Wrestling with a fetish all my life

Thanks CPilot. I haven't had much cause for anger yet, and by and large I am able to manage the stress and anxiety that go with it. However there have been some poor decisions along the way I feel, more to do with administrative issues from the NHS. I have tremendous respect the NHS and all the doctors and nurses etc. on the frontline. But the admin that connects them with the patients is under terrible strain and has been terribly flawed. It's difficult to be grateful for free healthcare at times!

 

I didn't realise that you were, Rebooter!

 

Unrelated to anything I've written about recently, but something has come up that has somewhat angered and frustrated me to the extent that it makes me want to relapse. It's not righteous anger.

I will go into more detail later as I'm currently at work but posting now to ask for prayer. Will hopefully have calmed down by the end of the working day anyway.

It really does seem that emotions are a bigger trigger risk than visual stimuli. I need to address this somehow.

 

Thank you both, and Rebooter I am praying for you.

My experiences today led me to seek out Proverbs I had previously noted as being related to haste (I like to sort Proverbs by topic as a project I've been working on). They aren't directly related to what happened today, but a clear reminder from Scripture of the dangers of being hasty. The following may not necessarily be driven by emotion, but emotion does drive us to haste, and the following errors:

• 18:13: If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame.
• 19:2: Desire without knowledge is not good, and whoever makes haste with his feet misses his way.
• 20:21: An inheritance gained hastily in the beginning will not be blessed in the end.

I have calmed down a lot, but still feeling a bit hurt. On reflection it's best I don't do into detail out of respect for other parties involved... even under anonymity I still don't feel too great writing about others in a public forum unless absolutely necessary for my recovery. Writing more earlier would have been foolish and an inaccurate representation of the situation anyway. Besides, the hurt may have been caused by my own misunderstanding - my reaction and subsequent emotion led me to judge. As Tao has said, emotions are poor decision makers... but also a terrible basis for judging others. I think I need to spend longer thinking about why I felt hurt by this issue. As Rebooter pointed out, a deeper hurt is our true problem.

I endeavour to never act on emotion. I know I react, usually with anxiety more often than anger when the reaction is negative, and I recognise that my judgement is awful in such situations. For this reason I avoid deciding things on the spot in all walks of life when it is avoidable - whether it's relationship decisions, work decisions, or even things like making purchases. I don't decide things on the basis of new information over the phone or in face-to-face conversation.

Salespeople and even scammers understand the human nature to act on impulse. Tell your target something important is at stake and if you trigger their fear you are putty in their hands. It's why scammers insist you "act now and avoid a fine / jail" - you are more likely to fall for their phishing link under fear!

Anyway I digress... my frustrations awoke something in me today... not just anxiety and anger but a desire to escape to the old ways. The issue made work hard as I could barely concentrate, but in many ways it's a good thing it happened there as I was not somewhere where I could have given into temptation. I don't think I would have given in even if I was at home, but the temptation was so incredibly strong I can't say for certain. It wasn't a desire for the fetish or PMO per se - but a desire to escape into a "happy place" which for me happens to take the form of fetish PMO. In another universe, the "happy place" could be vanilla porn, alcohol or any other vice.

The fetish has honestly lost its appeal to my heart in so many ways. But the sin in me still remembers what that "happy place" feels like, and if it needs to make the fetish appealing again to get there, then so be it. The problem for that sin is that I'm too alert to my own weaknesses and my awareness of how true happiness is found in Jesus Christ. Only by appealing to other animal instincts: fear, rage, etc., can it distract me from the Truth to the extent that it can tip me over the edge and lead me down that dark path. As

It's a reminder than there is always a risk of relapse. I do think that in the face of a perfect storm, my emotions could fire up and inhibitions could drop to the extent that I'm just not thinking about the consequences of giving into that urge.

I'm on 450+ days since last PMO, but every day is 0 days since last risk. That counter will not increase until I go to be with Jesus in Heaven. I like to think that I'm free from PMO, but I'm only free from the consequences of PMO and all my other sins. Until that first day in Heaven, the enemy will continue to tempt me to his ways, further and further, until I abandon Christ for the "happy place" and the wider world that the enemy offers me. We must all stay vigilant to avoid falling into this trap. Scripture and prayer are essential for this!

Thank you again for your prayers!

 

A really good day today. Not only am I feeling better compared to yesterday, but I acheived a personal fitness goal and went on to have a productive afternoon.

I've mentioned before that I have a regular hill route for running, with three variants, some steeper than others (but all steep!). This morning I finally made up the steepest one and kept going for the first time. I've noticed my stamina improve in general lately, and my resting heart rate as been lower. So I felt it was time to try again and I made it!

I enjoy hill running because it feels great to push the physical heart to its limits and observe it adapt to cope better with them. I also find it a helpful reflection on how God changes our spiritual hearts, especially through trials. It's not a perfect analogy by any means, but the tougher the hills we climb, the more our hearts are prepared for more of the same.

There was a time I was afraid I was getting less fit physically. I wondered if withdrawal had something to do with it, or perhaps the lethargy that arose from COVID, or the stresses of attempting to move whilst caring for parents. All of these things sort of overlapped, so it's difficult to tell. But today I've overcome whatever barrier was in place to the extent that I've actually improved on myself compared with when all of these things started.

In the afternoon I made a start on a decorating project I'd been putting off for a while, mainly to hide residual damage from a previous (fixed!) plumbing issue. This will go towards making it easier to sell my place when I feel ready to try again.

 

Indeed, the frustrations I had last week were in part due to myself projecting my own failings on others. I think sometimes failure is so difficult to accept that our knee-jerk reaction is to blame external forces so that we don't suffer the shame. Going back to the earlier point and those Psalms I quoted... the Bible clearly understands this and similar weaknesses.

This to me is something that really highlights the authenticity of the Bible. People often defend the Bible on grounds of historicity, and of course they are correct in doing so, but I think the Bible's understanding of human nature can also play a big factor. Not only do the books of wisdom call out our weaknesses and guide appropriate behaviour, but the stories in the books of history, gospels etc. depict sins that we see in people today. The times are different, but the pride, the stubborness and the behaviours they lead to are shown throughout history, especially in stories of the Bible. For the Bible to have been written purely by men and yet understand humanity better than it understands itself seems impossible to me.

I meant to address this before but forgot. Actually I'm weak here... I forget to treat the salespeople with love. Pride kicks in and I like to show I know their game and prove their tactics won't work on me. If I catch them in a lie I outright complain. Sure, they still need to be called out on unethical practices, but there is a way to do that in love and I forget that sometimes.

 

Lent starts tomorrow, and therefore so does my "fast" of gaming. I'm actually looking forward to it, which suggests that gaming is something of a compulsion that deep down I want to do less of. I'm looking forward to more time with God, more time for other hobbies and pastimes I never find time for.

I'm not telling many people at all about this (Matthew 6:16–18), only really posting about it here as a form of accountability.

It's also to teach myself more self-discipline in terms of giving things up or reducing my dependence on them. I've given up PMO, but the change doesn't stop there. By the will of God, I wish to constantly seek and change those areas where I fail, by His power and for His glory.

 

Lent begins!

Normally on a Wednesday night I’d be playing games after coming home from a regular commitment after work. But today I’m going to use the time to write up some reflections I’ve been having.

A Dream

I had a fetish-related dream the other night. I wouldn’t usually write such dreams up, but it felt significant somehow and catalysed my thought process with respect to some revelations I’ve had lately.

Trigger warning

Spoiler

In this dream, I was at some party being hosted by a female friend and I got talking to some woman I didn’t know (I don’t remember her name… I’ll just called her ‘X’!) about my fetish and how I’ve always wanted to tie a woman up. She was giving me mixed signals as to whether she was willing to be that woman but overall seemed interested. She seemed to keep indicating different chairs, asking which I wanted to tie her to, implying she was keen to place herself in the one I chose and somewhat intrigued by the idea, yet still seeming to have on-and-off second thoughts.

She eventually decided to let me. I was planning to use a roll of duct tape as that’s all that was available, but then thought to ask the host if she “had anything I could tie up X with”. She complied, going upstairs and returning with a bag full of strips of cloth.

I tied X’s wrists but as I began to then tie her legs she had freed her arms. Whenever I tied a part of her she again seemed to loosen some other part. I think she agreed to settle down and let me do my thing and I got quite close to finishing before the dream ended.

This is quite common in any fetish-related dreams I’ve had in the past… I’m about get the opportunity I’ve always fantasised about but something interrupts it (the woman changes her mind, somebody else takes over tying her, or the dream just ends). I often wonder if this reflects an unfulfilled desire to finally do this to somebody, or the fact that my first tie-up game I wasn’t the one who did the tying and furthermore had to cut the game short having been called to dinner, with no closure.

It’s all (maybe) about dissociation

Anyway, the thought that has been on my mind lately is the awareness that reaching this “holy grail” of finally having the opportunity to tie somebody up completely wouldn’t be the reward I expect it to be. I think it’s because I wouldn’t feel comfortable dissociating as the person, and furthermore that I know that whatever is going on in the woman’s head, even if she was into the fetish like I was, it wouldn’t necessarily be what I want it to be, i.e. the same thoughts I entertain in my dissociation fantasies.

A significant milestone is that I’ve come to realise that maybe this fetish or obsession or whatever I should call it has been more about dissociation than I had realised, and about the mindset of the woman in bondage In my last, and longest, self-bondage session I found it harder to dissociate as real people because I just couldn’t justify it so easily as I used to, but the lack of dissociation made the session less enjoyable. Going to the painstaking effort of finishing Naomi’s story, I found I was dissociating as her more when I was reflecting on or planning the story than when I was actually drawing it, and again the drawing or re-reading wasn’t as entertaining as I had hoped.

I just can’t dissociate so easily anymore and I don’t think I’d be able to in the ideas of fantasies I never got the opportunity to explore – partly because I respect people more now, partly because of being disillusioned by the realities that conflict with my fantasies, and in all cases through the transformation of the Holy Spirit of course! But without the dissociation, I feel little to no sexual compulsion to pursue these ideas.

There is however sexual attraction to the most of the women I fantasise about regardless of whether or not they are bound. So, there is normal sexual attraction to a woman’s body, and there is sexual attraction to dissociating as a woman in bondage, but the bondage itself adds little in the way of visual stimuli. All it does is aid in my ability to dissociation as it provides more for my imagination to work with.

Maybe that sounds confusing… but the point it that I’m realising I need to break the fantasy mindset that I associate with bondage. When I see a triggering scene in a TV show or movie I don’t think I dissociate at much, but when I’m lying in bed in the morning, half awake, and at similar times of mental vulnerability, I still fantasise, and this usually involves dissociating. It occurs to me that I’m almost sinning more in my mind when I’m not using any stimuli than I am when I am intentionally looking at material or drawing or whatever. I need to train my mind to break this association between bondage and this false mindset that I find so arousing.

No shame

Another point this dream got me thinking about is how I’m less and less ashamed of this fetish. This was reflected in the dream by how casually I was able to address the topic with this X lady. My fetish is different and a bit weird, sure, but it’s not who I am… my identity is Christ. Furthermore most people I’ve told about it have been accepting, and in some cases these people can even understand how the phenomenon of bondage can be appealing under certain circumstances.

I feel I have spent many years of my life misjudging people and not giving them the credit of assuming I can open up to them about such things. I realise that growing up being bullied, I learned to fear mockery and judgement for anything in my life that wasn’t “normal”. Perhaps, when I’ve considered sharing about my struggles to people in person, I’ve feared that this same mockery that I faced during childhood would resurface. I don’t think this bullying contributed to the fetish in any way, but it certainly made it harder for me to open up and trust other people. It’s something I need to address more in my reflections.

There’s more to the point on not being ashamed and not fearing judgement from others, but I think I’ll save that for another post for now.