{"id":38037,"date":"2021-06-30T05:00:27","date_gmt":"2021-06-30T10:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catholicinrecovery.com\/?p=38037"},"modified":"2021-06-23T08:59:01","modified_gmt":"2021-06-23T13:59:01","slug":"the-value-of-an-accountability-partner-for-maintaining-recovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catholicinrecovery.com\/the-value-of-an-accountability-partner-for-maintaining-recovery\/","title":{"rendered":"The Value of an Accountability Partner for Maintaining Recovery"},"content":{"rendered":"
As I began my quest to extricate myself from the addiction to pornography and habitual masturbation, my first focused attempt probably started in 2007 through an online educational program. For that program, I was set up with a coach to read my answers to the curriculum questions and share relevant aspects of his own journey based on those answers. The coach offered a superficial, safe, encouraging, and feel-good encounter. And the program helped me to realize that I wasn’t alone in my sexual struggles.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n However, both the coach and the program really didn\u2019t have any lasting effects.<\/span><\/p>\n The counselor that my wife and I saw for a time tried to walk the line between supporting my wife’s pain and normalizing my pornography addiction. Since she and my wife knew that my infidelity never crossed the line from pornography to real women (e.g. strip clubs, prostitutes, etc.) the counselor and my wife questioned whether my pornography use was a serious betrayal of my marital union. While the therapist might have had good intentions, this didn\u2019t help me overcome what I knew was a serious struggle.<\/span><\/p>\n So, even though some considered that my behavior \u201cwasn\u2019t that bad,\u201d I knew that I couldn’t stop. I had concluded that I was hopelessly flawed. I feared that if people knew the truth about me, that I repeatedly fantasized about women and masturbated multiple times a day, they would be repulsed by me.<\/span><\/p>\n True accountability didn’t start for me until after I was lifted out of the cesspool of pornography and masturbation addiction <\/span>through the grace I received during my Consecration to Divine Mercy<\/span><\/a> about seven years ago. Around that time, through a parish program called Christ Renews His Parish, another man shared his struggles with pornography with me. We became accountability partners about five years ago.<\/span><\/p>\n The value of having someone who knows everything about me is that I know I am loved no matter what. We can both ask each other openly: \u201cHow is it going on the sexual purity front?\u201d\u00a0 This is not a question most people feel comfortable asking, even to their closest friends.<\/span><\/p>\n Since I have opened up about my struggle with pornography and masturbation over the last few years and have shared my story with many, I experience far less shame, discomfort, or secrecy talking about it.<\/span><\/p>\n