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I’m Logan, and I’m no longer in bondage to sexual addiction. Being able to say those words is the 2nd biggest blessing in my life, after salvation through Jesus Christ. I spent years actively destroying my marriage, my life, and the lives of many others. I was an addict to pornography, affairs, and much more. I was, as Paul said, the chief of sinners. And I truly never envisioned a life where I wasn’t constantly mired in sexual depravity. It had become all I knew, in order to live on a daily basis. In 2016, God began to change all that. My life & my marriage now is something I literally could not have fathomed, 8 years ago. And I sincerely believe my mission on this earth is to share with others, how that happened. Because it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t quick, and I didn’t do it on my own.
BIO:
Logan is a born & raised Alaskan, married to his gorgeous bride Carrie, who herself is a 4th-generation Alaskan; and together they are raising 4 amazing but crazy little monkeys. Their life is a simple one – they love their family time, their dogs, and exploring the beautiful Alaskan wilderness. And yet, absolutely none of this should be possible today. For years, Logan did just about everything in his power to destroy his marriage and his life. Logan was a raging sex addict. Porn, affairs, hiring prostitutes, and more had simply become a way of life for Logan. He thought he had no hope. In 2016, God began to change all that. Through Recovery, God transformed Logan’s life and his marriage. Logan and his wife Carrie each now lead Recovery groups, doing what they can to give back by sharing the gifts that God has given them. Since January of 2021, Logan has been blessed to be able to use many of the tools he’s learned in Addiction Recovery, as a Dave Ramsey-endorsed personal finance coach. He’s honored to help folks find freedom & healthy living, in a different venue than just specifically recovery.
Logan’s website:
http://Logan Hufford’s Website
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Transcript Logan Hufford Part One
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast, brought to you by DSW Ministries. Your host is singer, songwriter, speaker, and domestic violence advocate, Diana Winkler. She is passionate about helping survivors in the church heal from domestic violence and abuse and trauma. This podcast is not a substitute for professional counseling or qualified medical help.[00:00:26] Now, here is Diana.[00:00:33] Hello, everyone. Welcome one and all to the podcast.[00:00:38] We have a great show this week. I do have[00:00:43] Logan Hufford this week. Now, sometimes I have on the show people who had addictions, and they were the abuser in the scenario, but they have overcome. [00:01:00] The abuse and the addictions and have gone on to help other people. I’ve had a few people with that sort of a story on the podcast.[00:01:14] Probably 90 percent of abusers never change their tune. They are lifetime abusers. They don’t repent. They don’t change. They go back and find a new victim once they are rid of the other victims in their life. But I think the exception to the rule is when addiction has been part of the dynamic[00:01:45] Cocaine or fentanyl, whatever. In this instance with Logan, my guest today, it is porn and sex addiction. So, [00:02:00] I like to have these stories on, not to glorify the addiction or the past abuses, but to show that yes, God can change somebody,[00:02:15] and people can change. Now that is if the person wants to change, we make that caveat right away. We’ve made that requirement, through the other guests on the show. For people to change, they must want to change, and they must take the steps to change.[00:02:37] I’m not going to tell you his whole story, but let me tell you some of his biography here. Logan is a born and raised Alaskan, married to his gorgeous bride, Keri, who herself is a fourth generation Alaskan. And together they’re raising four amazing but crazy [00:03:00] little monkeys. Their life is a simple one.[00:03:04] They love their family time, their dogs, exploring the beautiful Alaskan wilderness, and yet, absolutely none of this should be possible today. For years, Logan did just about everything in his power to destroy his marriage and his life. Logan was a raging sex addict.[00:03:25] Porn, affairs, hiring prostitutes, and more, had simply become a way of life for Logan. He thought he had no hope. In 2016, God began to change all of that through recovery. God transformed Logan’s life and his marriage. Logan and his wife Kerry, each now lead recovery groups doing what they can to give back by sharing the gifts that God has given them. Since January of [00:04:00] 2021.[00:04:01] Logan has been blessed to be able to use many of the tools he’s learned in addiction recovery. He’s honored to help folks find freedom and healthy living in a different venue than just specifically recovery.[00:04:17] So I’ve heard him on other podcasts and Logan’s story is really amazing and he has a unique perspective in this.[00:04:29] a different path he has taken than others. So I think you will be very intrigued by his story. So without further ado, here is my guest, Logan Hufford. Please welcome my guest, Logan Hufford from Alaska. Hey Diana. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me on the show. I’ve got some friends who live in Alaska and I think one of my [00:05:00] brothers is thinking of moving up there. It must be amazing to, to live up there in that pristine wilderness and the rivers and the mountains and the caribou. Cue the John Denver music![00:05:13] And well the rivers is like, that is an amazing part of it. There’s a lot of beauty in Alaska. My boys and I, we love watching my wife, Carrie does as well, but we love watching nature stuff and nature documentaries and like the outdoor boys who actually live in Alaska. It’s kind of cool. But you go to all the places that have rivers where you’re fishing and stuff or.[00:05:34] And it’s like, my goodness, we’re spoiled. Like you can drink out of the rivers. You can see through the rivers and see the rocks underneath. I totally took for granted living in Alaska, just how beautiful it is until honestly, until a couple of years ago, my wife is very much a, an Alaskan bones.[00:05:52] And so she’s like taking us camping, taking us fishing, doing all that stuff. So I’ve learned to love it. Tell us something that. [00:06:00] Most people think is true about Alaska, but really isn’t. Well, there’s the obvious ones that hopefully most people would know, which is no, there’s no penguins. No, we don’t live in igloos.[00:06:13] We don’t use dog sleds to get from place to place. Like there are still people that think that. No, we don’t see polar bears on the way to work. I actually a reverse of that might be. There are people in Alaska that do regularly see polar bears like that might be something that is almost flipped on its head where everyone assumes that you would never see one but if you work up on the Arctic slope as an oil field worker.[00:06:38] It’s very common to see polar bears. And then of course there’s villages up in northern Alaska where polar bears can run, in the villages. I suppose it is really boring, but it would be, that if you live in, there’s lots of towns, there’s lots of cities in Alaska that believe it or not have a Costco that have, more than one movie theater.[00:06:59] [00:07:00] There are Walmarts? Yeah. Anchorage is the main city. It’s like, well, 300, 000 people. And it’s, it’s a totally normal city. In every sense, you’re going to have multiple Costco’s multiple movie theaters, some malls and things like that. Where it gets weird is if you’re outside of Anchorage you’re going to have 1 of.[00:07:21] Everything usually, and then you oftentimes only have 1 road to get from 1 city to the next. There’s no other route. So, if you have a crazy snow day, if there’s a forest fire. If, we don’t really get flooding so much here, but forest fires and snow, absolutely. And so if that road gets cut off, you might be stuck in a city for a while.[00:07:42] Well, it sounds like it’s a great place to grow up and a great place to raise your family. And I’ll jump in right here you never associate Alaska with something like sex addiction. How does that even [00:08:00] come into play. It sounds like you have so much to do and things to keep you busy.[00:08:04] And as you say, the pristine wilderness. You were raised in a Christian home, right? So tell us what it was like growing up in Alaska. Yeah, my story. I always point out that my story is it’s unique, basically only in one way. If you look at other folks in recovery, is that it was really boring in a sense.[00:08:23] Like I, I didn’t have any crazy acute incidents of trauma, of, Brokenness of it was like this very safe, very almost kind of static upbringing. So not boring, not in a negative, but just, it wouldn’t have made for a good movie. Wouldn’t have made for an exciting movie. It was like, we ate dinner together.[00:08:46] We went to church together. We’re families close and we’re very sheltered, not as sheltered as some families, but more shelter than average. So, parents were, Definitely pretty protective over, friends that we’d be hanging around and things that we’d be doing [00:09:00] and movies that we’re watching and such.[00:09:01] But yeah, I had another way to say it, a healthy way to say it would be, I took so much for granted. I wished that there would be more excitement. I wish that we, we could have more, not that it would be bad to have, friends, but I wanted there to be more things to do.[00:09:16] Even though I enjoyed playing out in the woods as a kid and stuff like that, but. I couldn’t wait to get out of Alaska. I couldn’t wait to go experience, a city and things of that nature. In terms of the sexual addiction piece, I suppose this would be true of any addiction.[00:09:34] Ultimately, as a Christian, sin it’s an equalizer, right? There’s nobody that’s not going to get tempted. There’s nobody that’s not going to sin. And not that everyone is an addict or everyone has a struggle with sexual addiction. But, in any culture, in any city, in, people that are celebrities, that are millionaires, that are broke, if I don’t have healthy infrastructure, if I choose unhealthy choices, then I’m probably, I’m very likely to get stuck [00:10:00] in a destructive cycle whether it’s, a quote unquote addiction or not.[00:10:04] And that really doesn’t matter where I live. It doesn’t matter what I do for work. It doesn’t matter how I’m raised. So for me, even though I had this incredible upbringing compared to a lot of homes, I was very blessed and yet I chased after sin. I chased after things that were new and different and exciting and, that forbidden fruit kind of thing.[00:10:24] And I paid for it and a lot of people around me.[00:10:27] May I ask how old you are? I’m 33, I’ll be 34 here in a couple months. So you grew up, you had computers, right? Yeah, and even that’s kind of like a, is this transitional point for technology? The first time I ever looked at pornography on a computer I would say like, I arbitrarily will, I’ll pick out the age of nine as far as the first time that I looked at any sort of pornography.[00:10:51] First time I looked at a computer probably would have been 10. So, that would have been the year 2000. So, We’re not talking about iPads and tablets and [00:11:00] smartphones. We had dial up internet. We had a computer, you got to check and see if somebody’s on the phone, right?[00:11:05] If you’re going to get online. And, being sheltered. It was, I couldn’t just hop on the computer whenever I wanted. And my introduction to pornography. Was something that basically nobody would say that’s pornography, but it was my introduction to pornography in the sense that it was the first time I, because here’s my description of pornography.[00:11:26] It’s sexually objectifying the image of somebody. To me, that’s the definition. And so it was lingerie and swimwear ads in a JCPenney catalog. That is unbelievable. And that’s what I had access to. And that’s what I found. Wow. That’s old school. I’m sure my, my parents generation, they, that’s all they had really was in the early days.[00:11:51] The porn, was pretty vanilla. So it was, you had to go find it on purpose. It was hidden. You had to go to certain neighborhoods [00:12:00] certain, you knew certain people that would have the Playboy magazine, but it was very boy, girl, vanilla stuff. Now it’s, So violent and they have, children and torture and 24, seven access right in the palm of our hands.[00:12:17] But you just hit the nail on the head that yes, looking at, lingerie or people half clothed or almost no clothes on, you’re still objectifying somebody. That’s where it starts.[00:12:33] And it was on me. I want to make sure that’s clear too. I was the one who, now, did I fully understand what I was doing?[00:12:40] Not at all. Not at nine years old. But, I chose to look at that stuff. I chose to chase after that stuff. I do try to make that extremely clear. Lust, sexual addiction, the choices that I had made in my sexual life, that was my fault. That was not society’s fault. That was not porn’s fault. That was, that, that’s my fault.[00:12:58] I made those choices.[00:12:59] I [00:13:00] like the honesty that you’re bringing to the conversation. That’s so important for the listeners that are struggling with this. I’ve heard a lot of people blame it on something else. So why shouldn’t they blame it on someone or something else?[00:13:17] Yeah, and environment is can be very tricky, right? Influences can be very tricky and again, somebody that didn’t have my upbringing that. A lot of the men that I know in sexual addiction recovery, they have very tragic upbringing stories, right? Of abuse, whether sexually or otherwise broken homes.[00:13:35] And yet even, a man that I know that has been through healing, that has been through recovery, he would point to that stuff and likely say, yeah, those were tough things for me to grow up in that I didn’t deserve to have. And yet. Those did not make him a sex addict. He responded to things in an unhealthy way, but they didn’t make him a sex addict.[00:13:57] And I’ve sometimes wondered for me is like, I don’t know. [00:14:00] I did God, want to make sure that I didn’t have a crutch to point to? That, yeah, it was no, it was nothing, nobody else’s fault. It was nothing’s fault other than my own, because I didn’t have any, to point to and say, Oh, well, I had this type of upbringing, no, no wonder I became an addict.[00:14:15] It was like, no I had all the good infrastructure that you could have pretty much. There was no perfect family, obviously, but I had a really good infrastructure and yet. That wasn’t enough to make me a healthy person. I had to make my own choices. All right. So unpack your journey from when you were pilfering through the JC Penny catalogs and how did you, progress to where you’re, as you say, a raging sex addict.[00:14:43] Yeah. So I’ll give you the super, 30 or 50, 000 foot view, and I’ll let you zoom in where you want. It went from that. Which again I’ve arbitrarily picked the age of 9. I don’t know if I was 8 or 10, but it was pre puberty. I know that I didn’t know what sex was. I didn’t know any of that.[00:14:59] So it’s [00:15:00] probably 9. So, then, within a year, so now I’m looking at still images online again, very rarely that I could ever do that. But when I could and I always remember the 1st time I saw a naked woman. Initially, I would only want to see swimwear or lingerie because as a nine or ten year old, that was what I had seen.[00:15:20] And that was enticing. That was enjoyable. I liked how I felt when I saw that. So I would Google that stuff. I don’t know if it was literally Google, it might have been Yahoo, but I would search for those keywords, and I remember I was flicking through images. And a naked woman came up and how I responded.[00:15:38] Now, this is not gonna be every guy’s story. I’m sure, but how I responded was is kind of surprising to some folks. I was repulsed by it because I had not yet associated a naked woman with Again, this is pre knowing about sex. This is pre knowing about anything about that. And so at first I was like, oh, gross.[00:15:57] And I flicked past it and I [00:16:00] kept wanting to look for what I was looking for. Well, before too long, I don’t know exactly how long it was. Whether it was weeks or months or a year, I’m not sure, but before too long, all that became the next progression. Now I want to see that. Now that’s the new forbidden fruit.[00:16:15] And then within a few years I’m hooked on hardcore videos, around 13 or 14 I learned how to masturbate. And so that was this next level of, being able to do something about these highs, these hits that I’m feeling. Cause it very much is, there’s smarter people, more educated people than myself can, go into detail of it, just what’s happening in my brain, right?[00:16:35] And the dopamine hits that are happening. It’s again, not blaming it on anything, but Just like if I’m taking a drug, just like, anything else that we might think of as a normal addiction, sexual addiction is absolutely that way. I’m tying myself, I’m connecting, tethering myself to the thing in front of me.[00:16:52] And so hardcore videos. As a teenager very rare that I could find it still, very, but when I could, I would [00:17:00] I was the youngest of five. So there’d be some times where, you know, my dad’s at work, siblings are out, my mom’s at a doctor’s appointment. Okay, great. I can go hog wild. I can do whatever I want.[00:17:08] And that, those would be the moments, and even then, so, to zoom out, so from a spiritual angle, I’m not doing a good job giving you a 30, 000 foot view. You’re fine. So spiritually this whole time. Like, there’s never been a day in my life where I didn’t believe God was real.[00:17:21] So this whole time, I believe God’s real. I believe that Jesus is God who was, sent down to earth, died on the cross for our sins. Like, I believed all of that stuff and I thought I was a Christian, although I certainly was like, well, this is not how a Christian should act. So maybe I’m not, I was definitely confused and had some struggles there.[00:17:43] But I could kind of just compartmentalize at that time and just push it away. Well, I don’t do it that often, so it’s okay. It’s I’m just not going to think about it and then as an older teenager, I started because I was always very shy. I always felt that I was very insecure.[00:17:59] Felt like girls [00:18:00] didn’t like me. Girls wouldn’t find me attractive to your earlier point. Ask about Alaska. This is not so much an Alaska thing more of just where we lived. We were a little bit kind of rural. We were about 10 minutes away from the city and we were homeschooled. And so. Sports and church were the only times I was around other people, for the most part, especially girls. But as an older teenager, started going to the gym to play basketball, had more free time that way. And so then I started to open myself up to flirting with girls and seeking attention that way. And, to anyone watching, most people would have probably been, Oh, it’s just innocent. He’s just a teenager.[00:18:38] He’s just, experimenting with, not sexually, but just, talking to, and yet for me looking back on it, I was absolutely hooking myself without even realizing it on getting that attention from a girl, and seeking that attention. And if that girl wasn’t going to give me attention, then I’m going to move on to the next girl that might give me attention.[00:18:57] And it was mostly [00:19:00] internal. And I, so I still didn’t think I had like any big problem. Well, I went down to Houston, Texas in 2009. So I was 18 turned 19 down there. And that was my prodigal son moment. That was. The first time where I’m away from this infrastructure, I’m away from the safe house, the greenhouse effect, this, the family and looking back on it, on one hand, God protected me from so much cause it, there’s so many things as bad as that summer was, it could have been so much worse.[00:19:33] Like the fact that I didn’t have a car down there, the fact that there were certain like physical parameters that kept me from getting into certain types of trouble, but that’s when I experimented. Sexually with girls. That’s when I started experimenting with, mixing drinking and that kind of thing.[00:19:48] And all of that stuff, the party scene together. And I thought I was cool. I thought it was cool. I thought this was awesome. And the phrase insanity of addiction. This is the 1st time it [00:20:00] really applied. I would work for 12 hours. We work 12 hour shifts for 6 days. And I would do that.[00:20:07] And then in the middle of a work week, I would sometimes, if I had the opportunity, I would, go to somebody’s house, be there all night partying, go home, maybe get a 30 minute nap and then go back to work. And I thought this was awesome, cause this was everything that I couldn’t do before.[00:20:20] Everything that I wanted to do that I thought was, that’s what cool people do. That’s what players do. That’s what I thought. And then I came back after the summer. And it was like, I’m back to being good boy, Logan. I’m back to living in this safe, infrastructure. And within a few months at work, I met Kerrie, who is now my wife.[00:20:40] And we started dating and we talked about a lot of things. We talked about what we wanted to do in life. We talked about, even before we started dating, we talked about the idea of, that we wanted to be married one day we wanted to have kids. And so like, there’s all these things that.[00:20:55] We talked about that. We seem like there was a good fit. And [00:21:00] I’ve shared my background, my trajectory. So Carrie had the opposite upbringing. She grew up without Jesus in her house. It was a broken home. There was abuse there. There’s trauma there. And so she started out sort of here. And of course, if your audio only is like she’s in one corner and I started out in the opposite corner up here and I’m just going downhill.[00:21:23] I’m just like seeking unhealthiness. Well, she started out in a really rough spot. She was introduced to Jesus. Honestly, by somebody that was a terrible influence in her life, she would openly say that. And yet she was introduced to Christ that way. And so she’s seeking healthiness. She’s seeking a good infrastructure.[00:21:39] So we sort of met at the same point, but our infrastructures were completely, our trajectories were completely opposite. And, but in that season of life we, we saw a lot of good things in each other. Yeah. And we started dating and I had a pretty good housing situation for a while and a good [00:22:00] roommate good Christian guy.[00:22:01] And things went south there after a while. And right around that same time, I started selling cars at a car dealership and I was good at that job. I was good at, I was always very outgoing not with girls initially, but with people. But then I started going out with women too, and I was good at building trust, and I was good at building rapport, and getting people to like me and connect with me, and I completely abused that.[00:22:27] And I started to prey on women by basically flirting and seeking attention and then whatever I could take. From anybody in front of me, anyone in my path, I would do that. And so when we got married June 4th, 2011 I had cheated on my wife multiple times with multiple sexual encounters. So beyond pornography these were sexual encounters with other women.[00:22:50] She didn’t know about any of this. She knew we had, I shared with her that I struggled with pornography when we first started dating, but I didn’t tell her about any of these [00:23:00] things. During the time that we’re engaged. Did you and Carrie save? Sex for marriage, or were you having sex with Carrie before you were married?[00:23:11] Just, yeah. So I’m gonna use some weak verbiage, I’m fully identifying it’s a weak verbiage, but it’s the best descriptor of it. So we never lived together. We, had boundary and I’m using air quotes. If you can’t see me, we would set up boundaries and, And so we never fully embrace like, we’re just going to have sex whenever we want to, but we fell multiple times and we had sexual encounters multiple times.[00:23:34] So every time, like, we’d feel really bad and there was shame and that but then inevitably it would usually happen again, whether it was a few weeks later, a few months later, we were engaged for about a year. We got engaged very quickly within a couple of months and then got married about a year later.[00:23:49] Does she like thinking, marriage and it’s going to be wonderful after you’re married? Yeah, so she knew about Houston. She knew that I had, explored things that [00:24:00] I had this prodigal son, season of my life.[00:24:03] But as far as she knew. Yeah. And on some level, I believed these words, at the start of our relationship. Well, I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want that to be the case. I don’t want to keep looking at porn. Like I, I did on some level believe those statements. I just wasn’t willing to do any healthy behaviors to back them up. So there’s a lot of false resolve and false promises. When you had sex for the first time as a man, was it different from watching porn? You mentioned the what was it? The hormones that the dopamine hits. What was the difference between the first time that[00:24:40] you had real sex and how was that different than watching the porn? Was it the same? It wasn’t the same and I’m going to be very strategic how I respond to that question. The, 1st sexual encounter I had was it was with a 40 year old lady who was a drug addict and a drug dealer [00:25:00] and intoxicated.[00:25:01] And that was the setup and it was not really enjoyable at all. On one hand, it was not physically enjoyable at all. On the other hand, I was like this is so cool. This is so cool that I’m in this situation. That’s literally where I was at. That’s where my thinking was at. This is what guys are supposed to do.[00:25:20] Yeah. And now the first time that I had sex with Kerry definitely that was, even though it was wrong, it was sinful from a physical standpoint, there was a lot of enjoyment there because there was obviously the connection there, right? There was the relationship there. But and then, the first time I cheated on her physically with another woman,[00:25:40] there was definitely the doping hits. There were definitely the physical highs. But of course, there was so much shame, so much regret, so much self hatred almost instantly. Not enough to keep me from doing it again, enough to keep me from doing it maybe immediately again. There’s enough to make, Oh my gosh, I’m, I will never do that again.[00:26:00][00:26:00] And I said that, multiple times before I even got married, I said, I’ll never do this again. And not every time, but usually every time I would look at porn, I would say some version of that. Sometimes I would say that to God, God, please forgive me. And if you just forgive me and take this away, I will never look at porn again.[00:26:14] I said that so many times. There wasn’t, maybe when I was a teenager, there were times where I felt like it’s not that big of a deal, but once I was a young adult, it was pretty clear to me, like, this is not okay. I was on this slide and it was like, I kind of like the slide, I don’t know how to get off the slide, but I also knew that it was wrong.[00:26:34] Now, a lot of churches teach the idea that Once you get married, then this will cure your porn addiction. You need to get a wife to be your sexual outlet Why is that concept wrong? , right? Yeah, I’m taking a deep breath. Yes, take a deep breath. Oh my gosh. So yeah, whether it’s churches, maybe a female mentor, a pastor, a therapist.[00:26:59] [00:27:00] That has been told to women so many times. And then Like Carrie would tell you, she was not told that. She felt that though. She felt like that might be the case. Not so much in that marriage would necessarily cure me, but that she could help cure me by being better. And I certainly thought that, well, I guess in marriage, this won’t be a big deal, but okay.[00:27:20] So number one, I tried to make it very clear from the very start as a nine year old, like these choices were mine. Not anyone else’s. So on that same note. Carrie or any wife cannot cure her husband. It’s not an addiction to sexual activity. It’s not an addiction to that physical thing.[00:27:39] Now that obviously plays a part in it, but it’s for me, my addiction was I had trained myself to chase after new and different. It started with pictures, went to hardcore pornography videos. And then of course it went to physical women. But in every progression of my addiction, I was chasing after new and different [00:28:00] and more depraved and sexier and darker.[00:28:03] So Carrie can be all types of things. She can’t be a new person. She can’t be a different person. So she did everything she could to be more available, to take care of herself physically better. And she would tell you these things, but she can’t be a new and different person. And I had trained myself that would provide a bigger high, so she can’t compete with that.[00:28:26] Nobody can. No and of course we could literally do a whole series. I’m not exaggerating on that one question you asked. Yeah. But another giant point is that also to say that, like, well, if you get married, like this will just go away. That also implies that there’s a toggle switch out there somewhere that you just need to flip off.[00:28:44] You just need to switch that, flip that switch down and then you won’t have these urges anymore. I had trained myself to seek after, sexual affirmation, attention from basically. Almost literally every single female that was in my [00:29:00] path. Those are habits and routines that I had deeply ingrained in the infrastructure of how I went about my day.[00:29:07] Those were not habits and routines that were going to go away just because I was married. I had completely trained myself to act that way, to seek that, to respond a certain way. And so that was going to take a ton of infrastructure change, a ton of routine and behavior shifting. Now, there was also a huge spiritual element that needed to change too, but it was both. And that’s a piece that I don’t try to focus on, putting any blame on other folks when I’m sharing this, but just, you asked about, how the church oftentimes or just folks can give that advice, or kind of put that lie out there without realizing that, that marriage is, and another thing that it is very common in the church is this idea that, Well, you need to pray more.[00:29:53] You need to believe in God more. You need to go to a different Bible study. You need to read more books, right? Okay. Just [00:30:00] read that book. Read this book. Talk to your pastor more. Are any of those things bad? Well, some of them could be, but probably not. Right. All of those are tools.[00:30:08] They’re all resources, but It’s not about just reading your Bible more or just praying more. You absolutely should be doing those things. I needed to be doing those things, but I also needed physical accountability. Scripture is full of God using humans, right? God uses people to accomplish things.[00:30:26] He uses people as his hands and feet. And for me to just go, okay, I guess I’m just not a good enough Christian or I haven’t, I just haven’t talked to enough people. I haven’t read the right books. There needed to be a whole change in my decision making process and how I lived my life. And that wasn’t just going to come about easily.[00:30:45] And it wasn’t just going to come about by me praying, but not actually physically implementing new things in my life. And I feel bad usually for the wives, because I hear it all the time in my advocacy, is that the wives are told [00:31:00] You aren’t having enough sex with your husband and that’s why he’s addicted to porn or he’s cheating on you.[00:31:06] If you would just have more sex, well, you just pointed out there isn’t anything that she could have done to be that different person that you were seeking each time. That doesn’t fix anything to have more sex with your husband. Obviously I’m here, I’m sharing from my perspective.[00:31:22] Not only does it not fix me, it doesn’t fix the man. If I am repeatedly abusing my wife, and I’m repeatedly lying to her and gaslighting her and just treating her as if she’s valueless day after day, and then her pastor or her therapist or her friend or her prayer group is saying, well, be more available, have more sex with him.[00:31:43] That is not helpful to me. It’s possibly destructive to me. It’s incredibly destructive to her. Because now she is being put in this position. And again, I’m not, I don’t want to be triggering, but she’s been put in this position where she is essentially being told, go sign up for more of [00:32:00] more sexual abuse. And so it’s not just that it doesn’t heal me. It’s like that is wrecking her even more than she’s already been wrecked by, by her husband. And I don’t have all the answers. I have some, I’m so thankful for the resources that God’s given to me and to Carrie, but most pastors, most people in the church, most folks out there, Even that are trying to be healthy right, there trying to be helpful are not going to have great resources when it comes to most addiction but definitely sexual addiction in the betrayal trauma for the wife but at least like, so I used to meet with my pastor at the church that we went to for The majority of my life and the first half of our marriage and I give him a lot of credit because he met with me when I was at the worst of the worst, unhealthiest of all my behaviors and all this and I was lying to him and I was telling him all these half truths and I remember him telling me, he’s like, Logan, and he met with me every single week for a while, every other week for a while.[00:32:55] He’s like, Logan, I, yeah. I want to help you, but I don’t know [00:33:00] what it is to be in your shoes. Like the thought, the things that you struggle with. I don’t understand that. And I give him a lot of credit because what he didn’t try to do was to try to figure out how to fix me. He didn’t know. And he was open to that.[00:33:13] He didn’t try to give me a bunch of advice and give carry a bunch of advice. He’s like, this is beyond me now. On 1 hand, I want to make sure that people like him have resources, right? To be able to point to, but if you don’t have resources, don’t give out destructive for advice, abusive advice.[00:33:30] Again, that was, I’m starting to get preachy talking about other people and that’s not my purpose. I’m not trying to preach about other people, but no woman should have to go through that. And Carrie had no clue how to respond. And again, some of this stuff was not told to her.[00:33:44] It was stuff that she just thought, Oh, I guess I should do this. I guess I should do that. And that’s how, that’s the world that we operated in for the first several years of our marriage. Yeah. A lot of pastors have no clue what to do. And so I appreciate your raw honesty. [00:34:00] And this is what the guys and the gals need to hear that are listening because they don’t, they’re not getting this in their churches or in their communities.[00:34:09] This is a great time to continue the conversation with Logan next week. I know you’re probably on the edge of your seat trying to figure out how is he going to get out of this mess. So, we will see you next time on the Wounds of the Faithful podcast. Have a great week. God bless.[00:34:29] Bye for now.[00:34:30] Thank you for listening to the Wounds of the Faithful podcast. If this episode has been helpful to you, please hit the subscribe button and tell a friend. You can connect with us at DSW Ministries. org where you’ll find our blog along with our Facebook, Twitter, and our YouTube channel links. Hope to see you next week!