Scarred Faith. Landon Alexander

— she did nothing for him. Maybe someone else could make him feel better.

      Also, he enjoyed the exciting risk of putting it out there to women he didn’t know, for the reward of their phone number. Naturally, some would just ignore him or tell him to get lost, but some women were easily as brazen as he was and would flirt with him. Others, made bold by the company of their friends, would sass him to see how game he was. He felt like a different man from the one his wife knew at home.

      These women saw something they liked in him. This made him feel cool and powerful and attractive. They would give him their phone numbers, and he would enjoy these victories, but he would always cave-in to guilt and toss the numbers. He couldn’t take that next step.

      Then he realized he was programming himself. It got to the point that whenever he was in his car, he was in the hunting mode. He was this hunter dude in his car, so cool, cruising.

      Robert still felt guilty and loathed himself for this perverse behavior, but it was as if he wasn’t himself in the car. He was a different man on wheels. He really became the hunter. He couldn’t help it. He thought it was crazy, but it was as if something possessed him in his car. He felt the euphoria of mobility and freedom and anonymity at the wheel.

      Women: alone, in pairs, in small groups; give them a try. Talk to them with easy praise, flattering their secret sexy pride, complimenting them on little things that not every guy would even notice about them. Some loved it and wanted more. They gave him their phone numbers, which he never called. Did he ever pick one up? He had his chances, but he didn’t go any further with those women than getting their numbers.

      A close friend of mine, call him Charles, who was suffering through the same desperation, found that his addiction needed stronger stuff. He had to do more for the satisfaction he needed. He’d pick up women, who turned out to be working girls. You know what I mean. They wait for you and are willing to go with you, for a price.

      Sometimes, Charles would take one to a motel and just watch her take off her clothes while he masturbated. Or she would touch him and he would ejaculate because of the unbearable stress he was feeling. He wasn’t exactly comfortable with doing any of this, but he couldn’t seem to stop himself. He was squeezed with guilt in the middle of the experience and finished off as soon as they touched him. Guilty of addiction.

      Charles knew he was messing up. Through every act of sin, there was always something in him that was disgusted with what he was doing. He prayed for God to guide him. He couldn’t stop on his own. He couldn’t stop himself from seeing those women, in spite of the overwhelming sense of the sinfulness of it all. He was obsessed. He couldn’t stop thinking about their voluptuous bodies and all of the details that made these women so sexy to him, each in their own ways. He thought of these experiences as his secret adventures. They seemed to make his own intolerable marriage a little easier to bear, because he had this other shameful adventure going on.

      In his secret life, Charles enjoyed the lure of excitement and the sense of danger that was part of the sin. It was almost as if he was sinning out of boredom with his wife. It was his way of undermining the agony of being squandered in his unhappy marriage, where he felt devalued as a man and his hard work was held in contempt by his wife. It seemed he was a failure, wasting the best years of his life for nothing. If you’re starving, any kind of food seems to be worth whatever it costs; just so, any kind of sex can seem like a feast for the carnal mind. You can get more than a little depraved from being deprived.

      An intense relationship can seem like the answer to your frustrations, in the face of your wife’s lack of interest in sex. You might ask yourself, “If she doesn’t want me, why should she mind if another woman does?” Or: “If my wife tells me, No, how can I say no to somebody else?” This is the rationale of the sexually addicted.

      What exactly is “sexual addiction,” anyway? I’ve seen it defined as “excessive sexual drive.” Compared with what? Normal sex drive? What is that? Maybe one man’s normal is another man’s excessive.

      I would say, look at the damage it causes, and define sexual addiction in terms of behavior. Look at it as an addictive practice, not as an excessive desire. It’s not so much the need that’s the problem; it’s the addicted person’s inability to control their compulsion that leads to problems. Beyond that, the sex-obsessed addict, like a drug addict or alcoholic, is so attached to their desire and dependent upon it — directed by it — they will take outrageous risks to satisfy their need and give no thought to the consequences of their actions. They might feel like they have no choice. They are out of control, as Paul said. Their obsession takes priority over everything else and sabotages their life. That’s the tragedy, especially for those who care for the addicted person. They get hurt, too.

      What is excessive need within a marriage? Is it possible to love your spouse too much? If the marriage cannot contain the full expression of both spouses’ desire and this leads one outside the marriage — yes, that sounds like sexual addiction. Strong sexual drive itself is not unnatural, but if it reaches beyond your sex life with your spouse, it becomes the sin of being drunk with lust — sex addiction — which can take many forms, from viewing pornography and compulsive masturbation, to adultery, molestation and rape.

      I’ve known men who suffered from all kinds of sexual addiction. For instance, David (Not King David) was so sex-driven he had three women on the go at one time and wanted more. His lust was a habitual way of being, something he could not seem to stop or change. One of his women became pregnant and had a daughter. When this girl was 13, he seduced her and ended up doing time in prison. What was he thinking? Why would a guy do that to his own daughter? That’s the mess sex can make of his addiction. He sees all women as sexual beings, even his own daughter. He manipulated her with calculating talk. He spoke to her like a man would speak to his wife. He’d find a way to make it seem like having sex was her idea. That’s sex addiction: no sense of consequence.

      Another man, call him Greg, strayed from his marriage with the original intention of seeing where another woman’s interest in him might go. He wanted to know if he “still had it.” Again, here was a man whose pleasure was his pride and priority. Seeking satisfaction outside his marriage was more important to him than considering the consequences of his actions. Maybe he had other reasons, too, including some kind of revenge on his wife. There are many motives for sin. You don’t have to be a hardcore whoremonger to commit adultery; all it takes is a horn to hone on the whetstone of sin.

      Another friend fell into adultery out of curiosity; he hadn’t experienced much sex with women before getting married, so once he was a husband, he felt he’d missed out on what everybody else seemed to have done before they married.

      So there I was, serving the fellowship and working in the men’s ministry, helping other guys with their problems, as if I had none of my own. Call me a wounded warrior. I had been trying to fight the good fight and help others stay on the right path, but I was deeply wounded, myself. And then I fell into in a situation of unbearable temptation, with a woman from the fellowship: Deloris.