Spiritual Roots of Addiction

Many people who grow up with faith or in a Christian home feel a lot of shame about their sexual behavior and typically spend a lot of time asking God to help them stop, while often seeing no change in the behavior and feeling increasing levels of discouragement.  I think many young people in their late teens or 20s have a general hopefulness or belief that if they could just become more spiritually mature and keep praying, that the behaviors will stop.  They also generally have hopefulness about marriage and career and believe that similar blessing or growth will come their way.  Then life happens throughout the 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s, and a person becomes worn down and discovers that they haven’t arrived where they thought they would and probably won’t.  Marriage doesn’t solve problems or reduce sexual struggles, it often adds to them.  For some this difficult realization could arrive much sooner, depending on how harsh life is and how willing they are to look at the facts of existence.

These facts of existence, or suffering, which come to all of us, always have the potential to damage faith, create doubt in God and harm connection to Him.  The first time a person starts to look elsewhere for comfort and to deal with life, they begin to move away from God as the source of all things, and the relationship begins to wither.

Several years ago, a client directed me to an article by Reinhard Hutter that I found mind blowing in very clearly stating what is happening spiritually as a person moves into sexual addiction.  This theologian is much smarter than me, and I found his language and references at times to be difficult to follow, so I endeavored to summarize what I thought were his main arguments.  They are as follows-

 The Formation of the Root

Apathy

He writes that “the root of addictive behavior is spiritual apathy- a general sense of hopelessness and despair. It is the very forgoing of friendship with God—which is the fulfillment of the transcendent dignity and calling of the human person—and the embrace of the self-indulgent deception that there never was and never will be friendship with God, that there never was and never will be a transcendent calling and dignity of the human person. Nothing matters much, because the one thing that really matters, God’s love and friendship, does not exist and therefore cannot be attained.”

This apathy born of hopelessness creates a void that we try to fill with transient rushes of pleasure.  But the fantasies and sexual behaviors that promise the rushes of pleasure we seek betray us. They cannot fill the void created by the loss of our transcendent calling to the love and friendship of God. Rather, they only increase the craving to fill the void we cannot fill, breeding compulsion and intensifying spiritual apathy, thereby encouraging the most dangerous shoot to spring forth: despair.

Vain Curiosity

This spiritual apathy breeds other vices.  Gregory the Great famously assigns six daughters to this vice: malice, spite, faintheartedness, despair, sluggishness with respect to the commandments, and roaming unrest of the spirit.  This roaming unrest cascades into vain curiosity, or the lust of the eyes. Fueled by apathy, hopelessness, resentment, and elicited by the roaming unrest of the spirit, vain curiosity takes the first allegedly innocent step that all too soon leads to the regular, then habituated, and eventually compulsive practice of pornographic voyeurism.  I’ve heard many clients confirm this in their own words.  “I had such an awareness that there were unlimited amounts of women in the world, and I wanted to be able to see all of them.”  Or, “I could open up a porn site and see anything I wanted.  Any type of woman engaged in any type of sexual act.  I would never reach the bottom of it.”

Hutter again- “What seems most characteristic of the compulsive consumption of pornography is that the consumer no longer finds any pleasure in looking at it. All he has left, when the act is completed, is a craving for stimulating a desire that will always remain unsatisfied. What is to be learned from the testimonies of pornography’s users is the important fact that, contrary to prevailing cultural assumptions, the lust of the eyes is not a “hot” but rather a “cold” vice. It arises from the roaming unrest of the spirit rooted in a spiritual apathy that, again, despairs of and eventually comes to resent the very transcendence in which the dignity of the human person has its roots. The lust of the eyes that feeds on Internet pornography does not inflame but rather freezes the soul and the heart in a cold indifference to the human dignity of others and of oneself.”

I remember reading in Jay Stringer’s excellent book Unwanted, the idea that sexual addiction has a lot to do with self contempt, and that acting out is often an unconscious way to reinforce a view of self as unlovable and worthless.  He used the analogy of gambling, saying that we think gambling is about greed and winning more money, but everyone deeply engaged in a gambling addiction knows that the point of gambling is to lose.  I think there is a lot of truth in this, but it didn’t feel quite as true as the bigger idea that addiction is not just contempt for self but contempt for life in general.  As Hutter noted, thinking about lust as a hot emotion where we are craving sex or noticing beautiful women is only the most superficial way of understanding it.  It’s not about sex or money, it is about contempt and despair.  Underneath it all is a total resignation that God and others will meet a person’s needs.  So a person takes it into their own hands.  Patrick Carnes insightfully  identified the 3 core beliefs of an addict- if you really knew me you wouldn’t love me, sex is my greatest need, and only I can meet my needs.

Addressing the Root

Let’s shift gears from the spiritual causes to the spiritual solutions.  If hopelessness is driving the behaviors, where does a person need to go spiritually in order to begin countering this and to move away from compulsion into self control?

Chastity

To begin with, Hutter says that we need to shift out of vices into building virtues- especially chastity. Pornography consists in removing sexual acts from the intimacy of the partners, in order to display them deliberately to third parties. It offends against chastity because it perverts the intimate giving of the spouses to each other. It does grave injury to the dignity of its participants (actors, vendors, the public), since each one becomes an object of base pleasure and illicit profit for others. It immerses all who are involved in the illusion of a fantasy world. It is a grave offense.  Without consciously realizing it, a person eventually comes to resent the very dignity of the human person that pornography treats with contempt. There is a need to recover a Christian vision of chastity and sexuality.

Chastity does not mean that a person becomes a prude, or that they fear sexuality as a “necessary evil,” unavoidable but ultimately subhuman. It is the virtue that both expresses and preserves the dignity of what is a genuine and surpassing good: the dignity of the human person in sexual matters.  Just as he talks about a natural progression of vices, there can also be a building of virtues upon one another.  To be chaste is to develop the virtue of prudence.

Prudence

And what is Prudence?  It is the helmsman who directs the ship of our moral agency through the treacherous waters of moral quandaries and spiritual temptations. Our helmsman can operate properly only if we are properly formed in justice, courage, and temperance. An inordinate desire for sensual pleasure, brought about by the absence or failure of temperance, weakens and obstructs the ability of our helmsman to direct the ship. The selfless self-preservation of temperance protects the inner order of the person against the encroachments of powerful sensual desire and thus allows our helmsman to do his job. Without selfless self-preservation there simply is no true and perfect prudence.  What does Hutter mean when he says this?  It is a bit of a paradox, but I think he’s appealing to the reality that we are often first motivated by self preservation and seeing that something is better for us.  So we need to see that if we want to have any control over our lives and behavior in all areas including the sexual, we have to make selfless choices to deny the immediate pleasures and escapes that are offered to us.  The Christian, filled with the Spirit, has the power to exert their will and make choices that are obedient and life giving.  They give away that power when they allow urges and the flesh to dominate.

Without chastity, the result is a severely hampered moral life and consequently a great diminishment in human flourishing.

Prayer and pursuit of God

And lastly, despite the despair that may be felt in the relationship with God, a person must still pursue God.  But not primarily out of a posture of asking God to do this or that, or to show Himself in a certain way.  It directly connects back to valuing chastity and a willingness to submit and trust God.  “If the human mind,” writes Thomas Aquinas, “delights in the spiritual union with that to which it behooves it to be united, namely God, and refrains from delighting in union with other things against the requirements of the order established by God, this may be called a spiritual chastity. . .  every virtue withdraws the human mind from delighting in a union with unlawful things.”  Spiritual chastity preserves the union with God and thereby offers the strongest protection against hopelessness.  

Once again, this is heady stuff, so what are we saying here?  If we nurture vices, there will be a cascading effect in which we lose control of ourselves, our desires will change in directions that objectify people and fuel lust, and we will feel more and more distant and hopeless in our relationship with God.  If we nurture virtues, there is a building effect in the other direction, in which we feel more and more in control of ourselves and our will, our desires become more in line with God’s desires, and we feel closer and more hopeful in our connection to God.  It’s important to note that this is not a legalism or an earning of blessing from God through good behavior.  As Christians, we are already forgiven and do nothing to earn that.  But in terms of our inner experience regarding virtue, desire, and relational closeness with God, we can absolutely do things that will either build on or disintegrate that experience.

And we must pray.  One of the earliest steps in recovery for a person is to pray each morning and each evening as they are able, asking for union with God and for help on the journey.  Hutter shares this prayer as a possibility:

Dear Jesus, I know that every perfect gift and especially that of chastity depends on the power of your Providence. Without you, a mere creature can do nothing. Therefore, I beg you to defend by your grace the chastity and purity of my body and soul. And if I have ever imagined or felt anything that can stain my chastity and purity, blot it out, Supreme Lord of my powers, that I may advance with a pure heart in your love and service, offering myself on the most pure altar of your divinity all the days of my life.

The discipline of prayer sustains the spiritual union of the mind and heart with God and with everything that is consonant with the will of God. By exercising spiritual chastity and thereby sustaining spiritual union with God, the discipline of prayer protects us most effectively from falling into spiritual apathy. For the one who prays—truly prays—is never bored or resentful. The practice of prayer is the grace-initiated preparation for welcoming the virtue of chastity into the human mind and will.

It is the chaste person whose gaze can genuinely behold and affirm the dignity of the other. It is the chaste person who is free from the lure of the enticing, the titillating, the demeaning, the base, and who consequently can exercise true and perfect prudence.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/04/pornography-and-acedia

Reinhard Hutter, 2012

Navigating Differences in Sexual Desire With Your Spouse

The content on these posts often comes from the real life work that we do and the stories and struggles that clients are sharing with us. For whatever reason, in different seasons it seems like certain issues become more prevalent than others, and in this recent season, a high percentage of the men I work with have been expressing a lot of frustration and pain related to their sex life. And it can be hard to know where to turn for reliable information on how to handle this. I see two extremes that can take place in this area, the first being to feel entitled to a great sex life, becoming more and more resentful, to the point that an affair, divorce, or deepening relationship with sexual fantasy takes place. The second and opposite extreme is a form of Christian teaching that would emphasize denial of self, accommodating the spouse (especially if there has been any form of sexual betrayal or deception), and accepting that the sexual relationship is not going to improve for many years. I think either of these extremes places a person in a rough spot and is lacking in balance, which means it won’t be sustainable or lead a person anywhere good. The answer is not blowing up your marriage, nor is it to remain in the marriage in a perpetual state of deprivation and trying to be good enough to receive sexual attention from your spouse. So what is the way forward? I humbly offer two main thoughts.

Face Your Emotions

I see men struggling to talk with their wives about their emotions when it comes to sexual frustration and deprivation. This is understandable. It can be hard to communicate about many things in a marriage, and sexual things are among the most vulnerable and sensitive. Yet, it is crucial to know how you actually feel about the issue and to find a way to talk about it so that your spouse can hear and understand. A foundational theory for understanding our emotional lives and our relationships is called attachment theory, which posits that we form beliefs about ourselves and others as well as patterns of interaction based on our primary relationships with caregivers growing up. When we marry, our spouses become our primary attachment figures, and a lot of the same emotions and patterns of interaction that we felt with our caregivers come to life, and this shows up in how we approach sexual struggles.

Anxious Attachment

An anxiously attached person struggles to know how to comfort themselves and looks outside for comfort. They may have had caregivers who were inconsistent or unpredictable, sometimes being affectionate and there for them, and other times being distant or rejecting. How does this play out in dysfunctional couples communication related to sex? This is the man who is hounding his partner when it comes to the subject of sex. They will make it known that they are unhappy, whether directly or indirectly. They may sulk and walk around the house with a forlorn expression, or express outright anger or disappointment often and loudly. This pursuit tends to push the other spouse away as they feel pressured and put off by the way in which the subject is being handled.

Avoidant Attachment

An avoidantly attached person struggles to believe other people can provide comfort or will be there for them and looks inside for comfort, believing that they can only count on themselves. They may have had caretakers who were rigid or strict, or who weren’t present emotionally and did not encourage them to talk about their needs. How does this play out? This man will feel pain about the sexual relationship but probably won’t talk about it much. He will feel a lot of internal resentment but won’t see a point in bringing it up, especially if he has in the past and it didn’t go well or if he felt rejected sexually. This marriage may look ok on the surface and like it is functioning smoothly, but this man is withering away inside and is highly vulnerable to affairs or the fantasy world as a way to cope in private and meet his own needs that he has decided his spouse is unable to meet for him.

Secure Attachment

The place we want to get to is secure attachment- a belief that we can take care of ourselves and cope when necessary, and we can also reach out to others and ask for help. This requires knowing what you feel. The anxious person feels something and impulsively acts on it, pursuing the other person to talk. The avoidant quickly numbs what they feel and doesn’t want to face it. It is essential to slow down and name what you feel about sex and your marriage. This is incredibly hard because it is often a grief process. You thought your marriage would go differently, and you are faced with many things outside of your control that feel hopeless. There is sadness here and longing for connection. There are feelings of failure and of not being good enough. There is perhaps a healthy and righteous anger. Often what we show our spouses is the most superficial emotion, rather than looking underneath for the softer emotions that reflect how we truly feel. These are vulnerable emotions that invite connection and empathy when we share them. Most spouses draw near when they hear their partner honestly connect with the pain they are feeling. And these emotions are not demands or discussions about how to fix things. It is simply, “I want you to know what I’m feeling about this, how I am trying to care for myself through this in a healthy way, and also that I need you.”

Ask Where God Is and What He is Doing

Struggling with this issue is a deep source of suffering, and it is not one that you can openly talk about like other losses that are more visible and socially acceptable. This is a private and lonely struggle, and a source of shame. Fortunately, we know that God is not surprised or overwhelmed by what is happening in your marriage and in your inner world. He is present in suffering and he works through suffering.

Parker J Palmer recounts something his therapist said to him when he was in crisis:

You seem to look upon depression as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Do you think you could see it instead as the hand of a friend, pressing you down to ground on which it is safe to stand?

Parker goes on to reflect,

Depression was the ground of my own truth, my own nature, with its complex mix of limits and gifts, liabilities and assets, darkness and light…over the years, the befriending intent of this figure never disappeared but became obscured by the frustration caused by my refusal to turn around. Since shouts and taps, stones and sticks had failed to do the trick, there was only one thing left: drop the nuclear bomb called depression on me, not with the intent to kill but as a last ditch effort to get me to turn and ask the simple question, “What do you want?” This is the self planted in us by the God who made us in God’s own image- the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were created to be.

Where am I going with this? Similar to the encouragement to slow down and face your emotions, I would ask you to slow down and face the suffering. I can see a frantic aspect that takes over men in these situations, a desperation to fix things as quickly as possible. I can also see a despair and giving up, a belief that is has become hopeless. Both responses ignore God and don’t ask why this suffering is coming into your life at this specific time. I’m reluctant to give examples or reasons because this is such a personal journey, but also can’t resist doing so in an effort to be helpful in jump starting you in your own reflections.

Perhaps God wants you to reflect on the unhealed wounds from the past and your characteristic ways of interacting with people that developed in your family of origin. Maybe being avoidant has worked in many aspects of life and people respect you for being so self sufficient. But it is not working in this situation and God is giving you an opportunity to look at it. Maybe you have idolized sex and believe it is your only or greatest need and have reinforced this through years of porn and masturbation, and God wants you to put it into its proper place. Maybe you have never really understood your spouse and what they have been through in life. Perhaps they have trauma that impacts their ability to be sexual, or they are struggling in some other way and God wants you to truly listen to them and to develop compassion.

Whatever is going on, the suffering is not random and it is not pointless. Wrestle with God on this as you would with any other suffering in your life. This is an invitation to go down and to see ourselves clearly. What needs to change in us? What do we need to let go of? What do we need to fight for? This could be an opportunity to develop a deeper intimacy with your spouse than you could have ever imagined and an opportunity to let go of patterns that you perhaps needed at one time, but that no longer serve you.

Conclusion

I hope it’s clear that I have deep empathy for this struggle. Please know that you’re not the only person feeling this way, I don’t think a day goes by in my office that some version of this struggle doesn’t come up. Men are depressed about this, they are angry, they are hopeless. I don’t want you to stay there. Please engage with your emotions, with God, and with others on this subject. Reach out to other men for support, find a counselor, and don’t give up on finding new ways to process this with your spouse. Sit down and write your spouse a letter that expresses your feelings in a new way, without blaming or attacking.

This would be a whole other blog post, but I don’t think wives are particularly happy being in this situation either. You may feel that they are content to stop having sex and don’t care about you, but this is only what is being presented superficially as you are in your dysfunctional communication around the subject, as each of you alternate between attacking and defending. Both of you got married for a reason. You want connection. Keep fighting for it.

Excerpts taken from Let Your Life Speak by Parker J Palmer