Relationships

Is It Possible to be Addicted to Relationships?


There are some people who are unable to maintain a single monogamous relationship. They seem to have a series of relationships, one after another. They seem to be unable to summon enough commitment to maintain a long-term relationship.


These individuals are addicted to the feelings of pursuit or the emotional highs associated with new intimacies with ever-changing partners. They are addicted to the emotional highs produced by their own serotonin levels. Once the chemical effects wear off, they become bored with the relationship and must change partners in order to achieve the thrill they are addicted to.


This kind of addiction can be even stronger than most because it can have a leveraged effect: the process of pursuing another relationship becomes an "activity relationship," which is multiplied by the chemical effects of serotonin (chemical) addiction. This form of addiction thus becomes three times stronger than other, simpler addictions.


Pornography and addiction to superficial yet seemingly intimate relationships without commitment is even stronger than any other combination. It is possibly even stronger and harder to break than even the most severe chemical dependency because of it's multiplied and leveraged effect.


Imaginary Lovers


Proverbs 5:3-5 says, "For the lips of an immoral woman drip as honeycomb, and her mouth is sweeter than oil; but in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword. Her fet go down to death; and her steps lay hold of hell."


The monster elephant sitting in our pews and spewing waste all over the sanctity of the Church - that no one wants to acknowledge and few are talking about - is internet-based sexual addiction. Click the mouse and choose your wild lover (s). He/she is ready, red hot and yearning (or should I say, purring) for your love ... and credit card.


For those living in broken relationships, starving for affection, overworked or spiritually empty, the temptation must be sweeter than honey. Nearly 40 million adults now engage in internet porn in some fashion or another. And they are good people - husbands, wives, dads, moms, pastors, counselors, business leaders, college students, youth leaders, and yes ... kids. The number one consumer of internet porn now is kids, ages 12-17.


What's so difficult in offering hope and guidance is that the war is so strongly tied to the mind. With heroin, cocaine, or alcohol addicts, a substance is ingested that hijacks the brain, producing a buzz or high. The raw goal is sobriety ... But in porn addiction, the mind is consumed, hijacked from within. At the thought of an imaginary lover, endorphins (chemicals from within), kick in and hijack the brain, creating the consuming effect. And the effect is intoxicating, "smoother than oil."


I have yet to meet a man who couldn't recall the first time he was exposed to pornography. When the mind is flooded with imaginary lovers, it is easy to understand why some leading researchers now believe that treating porn addiction rivals heroin and coke addiction.


Just recently a leading pastor told me, "I don't know what comes over me, Tim ... I can pray one minute, and in the next breath, click the mouse and go straight into a charade of porn - totally absorbed and consumed by the exhilaration it brings. And then in the next minute, I get overwhelmed with guilt and shame. I've read every book out there and can't break free. I hate the person I have become. God must hate me.


"My heart grieves for these men. When leaders become entrapped in internet porn and illicit relations, the pain goes dep, and the reputation of Christ Himself is besmirched before the world. God-haters laugh, point the finger, and accuse us of fraud. Elite media outlets may pay little to no attention to the miracles and persecutions of the saints around the world, but moral failure and discovery of sexual addiction by Christian leaders is fodder for front-page news.


The American church, in particular, is facing an epidemic of mid-life men who have lived double-minded lives for much of their adult life. Publicly, they are good family men, upstanding citizens in both church and community. Privately, they are emotionally dead - or on life-support - and are usally estranged from their wives, and often alienated from their children. They carry on a secret sexual life that robs them of all true joy and peace. Beyond any thrill from their secret life, they live primarily to suppress their constant terror - the fear of being found out. The numbing effect of a long-term but functional addiction had robbed them of all ability to know and experience pleasure from the simple things in life. That pushes them into more dangerous behaviors - making their imaginary lovers real or adding substances or violence to their deadly elixir of sin in order to feel something - anything at all.


Addicts always end up mixing and adding new addictions until they become poly-addicts. Poly-addicts are truly desperate - they eventually get busted, or overdose and die. They become like 57 year old Wally Schirra, son of the famous astronaut of the same name. After finding felony kiddie porn on his computer, federal agents recently arrested him boarding a plane in San Fransico. He was on his way to Thailand to engage in sex with children.


Are you headed in that direction? Are you there already? Don't deceive yourself with lies and lust! Your unregenerate lust pulls you invariably toward temptation. And temptation not turned from - temptation that you willingly turn toward - always conceives sin (see James 1:13-16). And sin, reveled in, always produces death.


It is no different today than it was thousands of years ago. But God is also just as alive now as He was then. And His call of redemption is just as sure! Yes, it does seem hopeless. You have tried to quit in so many ways, have done it so many times, but have always come crawling back to your drug of choice. And you might do so again - there are no guarantees. Then again, this could be the day it all ends - the miraculous day of redemption that seems too impossible to even contemplate.


It may not work, but you can sure count on it never working unless you reach out and grasp the hand of the One who is Hope. Yes, you cannot control it any longer by yourself. The long, habitual pattern and the physiology of addiction have overwhelmed the power of your will to say no. You do need help and it will take several people to do so, but you must reach out and ask.


Yes, the road to full recovery may be painful, more pain that you probably want to face. But looking at the whole journey is a fool's game - you only have to travel it one day at a time. And God has promised to be there, and to not allow more trouble than you can handle. Recovery, in fact, is an opportunity to know God - and to be known by Him - at a level you never have before. It truly is relationship, not religion ... remember?


If you are an Internet porn addict - or a poly-addict - death is the path you are on now. Depression, self-deceit, and debilitation are what you live day in and day out. Haven't you had enough? Aren't you ready to forsake your desperate double life? Get honest with yourself and get the porn out of your life. Get accountable ... remember, you are as sick as your secrets. Learn to get close to God and those you love ... real freedom will come as you move beyong false intimacy. And true intimacy is the sweetest honey of all ... Peace is the path that Jesus offers. Joy is the journey He calls you to walk. Life is better than death, is it not? Choose life - but do it before it's to late.