Jesus asks this question, “Do you want to get well?” in John 5:6.  I admit that my answer to that question was “no” for a lot of years.  I got pretty good at walking in hypocrisy.

Across the first 18 years of my marriage, the porn addiction would blow up about every 2 years, and I’d act all sincere about getting help, but all I wanted to do was get Jana and others off my back.  I learned enough about recovery to sound like I was doing the work, introspective and vulnerable, really ready this time to do something different.  But I liked my sin, and wasn’t ready for a break up.

In 2007-2008, I spent a year walking through 12 step material from Doug Weiss.  A friend led a group and shepherded me in this process, and part of the work was to establish consequences that would fire at the next round of acting out.  Reviewing this with Jana, we decided at that time that if I acted out again, I would move out.  That’s exactly what happened in 2009, the start of the 18 days.

Lesson 2 would be, I was not ready to actually do the work to get well until my consequences were significant enough.  Up to that point, I knew I could hang on to the life I wanted and hang onto the addiction.  When I faced losing my family, I got serious about change.