Bernard shares how a hidden addiction to lust, pornography, and masturbation shaped his relationships, fueled anxiety, and left him spiritually disconnected despite outward success and respectability. Through the Twelve Steps, surrender to God, and ultimately his encounter with Catholicism and the sacraments, he discovered that true freedom comes not through willpower but through a relationship with God. Bernard’s story is a powerful witness that lasting recovery is possible when we allow God to heal our deepest wounds, restore our dignity, and lead us from isolation and fear into peace, purpose, and love.

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My name is Bernard, and this is the story of my sex addiction and recovery through building a relationship with God. You would never have known I was a sex addict. I had a respectable career, a house in a nice neighborhood, an attractive wife, children, and friends. 

But all the while, my obsession with lust, pornography, and sex controlled my life. Today, only through the grace of God, am I not a sex addict. This doesn’t mean I’m not tempted at times. But  the power of the addiction has been broken. Now, when the impulses surface I have God to turn to rather than indulging my desires.

To understand how addiction ravaged me one has to understand what purpose it sought to serve. The explanation starts in my formative years. In my tweens, I was a happy-go-lucky kid. The trajectory of my life changed in junior high school when I had worked up the courage to ask a girl out for the first time. She said no. 

That was when I first realized that I couldn’t have everything I wanted in this world—that the world wasn’t created for me. Until then, if I didn’t get what I wanted, I didn’t dwell on it. But this time was different. I didn’t know how to handle the rejection, so I looked for an escape. And boy, did I find one! I went home and masturbated. My sexual fantasy began with her, but I realized in my fantasies I could have any girl from my school! In my mind I created a world where things always worked out the way I wanted and I coupled it with a powerful physical pleasure and release of tension. Soon enough I was masturbating regularly after school.

As my life went on, masturbation became my coping mechanism for other times of uncertainty, risk, or disappointment. When I grew anxious, I grew horny. I didn’t consciously connect the two. Ironically, when later in high school and college girls began finding me attractive it actually made my addiction worse. I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence around women, so I dealt with these uncomfortable feelings by masturbating. 

But the “hangover” started to grow severe. After masturbating I wasn’t horny any longer but I felt physically and emotionally drained. With hindsight, I see that I was also spiritually depleted.  The spirit is the part within us that connects with God and with other spiritual beings. After masturbating I felt distant from everybody, uninspired, and lacking in confidence. This drove me to need my coping mechanism even more, so within a matter of hours or days I would become horny again. I became trapped in a vicious cycle—living for that next shot of fantasy, release, and physical gratification. 

I eventually got married, expecting that would solve my problem. I figured having a lifelong sexual partner would make masturbating unnecessary. Instead, it got worse. Every marriage is inherently fraught with difficulties. And then there were the responsibilities of building a career, paying a mortgage, and raising children. Many aspects of my marriage, family life, and work life were happy, fun, and rewarding, but the pressures in my life made my coping mechanism more important to me than ever.

Because of the hangovers, I would try white knuckling it, using my willpower to resist the urge to masturbate. Sometimes I would succeed for a few days, but I’d eventually cave. Because I had become dependent on my addiction, my subconscious, cunning mind created other fantasies to protect my addiction. For example, I’d find ways to blame my distance from my wife on her or I’d chalk my horniness up to my impressive natural virility.

This went on for 20 years of marriage. Even though my wife and I both saw our marriage as broken, I didn’t consciously understand that my masturbating was the problem. I didn’t recognize that I was an addict, nor did she!

Finally, the breaking point in our marriage arrived. I was out of ideas for how to “fix” our marriage. I told my wife I wanted a divorce. She was deeply saddened but she didn’t see our marriage improving so she didn’t object.

I moved into a small apartment and started dating other women. The same problems as I had in my romantic relationship with my wife surfaced in those relationships too. So I started seeing a talk therapist to try to figure this out. She quickly identified me as having a sex addiction. My initial reaction was shock and surprise. But she helped me connect my masturbation to my relationship problems on a conscious level.

Sadly, self-awareness of my addiction didn’t quell it. With hindsight I see that because I had no better way to cope with the uncertainty of life, I was still utterly dependent on my addiction, which allowed my cunning mind to block me from clearly seeing it as the destructive force that it was.

This therapist told me I didn’t need talk therapy—I needed addiction counseling. I began meeting with a renowned sex addiction expert. I chose him over Sexaholics Anonymous because SA’s definition of recovery included refraining entirely from masturbation, which didn’t make sense to me, since I saw masturbation as an essential, natural bodily function. The expert agreed with me, telling me I just needed to “manage it.” After four lengthy sessions with him, where I had laid out all of the details of my addiction, I asked him, “So, what’s the plan?” He said, “There is no plan. We just keep talking.” I was floored. I knew that simply talking to him about my problem wasn’t going to work.

I was now at a dead end. Masturbation was making my life unmanageable, ruining the  things I cared most about. The only vision I had for my future was a chain of failed relationships and manic behavior. Yet I could not stop.

I had hit bottom. I was divorced, away from my children, and battling urges to engage in riskier sexual behavior that could destroy my career. The increased worry only made my addiction worse. I was literally wearing five pairs of underwear hoping that the extra time it would take to get past all five layers would give me the time I needed to resist. That’s how bad it was. It was really, really bad.

In utter desperation, I called the Sexaholics Anonymous 12-step organization. I was literally sobbing on the phone, and I told the guy, “I will do anything. I will try anything if it can help me.” He asked, “Have you read our definition of sobriety?” And I said, “Yes.” And he said, “OK, so you understand it’s no sex with self or others except a person of the opposite gender in a committed relationship. Are you willing to do that?” I told him I would do anything if it would help. 

I began attending meetings daily. Thanks to Covid, daily meetings were now online, so nearly every hour of the day somewhere in the world a meeting I could attend was happening. In the meetings I learned how our spirit thrives on connection and that we can live with a malnourished spirit, but not with a healthy level of sanity, tranquility, or joy. I also learned what “lust” means.  It means fantasizing about a woman without considering her wants or needs. Watching porn conditions us to lust. We aren’t wishing harm on the woman—we simply aren’t considering her well-being as a human at all. She is nothing more than an object. I learned that treating another human being as an object spiritually disconnects me. By listening to others share their experiences in 12-step meetings, I grew to realize how often I lusted and engaged in a range of other spiritually disconnecting thoughts and behaviors.

I started working the Steps but I hit a wall with Step Two: “Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.” I believed God existed, but I didn’t believe I could know anything about Him or what He wanted from me. He seemed invisible. That He could or would help me seemed too fantastic to be true. My 12-step sponsor taught me that Step 2 includes “Came to believe” because no one enters the program already believing. So I kept working the Steps. I read every chapter of the book. I listened to hours and hours of podcasts. I followed advice from my sponsor. And I attended meetings where I spoke aloud my own failures and struggles and heard those of so many others. How strikingly similar theirs were to my own! I saw many of these other people achieve levels of sobriety through surrendering their will to a higher power. 

Gradually I learned to recognize my triggers and to turn to God for help. And for the first time in my life, I overcame the powerful urges without calling upon my own willpower.

For several years, I continued to work the program every day, and my life dramatically improved. One day I remarked to a Catholic friend how great the Twelve Steps are, and I wished there were a 12-step program for every person, no matter what their unhealthy coping mechanism was. He told me about Catholics in Recovery.

The Twelve Steps profess that the higher power is whatever you believe it to be; and if you believe it’s something as absurd as a door knob and that works for you, then so be it. While listening to the personal shares at my first CIR meeting, I observed that if the higher power is real, it isn’t whatever one chooses to believe, and that the Catholic Church has 2,000 years’ worth of knowledge on God’s actual characteristics, and that a higher level of recovery awaited those who made the effort to know God better. 

The next morning I attended my first mass. I fell in love right away. In 12-step meetings, we admit that we’re doing what we shouldn’t and we can’t stop without God’s help. That’s also how every mass begins: “Let us acknowledge our sins…” And following those words, we petition God for help. From that day forward I have studied and practiced Catholicism. 

At the start I looked for every inconsistency in Catholic dogma, and I put enormous energy into trying to debunk the Faith. But the opposite occurred. I learned that the only solution to the anxiety of living that drove my addiction is to know, love, and obey God. All the other solutions we concoct, such as relying on financial security, social acceptance and being cared for by others, physical outlets, fantasies, and distractions, will not work. Before knowing God it seemed logical and reasonable to look to those solutions and accept that worry and dissatisfaction are a normal and unavoidable part of life. Now I know otherwise.

By accepting the world God created as it is—not as I think or wish it should be—and by learning Catholic dogma, I have reached a level of recovery where days will pass without a trigger, even though my libido remains very much alive. When I am triggered, I turn to God for relief. And when God does not remove the desire to act out, rather than succumbing to it, I rely on my trust that He, my perfect Father, is holding back His assistance to grow my character, deepen my love, and strengthen my relationship with Him. The Twelve Steps got me to believe that God is knowable. The Catholic Church helps me understand Him better and how to stay surrendered to Him. 

To stay close with God, I gladly attend mass daily, attend CIR, Bible study, and Catholic men’s group meetings each week, and I read scripture and listen to Catholic podcasts instead of spending time on things like social media. Each morning I set my intention to follow God by saying a prayer consecrating my day and life to His purpose for me. Eventually, I received the sacraments of baptism and confirmation in the Catholic Church.

Not only am I no longer imprisoned by my addiction, but I am more tranquil, loving toward others, patient, and physically healthier than I’d ever been. Understanding that I serve God through each act, I now enjoy even those parts of my job I used to find unpleasant, highly stressful, or mundane. 

For the first time ever, my life has a clear purpose, and I accept and face life’s challenges knowing that true joy comes not from mere comfort and pleasure, but from knowing God loves me and serving my God-given purpose at every moment.