Why Confession Isn't Enough: Real Recovery from Sex Addiction

Confession feels like the goal—but what if it's actually the starting point? 

In this episode, trauma therapist Tabitha Westbrook sits down with Nick Stumbo, Executive Director of Pure Desire Ministries, to talk about what genuine recovery from sexual addiction looks like in the church. Nick shares his own story of pornography addiction, staggered disclosure, and the turning point that changed everything. They also discuss betrayal trauma, purity culture's failures, why women's sexual struggles are more common than we think, and why deep community—not white-knuckle willpower—is what actually brings lasting change.

Resources Mentioned

• Pure Desire Ministries: puredesire.org
• Platonic by Marisa G. Franco: book on friendship and intimacy, https://amzn.to/4bnEY9r

At The Journey and The Process we strive to help you heal. Our therapists are trauma specialists who use evidence-based tools like EMDR, Brainspotting, Somatic Experiencing, and Internal Family Systems to help you heal - mind, soul, and body. Reach out today to start your healing journey. https://thejourneyandtheprocess.com/

 This book is for every Christian woman who has been harmed sexually, whether that happened in childhood, adulthood, or even within your coercive controlling marriage, and you're longing to feel safe in your body again. We talk about the hard stuff, shame, desire, faith, and even questions like, is this sin or is this trauma?

You don't have to untangle it alone. Body & Soul, Healed & Whole is for you. Get a copy here today - https://a.co/d/8Jo3Z4V

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Transcript

Introducing Guest Nick Stumbo

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome to Hey Tabby, the podcast where we talk about the hard things out loud with our actual lips. We'll cover all kinds of topics across the mental health spectrum, including how it intersects with the Christian faith. Nothing is off limits here, and we are not take two verses and call me in the morning. I'm Tabitha Westbrook, and I'm a licensed trauma therapist, but I'm not your trauma therapist. I'm an expert in domestic abuse and coercive control and how complex trauma impacts our health and well-being. Our focus here is knowledge and healing. Trauma doesn't have to eat your lunch forever. There is hope. Now, let's get going. Welcome to this week's episode of Hey Tabby, and I am excited to introduce our guest. Nick Stumbo is a third-generation pastor, and he spent more than a decade serving as a lead pastor in Kelso, Washington, where he witnessed firsthand the devastating impact of sexual brokenness in the church. After confronting his own struggle with pornography, Nick and his wife Michelle found hope and healing through Pure Desires Counseling and Group Ministries way back in 2010. And this is a journey that radically transformed their lives. His courageous public disclosure to his congregation sparked a culture shift that was marked by grace, forgiveness, and freedom. And it led to the launch of Pure Desire groups for men and women seeking hope and restoration. In 2016, Nick joined Pure Desire full-time and now he serves as the executive director. He's the author and co-author of several books, including Setting Us Free, Safe, Creating a Culture of Grace in a Climate of Shame, and Hope, Healing, and Freedom. Nick has a Bachelor's of Science and Pastoral Studies from Crown College and a Master of Divinity from Bethel University. He and Michelle have four kiddos together and live in Nashville, Tennessee. Together, they've shared their story of healing on Focus on the Family and in other numerous publications. Nick remains deeply passionate about helping the church become a place where honesty, healing, and grace lead the way and where nobody has to struggle alone, which is definitely our vibe here on Hey Tabby. And Nick, we're really glad to have you here.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Pure Desire Origins And Approach

SPEAKER_00 2:48

It is an absolute pleasure to have you here. Nick and I have had the occasion to meet in person. We met actually in such a really cool way. Gosh, I want to say it was like almost we're getting close to two years ago now. And Nick heard me speak at the Pastoral Sex Addiction Professional Summit, the very first one. And we couldn't listen to each other live because we were at the same time. So he had to listen to my recorded version. And he reached out to me so that we could talk about helping Pure Desire become more abuse informed and have some more of that languaging, which has started what I think is a really cool friendship. And I'm very excited to know you. Tell me more about Pure Desire and how you know you started off in your own group that helped you, and then you came on staff. So tell me about that journey.

Nick’s Staggered Disclosure And Crisis

Confession Versus True Recovery

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Yeah, uh, Pure Desire really began just as a local church ministry when our founder, Dr. Ted Roberts, was a pastor in a four-square church and he was in Portland, Oregon, which from what I've been told at the time had a higher per capita of strip clubs than anywhere in the nation outside of Las Vegas. And as he was counseling men who would come in, his heart was always for counseling. And so he would do pastoral counseling and men would talk about, you know, finances and the marriage. And he just has a way of staring into your soul and asking about what's really going on. And he just found that in every single one of these men's lives was unaddressed sexual brokenness and struggles with pornography and sexual addiction. And he recognized I'm not going to help men in the church heal if I don't address their sexuality and really help them understand where freedom comes from. And so he really launched a small group ministry. The joke is he was writing a chapter, putting it in a three-ring binder, giving it to the men a week at a time. And that eventually became our seven pillars of freedom curriculum that's now been used by you know, we think almost by 200,000 men over the last 25 plus years that have walked through a healing journey. Um, and that's where my story began to interact with it, that in 2010, I'd already been married at 10 years at that point. And um in my desire for integrity, I had been a frequent uh confessor to my wife. Looking back, we now know that was called staggered disclosure. I would tell her just enough to feel like I was being honest, um, I wasn't living a double life. And every time I was sincere when I would say, okay, that was gonna be the last time, never again. And I would white knuckle it, believing I could change and maybe have a couple of good months and then stumble back into that binge purge pattern. And after 10 years of that in our marriage, my wife was really, and our marriage was really at a breaking point that if something didn't give, we weren't gonna make it. And that was when we found Pure Desire Ministries and had the opportunity to start doing a group both for myself as the struggler and for my wife, as the betrayed spouse that needed support and to understand how to find mental, emotional safety in our relationship and create healthy boundaries around the use of pornography and and what we would do if it happened again. So that group journey for us and the counseling that accompanied it was very transformational. So that in 2011, after a year of that, we shared our story publicly with our church. And out of that moment, um really a beautiful moment because we had the support of our elders. We had the support of our district leadership, who in fact had been the ones to invite pure desire in and say, hey, we're gonna partner with pure desire for the health of our pastors. We don't want to wait until someone goes off the deep end into behaviors that are irredeemable or require them to leave ministry. We recognize that internet pornography is happening, it's a reality, and rather than having pastors struggle silently, we want to help them. And that was the offer that got us started. And so then, with their support, a year later, we were able to tell our church about our story and to really recognize we weren't the only ones that were struggling, you know, as the stats bear out, that probably a majority of our church had this issue unaddressed in their lives. And so, in telling our story, it really created an avalanche of openness and grace. Because if the lead pastor, you know, can tell his story and own an addiction and be in group himself, it makes it safe for everyone else in the church to do the same thing. And and that really was an effective discipleship approach in our church for the next five years until as we continued to share our story and write a book about it, that the connection with pure desire continued to grow to the point of joining the staff in 2016 and getting to do this full time, feeling like God had just invited us into sharing our story of hope and healing and watching what he would do as we would share our story. And and in a large part, that's still what we're doing almost 10 years later.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

That's amazing. And I I do want to contrast your experience because I I as I was listening to one thing that you said, I felt every survivor that listens collectively catch her breath. And that is, you know, what in the world were you doing making these baby disclosures to your wife that were kind of halfway and cutting her to death with a thousand paper cuts, right? So a lot of survivors have experienced that. And I think sometimes we don't know what we don't know when we help.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah.

Church Culture Shift And Openness

SPEAKER_00 8:12

And and also you are not an abuser. Addiction is abusive, and not all addicts are abusers. And so I just want to make that statement because there is a difference between someone who is struggling with compulsive sexual behavior and being shady and gaslighting and all of the things that go along with that, but they are not taking the personhood of their spouse. And there's not that power and control.

Why Long-Term Groups Work

SPEAKER_01 8:35

I would just add in our story, that was really the turning point that for 10 years, you know, in engagement, we had been encouraged to uh the quote was share your dirty laundry so that when you stand at the altar and say, I do, you would know in confidence what you were saying, I do too, you know, flaws and all. And so I had been as open as I knew how to be about this struggle, said I was going to try really hard for it to not happen again. And so in marriage, when it continued to happen, because as we we know so well that that having a sexual relationship doesn't fix our sexual addiction, in in some ways it actually amplifies the shame and guilt of why we still seek out a behavior that we know at a physical level we don't need because we're we're having my wife and I would both say we had a mutually satisfying, well, I would say I was much more selfish in those 10 years, but but we felt like the frequency, the level of intimacy, like it was safe, it was comfortable. There wasn't this lack that was leading me somewhere else. They were coinciding in a way that was so confusing. And so when I would confess to my wife and she would get angry, my feeling was like, uh you just don't understand. Like this isn't about you, it's been in my life since before I met you. Like I'm I'm not trying to hurt you, it it's it keeps coming back, and I don't understand it, and I don't want it in my life. And so I was in this uh, like you said, don't not knowing what you don't know. Like I was sincere about I don't want it. And if and I had this belief that if she could just see it the way that I see it, she wouldn't feel so hurt. And I would say the turning point 10 years in, and I really believe it was a gift that God gave me, was after another relapse, I feel like for the first time I could sense and feel the pain that I was causing her. And regardless of whatever, you know, misbeliefs I had about it, the rationalizing, the minimizing, there was this moment of clarity to say, I'm the one who doesn't understand. I'm the one who doesn't embrace how deeply this is hurting my wife. And whether I think I can explain it or not, her pain is real, her experience is real. And I had kind of this really, you know, a lot of men are were just very logical and practical. I thought, you know, if there was any other area of my life where my wife said, when you do this, it feels to me like you're cheating on me. It feels to me like an affair. You know, if it was about anything else, I'd like, well, I'm not gonna do that anymore. But in this area, I was justifying, probably to protect myself, to say, oh, you just don't understand, and it's it's so different than a physical affair, and I would never do that. And and so, like I said, the real I think change for us when I was willing to acknowledge I'm the one who doesn't understand. And and I don't understand how to change. And yet I'm now becoming aware of how deeply hurt my wife is. And that expression that I think many men have used half-heartedly to say, I'll do anything. What do you want me to do? I'll do anything. I think I realized in that moment it was time to put my money where my mouth was and truly do anything because we'd we'd done what we knew how to do, just try harder, you know, have guardrails and try harder not to do it. But in terms of like counseling and group and engaging in an actual recovery process, we we had not done that. So that was the turning point of that awareness that this was deeply painful. And no matter how else I explained it, I needed to be able to see and take my wife's pain seriously.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

I think that is a key turning point for a lot of relationships that you know what's happening here isn't just me. It isn't just about me. And like the act of confession is almost like putting that weight on the other person when it is not followed by actual recovery. And a lot of folks, a lot of the folks who struggle with compulsive sexual behavior I've worked with, they, you know, because of the shame, because of so many other things, they're like, you know, I just need to get this off me. And then they do white knuckle sobriety where they're not really in recovery, they're not acting out, maybe they're not engaging in what they were, but they are not in recovery.

Community, Trauma, And Attachment

SPEAKER_01 12:37

Yeah. Well, I feel like in my upbringing, I had been taught that confession was the goal. You know, there's a Bible verse in James chapter five that says, confess your sins one to another and you will be healed. And so that was my mindset of if I could just be open and honest, if I could just be real to confess, I'll be healed and the problem will go away. And so I think that was the mindset I brought even to my relationship with my wife, was not doing it to hurt her or harm her, but believing like I'm I'm this is gonna help me be free if I just confess. And we saw confession as the end, where as I look at recovery now, I think confession is absolutely crucial. I mean, it's the the heartbeat of truth and honesty in a relationship, but confession is the starting point. Confession is what opens the door to say, okay, what are we gonna do to repent, to actually turn and go in a different direction, to have a change of behavior, a change of ways, a change of attitudes, and and to had someone help me see like confession is an open door into recovery, not the goal of recovery. It would have, I hope, helped us maybe address some of these things earlier on. And so to say that to anyone else that believes like, because maybe someone listening to this is still trapped in the secrecy of it, and they're listening to a belief that says, well, if I could just be honest, it'll go away. And you do need to be honest, but it won't just go away because there is a a lifestyle, a pattern of thoughts, beliefs, and behaviors that have led to this way of acting. And if you don't address that whole system, it's likely going to continue, even if for a while you can white knuckle it and find a little bit of success.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

Yeah. And there is a difference between vulnerability and transparency. And I tell both survivors and perpetrators and also my addicts, that same exact thing because I can tell you a thing, it doesn't mean I was vulnerable about it. It doesn't mean that like I can tell you, yes, you know, five years ago I did XYZ. Cool. But am I doing XYZ today? Where's my heart today? You know, and so I can give you transparency, which makes you feel, especially for spouses, like, oh, maybe I got something here. But then when the heart change doesn't follow and real recovery doesn't follow, it feels like you've just been sold a bill of goods.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Yeah, absolutely.

Family Of Origin And Shame Messages

SPEAKER_00 16:32

So you've seen pure desire, because this is going to be your tenth anniversary year there, which is very exciting. You've seen pure desire grow from something that was in some ways regional, it sounds like, to something that is much more national. So tell me a little bit about that.

Purity Culture And Sexual Maturity

SPEAKER_01 16:50

You know, Tabitha, a lot of our growth has really been because of life change. People that experience something deep and real. You know, one of the I think unique things about Pure Desire is that our group experience is a nine or 10 month group. And in many contexts, still we want, you know, uh, 10 weeks to a better this or give me a three-day retreat. And those things can be very valuable. But we've recognized that lasting change includes brain change, includes heart change, includes behavior change, and having deep connection and bonding with a community of people that know you and are on that journey with you. Because ultimately, our sexual struggles are not about sex. They're an artificial way of trying to find intimacy and connection. And by intimacy, I don't mean sex. I mean truly knowing and being known, being valued for who I am without performance. That's what creates lasting change. And you can't do that in a moment. You can't, you can make steps towards that in a weekend, but the lasting change takes time. And so I think as people have emerged from a pure desire group saying, I'm a different person. I'm not just stopping a behavior, I'm I'm walking in a new way. I'm I'm learning whole new ways of dealing with pain and difficulty and facing grief rather than avoiding it. That other people go, oh, that's that's different than just trying harder. That's different than just diverting your eyes or getting accountability software, although those are good practices. There's something deeper here. And I think for us, it felt a little bit like we we recognized that the change process was working and it was effective. And it was primarily a need to get that word out there. And so over the last 10 years, we have taken strides, whether it's through our podcast or social media or different forms of advertising or working with the Barna group to put out stats, to just let it be known, like, hey, we're here. We have an approach to healing that's very different than most have tried. And at its root, it's about having a life-changing group experience. And I think we've grown because the human heart hungers to be known. We hunger to be seen and valued even in the midst of our pain. And that happens in a group experience. And so it gets replicated, not because it's slick or trendy or we've got great marketing, but because at its core it works. And so people are being invited in and hearing about something that maybe this time will be different. And then when it is different, they're helping us tell that story. So I I really believe, regardless of what we've done internally, that our our biggest growth has always been simply about men and women who are telling their story and inviting their church to launch groups, you know, are telling a brother or a sister this worked for me, you should try it out. And we continue to see that kind of life change really drive the growth.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the long-term nature, longer term nature of the group is something that I think is so important. I think about what my pastor says, which is deep work over time in community. And all three of those are so necessary. Like surface work, it doesn't matter how long you're not gonna get there, right? Like if you're just new to sports and weathering, yeah, brother, how are you? Hallelujah, all that crap that I grew up with in the 80s, that you know, like that's not gonna that doesn't change people. It doesn't invite you into those deep dark places. If you are in a short period of time and like there there is a space for short-term intensives and short-term therapy, you know, a short-term inpatient, just especially depending on how bad the addiction is at any given point in time. Like some of those things are helpful to get you started, but they aren't gonna get you completed. It's not gonna get you into true recovery, it'll start your recovery. And that overtime piece is so important. And then in community, because if you have this thing that you're holding that has so much shame associated with it, then having people that turn their face toward you in your darkest spaces and encourage you in a different place. Hey man, you don't have to do that. We could do something different, or hey, hey, let's look at your three circles plan, which is a recovery plan for those who don't know. And let's look at that and see what's working, what's not working. Can we dive in? Where are you getting stuck? You know, those kinds of things, or like, hey, I care about you. Or when you say the horrible thing that happened, because look, addiction sits on top of trauma. It does, you know, but you can share that horrible thing that happened to you, and the person goes, Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. That was awful, you didn't deserve that. That like you you can't do that alone. Like you have to do that with other people.

Desire, Lust, And Theology Of Intimacy

Dismantling Shame With Specific Honesty

SPEAKER_01 21:32

Yeah, I I always think of what a psychologist, Dr. Gapoor Matei, says that trauma is not what happens to us, it's what happens inside of us in the absence of an empathetic witness, and how important it is that when we face pain, we don't face it alone. And I think Western Christianity in particular lends towards a kind of personal piety, you know, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, just trust Jesus, you know, the past is in the past, I can walk through this. Where so much of the history of the world was much more communal in nature. I mean, even if you look at the Old Testament and the New Testament, it's very unfortunate that we don't have a plural form of the word you. You know, I've I've recently moved to Nashville where y'all is so much more common. And the Bible really needs y'all because in so many places where we read you and we think me an individual, the Bible is actually saying y'all and addressing us as a community of people that are facing pain together, walking through life together. And I think because of some of our Western Christianity, our upbringing, we look back at the past and go, well, there was nothing hurtful there. I you know, like I didn't go to war, I wasn't raped, I didn't have all these extreme things. And yet, so many have had emotionally absent parents, uh, double working families where they were always with other caregivers and wondered what mom and dad thought about them, or very strictly high religion family where rules were much more important than relationship, or even forms of, you know, how we were told in the, you know, you mentioned the 80s, in the 70s and 80s, how parents were told to raise their children, while there are valuable to certain disciplines and methods of disciplining your children, methods like you know, spanking and other forms that that were absent of the recovery of true relationship have the marks of abuse. And I'm not saying if your parents spanked you, they were abusing you. I'm just saying, in the absence of relational recovery, the internalized message of so many of us were shame messages that I'm not good enough or I don't measure up or I'm in the way or I'm a problem. And that very much becomes then what we're seeking to fill through our addictive behaviors, whether it's an addiction to our anger or to eating or to work or to exercise or to pornography, where we're trying to answer those deeper questions. And if nobody helps guide us into those deeper questions, even if we have success white knuckling it and changing behavior in one area, we're just going to shift to another area to try to answer those deeper questions. And so I think for all of us, it's worth really pausing and looking through our life story to say, do I recognize what's formed? Me and in a very subtle way, am I aware of the lies that have maybe crept in in an even relatively healthy family upbringing? Because no family's perfect, right? Every family has its own version of crazy, and and what we thought was normal is only normal to us because it's the only family we had. But when someone else hears about it, they go, Wow, I could see you grew up really doubting that you had any value because these things happen. It's like, oh, I I'd never seen it that way. And even if, you know, we we say often that we believe most parents were doing the best they could with what they had available to them. Now, not most, because there were certainly abusive situations and really harsh things that we hear about all the time. But I think most parents were doing the best they could, but they were not perfect and they had their own unaddressed wounds. And wounded people wound people, hurt people, hurt people. We have a way of passing our unaddressed wounds get passed along into our children, into our family systems. And that's not that's just natural human behavior. And so when we have a safe place to actually address that and name that, not to blame the past, not to blame our behaviors on someone else, but to to reclaim it and to understand how it's impacted us, that can be so life-changing beyond just the behavior modification.

SPEAKER_00 25:30

100%. So I don't know if you can see my whole shirt right now. Um, if you're listening, you certainly can't, but my shirt says Foob Spider, so family of origin BS Fighter. It's one of the shirts that we have in our practice because that is something, even really wonderful families, there's gonna be imperfection, right? And that's not a bad thing, but sometimes we do need to address the ways that that impacted our going forward. And I do think about the evangelical upbringing that a lot of us had in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s around purity culture and some of the things that were taught about what healthy sexuality was supposed to be. And it was like, yeah, it doesn't exist until the day you get married, and then all of a sudden it exists. And the whole time men were being told all of your sexual desires and fantasies and everything will be perfect the minute you get married, and women were being told you're not even allowed to think about sex until the day you get married, and then you're supposed to basically be a whore in the bedroom, for lack of a better way to put it. And and and all of a sudden, all of these things are supposed to work well, and you're supposed to be the sexual fulfillment for your spouse. And man, does that not bear out. First of all, it is absolutely unbiblical. And secondly, it doesn't even take into account like the way we were created. And for so many people, it has caused so many issues.

Therapy, Arousal Template, And Safety

Betrayal Trauma And Spouse Healing

SPEAKER_01 26:55

Yeah, I I've heard someone say that we're taught, particularly in Christian circles, that you know, sex is bad, gross, and evil. So save it for the one you love. And and and that that kind of mindset of everything about my sexuality as a teenager was like fearful and sinful and gross and wrong. And yet it was also supposed to be what God gave us as a gift in marriage. Because that I feel like the church did a pretty good job of talking about like the gift of sex in marriage and saving it for the one you love. You know, those were the messages of the purity culture. And there's there's truth to those messages, but what was missed was the beauty of our God-given sexuality from day one. You know, and it's it's one of the messages when we try to educate and equip churches that we're really bringing across is that every single person sitting in the church is a sexual being. And I I know we don't like to think of Granny Ethel, who's 88 years old, being sexual, but Granny Ethel is a sexual being made in the image of God as a female sexual being with body parts and brain chemistry and hormones, and and wherever she's at at 88, like that's still her reality. And every single one of us has been our sexuality has been impacted by a broken world. And so whether we're in some sort of active addiction or not, the truth is all of us need discipling. We need growth and maturing in our sexuality. And yet, because the church kind of has this all in none mindset, like you were saying, with sex is for marriage, and until then we don't talk about it. And then once you're married, we just assume it's good. And because you're married, you're good to go. There's this whole unaddressed area of our sexual maturing that I think most of us missed. And we think that maybe, like, well, that was what eighth grade health class was for. And I don't know about your experience, but that was, you know, tremendously awkward anatomy and not much a whole, not much beyond that. It didn't teach me how to think about myself as a sexual being, and that even if I was never married, there was a goodness to my sexuality, and that that my hormones and desires and drives originated in God's creation, not in the fall. You know, one of the things I I like to ask, especially like groups of young college students, I'll say, where does lust come from? And of course, we all think lust is a byproduct of sin. And I said, and yet we would have recognized that God created the brain with sexual hormones. And I hope that when you meet the person you plan to spend your life with in dating and engagement, there are times that you have a strong sexual desire for someone that is not your spouse. And and the origin of that is God. So God is the author of lust. Now, obviously, lust we typically associate with sin and lusting after people not our spouse or or lots of people and objectification. I get that that it goes off the rails quickly, but the the original place of our strong, our desire for sexual connection is rooted in God's creation, which ought to help us kind of back the train up a little bit from just the purity narrative of sexist for marriage, and until then we don't talk about it, and to begin to explore like, why is my sexual desire there? Because the Bible also teaches that singleness in many ways is better than marriage. And we've totally lost that in the 21st century, the idea that to be single could be better than being married because we've idolized sex in marriage. But I think there is a value to our sexuality apart from marriage that we need to rediscover. And I see it as God implanting in us that desire for connection, that desire for knowing and being known. You know, when Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter two, it says, you know, they were naked and felt no shame. I don't think that's a statement of their biological bodies. I think it's a statement of that that before God and one another, they had nothing to hide, nothing to cover up, no shame. It was intimacy at its truest sense. And in a way, intimacy is a part of our sexuality. And I think it's another place we've really missed the ball that because we don't talk about intimacy enough and that desire for connection and belonging with others, we've learned to sexualize any feeling for intimacy, which I think leads a lot of people into questioning their sexuality and their gender because they're like, wow, I have I have a strong feeling of connection with this person of the same gender. And maybe it's just their heart longing to be seen and connected with someone, and it's totally non-sexual, but we've not been trained or taught to think about our longings as anything but uh a sinful sexual desire. And so, yeah, there's a lot to be explored there about our sexuality being good and reclaimed, and and that I think is the work of recovery of looking back and saying, what are the messages I've learned about my body? What are the messages I've learned about other people's bodies and the purpose they have in our world and in my life? And what are the messages I've learned about sex? And are they are they true? Are they helpful? Are they actually what God designed for us to be an intimate connection with Him? Because that's where intimacy starts, is with God and with one another. And I think if we if we could have a fuller understanding of that, you know, if we heard pastors preaching on that, there would be some paradigm shifts. We'd begin to think about sex differently. And I I think it would help all of us.

Discernment: Rebuild Or Release

SPEAKER_00 31:56

Absolutely. And I think, you know, just to kind of back up a bit, the church has not done a good job on talking about intimacy. While they've talked about sexual intercourse within the boundaries of marriage, they haven't talked about what intimacy is. And my contention is that the evangelical church is in fact a sex addict because that is all it focuses on is intercourse or sexual behaviors. When if we focused as the church on intimacy, intimacy and friendship and what that looks like and appropriate uh rhythms and boundaries there, because I do think people get confused these days, and intimacy in relation and marriage, and then physical intimacy, all of those things go together, you know, sexual intercourse and sexual behaviors and physical touch and things like that are an outcropping of when it's done correctly, the emotional intimacy that people have. And to your point, young people get like I think any people these days, but lots of young people get confused because we've been told that desire, affinity, connection is all sexual. And it's not. You know, there's a book out there called Platonic that really dives deep into this really well and talks about friendship and those feelings. And I think about David and Jonathan in the Bible, their hearts were knit together. I feel that way about some of my female friends. I have no sexual desire for them whatsoever, but I have a strong affinity and a deep love and a relational intimacy with them. I have that with some of my guy friends, you know, and there's nothing sexual about that. So I think the church retooling what is intimacy at its greatest depth. Again, intimacy with God, like you said, like it starts there and then intimacy with friends, and then intimacy in a romantic relationship. And you're right, the church doesn't talk about singleness at all, despite the fact that Paul very clearly did in scripture. And that is something that then does push the idolatry of marriage and the idolatry of intercourse in ways that aren't helpful. And society is all about that. Society will absolutely perpetuate that because everything is so hypersexualized. So I think really leaning into that, and I'll I I will just also talk about lust for a second. I think the better word is desire when it's healthy, and lust is consumptive. That's why when Jesus says if you lust in your heart, then you have committed adultery. Lust is I'm gonna take this for my good pleasure instead of I'm gonna enter in. I have desire for you. I desire you as a person, not just as a body. And I think that to me would be the differentiator between what lust is and what really beautiful desire is.

Women’s Compulsive Sexual Behaviors

Resources For Women And Churches

SPEAKER_01 34:46

Yeah, yeah, there's nuances of that word. I I think what comes to mind for me too when I think of the creation narrative, I've I've been looking at Genesis 3 a lot and recognizing, you know, when Adam and Eve were in the garden and they're being tempted to take of the fruit. So something that's not theirs, that God has prescribed is saying, This is not healthy for you, and I've made something off limits, even before the fall, they had a strong desire to reach out and take something that God had said was not healthy for them. And I think, isn't that interesting that in God's perfect created Eden, there was already these desires to have something that wasn't mine, which again, I'm not trying to say God is the author of sin, but to say there's there's actually something about what you're describing, and whether we call it desire or a form of, you know, lusting after something that's not mine, that is not a byproduct of sin, but is connected to our created order. And if God, if God created that capacity for us to want to grab hold of something that's not good for us, but we we just gotta have it, it's there for a reason. And I think that is what you're saying is it's desire to like to matter, to belong, to have the highest good in this world, and and that we can be easily, it's it's why you know sexual sin is so rampant and addiction is so rampant, and abuse of pornography and abuse of other people is so rampant because uh we we want the very best out there, and we can be so easily duped into thinking there's something better out there that you don't have, so reach out for it. And I'm just saying there's something in it that's actually about our humanity and ought to ought to have us question like, what am I what am I really looking for? You know, I think it's G.K. Chesterton that said that every, you know, um, every man who knocks at the door of a brothel is actually looking for God. Uh that that concept of I'm looking for that intimacy I was made for. I'm looking for that oneness. And it's why I think, you know, what I was thinking about as you were sharing that is why it's so important that we deal with shame and why a pure desire group is so life-changing, because there's there's a saying in recovery that says the devil is in the details. And what I mean by that is that shame resides in our unspoken secrets. And one of the failures of a lot of traditional accountability groups is we've learned to say, hey, I I struggled this week, or I relapsed this week, or I had a bad night. And I was like, oh man, thanks for that honesty, and we'll pray for you and you know, go this week and don't do that. And yet what's happening below the surface is we know the kind of pornography we looked at, or the the length of time we were there, or what we did in response to that, or the thoughts we had about someone else that we knew, and and that belief that says, Well, I shared this much, but if I shared all of it, they would reject me as a weird, perverted psychopath, and I'd I would I would be alone. And so even in some of our honesty, we walk into shame of I can't really disclose what's going on in my life. And and that's that is so crucial in a group that you've you've created connection with, there's safety, there's trust, that you can go to some of those specifics and say, and here's the nature of what I've been doing. And and you have to be careful with that. Like we don't want to trigger other people, we don't want to be graphic, we're not trying to be, you know, shocking for the sake of the shock factor. But when we can name some of our secrets that we've said I will never never tell another person this, and we find the courage and safety to speak it, and someone else says, I see you, and I still I'm with you, and let's walk through this together, like it changes us. And I would say the same about what happens with the shame over abuse. I mean, if if we've crossed the line into things of how we've treated our spouse, or or we know that in our worst moments we were a monster, and yet we're in a Christian community that, like you said, I'm fine, we're good, it's okay. Like, how to divulge that of like, hey, here's something I did, and I don't know what to do about it. We're gonna live in that shame, and that shame is gonna keep us stuck in secrecy, and that secrecy is actually going to make the behavior more likely to continue. And that's why we've got to get in places where we tell the whole story, we face the whole truth, because then shame can be dispelled and we can actually rebuild from a place of true honesty and and find the freedom that we're looking for. So yeah, it's it's why it's so important that we dismantle shame and really look at what am I what am I deeply longing for in these places uh that maybe have become the pockets of shame in my story.

Closing Encouragement And Next Steps

SPEAKER_00 39:21

Absolutely. And you know, for people who are like, well, I was thinking about a group and now I'm like, holy cow, right? And like, how do I tell my whole story without triggering anyone, you know, everybody and their mother? Like that is the way that a group is facilitated gives you the right parameters for that. And also I really encourage folks to get into therapy. You know, work with a therapist who understands the addiction and the compulsive behaviors, and that is a place where you can give more detail about this is the type of pornography I looked at and the length of it. And I mean, those are questions I straight up ask all the time. You know, because if you give me just a little bit, I can't really help you. If you give me the whole thing, then we can walk through it. What's driving that? How is your arousal template impacted by that? How did you get there in your arousal template? And these types of things in our arousal template, for those who haven't heard me talk about it, is the constellation of things together that turned you on. And so when we talk about that and figure out how things got woven in, whether it's violence or multiple partners, or you know, I probably should have given a trigger warning at the beginning of this episode because I'm saying some things that are probably rattling a few people. But when we can talk about that, we can go, how did you get there? And how do we help you disentangle and get you out? And so I think a lot of times, especially early on in the recovery process, having both a group and a therapist is really, really helpful in getting into a deeper level of recovery and walking that path. So I would encourage folks to do that with someone. And then the other thing I want to just touch on here is the spouse or the betrayed partner, because a lot of times, and I know pure desire does not do this, which I love, we'll see someone go get help for their addiction, but the betrayed partner's out there twisting in the wind, dying from all of these paper cuts over decades potentially and going, What about me? All the attention is always on the addict. And so I want to talk about Betrayal and Beyond and what it does for the betrayed spouse as well, because that is to me as a therapist, a critical piece is having both parties getting the care that they need. And betrayal trauma is brutal. It is awful.

SPEAKER_01 41:37

Yeah, the the challenge for both an addict and the spouse is isolation. It's a belief that says there's something wrong with me that makes me struggle in this way, or there's something wrong with me that makes my spouse do these things. And when we aren't able to talk about it, that voice of isolation and shame just drives that knife into our hearts, so to speak. And that was very much my wife's experience of going to group is she began to talk about her pain and hear other women talk about the same things or be in even worse situations. And she's like, Oh, it's not just me, or what I'm feeling is not abnormal, or how personal this feels. Even though my husband tells me it's not an affair, it feels like one, like, oh, that's not just me. And and having these other women, in a sense, you know, Galatians chapter six, bear her burden, something that really had been unfair. It had been too much for her to carry. She hadn't asked for it, she wasn't wanting it, but yet because of our marriage, she was having to carry it alone for 10 years. And in group, it's like, oh, I'm not alone. And and others are walking this road with me, and I'm figuring out what's normal. What do I need to feel safe? What do I do to restore my emotions? And what do I do when the person I would usually turn to for security is the very person that's hurt me? Where do I find security? Where do I find stability? And and I know some churches and leaders get fearful, like, hey, if if we if we call it betrayal, or like you said earlier, if we call it abusive, like that's going to drive marriages apart. And and we have actually found the opposite that in naming something for what it is and allowing someone to grieve what's been lost, to recognize the pain, and to move to a place of safety and security, actually is the best foundation from which a marriage can be rebuilt. Because in too many places, we're just trying to put a band-aid on a marriage and go, well, he's sorry, he's promised he won't do it anymore. You should forgive him. And now we've we've band-aided the marriage back together. Now go make it work. And yet nothing has changed, nothing's been healed, and now you've got two very disconnected people, maybe out of guilt and shame, trying to make a marriage work. It's like this is not a recipe for success. And, you know, some people make that work, but like, that's not the kind of marriage we want. Like, we want two healthy and whole people moving towards one another in recovery. And that can only happen if both of them have a place to be known and seen and heard that I would say is separate from one another, because the the source of your pain is not going to be the one to heal your pain. Now, now they have to make some changes to show they're going to live differently for the marriage to work. That's their work. But but you have to find places where you can heal and you can dispel the lies that you're believing. Because I think just like shame plants lies in the thinking of the addict, the trauma plants lies in the betrayed spouse. And it might not even be about that moment. It might be connected to her family of origin. And that doesn't mean she caused it or that she has to do this work because she did something wrong. But it's to recognize the whole story of what my spouse has made me feel is probably building on false beliefs that have developed all the way back from my childhood. And when I can address them and see them and do that with other women or other men, because men can be betrayed too. If I can do that in a safe group of others on this journey with me, I can heal. And when I heal, as I'm healing, that will give me the best perspective to know does this marriage have a shot to actually make it and become the kind of marriage that we'll be glad we have.

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Absolutely. And it and sometimes the answer is no. The marriage can't make it because too much damage has been done. Or the person who is on the addicted side, the betrayer, is not willing to change. And that support of a support group can be really helpful in walking the path of discernment in those spaces because and this is true of whether of any type of addiction, whether it's alcoholism, drug use, anything, you know, we can get so used to the system as the betrayed partner that we don't know how to make those decisions or figure it out what the truth is. And so having people around you when you can tell your story, go, oh yeah, that's not cool, man. You know, that's really helpful. Or, you know, someone who's further into their healing process go, Yeah, man, I've said those words. You might want to think about this. It's really, really helpful for folks to understand that one other thing that I've seen that pure desire offers, and it's not quite as broad as I hope it will one day be. Is for women who struggle with compulsive sexual behaviors. And I stumbled across that on your website, I want to say it was a year or so ago, looking for a resource for someone in that space. And what led to pure desire creating a women's essentially compulsive sexual behavior addiction group?

SPEAKER_01 46:35

I think we've just recognized from the beginning, like I've mentioned already, that people are sexual beings, not men, you know, and women are somehow asexual participants. Like, no, we're all fully sexual beings. And yes, there's uniquenesses in the gender, but but things like pornography and sexually compulsive behavior can put hooks into men or women. You know, I mentioned we did some survey work with Barna group last year, and and the percentage of Christian women that would say, to some degree I struggle with pornography is growing faster than the percentage of men. So we're up to 40% of Christian women. And if you look at Gen Z, our younger women, 69%, more than two-thirds of Gen Z women say, to some degree, I'm struggling with pornography. And so if we ever get up and try to help the men and don't mention the women, we actually double shame the women because now they feel this shame of not only what they're doing, but the shame that they have a man's problem. And the truth is, you don't have a man's problem, you have a people problem. And so uh we've developed workbooks for women called Unraveled, or for college-age single women called Authentically You. And it's a little more broader in its approach because I do think the visual pathway for men into pornography is more consistent, where for women we find a little broader spectrum, whether romance novels or kind of chronic short-term relationships or pornography, all the above. It's looking at addressing all those things so that women recognize I can find healing too, and I can do this with other women that are on this road. And uh there are far more stories out there than I think we believe. And if if we could create more environments where we just say, people are made in God's image of sexual beings, people are born into a fallen world, and so people need help and recovery. So, men, here's your group, women, here's your group, and betrayed spouses, here's the help that we offer. Because when we do that and people heal together, then we become safe cultures because we we recognize this both as men and women uh as something we can recover from.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

Absolutely. And this is something I'm seeing more and more of in my practice that you know, women are struggling with compulsive sexual behaviors and erotic fiction and book talk are on the top of that list because it seems like a story, there's a love element in it, and there is some dark, dark stuff. And there has been a rise in things like sex toys and things of that nature geared toward women. And look, I don't have any problems with vibrators used in the right context, actually talk about that in different places, but you know, I mean, like menopause is a thing for a lot of ladies, just gonna say it. But you know, there are things coming with that that invite you to, oh, if you are struggling with getting to orgasm, go watch this. And it's pornography, but it's marketed to women in a different way, and so I'm seeing a definite uptick and in Christianity, it is so hard for women to say, This is my struggle. But it's often also like with men sitting on top of trauma. And for women, it's a lot of previous sexual harm in a lot of ways. And I'm not saying it's not for men, I've seen a lot of men who have endured sexual harm as well. But in the women that I see, it is sitting on top of sexual harm that was done to them very often as little girls, and they end up in these places because of what has been habituated to them and woven into their own arousal templates, and they don't know who to talk to because yeah, there's a seven pillars group at my church, but there's nothing for me. I'm not a betrayed partner. What if I'm the betrayer? Or if I'm single, I'm betraying myself. You know, what do you do with that? And so I love that there are more resources for this because that is an area for my own heart where I see women and I just see the brokenness that it sits on and how that needs to be healed as well. So I love that pure desire has developed that, has it out there. There's still not as many groups as I would love to see.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

So if you are a woman like woman listening, it's hard for women to find a safe space where that shame element is not there and there's actually a group. So we're we're working on it.

SPEAKER_00 50:52

Yeah. And so I I would say if you're a woman listening and you're like, I have a heart for this, or it's part of my own story, then I would, you know, as long as you're already in recovery, don't start groups if you're not already in recovery. Please, whether you're a man or a woman, that's a terrible idea, actually get in recovery and then pay it forward. But this might be a group that you bring to your church or your community, you know, and yeah, it's a hard topic to talk about. It is, but it's so needed because we are all sexual beings. And I think putting everything into God's rhythm where we get to express our fullest sexuality in the ways that God has given us is such a beautiful thing. And so I love that Pure Desire has that. I would say if you if you've been like, gosh, I should lead a group, this is a great opportunity to reach out to Nick and to the team at Pure Desire to do exactly what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01 51:40

I'd love to help you walk down that road for sure.

SPEAKER_00 51:43

Absolutely. Well, Nick, I am so grateful that you have come to spend time with us today and to talk about these hard things. And for folks who are listening, if you are feeling a little bit dysregulated and this was a lot, I just want to encourage you to take care of yourself and go move your body. And if this brought stuff up for you, reach out, get some support, get some help, either get into a pure desire group if you need to, or reach out to our practice and we'll help you find resources. But we want you to be okay because this is a hard topic, and we got pretty detailed here. But Nick, thank you so much for being here.

SPEAKER_01 52:20

Yeah, I would just add to that if you're feeling some of those things deeply, make sure not to shame yourself, but to recognize I'm feeling these things because it shows how much this matters. How much this matters to who we are, how we see ourselves. And our world tries to say, oh, it's just porn, or it's just sex, or what's the big deal? Like, if we feel really triggered by it, we recognize, like, oh, there's a lot here. And and it can be that motivation to say, this would be worth really investing in, understanding what's going on. And there are many safe places, uh, like what Tabitha is doing and Pure Desire is doing, where you can walk that road and and find others that would walk it with you. So yeah, I'm I'm always happy to have the conversation and to remind people you're not alone, you're not crazy, you can do this. Other have walked the road before you, and we'd love to be a part of that journey if it fits for you.

SPEAKER_00 53:07

Absolutely. Well, thank you guys all for listening to this week's episode of Hey Tabby. Please be sure to like and subscribe and do all the cool things to help other people find this podcast as well. Nick, thank you again, and we will see you guys all next time. Thanks for joining me for today's episode of Hey Tabby. If you're looking for a resource that I mentioned in the show and you want to check out the show notes, head on over to tabithawestbrook.com forward slash hey tabby. That's H-E-Y-T-A-B-I, and you can grab it there. I look forward to seeing you next time.