From Darkness to Light: A Journey of Recovery

Transcript

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On today's episode, I'm joined by Logan Hufford.

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He is a former sex and porn addict, saved by God's grace.

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His trust with his wife was broken during this dark season in his life, but they have been able to overcome in Christ and are now strong in their marriage and faith as they run ministries at their church that deal with addictions and the sexual betrayal a spouse can endure as well.

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Logan believed he would never amount to more than just an addict, but through the power of Christ and the tough love of his wife, he has come out on top and devoted his life to giving God the glory and sharing his story with others to help them through their struggles.

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Get ready to be empowered to overcome your own struggles.

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Whether it's porn or not, this episode has something for everyone.

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Be sure to share this episode with family and friends so they, too, can be blessed by the contents of this episode.

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Hey, logan, thanks for joining us today.

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I'm very excited to talk to you about this topic because it's something that's near and dear to my heart, as I have also dealt with this addiction and become freed from it also dealt with this addiction and become freed from it but also because this is something that I don't think the church talks about enough and Christians in general kind of shy away from it because it's so.

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I don't even know how to explain it.

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It's just not taboo, but something like that.

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It's just something that people don't want to talk about.

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So I'm really excited that you, on your Instagram, are constantly talking about it, because people need that help.

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So thank you for joining me today so we can discuss this.

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Yeah, I very much appreciate giving a chance to come on and talk to you, Ana, and the only thing I would add to that is, at least in regards to I mean, I suppose this could be true outside of the church too, but especially when I think of a lot of Christian circles, I think there's a denial or, at the bare minimum, there's a lack of understanding of how addiction works, of how sexual addiction works.

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You know, even that word, addiction, gets rejected a lot, I think, in Christian circles.

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This idea of like, oh, if you're a Christian, you can't be addicted, that's false verbiage.

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Like, and I even I think I bought into probably a lot of that thinking for a long time, so we get into that.

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But it's, yeah, there's, there's.

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I, as I always put out there, like in any conversation I'm having on social media, like, my focus is never to attack the church or to attack Christians, attack pastors, like because I care about them and I want them to be equipped right, that I want us to be better educated and to understand these things better.

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Yeah, yeah.

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All right, let's get into it.

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How old were you when you first saw porn?

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I always use the age nine and it's kind of arbitrary.

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I don't remember how old I was.

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I was a little kid.

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This was definitely before puberty, before understanding anything about sex, and it wasn't even with porn.

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It was not with anything that you would classify as porn, just like in a vacuum.

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It was JCPenney catalogs, and I learned that I could find women in swimwear and lingerie, and yet I always classify that as that.

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That was my introduction to porn, because it was the first time I sexually objectified pictures of women, which in my opinion that's a pretty good working definition of porn, right, it's sexually objectifying pictures of people, and that was my introduction to that.

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Okay yeah, I was a bit of a late bloomer in that area, in what I consider actually seen porn for me.

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I was 17.

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I've, I remember it.

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My mom was trying to type in a website and she misspelled it by one letter and it sent her to a website.

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Not what she was looking for her website.

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Not what she was looking for.

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Stop looking and like I don't even think I saw anything specific.

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But I remember it was not good and I was to stay away, but that's kind of when I actually saw that.

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But I also had some sexual issues.

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That happened when I was younger as well from people in my life and obviously'm not going to name drop or anything but I also never grew up in family that, I think, felt comfortable talking about the subject in a healthy way.

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I grew up in a Christian home, but we didn't talk about that.

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I remember learning birds and the bees from TV or something you know which is not.

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I asked my brother.

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I asked him if he would give me the talk and he was like you got to ask mom and dad, dude, and I literally was like I made them give me the talk when I was way too old.

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I mean, I was like a I don't even remember.

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I might've been a sophomore high school or something.

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I'm not joking, like it was, yeah.

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It's a subject that no one wants to talk about, but it needs to be talked about because, if not, then where the kids going to find out what they should or should not be doing if their parents aren't comfortable to tell them?

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You know it's.

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It's an important topic and I know in my own life I didn't start talking about this stuff with my kids.

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I have five kids and I didn't start talking to them about it.

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I have one who's 17 now and one who's 12.

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And unfortunately now, because of the state of how things are in the world, my son's asking questions that I never thought I'd have to talk about, but they're things that I'm talking about.

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So it's an uncomfortable experience for both of us because it's something I'm not used to talking about, because it wasn't talked about with me.

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Right, so Well, and I will say, I mean as a parent, you know, most of the times I'm having these conversations, whether it's on podcasts or not.

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I, you know, I try to speak from my own experience.

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That I'm most comfortable or most confident in which is sexual addiction recovery not necessarily parenting, because I have a lot of experience in it.

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But I don't know what I'm doing.

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Half the time we're sort of on the other end where my oldest is 12.

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My youngest is eight.

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So I know what we are doing or what we have been doing.

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I don't necessarily know how successful it will turn out to be.

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Right, it's like we're trying to plant seeds.

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We're trying to plant seeds half the time I don't know if those seeds are dead or if they've grown anything, or who knows.

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But we're, you know, me and my wife, carrier Carrie, are just doing what we can, right.

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But I mean, the number one thing that we try to just stay intentional on is just opening up those conversations.

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You know, I put it this way, I try to be.

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I would say we are extremely hesitant to tell the kids hey, you need to give us privacy because we're having a grown-up conversation.

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Obviously there's times where that is going to be the case.

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And obviously there's times where that is going to be the case.

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And obviously there's times where we need privacy.

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But if we're talking in the living room and the boys are in the kitchen and we don't want to be talking about something that is, yeah, it's not about the kids.

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And yet if the kids come into the living room, we try to default to just continue the conversation and letting it hit their eardrums.

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And if they want to ask questions, if they want to talk about it, like then we're going to talk about it.

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And obviously there's times, whether it's we're talking about somebody, recovery, or you know, in terms of like somebody, that we, you know we're we're trying to help somebody with something, but for the most part, you know, 80% of the time, or whatever we try to, just, you know, let those conversations hit their eardrums, even if they're not necessarily part of the conversation.

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Because, yeah, I don't want them growing up thinking that there's grown-up life and then there's kid life and there's a giant chasm in between.

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Um, because I I think that tends to be how it happens in a lot of families.

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Yes, I don't think it tends to be healthy in terms of as a kid and you know understanding how life works and asking those questions yeah, that's actually pretty good Because I've since I've started listening to podcasts from various sources that talk about, you know, what's going on in the world today with the transgender and all this other stuff they're trying to push in schools.

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I've been listening to a lot more podcasts and I listen to them out loud, like you know.

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Put my headphones on and my son will be able to hear it.

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My two young daughters, my youngest son he's only going to be two, so he's not really listening but they can hear it and you know, if it gets too graphic or whatever, I might wander in a different room just for the younger ears.

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But my son knows a lot more than I did at his age, right, and he asks me questions, you know, and I'm more open to talking to him about it.

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I don't want to shy away from it.

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I don't want him to feel like I'm trying to hide something from him because it's bad, and I always just try to bring it back to the way that God intended sexual experience to be if he asked me questions.

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You know this is wrong.

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This is right.

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You know this is what you should do.

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This is what you shouldn't do.

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We actually have a book.

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I don't remember who wrote it, but it's about pornography and it's for kids, but there's also one for older kids as well is this good pictures?

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bad pictures?

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yes yes it is we have a one for the little kids and we have the one for the older ones that is so.

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Those are so such good books yes, and there's.

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They're simple to understand the concepts and they're not overreaching in any way.

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So I.

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I'll read that to the kids and ask questions.

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But yes, thank you, that's the name of it.

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Yes, yeah.

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Yeah, it's, it's.

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Unfortunately, it's something that a lot of younger kids are seeing nowadays.

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My son was one of them, who one of his friends showed him something when he was probably about nine, ten years old.

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One of his school friends and I found out only because God had kind of woke me up in the middle of the night and I heard running footsteps and then jumping in bed and I'm like, well, that's weird.

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I didn't do anything about it at that point.

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But the next morning I went and I looked and his tablet was in his bed.

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So I went and looked through it and I saw a couple things that he saw on YouTube.

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It was.

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It was hard.

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I did not have the best response to it Because I didn't know how to handle it, and that's why I'm trying really hard to be more open and talking and letting him know that you can come to me and talk to me about these things and I won't do the yelling again because I'm a little more with it now.

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But with the conversation, yeah.

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Yeah, so when did you realize that you had an addiction?

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Probably like a year after I got married, to be honest, because that that was when I don't remember, before I was married.

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I don't remember if I had the, the, the awareness of, like I can't stop.

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I seemingly can't stop my.

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You know, my addiction all through my teen years was limited to pornography very rarely Cause like I just couldn't have access.

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I would take it when I could get it, but I didn't have a lot of opportunity.

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It grew up pretty sheltered.

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You know I'm younger than some people, but we're talking, you know, early mid 2000s, so you didn't have smart TVs and tablets everywhere and stuff like that, and definitely not in my house.

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So I didn't have an opportunity for porn, but I wanted it, you know, when I could get it.

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And then I was always always very shy around girls and so all through my teen years, to the external eye it probably wouldn't have looked like I had any problems, um, and especially like from a worldly perspective, like, oh, okay, logan's, he's a pretty good kid, he's, you know, not doing all these crazy things that other people are doing.

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But I wanted to do these things.

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I wanted the attention of girls, I wanted to look at foreign, I wanted to have, have these experiences and then, um, you know, once I had more freedom, moved out from my parents' house, and then, ultimately, for me, what a giant difference was.

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And this is not me blaming anything on environment or people around me, but environment does matter and, you know, a healthy environment is helpful in a unhealthy environment is typically not going to be helpful in terms of making good decisions.

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I started selling cars in August of 2010.

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So I'm 20 years old to this point again, occasional porn, wanting the attention of girls, but not much external behavior.

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I was planting seeds without even realizing it, but not much external behavior.

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But then these seeds started to grow out of the ground a little bit and I started to.

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I'm talking to people, I'm selling cars, I'm building relationships with people and I was good at building connection.

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I wasn't like the best car salesman because I knew all of this stuff about cars, but I was good at building rapport and getting people to talk to me, and that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I totally abused that.

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And when it came to women basically any woman in my path I became a predator.

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I would prey on them to get what I wanted.

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I would seek out, you know, I would flirt, I would, I would seek attention, I would see where the conversation would go and before too long I had had multiple sexual infidelities during and during this time I'm engaged I know I'm jumping around a little bit timeline, I apologize, but I'm engaged to carry and I had sexual encounters on multiple occasions before we got married with other women.

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There was a huge part of me that was like I felt terrible shame and all this.

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But there was a huge part of me that also, I mean, I enjoyed it.

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This was kind of the thing that I'd always wanted.

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Didn't plan on doing these things while I was engaged to a woman that I loved, that I cared about, wasn't planning on that, but I mean, on some depraved level, these were things that I always wanted to do, and you know to to have women like me and give me that attention and all that.

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And you know I said I planted seeds earlier, even though I didn't realize how they were growing.

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What I mean by that is, you know, all through my teen years, every time I'm looking at porn even though I wasn't having really any interaction that was inappropriate with with girls around me every time I'm looking at porn, I'm training myself to chase after new and different.

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Every time I'm looking at porn, I'm training my brain that I can have what I want when I want it, however I want it, with whoever I want.

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Like, I can pick the type of woman that's on screen, I can click to a different video, I can choose all these things, which, at the bare minimum, is a very immature way of behaving.

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And then, of course, you know, beyond that, um, you know the, the spiritual and sexual depravity that exists there.

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Um, you know the glue of, uh, all those dopamine hits and the hits and the glue that I'm tethering myself to these images and to this behavior.

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I was planting all those seeds and had no clue.

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So now, going back to as a 20 year old, I'm playing these things out in real life.

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You know, I'm getting this attention in real life.

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So we, carrie and I, got married June 4th 2011.

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When we got married, I'd already cheated on her multiple times, beyond pornography, you know, with real women in real life.

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And then it just continued.

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Six months after we got married, I actually wrote her a letter and I confessed to the sexual, to the physical sexual encounters.

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I didn't confess to the constant flirting.

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I didn't confess to all that.

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I confessed to the stuff that felt really bad and I wanted to get off my chest.

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So it was not healthy repentance.

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But at the same time, like there also was part of me that, as insane as it sounds now, I truly thought that I was just like not going to do it anymore, I'm done, I'm never going to do this again.

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I feel so terrible.

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And, yeah, nothing in my infrastructure changed, nothing in you know, I didn't.

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I didn't build up an accountability infrastructure, I didn't start seeking out resources.

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I just, you know, decided I was going to hit the off button and never do it again.

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And I and it didn't stop again.

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I don't have a singular moment, but like, at some point within that first year or so would have been where I'm like, okay, this keeps happening.

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I keep I shouldn't say this keeps happening, I keep doing this, and on one hand, I want to do these things, but on another hand, I don't want to do these things.

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Somewhere in there was when my awareness of my problem like I I still didn't didn't identify as an addict.

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I didn't think of this as an addiction.

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It's just like man, I keep doing this crap and I don't know how to stop.

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And then over the next couple of years, that feeling intensified to the point when I was like 24, 25, I had fully given into.

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There's no future for me on earth that isn't just like this downward slope of depravity.

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There's no future where I'm going to be a good husband.

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There's no future where I'm going to be able to look in my kid's eyes as a dad and know that they can look up to me, that I can teach them, you know things as a dad.

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Realistically, there's probably not a future for me as their dad.

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Like you know, it's only a matter of time before they just you know they'll never talk to me again At some point.

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I'm sure carrie's gonna leave me.

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All of these things I pretty much just fully bought into as like a 23, 24, 25 year old that's.

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Shame and guilt are definitely the devil's tools, because he uses those and tries to keep us from god for one.

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But also sometimes I feel like we like to live in it, you know, or at least a part of us likes to live in it, you know, like you were, saying we felt like I deserved it.

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Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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Right, which I did, but Masochistic or something you know, but it's yeah as we.

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I know when I was looking at the porn a lot of people didn't know.

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Like I'm pretty sure nobody knew that I was doing that because I was able to hide it.

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And when I did have access to internet I knew how to delete the history so people wouldn't see.

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I was just very crafty with it because I was in my family, as my late grandpa called me and said you are supposed to be the good one.

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So it was a high mantle that I had to keep up appearances on and it was not easy to do.

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But I tried my best to be the best teenager I could be and do all the right things.

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So this was definitely a secret sin for me that I tried really hard to make sure nobody knew about because I didn't know what would happen to me if they found out.

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So I got really good at hiding it.

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I knew where to get all of it.

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I didn't have to pay.

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I just knew my way around because I had been so sneaky for so long and trying to be as clever as possible.

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When I got the iPhone, that was the worst, because it's like handheld now, but the guilt and shame got me every single time.

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Immediately, I'd feel guilt and shame.

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I'd feel like I'm a horrible person.

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Why do I call myself a Christian?

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All these things just like you're disgusting.

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I hate this.

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I'm sorry, god, I won't do this again, like that was.

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My immediate response was I'm sorry, god, I won't do this again.

00:19:27.637 --> 00:19:30.679
But of course, I kept doing it again and just didn't stop.

00:19:30.679 --> 00:19:35.240
When I got angry, I'd go and seek it out, like that was my trigger most of the time.

00:19:35.240 --> 00:19:46.708
So the guilt and shame got me so bad that I just I couldn't like myself.

00:19:46.708 --> 00:19:51.252
I guess and you mentioned something in one of your Instagram posts and I think now's the perfect time to talk about it you mentioned religiosity.

00:19:51.252 --> 00:19:55.050
Want to share what that means, because I found that very profound.

00:19:55.653 --> 00:19:55.953
Yeah.

00:19:55.953 --> 00:20:06.180
So the idea of religiosity is basically like in my case I had definite beliefs and had knowledge that they were not fake.

00:20:06.180 --> 00:20:09.006
I believed in God as the creator of the universe.

00:20:09.006 --> 00:20:13.155
I believed in Jesus as God, who became man, who died for our sins.

00:20:13.155 --> 00:20:26.056
Like I believed the Bible to be true, I believed all these things and yet and I had, you know, worldview and moral principles based on that, but like, none of that necessarily made me behave with integrity.

00:20:26.056 --> 00:20:28.819
I always give the example, real life example.

00:20:29.365 --> 00:20:45.289
When I was 20, 21 years old, working at the car dealership, living this whole double life, I would have conversations with my coworkers and bait them on the evils of abortion and how wrong that is, or why I'm not going to go to a strip club I'm not about that is.

00:20:45.289 --> 00:20:54.288
And or you know why I'm not going to go to a strip club and, like these guys, like I'm not about that life.

00:20:54.288 --> 00:20:55.914
And yet meanwhile, I'm texting women, you know, trying to seek out affairs.

00:20:55.914 --> 00:20:58.005
And and the crazy part is, in those moments I was not.

00:20:58.005 --> 00:21:02.675
It wasn't like I was thinking through my head okay, how am I going to craft this lie?

00:21:02.675 --> 00:21:04.167
How am I going to craft this double life?

00:21:04.367 --> 00:21:17.615
It was, it was, literally I had compartmentalized to this huge degree to where I could believe I have a position, I have a moral position to stand on and yet, at the same time, my own darkness and my own sins and my own double life.

00:21:17.615 --> 00:21:23.516
You know, yeah, like that's, it's terrible, but you know, I'm like, I want to be judged on a different standard.

00:21:23.516 --> 00:21:43.971
Like, well, I, I see me and they can't stop I, this problem and other people, if they sin, if they were to have, if they were to cheat on their wives, if they were to go to strip club, if they were to do these terrible things.

00:21:43.971 --> 00:21:49.557
Well, like that, I'm the worst of the worst too, but there was a period of my life where the religiosity was.

00:21:49.557 --> 00:21:57.095
I'm going to hold up my beliefs and my standards of things over here, but I want to be judged by this other, very different standard over there.

00:21:57.825 --> 00:22:03.220
Yeah, I kind of went through that as well when I was looking at porn.

00:22:03.220 --> 00:22:07.429
I'd judge strippers basically and say, oh, they're disgusting.

00:22:07.429 --> 00:22:15.141
And I don't remember when I first heard it, but I heard the phrase that those women are daughters to someone.

00:22:15.141 --> 00:22:18.615
The ones you're watching on a screen they're someone's daughter.

00:22:18.615 --> 00:22:27.071
That just hit me in a way that I had never really thought about before, and it made me see that they are real people, they're not objects.

00:22:27.071 --> 00:22:33.300
Which is what porn makes you think is that they're just objects to be objectified.

00:22:33.300 --> 00:22:38.211
But these are real people and a lot of them probably don't even want to be there because they're.

00:22:38.211 --> 00:22:40.597
You know, sex trafficking is a thing too.

00:22:40.597 --> 00:22:43.734
So that just kind of gave me a mindset shift.

00:22:43.734 --> 00:22:51.874
I don't remember if I had heard that after I had stopped looking or if it was while I was still looking, but that was an eyeopening experience.

00:22:51.874 --> 00:22:57.400
And when you were talking about religiosity and your Instagram, that's where my brain went as I remembered.

00:22:57.400 --> 00:22:59.605
That's the mindset that I had.

00:22:59.726 --> 00:22:59.925
Yeah.

00:23:00.586 --> 00:23:26.628
So, and and I, and I would do that in in real life too, where I would, in real life too, where I would, you know, I would do everything I can to like to groom my own brain, to basically like gaslight myself to believe that you know women, that I'm seeking attention from women, that I'm trying to do things with, like they, to basically lie to myself that they are not much more than objects.

00:23:26.628 --> 00:23:45.969
Because if I was to see them from a holistic angle, see them as somebody's daughter, see them as somebody's sister, see them as, ultimately, see them as somebody creating the image of God, right that God formed in her mother's womb, kind of thing, well then I I mean I, there's no way I would have, I could have continued pursuing the things I want to pursue.

00:23:45.969 --> 00:23:52.605
So I had to go the other way in order to preserve my addiction, you know, and to protect these evil desires that I had.

00:23:52.605 --> 00:24:08.130
So I mean, I would compartmentalize to this again to this huge degree and just view them like, purposely, view them as objects as much as possible, view them as, oh, you know, they're realistically like.

00:24:08.349 --> 00:24:11.932
You know, this woman, she's chasing after me just as much as I'm chasing after her.

00:24:11.932 --> 00:24:19.205
So it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter if I'm harming her, it doesn't matter if I'm praying on her Like she's doing the same thing to me, so it's.

00:24:19.205 --> 00:24:22.852
You know, she's just an object to me and I'm an object to her, and that's fine.

00:24:22.852 --> 00:24:37.193
And I, if I could get myself to believe that lie, if I could get myself to justify it via that type of thinking, that was a win for me, because it let me do these terrible things and not have as much of a conscience bugging me.

00:24:37.404 --> 00:24:43.377
What was the catalyst that made you realize that this was an addiction and you didn't want it anymore?

00:24:43.377 --> 00:24:45.060
What happened to you to make that?

00:24:45.080 --> 00:24:45.262
happen.

00:24:45.262 --> 00:24:47.011
Yeah, july of 2015,.

00:24:47.011 --> 00:24:58.605
I had a month long affair and my wife, uh, would tell you this was the most painful affair that I ever had.

00:24:58.605 --> 00:25:06.423
That's her words when I confess this one to her because, again, every time I had a sexual affair, every time I had a physical affair, I would confess to Carrie.

00:25:06.423 --> 00:25:13.803
I just, like I said before, I wouldn't confess all the other you know unhealthy behaviors, but I would confess the physical affairs.

00:25:13.803 --> 00:25:20.087
Just make it very unhealthy, just to get it off my chest to feel better, to, as you said, we were talking off screen.

00:25:20.087 --> 00:25:21.169
You know, like to vomit.

00:25:21.169 --> 00:25:23.609
You know, now I feel better, so I did it again.

00:25:23.609 --> 00:25:27.113
You know it's like, okay, I have this affair, I'm so sorry, you know all the all these things.

00:25:27.113 --> 00:25:29.519
And so in that moment she did something she'd never done before.

00:25:29.519 --> 00:25:34.038
She's like all right, if you don't get serious help, then you will lose me and you'll lose the kids.

00:25:34.038 --> 00:25:38.726
We already had three boys and then fourth, isaiah was in her womb.

00:25:38.726 --> 00:25:42.818
She was pregnant with Isaiah and I that scared the crap out of me.

00:25:42.818 --> 00:25:46.065
I believed that she would, in fact, leave me.

00:25:46.065 --> 00:25:52.369
So I, that was the catalyst, that was the thing that spurred me to okay, I got to find something.

00:25:52.631 --> 00:25:55.080
Now, there still was a 10 month period.

00:25:55.080 --> 00:25:57.289
My sobriety date's May 19th 2016.

00:25:57.289 --> 00:25:59.212
So there was a 10 month period of like flailing around and like some success for a little bit.

00:25:59.212 --> 00:25:59.898
I had four months of sobriety date's May 19th 2016.

00:25:59.898 --> 00:26:02.378
So there was a 10 month period of like flailing around and like some success for a little bit.

00:26:02.378 --> 00:26:06.299
I had four months of sobriety at one point, but no recovery, no healing.

00:26:06.299 --> 00:26:06.961
But I was.

00:26:06.961 --> 00:26:10.237
I was trying to, I was doing things differently on some level.

00:26:10.237 --> 00:26:24.102
Where I was, I was going to groups, I was reaching out to some resources, I was starting to, you know, make some phone calls to recovery brothers here and there, but it was a lot of checking the boxes, doing the bare minimum.

00:26:25.423 --> 00:26:33.126
Um, the the next like landmark that happened was I met a guy at a group that was just a.

00:26:33.126 --> 00:26:37.056
It was a, uh was a is a recovery group.

00:26:37.056 --> 00:26:39.746
That was it wasn't super't super super deep.

00:26:39.746 --> 00:26:49.164
Um, men would split off, women would split off and just, no matter what you were there for, um, you know you would, you would meet up, meet up with a group um based on gender.

00:26:49.164 --> 00:26:57.997
So just there's like 20 women and 20 men or whatever, and out of these 20 guys, roughly 20, I and this other guy, rick, were the only two that were there for sexual addiction.

00:26:58.356 --> 00:27:01.403
So after the group he was man, appreciate you?

00:27:01.403 --> 00:27:02.968
He's an older guy, he's like my dad's age.

00:27:02.968 --> 00:27:05.801
He's like I appreciate you're here, but you need more than this group.

00:27:05.801 --> 00:27:10.068
He's like, based on your story, he goes you need something more intense.

00:27:10.068 --> 00:27:12.416
And then he went on telling he's like I needed something more intense too.

00:27:12.416 --> 00:27:22.788
And so he told him about this group called prodigals and and it's like it's a faith-based group, christ-based group, 12 step recovery specifically for men struggling with sexual addiction.

00:27:22.989 --> 00:27:34.015
And I didn't think that that had like that, that existed at least not in Alaska, like maybe in a big city, somewhere there's a group but the idea that there was a group of men specifically, you know, centered around sexual addiction.

00:27:34.015 --> 00:27:48.666
And then they come to find out a few months later, when I finally went to that group cause I pushed him away for a while, when I finally went to that group and then I got to meet some of these guys, multiple men that had my story, my past, but had experienced healing.

00:27:48.666 --> 00:27:49.654
In most of their cases it restored marriages.

00:27:49.654 --> 00:27:56.664
Guys that had 10, 15, 20 years of unhealthy living and they had 5, 10, 15, 20 years of healthy living.

00:27:56.664 --> 00:27:58.618
That boggled my mind.

00:27:58.618 --> 00:28:00.345
I never thought that that was possible.

00:28:05.515 --> 00:28:08.106
Now, again, like all of those examples that are shared, none of those examples gave me access to the button to just turn it off.

00:28:08.126 --> 00:28:10.717
None of those things made it to where, like the next day when I woke up, I was healthy.

00:28:11.199 --> 00:28:30.265
But they started to give me hope because now I could see, okay, maybe maybe I can stop doing this stuff and then, on a whole different level, maybe probably not, but maybe I can even have like an enjoyable life, like I can actually have a restored marriage, maybe I can be the kind of dad that my kids can look up to.

00:28:30.265 --> 00:28:32.279
And I'm not exaggerating, I mean it was.

00:28:32.279 --> 00:28:42.759
It was probably a year into the program, a year into sobriety, before I even started to feel like I could have those things, so it was not a quick change.

00:28:42.759 --> 00:28:52.865
It was probably a year and a half in, maybe even two years into sobriety where I started to feel like, hey, I think I can not do this anymore.

00:28:52.865 --> 00:28:54.237
I think I can not act out.

00:28:54.237 --> 00:28:55.921
I think I don't need porn anymore.

00:28:55.921 --> 00:29:00.461
I think if I were presented with a strong temptation, I think I could overcome it.

00:29:00.461 --> 00:29:05.621
That was like two years into sobriety before I started to have those type of, those type of yeah, that's amazing.

00:29:05.721 --> 00:29:12.461
I love that that he actually came to you and was honest with you and say you need more.

00:29:12.461 --> 00:29:14.482
That's that's very important.

00:29:14.482 --> 00:29:17.696
We need people to be honest with us and say you know what?

00:29:17.696 --> 00:29:18.778
This isn't cutting it.

00:29:18.778 --> 00:29:19.999
You need more than that.

00:29:19.999 --> 00:29:46.546
And when I finally came clean and admitted I had an addiction I'm 40 now I'm 40 years old, so this was well, maybe about 10 years ago is when I met my husband so terrible with dates and math, but it's been within 10 years, not that I've been sober from it or anything.

00:29:46.546 --> 00:29:52.647
That didn't happen until I was pregnant with my third child.

00:29:52.647 --> 00:30:02.597
That's when I finally admitted to myself and to my husband that I had an addiction because I just couldn't stop, no matter what.

00:30:02.597 --> 00:30:04.465
I just couldn't stop when I got angry.

00:30:04.465 --> 00:30:05.269
That's where I went.

00:30:05.269 --> 00:30:10.503
So I finally admitted and from the moment I admitted it I felt so much better.

00:30:10.503 --> 00:30:11.766
The burden was lifted.

00:30:11.766 --> 00:30:13.457
But I took precautions.

00:30:13.457 --> 00:30:19.166
I didn't go to a group right away because our church didn't have anything at the time.

00:30:19.166 --> 00:30:20.128
They do now.

00:30:20.375 --> 00:30:22.382
It's called unbound but they what is it?

00:30:22.762 --> 00:30:27.576
unbound, unbound okay yeah, and they didn't have anything at that time.

00:30:27.576 --> 00:30:36.576
But I, I just I told everybody that I could, my friends and everything, because I wanted accountability.

00:30:36.576 --> 00:30:37.818
I wanted people to know.

00:30:37.818 --> 00:30:43.907
That way, if they they said, hey, how are you doing, I'm not going to lie to them because I don't like to lie.

00:30:44.229 --> 00:30:47.962
I get sick to my stomach when I lie about something this serious.

00:30:47.962 --> 00:30:49.426
So it's like I didn't want to lie.

00:30:49.426 --> 00:30:53.268
So the more people know, the more I'm going to be willing to not do it.

00:30:53.268 --> 00:30:56.739
So I just told people all the time but I still.

00:30:56.739 --> 00:30:59.527
I had, you know, a few slip ups here and there.

00:30:59.527 --> 00:31:09.786
But our church started connection group and we didn't have a name for it at first but there was six of us or whatever and I went to that cause it was the very first.

00:31:10.316 --> 00:31:11.038
How big is your church?

00:31:11.038 --> 00:31:13.965
Roughly Like a couple hundred people.

00:31:14.815 --> 00:31:17.105
Yeah, yeah, well, it could be more than that.

00:31:17.105 --> 00:31:17.749
It's not like.

00:31:17.769 --> 00:31:22.076
It's not like a big mega church Sure, but several hundred probably yeah.

00:31:22.356 --> 00:31:23.519
It wasn't at the time.

00:31:23.519 --> 00:31:30.470
It was a lot smaller, because now they have four services they do over the weekend, but we only had, I think, one or two at the time.

00:31:32.175 --> 00:31:34.380
Sorry, I know, I interrupted you, I was just curious.

00:31:35.101 --> 00:31:40.089
No, but it was the beginning of the addiction ministry.

00:31:40.089 --> 00:31:50.280
It wasn't just for people who had sexual addictions Anyone who had an addiction was there but there were only six or seven of us at the time and now it's grown.

00:31:50.280 --> 00:32:00.535
I haven't been there in a while so I don't know how it's grown, but it has grown into a constant ministry, not that they just did it during a certain time of year or whatever.

00:32:00.535 --> 00:32:01.116
It's just one.

00:32:01.116 --> 00:32:06.445
They do all the time now and it's been amazing, life-changing for the people who are in it.

00:32:06.445 --> 00:32:12.265
Those groups can be very helpful and sometimes you need more than that, sometimes you don't.

00:32:12.634 --> 00:32:14.394
Everyone's story is different.

00:32:14.394 --> 00:32:20.347
You and I kind of stopped our addictions around the same time.

00:32:20.347 --> 00:32:27.886
I think I was a couple years behind you, so it's like 2017, maybe 18, something like that.

00:32:27.886 --> 00:32:42.057
I'm just really encouraged by you wanting to get help and you know, being honest about your story, that you didn't just get help right away.

00:32:42.057 --> 00:32:55.167
You know you had to go through the stripping away of your pride and getting to a low point, I guess, where you finally realized, okay, I can't run anymore, I have to fix this.

00:32:55.167 --> 00:33:02.898
How did your wife perceive that when you finally went to get help from prodigals and she started seeing a change.

00:33:02.898 --> 00:33:05.744
How did she react to that?

00:33:08.009 --> 00:33:08.951
She was encouraged.

00:33:08.951 --> 00:33:17.384
I mean, she was thankful that I was reaching out, that I was trying to get help.

00:33:17.384 --> 00:33:25.363
Know, I started going to meetings like so it would have been august of 2015, sex addicts, anonymous, sober recovery.

00:33:25.363 --> 00:33:37.839
You know a few different things, um, and and not bashing any of those groups, but, like, none of those groups offer the intensity, the accountability, the, to be honest, the hope that I, that I needed.

00:33:37.839 --> 00:33:55.361
Um, not saying there was no hope, it just I didn't see anyone that had struggled with the things that I'd struggle with that were living a healthy life, like maybe with other substances, you know, but it wasn't until prodigals that I met guys that lived out my story on some level, um, that experienced healing.

00:33:55.361 --> 00:34:05.236
But she, when I started going to prodigals, a couple months later she started going to partners in process, which is a group for women who have been hurt in this way.

00:34:05.236 --> 00:34:27.648
So, the sexual betrayal trauma, which is a whole other side of the coin, because she had been abused by me and because of my sexual behaviors, I had been emotionally and psychologically and verbally abusive for years, lying, know, lying to her and living this double life and protecting my addiction at the expense of her and the kids as angry, like all of these things I've done to her all along the way.

00:34:27.648 --> 00:34:31.739
So she dove headfirst into recovery shortly after me.

00:34:31.739 --> 00:34:34.206
So she's been active recovery for exactly eight years now.

00:34:34.206 --> 00:34:37.244
She's, you know, in July of 2016, which is that's a.

00:34:37.244 --> 00:34:38.367
I mean, that's a, that's a.

00:34:38.387 --> 00:34:52.485
When I say that's a whole other side of the coin, like because I've met guys that you know more or less half my story, like they've gotten into recovery and they've they've transformed you know, god's transformed their lives, they've transformed their infrastructure all these healthy, living, healthy guys.

00:34:52.485 --> 00:34:57.380
And yet the majority of guys that I know in recovery, their wives have sought after healing.

00:34:57.380 --> 00:35:02.920
But there's definitely there, there's several guys that I know that I'm close with and their wives have chosen not to.

00:35:02.920 --> 00:35:07.956
You know, um, it doesn't have to be necessarily like this recovery group, but they've.

00:35:07.956 --> 00:35:15.556
They've chosen not to embrace intentional healing journey and it's tough Cause, like, yeah, it's not their fault, you know, it's not.

00:35:15.556 --> 00:35:16.838
It wasn't Carrie's fault that I did this.

00:35:16.838 --> 00:35:17.237
Obviously it's not.

00:35:17.237 --> 00:35:18.099
It wasn't Carrie's fault that I did this.

00:35:18.099 --> 00:35:32.422
Obviously, it's not her fault that she got hurt, but she was wounded and she could have chosen to be like, well, I didn't cause this, so why am I going to spend time and energy fixing it.

00:35:32.422 --> 00:35:37.480
And yet and when I say fixing it, not fixing my addiction, but fixing her, you know healing her, you know getting healing, recovering.

00:35:37.480 --> 00:35:44.177
So she chose for herself and she always, you know she tries to train up.

00:35:44.177 --> 00:35:55.657
You know, next generation of, you know, women that come to the group now is like, yeah, you didn't cause this problem, but you have been wounded, so you can either walk into the hospital doors and start seeking healing or you can just let it harden and that's it.

00:35:55.677 --> 00:36:02.268
That's a really tough thing, cause happens then is that spouse is forever the betrayed victim.

00:36:02.268 --> 00:36:13.585
They're frozen in time as this embittered, resentful person who was victimized and it's so hard for that marriage.

00:36:13.585 --> 00:36:16.965
It's like this person's stuck in this place in time.

00:36:16.965 --> 00:36:25.367
This other person is imperfect, know imperfectly, but you know moving forward, and it's like you know that stretches, that stretches and strains the relationship.

00:36:25.367 --> 00:36:27.000
It's a really, really sad thing.

00:36:27.000 --> 00:36:31.637
I I wasn't planning on going on this whole rant, it's just I I care deeply for marriage.

00:36:31.637 --> 00:36:41.780
You know, I care deeply for for intimacy between spouses and relationships and it's a sad thing to see any sort of pain within relationship, right, but especially because I know what's available.

00:36:41.780 --> 00:36:54.699
I know what is available for anyone a man or a woman that struggles with this, and then I know what's available for a spouse who has been hurt by that sexual betrayal trauma, and so it's hard for me to see anybody that is hurting not seek out that healing.

00:36:54.978 --> 00:37:02.851
It's hard for me to understand, too, why you wouldn't want to seek help, being the victim of what they've done.

00:37:02.851 --> 00:37:05.483
Wouldn't you want to get help?

00:37:05.483 --> 00:37:15.163
Because I feel you'd have a hard time trusting at that point If your wife didn't get the help she needed to make her stronger.

00:37:15.163 --> 00:37:18.989
Would she be able to trust you with my husband?

00:37:18.989 --> 00:37:28.764
After I told him I gave him full access to passwords to my phone if he wants to go into it.

00:37:28.764 --> 00:37:30.949
I don't hide it from him, you know.

00:37:30.949 --> 00:37:34.844
If he can't remember my code to get in, I tell him I've got nothing to hide.

00:37:34.844 --> 00:37:37.418
And that's what I'll tell him is I've got nothing to hide.

00:37:37.418 --> 00:37:39.764
Take my phone yeah I.

00:37:39.945 --> 00:37:44.887
There's a level of trust that I'm giving him that he knows he can trust me.

00:37:44.887 --> 00:37:51.043
I'm honest with him about everything yeah and that is something.

00:37:51.443 --> 00:37:55.552
trust can easily be broken, but it takes a while to build.

00:37:55.552 --> 00:38:24.498
So I'm glad that she got help and I wish more women would take the time to get help, because they're not doing themselves favors by not doing it, because even if they decided not to stay with that person and move on to someone else, they're bringing that baggage with them, know we always say, like recovery, we got into recovery for relatively narrow purposes, right, at least speaking for myself, I got into recovery purely and only to stop cheating on my wife and that was like the only reason.

00:38:25.400 --> 00:38:34.420
Um, and you know, I don't I don't want to speak for it, because anything I share from carrie's perspective is like I'm going to share things that I've heard her say from her own mouth.

00:38:34.420 --> 00:38:45.666
But I think I can safely say like carrie got into recovery because she knew that she needed healing, right, like from sexual trauma, and like we have experienced healing in those respective areas.

00:38:45.666 --> 00:38:51.565
But we've also, through recovery, god has allowed us to learn ways to deal with life.

00:38:51.565 --> 00:38:53.309
You know, to deal with life stressors.

00:38:53.309 --> 00:39:01.409
You know for me to be able to deal with anger, to deal with all these different issues not not perfectly a lot of progressive victory.

00:39:01.409 --> 00:39:09.007
And like with Carrie yeah, I mean it's helping her to to understand what, what things she can control, what things she can't control.

00:39:09.007 --> 00:39:17.063
You know how to set and communicate boundaries right, like in in ways that are far outside of sexual betrayal, just life stuff.

00:39:17.063 --> 00:39:27.326
That most people will never learn those tools because they've never been in a position where the stakes were this high, did they either learn tools or experience this like a credible destruction?

00:39:27.326 --> 00:39:36.496
So for myself, like I'm so thankful I'm not thankful for the things I've done, but I'm thankful that I have my journey, because it it made me.

00:39:36.496 --> 00:39:52.561
It was like God put me on the very clear there's a fork in the road and you can, you can choose to walk towards healing even though you don't know what it's going to look like, or you can walk away from that, like there was no middle middle ground and he honored you know that that choice.

00:39:52.561 --> 00:39:54.056
And same thing with Carrie he.

00:39:54.056 --> 00:39:56.297
Because the stakes were this high, it was pretty clear that we had that choice.

00:39:56.297 --> 00:39:58.882
Because the stakes were this high, it was pretty clear that we had that choice.

00:39:59.083 --> 00:40:08.326
If somebody doesn't have an addiction, they don't have maybe betrayal trauma or something that's like this high in their life, the stakes are this high.

00:40:08.326 --> 00:40:11.626
It might be easy to kind of deceive myself.

00:40:11.626 --> 00:40:23.784
I'm like I don't need to get help on, I don't need to work on stuff, and I see all the time like wish everyone would get into recovery, just work through the 12 steps and there's work through a Christ centered recovery program.

00:40:23.784 --> 00:40:27.902
Because we've all got baggage, we've all got resentments, we've all got harms that we've done to people.

00:40:27.902 --> 00:40:29.320
We've all got amends that we need to make.

00:40:29.320 --> 00:40:31.360

From Darkness to Light: A Journey of Recovery

Logan Hufford

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From Darkness to Light: A Journey of Recovery