SHOWNOTES FOR EPISODE 065 (10:36)
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** Inspiration for this podcast / blog and some of the material came from Dr. Mark Laaser’s book Faithful and True (pp. 126-128, 140-143)
“Ritual” is a recovery term you need to learn.
A ritual is the warmup to acting out.
It is the preparation you make that most always leads you to acting out.
EXAMPLES OF RITUALS
Struggle With Internet Porn – Here’s a typical ritual. You go on your computer, do some legitimate work. You get bored so you start searching for harmless stories & pictures. Then you start searching for images that are a little more exciting. Before you know it, you’re deep into hours of looking at porn again.
Girl at Work – For the girl at work, you go by her desk, start chatting. Chatting eventually turns to talking about deeper stuff. This may go on regularly for weeks and months. You repeat the same routine. Eventually it turns into lunch, then a drink after work, then spirals into an adulterous relationship.
Neighbor Through The Window – You have a neighbor that leaves her blinds open at night. You have caught glimpses in the past and start a ritual of waiting for times when you are alone in the house or your wife is asleep to go look through the window to the neighbor.
In a Public Place – You go to a public place for legitimate reasons. You are running your errands and doing your shopping. You start checking out girls, ogling them. It’s just a “harmless glance” you tell yourself, but it turns into looking again, then positioning yourself in different places to get better looks, then following her. It may not ever turn into talking to the girl, but you’ve developed a ritual.
On a Business Trip – A lot of rituals can develop for sexual addicts on business trip.
- It might start with you being alone, going back to your hotel room to look at pornographic movies & masturbating.
- It might be you hanging out at the bar after your conference to hook up with someone.
- It might be you pulling out the phone book and calling an escort or visiting a massage parlor.
All sex addicts develop many rituals to get them ready to act out sexually.
Rituals are exciting. They draw out the experience and excitement. They prep our minds and our bodies for the sexual experience. They get the neurochemicals going in our brains. It charges us and it’s exciting.
The warm-up can be quick or it can be longer. The ritual can take minutes or days. You preparing yourself to act out sexually.
We wonder why things “suddenly happen”, but when we look back, we really can break down what has happened. Dr. Mark Laaser in his book Faithful and True talks about rituals (pp.126-128). He says that several things are unfolding when we are developing and participating in sexual rituals.
- Starts with a Trigger – It might be alone time, boredom, anger, grief or seeing something sexual, or seeing someone sexual.
- Memories – We are reminded of times we have acted out. Learned behaviors. Sexual memories of the past.
- Rationalizations – We rationalize in our head that it’s OK. We start thinking that it would be OK to go this direction. You’re not going to take it too far. You can always stop. You are meeting your own needs. Your spouse is not here to take care of you.
- Lies – We believe lies to support our behaviors. Believe that we will be better off meeting our own needs. Believe that our behavior is OK. We believe we are not loved. We believe that sex is our greatest need.
- Secrets – We have another secret behavior to hide. Secrets build upon each other.
When we are going through a ritual we get tunnel vision. We start to only see the time of acting out. We head down that slow funnel to completion.
We start to dance around it. - We surf our computer, touch some bad sites and save those for later – when it’s time to complete the acting out. We don’t go straight to the acting out because we want to make the experience stronger and longer.
We start to take risks – We see how far we can nudge the relationships. We tell a dirty joke or mention a sexual enuendo, touch the person on the shoulder to see how much farther we can get and see what the reaction is.
Mark Laaser also says that rituals:
- Are usually done in secret
- May be dangerous
- May involve a chase, a quest, or a pursuit
- Are done in anticipation of something rewarding
Rituals get the adrenaline going. Rituals are often wrapped around fantasy. Our fantasies fuel the rituals and get the neurochemicals in our brains firing. Our brains don’t know the difference between fantasy and acting out. So prolonging the fantasy and ritual makes it even more exciting and addicting.
RITUALS CAN BE GOOD
Not all rituals are bad. A husband and a wife have several rituals they go through as they grow together in emotional intimacy. They have certain rituals that lead up to physical intimacy. Rituals can be part of romance. The dance between a husband and wife can be very exciting and satisfying.
HOW DO YOU BREAK RITUALS?
So how do you break away from rituals?
- You need to identify the rituals you have.
- You need to draw boundary lines.
- You need to set up roadblocks.
- Get an accountability buddy.
- Establish new, healthy rituals.
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Resources
www.porntopurity.com (Main Website)
http://porntopurity.wordpress.com (Porn to Purity Blog)
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Background - AJT “Apple Chunk Guitar”
The 104 Podcast
Top tips for sexual purity. The meat. Get to the most important stuff in bite-sized pieces.
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