Black As My Soul: It's Hard to Stand By and Watch

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October 28, 2007

It's Hard to Stand By and Watch

I was clicking through links on Cunning Linguists the other night. There are a lot of new sites there, but I was happy to see some of the sites that have been around for a while are still online. One seemed particularly familiar and I went to check out her style of writing. It seemed like I had linked to her once long ago, or maybe I didn't. I don't know.

But there it was. It was a little too much like reading a chapter out of my own life. She was in counseling and was going to seek treatment for sexual addiction.

I wanted to leave a comment and to fill her head with questions, to shout "No, don't fall for it!"

Like really good friends here tried to do for me.

But I remember. I didn't listen.

It took me years, a divorce and lots of time on my own to see how much I was not living my life for myself. That the sexual activity I was pursuing helped me to get through the other shit. And I will grant you that plenty of the shit was inside my own head.

I'm not trying to say that the sexual activity was all benign. I was obviously behaving in some ways that were destructive to my primary relationship.

By then, it was too late. Emotionally I had checked out of my life and my marriage. I was definitely just going through the motions.

Instead of prolonging the inevitable, instead of not wanting to hurt anyone, instead of punishing myself for having real and true feelings that did not agree with the life I was leading, I should have opted out sooner. That would have been the honorable thing to do.

I played at honor for a long time, and that hollowed me out. I pushed down my own intuition, my own desires and my thoughts for so long that I was completely lost. I'm still working on recovering who I am as a man.

I suppose the therapy was useful to me. I learned that in a room full of alleged addicts, my actions were no better or worse than any other in that room. My desires were no less normal than anyone in that room.

I learned that I can't feel more healthy by suppressing desire or lust, or any other aspect of myself.

Ultimately, I did not comment on the other blogger's site.

I can't just assume that she is in the same place I was, or that she will arrive in the same place as me. She and I are not on the same journey, similar though they may be.

If she does wish to search on the topic of sexual addiction, she may see some of the posts on my site that talk about it, or she may not. And that's not going to be up to me. She has to see in her own way in her own time. My own wishing for a certain outcome is not going to help her any more than what her therapists wish or her partner wishes. And that is why she is there in the first place.

[+] Posted by Sinner, who was transgressing at the time (October 28, 2007 10:47 AM) by thinking evil. [+]