Like all good plans the issues was not in the strategy but in the implementation.
The process of coming up with a plan to overcome the addiction of pornography was a process within itself as I first began the journey under a cloud of embarrassment, depression, condemnation, guilt and defeat which clouded good judgement and I tended towards a legalistic plan. ‘I will not go there again’, ‘I promise to never stay up late on the computer’ etc. A lot of dramatic statements of ‘No more porn or masturbation’ and not a lot of space to progress. It was cold turkey, it was absolute, my wife needed it and my faith demanded it.
It did not take long for me to mess it all up, to find some porn and masturbate again and because my plan had no ‘failure clause’ built in it just caused me to fall into a deeper pit of condemnation, I really was trying and I just couldn’t do it. The plan needed to change, the plan somehow needed some Grace but was that allowed?
If you take any process of development, like products, there is an inbuilt understanding of failure and it is not seen as a world ending event and is indeed a desired outcome as it proves one way it won’t work and pushes into new ways, even in failure there are learnings that propel towards success. I was about to discover that the process of rebuilding a healthy sexual and emotional foundation free from pornography and condemnation required both a pulling down and destroying as well as a building and growing.
I believe there are key elements that must be present in every plan to overcome pornography such as Internet protection software, accountability with at least two people though I found three better (wife and two others) and also identifying key factors that move you towards pornography such as stress, loneliness etc and developing strategies to overcome them.
These strategies are all necessary but the biggest single element that helped me the most was the discussion around failure and how I was going to deal with it and maybe more importantly how was my wife and my key accountability buddies going to deal with it. Once we discussed this it helped me be honest, it gave me encouragement to try harder knowing that if I messed up again I wasn’t going to lose everything, my wife, my family or my calling. It was not an excuse to fail but an understanding that the consequences were not going to be fatal and without this I always felt any failure would result in the worse case scenario thus cause me to hide when I slipped.
Again I must acknowledge the grace of my wife as the pain I initially caused through pornography was not finished as the small band of grace she gave me to overcome this addiction was not free, it still hurt her when I confessed to stuffing up and I had to receive the consequences of this hurt but without the fear of her leaving. This made me want to try harder, grace is powerful and cannot be demanded but given and at this stage in my healing it was the greatest gift. I believe she was willing to give this because of her faith in Christ, her love for me and because I showed true repentance and took the lead to change and took the initiative to overcome, there needed to be action from me before she felt safe to offer this grace as it opened her up to real hurt. WOW, I am still in awe of her giving what I do not deserve but absolutely need to overcome this addiction. For me it was a key ingredient to the plan and a huge eye opener to the Grace of God.