Did I catch you peeking?

(Note: This story was written about a year ago but never published. I feel it is too important to be left untold. The story has been edited slightly and the last names of most of the subjects removed. It is important to not that everyone in the story gave permission for their names to be used. I chose to remove the last names because I have not received their permission to run this story on my blog. Each of them gave permission to include their names for publication, so I feel confident using their first names here. If after reading this you feel a need to get help, please contact any one of the churches or ministries mentioned. They will be glad to help.)

For Rick, it all began with peeks at dirty magazines when he was just a boy.
Ron fell into the trap in his teens.
Neill was already retired when got hooked.
Rusty couldn’t admit he had a longtime problem until four years ago after his wife caught him with porn — again.
The price each of them paid for their sexual addiction was high. But the benefits of breaking the addiction were far greater than living a life of guilt and shame.
Rick followed the path of lust to the beds of prostitutes. It cost him his marriage and his job as a pastor. He has since confessed and repented and is once again pastoring a church in Arizona.
Neill now works full-time on his computer at home mentoring other sex addicts from around the world.
Ron and Rusty sought help and now co-lead a recovery group for addicts at Trinity Fellowship Church.
Each of the men have a different story, but they all follow a similar path. Each got hooked on pornography and the self-gratification that went with it. Most of them went deeper into their secret fantasy life.
Each hid their addiction from their families, got caught and went to counseling. Now each of them are working to help others with the same problem.
Wib Newton, a licensed practical counselor and executive director of New Hope Counseling and Resources (www.newhoperesources.com), counsels men with sexual addictions and also leads workshops on the subject.
“Most of the ones I see, their life is becoming out of control and maybe it’s affecting their work or maybe it’s affecting their marriage and the majority of them get caught,” he said.
Newton said sex addiction has been around as long as the human race. In the last century the introduction of Playboy and other pornographic magazines and films increased the problem. He said it grew worse with home video.
“The Internet has come on and blasted this thing to a whole new level,” he said.
He said with the Internet and other technologies, gaining access to pornography has never been easier. He said computers and cell phones make access to it easy, affordable — often free — and anonymous.
“After they act it out, they feel shame and shame powers that addiction,” Newton said.
He said most men are going to have some kind of urge or prurient interest in the female body, but said it becomes a problem when it becomes obsessive and out of control.
“It is now in control instead of me in control. That’s where denial comes in. You have to admit that it’s causing trouble,” he said.
Like any other addiction, Newton said it must escalate in order to reach the same level of pleasure.
“You have to have more and more stimulation to get the same level of satisfaction. ... It has to go to the next level to get the same result. That’s how it starts and it just progresses,” he said.
Quite often admitting a problem comes from getting caught by a spouse or employer.

A pastor's story
Rick caught a sexually transmitted disease after his first encounter with a prostitute.
“I told my wife and we both got treated,” he said, adding that “it was a very difficult time for her and for the two of us.”
He said his addiction started in elementary school when “I found pornography in the alley coming home from school one day.” As time passed, he found more.
“I remember having a very excited feeling but also at the same time a sense of something not being right,” he said.
As he grew, his interest in porn expanded to include self-gratification and then visiting adult book stores and X-rated theaters.
When he graduated from Bible school and got married, he thought he had broken his addiction. Four years into his marriage came the first visit with a prostitute, followed by extreme guilt and deep feelings of suicide. His family had moved from Texas to California, back to Texas and on to Indiana, where he became the pastor of a church. He had four children and two very public and very private lives.
“I missed a lot of time with them (children). I became very good at manipulation and good at acting,” he said. “I was co-chair of the PTA and was pretty involved in school.”
But he continued to see prostitutes and frequent adult book stores. One day his wife suspected something and confronted him.
“I came out in the open. I confessed a lot of behavior to her, her parents, my parents and others,” he said.
He left the church and returned to Dallas to work outside the ministry. During that time he saw a counselor and attended Sex Addicts Anonymous meetings.
His wife left in 1992 and in 1994 he moved to West Texas to try and reconcile with her.
“Too much damage had been done,” he said.
She filed for divorce in 1995 and it became final the next year.
“It ended up costing me my marriage, my family and eventually my work, too,” he said.
Newton said Rick’s story is not uncommon.
“Pastors have high stress and low accountability,” he said. “They’re set on pedestals and can’t be reached.”
Neill, who mentors sex addicts in The Way of Purity course at www.settingcaptivesfree.com, said he counsels a lot of pastors.
“Best estimates are that one out of three of the men who enroll in The Way of Purity are either pastors, ministers or have some other high profile job in a church or ministry, such as worship leaders, youth ministers, etc. Many of the young men who come to our course are studying for the ministry.
“If I had included Sunday school teachers, the ratio would have been much larger. We cannot know the exact number of who does what, because they don’t have to tell us what their occupation is,” he said.
Neill estimated that since 2002 he has mentored 1,200 men and he communicated with 40 to 45 a day via e-mail.
“Not all of them will finish,” he said. “That sin has a real strong pull.”
He said The Way of Purity is different from most sex addict recovery programs in that it is biblically based and not based on a 12-step program.
The program led by Rusty and Ron at Trinity Fellowship, as well as ones led by Newton are based on the 12-step model. Ed, who has had his own struggles, leads a non-denominational group in Canyon for addicts of all types called Celebrate Recovery. It, too, uses a 12-step method.
“The only thing that can come out of this is good,” Ed said.

Getting help
“Men fall into that trap thinking that when I get married all my sexual wants will be fulfilled,’” Rusty said.
He said fatigue, boredom and stress are often the triggers that send men, and women, seeking porn. Newton said most people have unresolved issues from their childhood, such as having been sexually abused themselves, are typically the underlying issues that cause them to seek the self-fulfilling pleasure in porn.
“A lot of guys don’t want to admit they have a problem with porn,” he said.
Ron said pornography was no big deal when he was a young man. It was in the open at his home, sometimes sitting on the coffee table. Because it was there, he didn’t obsess about it. It wasn’t until he got married and became a Christian that he realized how strong a hold it had on him.
“It’s a totally different addiction — more severe than a drug addiction,” Ron said. “It’s an internal high ... you’re not fighting an external substance, you’re fighting yourself.”
The men said the two key components to overcoming a sex addiction are to first admit the problem and then to seek the help of others of the same sex who will help keep you accountable.
“We urge them to get an accountability partner,” Neill said, adding that his program requires men to answer three specific questions about their addiction each day, such as if they’ve seen porn or acted out sexually.
Rusty said sex addicts cannot break the habit alone.
“You can’t do this by yourself. You need an army around you to support you and protect you,” Rusty said. “Instead of white-knuckling it by yourself, we give you a number to call.”
“You have to be God with skin — give them a real person to relate to,” Ed said.
Ron said he did not know where to turn to get help.
“I surrounded myself with a group of men that would hold me accountable,” he said.
He said an addict needs to have someone who will check on them and ask direct questions to make sure they’re staying clean.
Newton said it takes a fast of about 90 days for the brain’s chemistry to return to normal levels from an addiction. Ron noted that even then, the urge will always be there.
“The temptation never leaves,” he said. “I’ve been sober from pornography since July of 2001. .. Will I tell somebody that I’m 100 percent cured? No.”
Andrew Comisky left the homosexual lifestyle 30 years ago and now helps sex addicts of all kinds with his Kansas City-based Desert Stream Ministries. He was recently in Amarillo to lead a series of lessons at MORE Church.
“(Recovery) has to involve community. It can’t just be the sexperts,” he said.
Comisky said an addiction to sex “frustrates and fractures the good desire to relate to human beings. It creates a grandiosity, creates a narcissism.”
He and the others said another key to recovery is confidentiality. They said sex addiction is so taboo in society that the shame of getting caught creates a lot of anxiety.
“You need safe places where the secrets are safe,” Comisky said.
The hardest part of recovering, the men said, is coming clean with the wives.
“We make sure that they know,” Rusty said.

Wives tales
Rusty’s wife, Tammy, co-leads a support group for women with Ron’s wife at Trinity Fellowship.
“She has told me that without exception the women come in there and think it’s her fault that he has fallen,” Rusty said.
“The spouse needs to be considered in this,” Newton said.
He said most wives feel shame and hold themselves responsible for their husband’s addiction.
“After a year of treatment ... the wives were able to see for the first time a healthy husband. They’re happy they can finally get what they were looking for when they got married,” Newton said.
The road the women must take is long and difficult. Tammy said her Living In Freedom Everyday support group spends the first seven weeks just dealing with the grief process.
“Women have the same problems as men do. The spouse has lost the idea that this is my Prince Charming, this is my one true love,” she said.
She said after dealing with the grief process, they take a break and then come back for more healing.
“After grieving we focus on the fact that it’s not the woman’s problem ... they cannot control it and they cannot change it,” she said.
She said the LIFE group takes 28 weeks and is done in sections. She said each session is like peeling the layers off an onion. It gets deeper and more intense and makes you cry.
“My biggest thing, I felt like I was alone. I didn’t know if I was crazy for feeling these things I was feeling or crazy for thinking this is OK. I wanted my marriage to work,” she said.
She said each time she caught Rusty she would relive the gamut of emotions and questions such as “Should I leave?” “Should I give up on him?” “Is there something I can do to change him?”
“Every time there was a fall, I’d go through the same reaction,” she said.
She said she and her husband found support groups they could join at Amarillo South Church. Once they completed the classes, they decided to try and help others with the same problems through their church at Trinity.
“Pornography has different levels and that’s what the woman needs to know,” she said.
Newton said women are increasing in numbers with sexual addictions themselves and blames the Internet for a lot of it. While there are no local support groups for women who are addicted or for their husbands, he said many counselors are equipped to handle those situations.
Ron said going through the program and then turning around and teaching it has been tough.
“If we can change one man’s life, my story and all the junk I went through, it’s worth it,” he said. “Most men just give up. If God won’t take this desire from me, I’m going to embrace it. Most men we get, they’ve given up on God healing them.”
Ron said he understands but wants men to know one thing.
“God loves you and he’s never given up on you,” he said.