Chapter 11 – Being Honest about Our Motives
Motives, for an addict, are tricky things. They hide in the corners of our minds and try to fake us out. We addicts are especially adept at keeping them hidden, the dangerous ones, and trotting out the more acceptable motivations for others to see. We often do this with straight faces and say something like, “I just wanted to see the news, and then there was this link that led me to...”, “I intended to watch only the movie trailers, but after the trailer, there was a link to...”, or “I was just wondering what it said on her t-shirt,” (which happened to be wet and three sizes too small – this part left unsaid of course).
Addicts are master manipulators. The trouble is, that if you tell a lie long enough, you begin to believe it yourself. For some of us –many of us, we started telling ourselves lies about our motivations long before we even knew what motivations were. For me, growing up in a religious home, it was wrong to lust, wrong to look at porn, wrong to have sexual fantasies. Consequently, when I found myself doing these things, I had to make an excuse for how I was really trying to do something benign, and then the temptation snuck up on me and I gave in. I couldn’t tell myself the unvarnished truth, the shame demon I kept carrying around with me was trying to make sure of that, and I listened to it for far too long.
The truth is that we human beings often do things with mixed motivations. The single girl may dress nice because she likes the way it makes her feel, but she also wants the boys to look at her when she walks by. The politician may actually want to solve the problem, but they want the votes so they can stay in office maybe a lot more. I am a people watcher and have a natural curiosity, but when I was acting out, I often found myself watching a disproportionate amount of attractive women who weren’t dressed appropriately.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here. If you want to get somewhere, the first thing you must determine is where you are right now. If you can’t learn to be honest about your motivations regarding the behaviors that support and promote your addiction, including acting out with pornography, then you will never be free. As Jesus once famously said, “Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” Well put, Jesus.
So where does this leave us? Well, if we act out, let’s start by assuming our subconscious motive was actually to act out a long time before we got to the point of viewing porn. I find this is the best place to start. If, you can find credible evidence to suggest otherwise, then, by all means, let the truth be made known. However, I believe you will find that in most cases where you act out with pornography, you were actually starting down the path days, if not weeks before the actual event. Identifying those motivations and understanding the choices you made in service to those motivations is key to long term sobriety.
Let me provide an example from my own journey to illustrate the point. Years ago I had an email account with a certain online provider that shall remain nameless. The spam folder for this email account would regularly have sexually explicit material in it – sometimes pictures and often links to pornography websites. I would be on one of my regular periods of pursuing sexual sobriety where I was ‘resisting’ the urge to go and visit the porn sites. During one of these phases, I would elect to go and ‘clean out’ the spam folder of my email account. After all, there were sometimes legitimate emails in the spam folder, and I didn’t want to miss an important email, did I? Inevitably I would end up clicking on one of the emails containing the illicit material, then it wasn’t long before I was off on another pornography binge.
The truth was that either days or weeks before I had already begun the thought process that was leading to the moment I clicked on that link to view pornography. The truth was that looking at the spam folder had very little to do with identifying legitimate email from a non-porn source, and much more to do with a desire to view pornography. In the list of motivations, viewing pornography was #1 at 90%, and finding legitimate emails which were accidentally sent to the spam folder was a distant #2 at around 10%. Owning that 90%, i.e. admitting what my true and strongest motivation was in that situation was the first step in getting free from a repeat performance.
We addicts have to begin dealing with the shame demon in our lives before we have a ghost of a chance of being honest about our real motives. However, it is something we must do if we ever want to be truly free. We must pursue a lifestyle of brutal honesty with ourselves and with others we trust in our recovery program in order to be free from bondage to our addiction.
Today, I still find my flesh, that part of me that wants to act out, trying to use this old tactic of hiding my true motives. The magazines in the checkout line at Walmart or the grocery store often have inappropriate images on them. Yet, I still find myself at times hiding behind a motive of just being curious about what is going on in the world or interested in the latest celebrity divorce and minimizing or ignoring that perhaps my more prurient motivations are in play when I choose to look at those magazine covers. But, if I am to be honest, I must acknowledge that why I choose to look at those magazines is at least partially influenced by lustful desire – sometimes it is a far bigger portion of my motivation than I want to admit even now, after being in recovery for years. In all honesty, there is no good reason for me to look at those magazine covers at all. I don’t think I have ever seen anything on any of them that has ever made my life better, but I certainly have seen plenty of images that I have lusted after and fantasized about. Once I am truly honest about my prurient motivations, I have a much better chance of embracing the truth and choosing to turn away from those magazines the next time I am in the check-out line, thus avoiding the temptation that I know will come if I do look that way. The bottom line here is that being honest about our motivations is a life-long pursuit for the recovering addict and one that we must constantly push ourselves to pursue if we want to get and remain free.
For many of us who are addicts, being honest is not as easy as it sounds. Many of us learned to be deceitful in our childhood as a defense mechanism in order to protect ourselves. This tactic wasn’t thought out or planned – it was a natural response to a less than perfect situation in our lives where we were faced with some form of abuse, neglect, or some fearful situation that we were not capable of dealing with in a healthy way. Often those who were supposed to protect us failed to do so either through neglect, ignorance, or in many cases because they were the perpetrators of the abuse to begin with. I get it, I’ve been there. But now that we are adults, it is time for us to embrace the process of change and learn to live honestly.
There were a number of experiences I had growing up that influenced me to turn to deceit as a defense mechanism that I won’t get into here for brevity’s sake. Many of you reading this have had far worse experiences than I had growing up that pushed you in the same direction. I understand how hard it is to put down the security blanket of dishonesty. I know the terror you feel when you even think about telling your spouse you have a pornography problem. I want to tell you that there are men and women in thousands of recovery groups around this country that have gone through the same thing. Go to one of these groups, hear their stories, then after you’ve been there a while, take a step of faith and begin to tell your own story. A bit here, a bit there. You don’t have to jump off the deep end all at once, but you do have to start wading in the shallows of honesty if you ever want one day to swim in the ocean of freedom. What you will realize along the way is that they are the same body of water.
Your level of freedom from pornography addiction is inextricably intertwined with the level of honesty you maintain in your intimate relationships. One of the many truths you will hear in recovery groups is, “You are only as sick as your secrets.” You can do this. You can pursue honesty and live to tell the tale. Those who really love you won’t leave you once you start being honest about your addiction and your problems. It isn’t always an easy path, but it is the only path to true freedom. Be real; be honest; be free. God bless.