Every Young Man's Battle: Stategies for Victory in the Real World of Sexual Temptation: The Every Man Series (21 page)

Eric
is a college-aged single guy with a Web-based design business that he runs out
of his apartment. Eric’s story paints the picture pretty well:

Porn leaves a big hole of emptiness, but I cannot get myself to turn away
from it when I’m the only one in my lonely apartment. I’ve tried
bouncing my eyes, but that’s as far as I can go. What happens after that
is that I cannot concentrate on my work. I can’t get anything done
because sex constantly floods my preoccupations and thoughts.

What’s going on here? The best way to describe what’s happening
is to compare it to withdrawal. Eric’s body had gotten accustomed to
getting the chemical highs from the “visual pops” stemming from
porn. This isn’t unusual. Many of us have had similar experiences outside
the sexual arena. Richard told me, “You guys don’t seem to drink
much Dr Pepper in Iowa, but where I come from in Texas, Dr Pepper is
the
soft drink of choice. Everyone drinks Dr Pepper, and I used to
have one for breakfast, lunch, supper, and in between. If I went too long
without a Dr Pepper, I’d actually get grumpy. My body demanded
one.”

I (Steve) became real addicted to the sugar high from
cookies once, and when I tried to pull back, I got headaches! Going without
afternoon cookies even affected my work. We see the same thing with caffeine,
alcohol, and other drugs. An aspect of this is kicking in when you go cold
turkey with your sexuality.

But it’s also more than that if
you’re constantly masturbating. An orgasm releases a flood of “feel
good” brain chemicals—endorphins—into the bloodstream, and
the act gives you a bigger kick than anything that comes through the eyes. Your
body wants that feeling again, and that’s why some guys masturbate three,
four, even five times a day, even though this goes far beyond the demands of
any natural sex drive.

If you’re getting regular orgasms through
masturbation, oral sex, mutual masturbation, or whatever, and if you’re
living in a constant state of visual foreplay, then the crest of your sex drive
has risen to a height where it’s flooding every dike and riverbank that
God put in place for you. In other words, you’re out of control. You have
a flood on your hands, and that flood has to settle back into its banks. This
means your sex drive has to “dry up” to normal levels as a
“drought” of images and orgasms has their natural effect. That will
take some time—probably more than three weeks.

What else can
be done about the head-throbbing sexual pressure of withdrawals? Hopefully,
nocturnal emissions will kick in quickly to take the edge off while the river
dries up. But not always right away, it seems. Listen to this story from
Marc:

I finished reading
Every Man’s Battle
and began
bouncing my eyes. I had success for about a week and then fell to the
temptation as the sexual urges got stronger. I’ve been so used to
focusing on attractive babes that this was a tougher habit for me to break than
I thought it would be. Plus, I’d been masturbating quite a bit.
Every
Man’s Battle
was written to married men, so it assumed that the
reader had a wife for release when the sexual urges got strong. I figure
married guys must get release once a week, at worse. But you also mentioned
that the single person has nocturnal emissions to relieve the sexual tension. I
don’t recall the last time I had a nocturnal emission. How am I going to
abstain from masturbation without those?

Marc’s problem is
simple. He hasn’t ridden it out yet. He needs to hang in there and be
patient. As for Marc’s stating that he’d experienced no nocturnal
emissions, let’s talk about it. Nocturnal emissions are there to release
a buildup of sperm in the sperm banks. But those banks may never get filled
because of “overuse.” Some guys have never had a nocturnal emission
simply because their regular masturbation and promiscuity keeps the banks from
filling up and demanding release.

Maybe you’ve never had one for
the same reason, and you wonder whether they’ll really help you at all.
It may take some time for your body to adjust to this new scenario. Besides,
nocturnal emissions aren’t exactly science and don’t work on the
clock, so they can’t be expected to happen every third evening on the
dot. They’re there to release the sexual pressure that comes from
“sperm production,” not the sexual pressure that comes from
impurity. This means that it may take some time to get in balance.

Along these lines, I (Fred) have a great story for you from a young reader
of
Every Man’s Battle
whom I’ve come to appreciate through
a series of e-mail interchanges. I think you will too. His name is David:

My whole life I’ve gone to church and lived in a Christian home
where my dad’s a deacon and my mom plays the piano for the choir. Anyway,
I had some problems to deal with, being seventeen. Like porn, porn, porn. Dirty
chat rooms. Videos. You name it. It took a while to become honest with my youth
pastor, but we are extremely close, so I finally got it out and we discussed
it. I’d been trying to do different things to get over it before reading
your book.

I found
Every Man’s Battle
to be very
entertaining reading, and I learned all the techniques of bouncing the eyes and
taking thoughts captive. I’d been struggling with random dirty thoughts
and glances at close friends of mine, and the book was very helpful. I feel so
liberated!

But I have a few comments. I’m not married, so
does this mean I’m just supposed to wait for nocturnal emissions? But in
the three or four years since puberty, I have
never
had one. Not once.
Never, ever, ever. And it wasn’t because I never went seventy-two hours
without a release, either. At times in the past, I have made bets with friends
to see who could “last the longest” without release, and I’ve
made many, many seventy-two-hour sets in a row.

I know that
Every Man’s Battle
was written for the perspective of married
guys, but you left us single guys hanging out to dry. I’m sorry, but
telling a man he should go at his wife with great gusto and then telling the
single guy to wait for a nocturnal emission is insane!

So here we
arrive at the topic of masturbation. Right now, I’m well past seventy-two
hours and I am kinda frustrated…if you know what I mean. Since I’m
“emission deficient,” I’m going crazy!

I
corresponded with David, and we got a dialogue going. Then I heard this from
him:

It had been a number of days since I last masturbated, and I
don’t know why, but IT WAS BAD! I always thought the term “blue
balls” was made up, but I actually ached! I have no idea why. I’ve
gone weeks before on bets, and it had only been a couple of days. I was pretty
confused. It was bad, I’m telling you!

Well, after a couple
of more days I took matters into my own hands again—literally. I did it
earlier in the day. I tell you that because I want you to know that when I went
to bed that night, I was not really still thinking about sex.

So
that night, guess what happened? Yep, a nocturnal emission. The first time
it’s ever happened in my life. I think God was saying, “Ha,
ha” to me or something, maybe implying that if I’d have just
waited, He’d have taken care of it for me. He must be a joker!

What can we say? As you move into purity, the physical side of your
sexuality should begin to rebalance, and we’re confident that it will
fall in line with God’s natural intent. It may take a while for the
physical processes to kick in and the sex drive to become manageable, but it
should happen.

What else
might slow up your timeline to victory? It may also take a while for your
mental processes to kick in. Kind of a jet lag of the pure mind. Remember,
you’ve likely been using the false intimacy of masturbation to replace
the real intimacy you were missing in your family or school. That doesn’t
change overnight, so there may be a number of false starts early on.

You don’t form intimacy with God overnight, either. That will take
some time. You also won’t build intimacy with new friends or
accountability partners overnight, either. Since these needs for intimacy are
very real, you must be diligent in finding friends to fill those needs. Eric
said,

Even if I
could
get past three weeks on bouncing my
eyes and staying away from the Internet, I wonder if there would still be an
emptiness that would drag me down? It seems I need to fill a void in my life
that the porn now fills. Can I really expect my legitimate needs for
companionship to suddenly disappear?

On the one hand, we can say no.
On the other hand, we urge you to be as diligent about building up friendships
and finding companionship as you need to be about bouncing your eyes. This is a
critical component in your battle for sexual purity. Without it, the struggle
may be merciless.

Another
reason the process may slow down is that your commitment and discipline to this
process of purity may take some time to kick in. Our society doesn’t
glorify discipline all that much, especially in high school. This means it may
take you some time to learn a disciplined lifestyle.

The apostle Paul
said we’re to be like Olympic athletes, beating our bodies and running so
as to win. Most of us haven’t disciplined our bodies to that extent,
certainly not in the sexual arena. But the truth is clear. We’re to
crucify the flesh. Part of that process is learning not to put yourself in the
same old situations that lead to sin.

For instance, an alcoholic
shouldn’t hang out at a sports bar on Friday nights watching the ball
game. Similarly, renting
American Pie,
or feasting on the visual
sensuality of Lara Croft in
Tomb Raider,
drags us away from
God’s best, even though we may not notice it on the surface. In fact,
we’re amazed at how many guys can watch raunchy movies and think that the
sexy stuff doesn’t affect them.

Did you see Tom Hanks in
Forrest Gump
? If so, you probably remember the scene at the beginning
where Sally Field had sex with the principal to get her son into the
“right” school. You’ll remember the bare breasts at the New
Year’s party and the nude on-stage guitar performance. You’ll never
forget how Forrest’s girlfriend let him touch her breast, which set off
an orgasm. Or the time she climbed on top of him in bed—which led to her
conceiving a child out of wedlock.

Seeing this type of stuff causes
your mind to race in all kinds of directions. At night and in bed, you wonder
what it would be like to touch her breast like Forrest did. You fantasize about
your girl making you grunt and pant like Sally Field did with the principal.
Finally, you masturbate just to make all the thoughts go away.

Some may
think that objecting to
Forrest Gump
is minor, legalistic meddling.
But such subtle influences, added to hundreds of others over time, provide more
than a hint of sexual immorality in our lives. Soon, the effect isn’t so
subtle anymore, because it builds that false sex drive into a permanent
low-grade sexual fever that isn’t fun to deal with at all. Before long,
your conscience dims until you can’t quite tell what’s right or
wrong anymore. You’re watching movies like this without even noticing the
sexuality. But it’s there just the same, turbocharging your desires.

While we’re talking about discipline, let’s go beyond our
concern for our eyes. We must also be concerned with where we place ourselves
in other ways. For example, Tim told us that he never takes a shower without
playing Christian music at the same time. Otherwise, the warm shower water
tempts a fantasy. Mike told us he chooses to do his homework every night in the
living room instead of his bedroom, even though he studies better in the quiet
of his room. “I don’t want to spend so much time alone where my
thoughts and eyes can go crazy on me,” he said. Dave told us that he and
his girlfriend have a rule that they can’t be alone in either home if the
parents are away. And Josh said to us, “Kissing isn’t wrong, but
when a girl decides to kiss me on the first date, I find it hard to believe she
cares much about her purity. That’s dangerous, because if she
doesn’t care much about hers, she won’t care so much about mine. So
I have a rule not to date them a second time.”

These guys are
smart. To be bold here, it’s obvious that if you want to stay in control,
lying on your bed without any clothes on wouldn’t be a smart move. Limit
the times you’re alone and in a highly excitable situation. Do things
with friends of both sexes. Go on group dates. Limit the amount of touching
and
the amount of kissing. Whatever your defenses, set your rules and then
be disciplined.

Walk in truth.

What happens if you don’t win this battle
in six weeks? We don’t know, but in some sense, we’re not sure how
much that matters. Sure, you’re anxious to win. Sure, you want to put
this stuff behind you. But it’s not as important to focus on some
self-imposed deadline as it to
focus on where you’re
headed.
This is going to be a battle—a battle that will
demand your patience and time.

What should be our focus? Actually,
there are two primary areas of focus: (1) getting closer to God and (2)
integrating our sexuality into our Christian lives. Let’s take a close
look at each of these before Steve shares some thoughts about starting with
less while moving to none.