Sin Like an Addiction Grows

Greg Wallace tells the story of a man whom he's been solicited to help recover from a sex-related collapse of his life (part one and part two):

"You know this guy," he said. "He works for the State Police. He got involved in pornography years ago, graduated to the Internet, hooked up with someone there and about five years ago she left her husband to be with him. After five years of him living a double life, he couldn't handle the pressure anymore, tried to break it off, the woman told everything to his wife, who wound up in the Stress Center yesterday for around-the-clock observation."

A whole range of factors have to bleed together for somebody to let his life get to this stage. It's the fashion to redefine sexual "addiction" in terms akin to substance addiction, but that obscures the degree to which the problem is psychological and, therefore, spiritual — in a series of bad decisions and the willful stirring of sensation. As Greg writes in part two:

He became sexually active at a pre-pubescent age; the Song of Songs says "don’t awaken love before its time," and while I believe that has a specific context in scripture, I believe it also applies to God's plan for our sexuality – that there is a time and place of His intention for us to discover what he has designed as a gift for us. When that plan is derailed, then all bets are off. The young man's sexuality – already supercharged by premature exposure to sensation – was heightened by exposure to pornography, which continued unabated for many, many years.

Prolonged exposure to pornography dulls the senses. It takes more and more stimulation over time to achieve satisfaction. What started out with magazines and videos graduated to the Internet. And as the senses continued to shut down, he began to look for more effective ways to achieve the same level of satisfaction. When he hooked up with a woman on the Internet, it was like striking a match to tinder.

Psychological association, I've come to believe, is part of the reason pornography viewing escalates and voyeurism makes the leap to action. One of the reasons advertisers pay so much money to associate pop songs with a product is that the song will thereafter evoke thoughts about the product. Similarly, a person's emotional reaction to a particular scene in a movie will affect how that person feels about something reminiscent of that scene in life.

The more scenes, plots, sounds, and so on that we — individually and socially — associate with sex, the more there is in the average day to arouse sexual feelings. Those feelings build up, and temptation, being more constant, becomes more difficult to resist.