarantee that I would encounter scores of video covers with inappropriately dressed women on the front in the process of looking for a good movie. When I began to learn about healthy boundaries, one of the first ones I put in place was to commit that I would not go to the video store to browse titles. Instead, I would perform targeted searches on the internet to find the title of a movie I was interested in renting. I used keywords and filters that cut down on the inappropriate titles I would otherwise see in the store or obtained a good movie recommendation from a friend. Next, I would call the store to see if they had that movie in stock. If they did, then I would go to the store, go straight to the location of that title, pick up the movie, and leave. By putting this simple boundary, or rule of behavior, in place, I immediately cut down on a significant area of sexual temptation in my life.
Another boundary I put in place concerned internet use. I moved the computer out of the spare bedroom where I could easily view pornography without anyone seeing me, and into the family room with the screen facing the center of the room. That way, anyone coming into the room could instantly see what I was looking at. This boundary helped keep me accountable for not viewing pornographic material. Some men I have been in recovery with have found that putting their cell phones in the trunk of their car after a certain time at night has helped them cut down significantly on the temptation to act out by viewing pornography on their cell phones. Sometimes the laptop goes in the car along with the phone.
With some targeted and well thought out boundaries, it is usually a relatively easy process to come up with a few good boundaries that can significantly reduce your level of temptation and the frequency of acting out. If you are serious about wanting to get free from your addiction to pornography, then you will be serious about developing effective boundaries to help keep you away from temptation. I recommend asking someone who is familiar with your story, such as your sponsor, to help you develop your boundaries – particularly if you are just starting out in your recovery. At the beginning of your journey, you will likely have significant blind spots preventing you from identifying some helpful boundaries that will be obvious to someone else who is a) wiser in the ways of recovery, and b) more objective about your current situation than you are.
I’ve been in recovery and living in freedom from pornography use for years. I have led sexual addiction recovery groups, and I have served as a sponsor for men in these groups. During this time I have helped many men develop good boundaries that have helped keep them a safe distance from overwhelming temptation. When observing these boundaries, they have reported decreased temptation and an increase in sexual sobriety. After a while, I have noticed that many of these same men would begin reporting an increase in acting out once more. When questioned, in many cases it would come down to the simple fact that they had become lax in keeping the boundaries we had developed. This leads me to state what should be an obvious truth: boundaries only work if you use them.
Recovery is not a gulag where you are stripped of your rights, thrown in a cell, and forcibly prevented from acting out with pornography. Recovery is and must be a choice. By making a series of good choices starting right now, I firmly believe that anyone reading these words can get free from their addiction. Your addiction was built into a formidable fortress one poor choice at a time. Your freedom can be gained by making one good choice at a time.
I’ve been in the hell-hole of addiction, tormented to the point where I thought I would never get free. Thirty years of bad choices had built a formidable addiction to pornography in my life. Now I have been free from acting out with pornography and living in sobriety for over eight years. It can be done. If you follow the advice in this book, you can have a much more successful journey than if you try and learn all of these lessons the hard way. Be smart. Don’t try and reinvent the wheel. Instead, learn from those of us who have gone before you and build your own fortress of freedom from addiction with the bricks of our hard-won successes. Boundaries – just do it.
HOMEWORK: Develop three boundaries this week that you believe will help you avoid the temptation to use pornography and share them with a friend who will help keep you accountable for implementing them.