Three Problems With Bouncing Your Eyes

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Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn.
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Why?
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So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship.
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My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go.
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Today, we are talking about the problems with bouncing your eyes, and yes, there are many problems.
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Bouncing your eyes refers to a strategy that was made famous in the book Every Man's Battle and Every Young Man's Battle that I read many years ago.
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The basic concept is this when you see someone or something that you find sexually attractive, immediately look away.
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In the words of Every Man's Battle, bounce away from the sexual like the jerk of your hand, away from a hot stove.
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And even as I say that, anger and frustration rise up in me, because this advice is not only ineffective, it's actually unkind, and I'll explain more of what I mean by that.
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In this episode, you will hear a story of when I recently tried bouncing my eyes and what happened as a result.
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I'm going to share three problems with this strategy and then, at the end, I'm going to tell you exactly what you can do instead when you see a sexually attractive person.
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I'm going to give you a way to respond to these thoughts that is effective and empowering.
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Okay, let's start with a story.
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On December 6th, I attended the Colorado Springs Christmas Parade with my two young sons, while my wife and daughter were out of town.
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We had so much fun.
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So many different, creative, interesting floats drove past.
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We enjoyed the Christmas lights, we found ways to stay warm.
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It was the perfect activity.
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And then one float drove along that featured 20 women on a raised up platform, all wearing outfits, with cowboy hats that made them look like cowgirls.
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And I thought that made them look like cowgirls, and I thought, oh, that's so fun, that's so cute, until I noticed one of the women was exactly the type of person I used to search for pornographically on the internet.
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It was exactly the type of person I used to fantasize about and masturbate to A tall, thin, blonde-haired woman laughing with a smile full of braces.
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It is so difficult for me even just to say that right now.
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I know many of you have heard me talk about my story and you've heard me talk about my sexual fetish.
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Even now, there's a part of me that wants to throw up, just in being vulnerable and telling you all about this, because the truth is, even after 10 years of freedom from porn.
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This still feels somewhat irresistible to me, and it wasn't actually just the fact of seeing someone with braces, and it wasn't actually just the fact of seeing someone with braces.
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It was seeing a beautiful woman dressed up in a cowgirl outfit, with braces, and looking back, it makes so much sense that this specific situation triggered me, because it wasn't just seeing someone with braces or even a beautiful woman with braces, it was the group of cowgirls being part of this celebration that took me right back to middle school in Dallas, texas, where all the cheerleaders wore cowgirl outfits, just like that.
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Of course, in the moment I didn't realize that, but instead of getting curious about what I was feeling, instead of allowing the about what I was feeling, instead of allowing the float to pass by, I reacted very strongly and I panicked.
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I bounced my eyes off of everybody on that float and I actually believe that was my big mistake.
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I actually believe that the problem was not seeing these women or feeling these feelings.
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The problem was how I responded.
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I didn't pause, I didn't check in with myself, I panicked and I did exactly what every man's battle told me to do I bounced my eyes, I looked down at my two boys until the float passed.
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And a minute later I glanced back up after the float was far away and I thought back to that woman and a part of me wanted to look.
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But of course by then it was too late and I assumed that I had successfully managed this sexual attraction.
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But deep down there was a lot of energy stored in my body and the tension I felt was only increasing.
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A few hours later I forgot about the experience, but that night I woke up at 1am extremely sexually aroused.
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Thankfully I finally was able to relax, calm down, go back to sleep and then I woke up again at 3 am that same night.
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My mind would not turn off.
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I tried to shut down sexual thoughts but eventually, at 3 am, I let them wander.
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My thoughts kept going back to the cowgirls who I knew during middle school and high school in Dallas, texas.
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Some of them had braces on their teeth and these are the girls that I used to fantasize about when I would masturbate.
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And let me be very clear Even just entertaining those thoughts and fueling the fire of those fantasies was lust.
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And as I allowed myself to lust and fueled the fire of those fantasies was lust, and as I allowed myself to lust and fueled the fire of those fantasies.
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The train of sexual temptation was speeding up faster and faster.
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Now, whether or not I looked at images on the internet or masturbated to them or access pornography, this is what I would call a slip, a sudden lapse in progress.
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Even if it wasn't a full relapse, it's still significant and it's still worth exploring and processing, because the posture of my heart was sinful whether or not I went back to unwanted sexual behavior.
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Since then, I've processed this experience.
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I've shared about it with my wife and I've asked myself what happened at that Christmas parade.
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Why were my sexual thoughts and feelings so strong that night?
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Where did I go wrong?
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What made this different?
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Because this was not the only time I've been sexually or emotionally triggered lately.
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What made this experience different is that I responded to those triggers reflexively and reactively by bouncing my eyes.
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That's something that I responded to those triggers reflexively and reactively by bouncing my eyes.
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That's something that I haven't done in years.
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I haven't felt that fear and shame and looked away for a long, long time, and I haven't felt this level of sexual temptation in the middle of the night in a long, long time.
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I'm convinced that this decision to bounce my eyes was actually part of the problem.
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Let me tell you why.
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Before we talk about the problems, let's go back to the original teaching from the book Every Man's Battle Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time.
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According to page 125, you can win this battle by training your eyes to bounce away from sights of pretty women and sensual images.
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If you bounce your eyes for six weeks, you can win this war.
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The problem is that your eyes have always bounced toward the sexual and you've made no attempt to end this habit.
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To combat it, you need to build a reflex action by training your eyes to immediately bounce away from the sexual, like the jerk of your hand away from a hot stove.
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Let's repeat that for emphasis when your eyes bounce toward a woman, they must bounce away immediately.
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There are so many problems with this quote.
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There are so many problems with this quote.
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First of all, the authors assume that men are only sexually attracted to women and they also say the problem is that your eyes have always bounced toward the sexual.
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Experiencing sexual attraction and arousal is not a problem.
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They say you have made no attempt to end this habit.
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That is also not true.
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Many of us have attempted to end the habit of giving into sexual temptation over and over again, sometimes using a strategy like bounce your eyes, which is ultimately an example of sexual repression, anti-sexuality, just a hostility toward this good part of who we are.
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When I hear the advice of bouncing your eyes, I hear that video of Bob Newhart pretending to be a therapist and telling someone just stop it, stop it.
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And there are so many problems with this approach.
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Here are the three major problems I see with this strategy for overcoming sexual temptation known as bouncing your eyes Number one, the rubber band rebound.
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Number two, the long-term limitations.
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And number three, the covert cruelty.
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Let's start with the rubber band rebound.
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Whenever you see someone who is extremely sexually attractive to you, whether in person, in a picture or in a video, your body goes into a state of hyper arousal.
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You experience tension.
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It's as if a rubber band is being stretched out and that tension is pushing you toward a release.
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And until that tension is released, you're going to experience a lot of discomfort and probably temptation to sexually act out.
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Here's the problem with bouncing your eyes Once that rubber band is stretched out and it's really tense, if you immediately look away, you don't actually release the tension.
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It's almost as if you stretch the rubber band out in the other direction because your brain goes into fight or flight.
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You're still in a state of hyper arousal.
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I hope this makes sense.
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This makes sense.
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So if your brain is feeling really sexually charged up and you bounce your eyes and you think, okay, I have to fight against that or I have to run away from that, stop thinking about that.
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You can just hear the tension continuing to build.
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Bouncing your eyes actually intensifies the sexual arousal that you feel toward this particular person or picture.
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Feel toward this particular person or picture and, as a result, sooner or later you are going to feel what I call the rubber band rebound.
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It's when you feel that sexual energy and then you fight really hard against it or you try to run away from it and then it comes back with a vengeance.
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And that is exactly what happened to me the night of the Christmas parade.
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When I saw that group of cowgirls and the woman with braces standing on top of that platform, my brain immediately went into fight or flight.
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All of that tension in my body didn't go away.
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I just shoved it down and for a while it stayed dormant, until in the middle of the night it came back stronger than ever and now my defenses are down and my energy is low and I'm barely conscious.
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This is what I see again and again with men who are taking the purity culture approach to try to quit porn.
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They're fighting every man's battle, which is frustrating and exhausting.
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Because of problem number two, the long-term limitations, let me be very clear.
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There are times when it is wise and good to flee sexual temptation, as the Bible tells us to do, as a short-term strategy.
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For example, if I saw the cowgirl with braces later that night and she winked at me, or if she was hitting on me, or if she gave her number like, it would not be safe for me to continue in that conversation.
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I would need to remove myself in order to stay safe.
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That's a short-term strategy and if that were to happen, I would need to talk with someone about it.
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I would need to process what happened.
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Otherwise, the energy is going to stay trapped in my body.
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The energy is going to stay trapped in my body, and the same was true when I saw this parade float go by.
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If I bounce my eyes like I did, that cannot be the end of the strategy.
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I'm not saying that it was wrong for me to immediately look away from the cowgirls going by on the Christmas parade.
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Look away from the cowgirls going by on the Christmas parade.
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What I am saying is that was a short-term strategy and it was only dealing with the surface level symptoms rather than going deeper and asking the question what's really going on within me?
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Why is this affecting so much?
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Making connections between these sexual thoughts and feelings in my story.
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Now, we can't always do that in the moment, so short-term strategies are helpful, and if you really want to outgrow porn, if you really want lasting freedom, you have to go deeper and process what's underneath it, and I didn't do that that night.
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I simply resisted and repressed what was happening within me, and I can now see how all of this unprocessed energy truly did need a release, and what I settled for was a sexual release that night at 3 am.
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I'm not proud to say that I had allowed this train of sexual temptation to speed up so much that I was not able to regulate without some kind of sexual release.
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It was so overwhelming for me.
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In the end, I chose to masturbate while thinking about my wife, and I don't think it was lustful, it's still not who I want to be.
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If you want long-term, lasting freedom from porn, it requires going deeper than just bouncing your eyes.
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I do realize that for some of you, bouncing your eyes has been helpful.
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I'm not saying that it's wrong to do this.
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I'm saying that it's limited.
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It's a short-term, surface level strategy, but I encourage you to think about this as more of an emergency action step rather than what you're going to do every single day, because it's unsustainable, it's frustrating, it's exhausting.
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We are not designed to operate in a constant state of hypervigilance and threat.
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That's part of the problem with bouncing your eyes.
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This is a great strategy for a crisis and for an emergency, but in everyday situations, like what was happening for me at the Christmas parade, I don't need to set off the alarm and call in all the forces.
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It's more helpful to have a bigger toolbox than just bouncing your eyes.
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At the end of this episode, I'll tell you some of the tools that are in my toolbox that you can use when you're in that situation.
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So we've talked about the rubber band rebound, which is another way of saying that bouncing your eyes and repressing sexual energy actually intensifies temptation and puts you in this frustrating, exhausting battle.
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We've also talked about the long-term limits, because if you want your sexual recovery to be sustainable, you're going to need to go deeper than just trying to stop looking at certain kinds of people or certain kinds of stimulation.
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And finally, one of the most important problems I see with bouncing your eyes is the covert cruelty.
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I want to argue that this strategy is not only ineffective for the most part.
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I want to argue that this strategy is not only ineffective for the most part, it's also unkind for the most part.
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Underneath this impulse to immediately look away from anyone or anything that we find to be arousing or beautiful is self-hatred and a disdain for our sexuality, is self-hatred and a disdain for our sexuality, and I felt that toxic shame so strongly when I saw the cowgirls at the Christmas parade.
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I didn't look away from those women out of love for them.
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I looked away out of fear and out of shame, and that is really not kind to me or to them.
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The idea that bouncing your eyes off of a sexually attractive person could be unkind might be hard to understand, so I'm going to try to explain it as clearly as I can.
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Imagine that you are the type of man or the type of woman who often receives second glances, if you have the type of face or the type of body that people often envy.
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Imagine if, in your everyday life, you often see people looking at you for a long time, gazing at you, imagining what thoughts are going through their head.
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Of course, that's the experience of being objectified.
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There is a less obvious objectification that takes place when you're going through your daily life and everyone's looking away from you, when you're having conversations with people in a casual setting and they can't look you in the eyes or they're just avoiding you all the time.
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I know that people feel objectified when they can sense that someone's using them sexually.
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Yet at the same time, people feel objectified and dehumanized when someone's always trying to stop thinking about them sexually.
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Imagine what it would be like if many of the people with whom you interact on an everyday basis saw you as a threat and a source of sexual temptation and they related to you with avoidance or distance or not even acknowledging that you exist.
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This is a real problem.
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There is an appropriate context for noticing that someone's outfit looks really good.
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There's an appropriate context for saying hi and having a small talk with someone who's really sexually attractive and there's also a dangerous context for that.
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So we need to have the wisdom to know the difference.
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For me, on December 6th, at that Christmas parade, there was an appropriate context for me to see the women up there on that platform wearing their cowgirl outfits.
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I mean, at some level they wanted to be celebrated.
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That's why they're up there.
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I didn't need to squash my charged up feelings.
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I could simply let this float of the parade slowly move past me, see it, notice it, acknowledge it and let it pass.
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Instead, I took a militant stance of locking down anything that could have been coming up within me and I suffered the consequences later.
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If I'm ashamed of anything from that night, it's of my immaturity and inability to appreciate the beauty that was set before me in a healthy, God-honoring way.
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It's not objectifying and it's not predatory to notice that someone's beautiful, to see that they have a beautiful smile, to enjoy the clothes that they're wearing, to see them move past you like a float on a parade, let that come and then let it go.
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This is a very different approach than the approach of bouncing your eyes, which is rooted in fear, shame, control and purity culture.
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And, if you want to be a person who lives in Christ-like love.
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We need to take a different approach.
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Lust is about taking and using.
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Love is about sharing and receiving in healthy, appropriate ways.
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I want to argue that the opposite of lust is not purity in the sense of the absence of bad behaviors.
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The opposite of lust is Christ-like love, the presence of appreciation, honor, dignity and love.
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And if you want an alternative to bouncing your eyes, then let me tell you what I wished I had done at the Christmas parade.
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This is something you can do when you see a sexually attractive person.
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I wish I had taken my own advice and practiced BOA B-O-A which stands for breathe, observe, attune.
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This is one of the techniques that we teach at Husband Material Academy and I want to walk you through exactly how it could have helped me and how it can help you whenever you see a sexually attractive person or picture.
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First, I wish I had breathed.
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I wish I had taken a few deep breaths.
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Breathing is our superpower for self-regulation and it contributes to releasing tension.
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Remember how I talked about that rubber band.
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Breathing allows you to relax.
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It welcomes connection regulation.
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It is the quickest, most effective, most efficient way to calm your body when you're hyper aroused and to wake yourself up when you're numb or shutting down.
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So I wish I had breathed.
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When you breathe, you work with your sexuality instead of against it.
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You work with your body instead of against it.
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So that's the first thing that you can do when you see a sexually attractive person Just breathe.
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Second, I wished I had practiced mindfulness, non-judgmental observation, noticing hmm, those women are really attractive.
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Wow, that one right in the middle is smiling and laughing and she has braces on her teeth.
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Whoa, that really affects me right now.
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Nonjudgmental observation both applies to what I'm feeling on the inside Okay, I'm feeling sexually aroused.
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I'm also feeling scared, I'm feeling shame and it also applies to external circumstances, like, okay, I'm watching the Christmas parade and this float is going by.
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Now it's getting closer, now it's getting farther away.
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This simple mindful observation can really de-escalate the strength of the arousal we feel.
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Notice how this doesn't take your brain into fight or flight.
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This doesn't put you in a battle against yourself.
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It's more about being with yourself, and that's a very different approach.
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And the last thing I wish I had done is attunement.
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I wish I had attuned to my own heart and say Drew, what is underneath this for you?
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What do you really need right now?
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What is the desire underneath this arousal?
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Where is this coming from in your story?
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Wow, at the Christmas parade I didn't have the presence of mind or the healing for this part of my story to be able to process, that I wish I had come back to it later and journaled or talked to a friend.
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These three steps breathe, observe, attune can be done in 10 minutes or they can even be done in 10 seconds.
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For example, okay, I see a sexually attractive person and I'm going to be away.
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I feel very uncomfortable right now.
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Hmm, what's underneath that and what do I need right now?
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There you go, 10 seconds, my friend.
00:26:19.526 --> 00:26:27.564
I hope this gives you hope because there is a better way to respond that's not based on fear and shame.
00:26:27.564 --> 00:26:36.236
It's based on love for yourself and for others, even the type of people that you find sexually attractive.
00:26:37.059 --> 00:26:41.471
Outgrowing porn is not about battling your sexuality.
00:26:41.471 --> 00:26:45.070
It's about befriending your sexuality.
00:26:45.070 --> 00:27:01.196
So maybe next time you see a person or a picture that sexually triggers you, instead of bouncing your eyes, be with whatever's coming up for you.
00:27:01.196 --> 00:27:03.747
Take a few deep breaths.
00:27:03.747 --> 00:27:16.301
You don't need to immediately look away, but mindfully observe what's happening around you, what's happening within you and attune to your own heart.
00:27:16.301 --> 00:27:21.933
Find out what's going on at a deeper level.
00:27:21.933 --> 00:27:29.385
Instead of bouncing your eyes, practice BOA, b-o-a Breathe, observe, attune.
00:27:29.385 --> 00:27:32.048
Bouncing your eyes is ineffective.
00:27:32.048 --> 00:27:34.172
It's anti-sexual.
00:27:34.172 --> 00:27:40.903
Boa is effective, it's empowering and it's loving.
00:27:42.386 --> 00:27:52.041
I realize it's easier to talk about this than to do it, and my experience on December 6th is evidence of that.
00:27:52.041 --> 00:28:13.569
Even after 10 years of freedom from porn and significant sexual sobriety, I'm still learning how to do this with you guys, and that's not an obligation, that's an opportunity, it's a gift for me to discover more of my own heart, heal even more and get even more freedom.
00:28:13.569 --> 00:28:20.752
My friend, I hope it's clear that I am in this adventure with you.
00:28:20.752 --> 00:28:27.355
I'm still learning, I'm still growing, and everything I just told you is something that I'm actively working on.
00:28:27.355 --> 00:28:37.381
No matter where you are on this journey, it's not easy, it takes practice and sometimes it feels impossible.
00:28:37.381 --> 00:28:54.932
So, no matter where you are on this journey, I want to remind you that right now, exactly as you are, you are God's beloved son and in you he is well-pleased.