Lust / Good or Bad

Lust Train

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Lust is a human emotion that relates to sexual desire. Like all emotions our lives seem easier when they are not running out of control. Lust can run out of control like a train. Think about this. Lust, like a train, starts out slow. As we read sexually charged magazines, surf porn sites, watch por
DVDs or anything related to unhealthy sex, it will slowly build momentum on the inside of us. Like feeding coal to a train’s engine, or upping the power. It takes time to build momentum but if lust is left unchecked and able to run out of control like a train it will soon crash. The crash in a sense is the addiction to sex or porn.
For me, a typical addict, my whole system screamed out that I was going to die if I didn’t take a “drink”. Drink in this context means a look and it’s too fearful not to drink because lust became my spiritual life support system. I got hooked on it and remained a slave to it. It’s this kind of fear that kept me in bondage and forced me to keep slipping with lust. I stayed in this bondage to lust because I thought I would die. I was unable or unwilling to connect with the life giver instead.
This was where I was at as I had always lusted and never really knew I needed to love nor really knew how to love. Especially when my first girlfriend and I broke up, I didn’t want to get hurt again so I reverted to the fact that I could control the relationship even though I didn’t quite get this at the time. Remember how devastated I was when we broke up? What I developed, was to have a relationship I could control, that was the one I had with porn. This is why lust was out of control in my life. When we get hurt we tend to move in a direction that will not hurt us again. Some people resort to drugs or alcohol, me, I resorted to porn. It had everything I was looking for but without feeling. I didn’t want the emotional impact, just the sex, because I was not going to be hurt again! Who would? Getting hurt sucks and if we are hurt by a break up we will usually not be hurt again. Our attitudes change towards the next love
and we will always have our guard up. I did. That’s why I resorted to porn, porn never hurt me, or so I thought!
So, my drug became the compulsion of the look, the fantasy, image or misconnection which when denied is the very threat of death. So, instead of learning to act against the fear, to lean into the fear, I would look.
Have you ever heard of the three second rule if you’ve looked over 3 seconds you are lusting. Most of us think that lust has to do with timing but it doesn’t at all. Lust has to do with our hearts intent. If the intention is to take a quick look, does it really matter how long we look? The intent becomes what we are and we need saving from that or the disposition of our heart.
I thought “I shouldn’t be doing this” as I went ahead and took the drink. This began to show me I didn’t fully understand the nature of what I was dealing with and under-estimated the strategies of spiritual blindness and denial. I did not realize that lust is a disposition of the heart or an attitude. If our attitude is to look at women as our sisters would we look lustfully? If our attitude is to look at them lustfully and we have learned that through society, how do we change or better yet, do we really want to change? Have we become so bad, so corrupted that we attach our manhood to how many women we look at this way or sleep with? What are we teaching our sons? How do they view women, like our wives or daughters? What are we letting society teach them about women? What are they believing? Are there things, we as parents can do to ensure our sons will live a healthy life and more importantly have a healthy sex life?
Experts say that children are the most impressionable from the ages of 8 to 14. What will we impress on our sons during these ages?
I believe, that because I never had the chance to truly understand what lust was, I never had a chance to realize how bad it could get. Since I was really hurt by my first real relationship, I put a wall up so I would not be hurt again. But sex is our life support, it is what we are created to do, it is a natural human need. Nobody really discussed sex with me and because of a misunderstanding of what it was, lust in my life became totally out of control and the more I looked at porn the more out of control lust became. This was the vicious cycle of addiction. The more you look the more you need.
Lust works like most of our emotions, if we do not keep them in check they will run amok and so will our lives. My parents did what they thought was right. Lust and porn were not as big an issue as they are now and my parents did the best they could with what they had to work with and what society gave them at the time.
In my experience, I believe there are a few things that we can do to help ensure our children can have healthier relationships.

1. Listen. I really wish my parents had listened to me more because I believe if they had it would have validated me and helped my self-worth become much more positive. As adults we tend to brush our children’s needs aside, when we do this it devalues them as individuals. Just because things that are important to them are not as important to us, doesn’t mean we tune them out. They see that and it greatly affects their self-worth. A low self-worth means a low value in ones self. A low self worth leads them to think they are not worth the time to other people and can lead to unhealthy relationships.
2. Talk about sex. My parents never talked to me about sex. I know, really?? You say! But they never really did. I never had a chance to understand the guy’s point of view as I learned it all from my friends. Do we want our kids learning about sex from their friends? We will need to start out with age appropriate topics and as they get older discuss things more in detail. Share with them how boys and girls work, how they communicate, how they need and want to be treated.
3. Teach your kids how to treat each other. Love your neighbor as yourself is a great golden rule. If we lead with this behavior in our homes, you might be amazed at how kids pick up on this and begin to treat their friends.
4. When our children get in trouble, explain to them why they are in trouble. Kids need explanations and too many times, we as parents don’t take the time to tell them. Tell them why the bad behavior is not appropriate and walk them through how they need to change it. If this includes a punishment of some sort, then punish. I got some explanations when I got into trouble but I never understood my behavior and why I was a wild kid. Explanations are powerful in helping kids grow into themselves and understanding who they are. It helps their self- worth and teaches them to do better.
5. If we invest teaching good behavior and habits to our children, they will use what they have learned to invest in the lives of others, treating them with respect and honor.

The example we set as parents, aunts, uncles and friends will determine how our sons will treat their future girlfriends or wives and families. I truly wish I had had a mentor in my life that knew about these things and had the heart to teach a young child about relationships and sex.
Lust starts out slowly. As a child we don’t even understand what lust is and definitely what it can become. If, as a child we are not guided into learning about sex in a healthy way, we take the chance of becoming a victim to lust and sexual addiction.
Sadly sex or porn addicts are some of the loneliest people in the world. As a child, I was really like this at times. It sucked not having friends, not fitting into the so called status quo and experts say that an addict’s childhood is one of desperate loneliness with feelings of being lost, unprotected and out of touch. Their lives are filled with people that cannot be counted on, times when they were left by themselves and feelings of mistrust. As children mature it is human nature to search for dependency, something or someone that can be trusted. Since sex is the core of our identity many will become sex addicts. Addicts desire to connect with others but due to childhood disconnection with caregivers (divorce, abuse, neglect, abandonment) the addict attempts to fill the connection with something controllable and safe and experts say that 83% of all addicts have multiple addictions.
Since I was sexually abused for 2-3 years, I believe I lost all understanding of how to connect with adults and how to trust people. I was scared to trust people to tell you the truth. This became very apparent as I got older. I developed attitudes with people and co-workers because of this and had a hard time getting along with others.
According to Patrick Carnes Ph.D there are 4 factors in a child’s development that will become part of the sexual addiction.

1. Self-image- How children perceive themselves. This is an important factor in the maturing child. Supporting, inspiring and encouraging children in the right direction will help them develop a healthy self-image of themselves.
2. Relationships – How children see their relationships with others.
3. Children’s needs- How they perceive their own needs. Are those needs being fulfilled?
4. Sexuality- How children perceive their own sexual feelings. It is important for parents to communicate sex and related topics to their children.
It’s easy for us to see that these items can start out healthy but if we don’t make them topics of discussion with our children as they mature, these items can easily get off track, resulting in sometimes very tragic futures. We as parents should strive to have healthy and open communication with our kids. The more open discussion the better the result. We all should help children grow into healthy self-images, relationships, needs and sexuality.
We should understand that porn sex addiction is a shame-based illness. Meaning the person receives no or little affirmation in life and has a flawed sense of self and worth. This is an intimacy disorder and many addicts have attachment issues as they don’t know how to connect with others. They go through stages of isolation and self-soothing to help cope. The addiction is a problem of no attention and it is the ultimate attention deficit disorder. Addicts need the addiction to bring order to their lives and it is a coping mechanism for stress, solution to trauma and brings protection from painful memories. This is a family disease, passed down from generations of addicts. I don’t know what my family was addicted to and if they ever were but I know the skeletons are there as I am reaping some of them.
My life points to an unhealthy self-image, relationships I had didn’t seem to work out, and I was clueless about sex.
Understanding and familiarizing ourselves with a few of these can also help to identify a loved one who may be an addict. The sooner you can identify with them, the sooner you can help them.