This is part two of a three part series, read part 1 here.

I have been a Christian since high school. My own past and negative attitudes about myself kept me in a strict and legalistic spiritual environment. I am not saying there was not love or acceptance there. I am saying I was not open to it if it was there. I lived in fear there too. If they found out about me, I would be criticized and rejected by the few friends I had and especially by my best friend who led me to the Lord that one night in the school parking lot. I viewed Christianity as something that told me how I was supposed to act and behave. Since I failed at that every day, my feelings about myself never changed. I knew I was saved but my every day struggle and pain continued and I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone. Just as I was not open to the love and acceptance of the church I also not really open to the ongoing love and acceptance from God. I just didn’t understand it or know how to accept it and integrate it into my life. I came to understand that I just didn’t expect anymore from God then I had received from my parents. I had just accepted that no matter how much I hated it, or how lonely I felt, or afraid I was, I was supposed to be alone and handle it on my own.

I felt very alone in my life. I made my own decisions and set my own life course. I kept my feelings and thoughts to myself because I was not capable of handling the criticism. I tried college. It was a strict and fundamental university. I convinced my parents to let me go and found a way to work off my tuition. They criticized my decision and didn’t want me to go. Their objection only made me more determined to go. As a below average student with poor study skills and poor ability to focus and maintain attention, the challenge of college was greater than my ability to meet those challenges. The success I was hoping for was fading. This led to more escaping into my fantasy world. It was hard to find the privacy to masturbate and I found myself confronted by my roommates. The shame I felt then was no different than that of my wife catching me later in my life. My roommates gave me two options. They could report my behavior to the dean and I would most likely be expelled from school or I could see one of the psychology professors. Not being ready to admit failure on my choice to attend college there, I chose the latter. What was supposed to be help was really the manipulation of a student to meet the sexual needs of another sex addict, the psychology professor. Somewhere deep inside me, I found the courage to confront him but I was too ashamed to tell anyone else. It was after this that I made my choice to leave college. I used the lack of adequate funds and poor grades as my excuses and never told anyone of my experience. I was convinced they would not believe me anyway. It was over ten years later that I first told of that experience. Even then I was not looking at myself as having an uncontrollable addiction. It would still take many years to reach that place.

After returning home, I found myself in the health care arena. It was not glamorous by any means. I was working as an orderly in a nursing home. It was there that I met someone that I had a great deal of professional respect for. At his persistent encouragement I finally got up the courage to apply to nursing school. I rationalized that it was only a few short years and that if I didn’t make it, it was not all that much time wasted. I didn’t expect to succeed. I was convinced I was not smart enough. Somehow I did make it through the curriculum and managed to pass the state licensing exams. It was a turning point in my life. It was that day that I was convinced that I could really make it on my own and I would not be dependent on anyone or even have to ask for help. I experienced a sense of freedom and a hope for my own future. I threw myself into my work. It became a driving force. It strengthened my sense of independence and the myth that I didn’t really need anyone in my life. I still felt alone. I was hiding behind my career and still had my addiction.

There was still something missing. Why wasn’t I happy? Why couldn’t I be close to anyone and be honest about my feelings? I know it was because of my parents and their decision to drink rather than be a part of my life. But, shouldn’t that have gone away by now? What is wrong with me? Why is it, that no matter what I do or how good I do it, I don’t feel a healthy sense of accomplishment? I was haunted by these questions. How could I find out about myself? How could I help myself? The drive to find my own answers and an interest in psychology led me back to school. The fear of failure was diminished because I had a career to fall back on. In addition to that, I was only going to lean about myself so I could fix myself. Taking only one or two classes at a time I manage to complete a BA in psychology. This offered little help in accomplishing my purpose.

My first marriage failed after 4 years. My pride and my fear and my shame prevented me from going into counseling and saving the marriage. A few years later, I married again but the results were the same. I know there were faults in my wife and I used them all to keep the heat off of me and to keep me from looking at myself. Intimacy was just not in my makeup. The shame and the fear were too intense to even try. I was still lost. Nothing was helping me. I didn’t think God was helping me. Getting married didn’t help me with my addiction or my ability to be close to anyone. Having a successful career didn’t make me feel any better about myself or make me feel any more successful or accomplished.

The next ten years was consumed with trying to maintain my career, raise my son, and feed my addiction. I had custody of my son and I felt I was the better parent but didn’t feel like I was being a good dad. It was during this time that I made another choice to take a risk with school. I applied for graduate school in psychology. I never expected I would complete the program and become a psychologist. Again, my purpose was to fix myself while pretending to pursue a career in psychology. Like all of my other efforts, this one failed too. I understood more about the problem and my past and how things got the way they did. What I did not find was a solution. I had the knowledge and the insight into myself but I was no better. The emptiness and loneliness continued.

It was at the end of my masters program that I married again with great hopes of a lasting marriage. I was still trying to hiding my addiction and control when and how much I was acting out. The marriage was working out. We had become more involved in church. I was having some limited success with talking and sharing. After 10 years, we were still married. She was not as happy as I was. Her disappointment and the stress of finishing graduate school took its toll. The addiction got more out of control. She had caught me several times. At first we agreed to get rid of the internet. I kept loading it back on. She finally demanded that we get rid of the computer all together. It took all day to pack it up. I had a sense I was cutting my lifeline. I still asked myself how I was going to manage without it.

Continue to part 3

I’ll never forget the smell of that room, the strain and pain I felt some mornings after hard work-outs, and the mental effort it took to keep pushing the bar up day after day.  In the end I didn’t reach my goal of benching 225 lbs, (it wasn’t until later in the summer that I finally broke the barrier) but during those months I learned some invaluable lessons about working hard when you don’t feel like it, exercising often, and persevering in the face of challenges and set-backs.  Oh yeah, and I got a little more attention from the ladies that summer as well.

The Marriage Muscle Recently my wife and I were talking with a newly married couple about the challenge of developing and maintaining a strong marriage.  Six years into it, Stephanie and I have faced our share of ups and downs, and after sharing our marital story with our friends we all came to the conclusion that a marriage is a lot like a muscle.  If you want your marriage to grow and be strong you have to exercise it often.  If you don’t exercise your marriage muscle it will shrink, weaken, and eventually, with enough misuse or maltreatment, begin to breakdown.

So how do you exercise your marriage muscle?  Here’s 5 exercises you should incorporate into you marriage work-out.  Some of the exercises are easier than others, but if done consistently, all of them will help you sculpt and tone your marriage muscle into something that will remain healthy and strong for a long time.

#1 – Go on a date

Dating is the exercise that gets the marriage muscle growing in the first place, so it is befuddling that couples stop dating once they get married.  All the laughs and random time spent together morphs into routine TV watching and nights spent on the computer or out, separately, with old friends.  This is not a good idea.  It is similar to someone who is training for a marathon and then abruptly stops doing regular distance building runs 12 weeks before the race.  Dating is a simple exercise that keeps your marriage muscle in building mode and sets the foundation for more challenging exercises later.

#2 – Leave random notes, text messages and e-mails

Possibly the easiest way to exercise you marriage muscle is to tell your spouse you’re thinking of them during the day.  Technology is great for this.  Every so often fire off an email or a text message that says, “You’re beautiful” “Thinking of you today” or “Can’t wait to see you tonight.”  There are many ways to do this exercise.  Pack your spouses lunch and leave a not in the bag.  Write something in the snow on their windshield when you leave for work in the morning.  Write something sweet on a post-it note and stick it to the fridge or bathroom mirror.  Lay that special piece of clothing out on the bedroom floor with the words “Hurry home” next to it.  Whatever you do, it will mean a lot to your spouse to know that you took a moment out of your day to express how you feel.

#3 – Understand and appreciate your differences

This is not a new fact, but one worth repeating over and over again, “No two people are alike.”  Period.  And you wouldn’t want to be married to someone just like you anyway because, let’s be honest, you are one jacked up individual.  But even with that being said, thousands of marriage muscles shrivel and die because spouses attempt to create a clone of themselves in their covenant partner.  A better idea, a way to build the marriage muscle into something powerful, is to exercise it by understanding and appreciating the unique set of traits, talents, and trials each person brings to the relationship.  Then your marriage can flourish as you learn to capitalize on those differences for good.

#4 – Be physically intimate regularly

While this exercise is often more important to the marriage muscle of men than women, it shouldn’t be thought in only those terms.  Being physically intimate regularly is extremely important for developing a healthy marriage muscle.  Part of the design of marriage is that men and women would experience physical oneness with one another.  Physically exercising your bodies together is a profoundly critical activity for maximizing the well-being of the marital muscle as a whole.  When this exercise is neglected or not-valued by one spouse or the other, there will be inevitable damage done to marriage muscle.

#5 – Spend time talking with each other

If the previous exercise is often overlooked by one sex in the marriage, this exercise is likely overlooked by the other.  Just as exercising the marriage muscle involves physical exercise, it also involves an equal amount of emotional exercise.  Simply put, when the marriage muscle is not exercised by conversation and emotional intimacy, it will begin to breakdown.  Marriage muscles are stimulated to wellness through sharing and tenderness at an emotional level.  Prolonged introversion and a failure to share with one another is to the marriage muscle, what a 2 bags of Doritos and a case of beer is to your abs – not friendly!

From the Weight Room to the Living RoomThose lessons learned years ago in a small stinky high school weight room continue to serve me well.  The muscle I developed as a weight lifter has regressed some, but that doesn’t matter.  I don’t need it to get the attention of anymore girls.  I married the perfect one and I’m done worrying about how much I can bench.  Now I’m focused on working hard when I don’t feel like it, exercising often, and persevering in the face of challenges and set-backs, to build my marriage muscle for the next 60 years.  My pecs will be long gone by then, but with my bride at my side, it won’t matter.