Have been working on 'enjoying wife' less the last few days. I used to handle wife almost continually in my old life. I learned I had to scale back with sex stimuli with wife inside the home as well as sex stimuli outside the home if I wished to be at peace. Sometimes we go a little too far with sex and need to be reeled back in. SCA calls these 'gray' areas. So this is where I'm at now, coming back from some gray areas of excess. I just scaled back with wife stimuli until it felt doable and work to keep it there. If we keep going past the gray and fall off the edge it is a tough hard climb back up and sometime we don't get back up if the fall is hard enough. No, just being married is not a free pass to abusing sex stimuli all the time. It is no different from thinking you can drink all the time cause you own a whisky factory or eat rich food all the time if you are a four star restaurant owner. "Just as a life of virtue yields its own reward, a life of vice yields its own punishment" - Plutarch
Being hyped up is a byproduct of sex. One goes with the other, so no use beating yourself up over it. The nature of the beast with sex is to get excited, so this is what makes it tougher addiction than food and spending, as we can eat or spend and still be devoid of most of the excitement from these areas if we wish. But in general, we cannot participate in sexual activity without getting excited. In addition, it takes a day or two for some of us to go back to normal from sex, so this refractory period is another area to deal with whenever we get hyped up sexually. Is this refractory period bad? No, it is just how things are. The problem with addicts is they overdo things to a point of pain - that is what's bad.
Perfection with sex? This is where most addicts fail. Where judgments have to be made, mistakes can and will happen. Forget perfection - look for direction. Addictions can go in 3 directions. We can always get a quick snapshot of our recovery direction by asking the question: Is our addiction frozen? Is our addiction growing? Or is our addiction declining? Aldous Huxley sheds some light on this "The only completely consistent people are the dead." If you are a celibate and renunciate then find you pride in perfecting that area, but also be advised you are working against nature. SCA gave me the gift of accepting sex as a gift from God, but it is totally up to me with how I use this gift. I try to remember..." If you abuse it ~ your lose it." I don't want to lose the privilege.
(SCA guidelines: is the activity placing unreasonable demands on my time and energy, will it place me in legal jeopardy or endanger my mental, physical or spiritual health?)
V (Male)
A Christian-Buddhist practitioner living a life of Voluntary Simplicity and grateful recovering Debtor, Drug, Alcohol and Substance Abuser, Compulsive Overeater, Clutterer, Hoarder, Rageaholic, Speculative Gambler, Compulsive Spender, Sex and Sensation Addict.
Being hyped up is a byproduct of sex. One goes with the other, so no use beating yourself up over it. The nature of the beast with sex is to get excited, so this is what makes it tougher addiction than food and spending, as we can eat or spend and still be devoid of most of the excitement from these areas if we wish. But in general, we cannot participate in sexual activity without getting excited. In addition, it takes a day or two for some of us to go back to normal from sex, so this refractory period is another area to deal with whenever we get hyped up sexually. Is this refractory period bad? No, it is just how things are. The problem with addicts is they overdo things to a point of pain - that is what's bad.
Perfection with sex? This is where most addicts fail. Where judgments have to be made, mistakes can and will happen. Forget perfection - look for direction. Addictions can go in 3 directions. We can always get a quick snapshot of our recovery direction by asking the question: Is our addiction frozen? Is our addiction growing? Or is our addiction declining? Aldous Huxley sheds some light on this "The only completely consistent people are the dead." If you are a celibate and renunciate then find you pride in perfecting that area, but also be advised you are working against nature. SCA gave me the gift of accepting sex as a gift from God, but it is totally up to me with how I use this gift. I try to remember..." If you abuse it ~ your lose it." I don't want to lose the privilege.
(SCA guidelines: is the activity placing unreasonable demands on my time and energy, will it place me in legal jeopardy or endanger my mental, physical or spiritual health?)
V (Male)
A Christian-Buddhist practitioner living a life of Voluntary Simplicity and grateful recovering Debtor, Drug, Alcohol and Substance Abuser, Compulsive Overeater, Clutterer, Hoarder, Rageaholic, Speculative Gambler, Compulsive Spender, Sex and Sensation Addict.
