What should be done when sexually frustrated and single? How can one be content?

[billcu1]

Marrying to cure a sex addiction (or anything else, like loneliness, depression, etc) is a terrible idea. You’ll just be a married person with a sex addiction, and probably an unhappy one when you discover marriage not only didn’t help, but also brought with it additional responsibilities and problems. Bottom line is you can’t solve the problem by satiating the symptoms, and trying to do it through marriage is just plain foolish. You wouldn’t tell a drug addict to marry a pharmacist.

While it might seem discouraging, this is good news because it means that you don’t need to worry about not being able to marry or date right now. You can start to tackle the problem immediately. Have you sought professional help for it?

“…tell a drug addict to marry a pharmacist.” I like that and that’s true. That would be a pill supplier. Check out my signature. This guy had a problem too.

 

[ethereality]

As poster Lou recommended, perhaps you might also get more responses to your thread if you started a new one? Just trying to be helpful.

Wouldn’t starting a new thread clutter the forum and lead to people repeating what has already been said? By continuing the same thread for the same question, all the answers are in one spot and people will be less likely to post redundant messages, right? Why should a new thread be started? The only reason I can see is that someone may see multiple pages and assume the problem has been solved and therefore not contribute. Is that the reason you have in mind? Are there more?

 

[barhoram]

I would say that if you have a sex addiction and get married, you will just be a married person that still has a sex addition. I don’t think getting married will solve the problem.

My advice would be to try and rid yourself of pornography, masturbation, fantasies, etc. This will sound cliché, but take it a day at a time. Make up your mind that you are going to stop and go to confession and confess to the priest. This is now Day 0. Search out strategies to help you stop (rubber band technique…say a Hail Mary if you have any urge or thought, etc.,). If you have a slip up. Right back to confession. Get to Mass. Get to Communion…pray for help. Slip up again…back to Confussion. Hopefully time between slip ups will go from days, to weeks, to months. If not, you will be in line for Confession all of the time…and that will begin to help you stop in itself.

Good Luck.

 

[chevalier]

I’ve encountered this same question again: Can you contribute something that hasn’t already been said?

I think I have a sex addiction and I don’t know how to deal with my sex drive. I’m trying to live chastely in accord with the Church’s teaching for 9 months, and it seems I might not be able to last two weeks. Do you have any advice? Asking this question, I am reminded of St. Paul saying it’s ‘better to marry than to burn with temptation’: Am I to understand that there may be nothing I can do except try to marry to satisfy this desire? Why would God be so cruel as to give us such a strong desire with no means of satisfying it? (I am in no position to get married financially or career-wise, and the life I am currently living makes it essentially impossible for several years; even to date is apparently impossible until I can obtain greater proficiency in Japanese, which will take much time.)

He actually doesn’t give us harder challenges than we can take. Not withholding the challenges from us means He loves us, like the father who knows better than to put the children in a gold cage. He also provides sufficient grace, always, to help. He’s not cruel, He’s just capable of making difficult decisions for our own greater good, even where a human father would flinch. Imagine a colonel who ends up with his own son for a private in the regiment and has to allow him to grow into a mature soldier. At war time.

 

[ethereality]

He actually doesn’t give us harder challenges than we can take. Not withholding the challenges from us means He loves us, like the father who knows better than to put the children in a gold cage. He also provides sufficient grace, always, to help. He’s not cruel, He’s just capable of making difficult decisions for our own greater good, even where a human father would flinch. Imagine a colonel who ends up with his own son for a private in the regiment and has to allow him to grow into a mature soldier. At war time.

I don’t see how this describes the reality I am facing:

My body has an urge for sex. My body wants sex. All I can do is ignore it, or give it sex. Like food temporarily makes hunger go away, “sex” (achieving a physiological response) temporarily makes the urge for sex go away. I’m trying to ignore this urge, trying to focus on my work; I’ve already prayed to God, asked God what I’m supposed to do with this urge, and the only answer I’ve gotten has been to ignore it. But ignoring it hasn’t made the urge go away. I can understand the cat outside my apartment that’s been meowing loudly, almost in pain lately, apparently wanting the same thing. My problem is that it is nearly impossible for me to meet women to begin dating in my current situation in life. God seems cruel to give me this urge and not have it go away and give me no approved means of escaping/satiating it.

 

[chevalier]

I don’t see how this describes the reality I am facing:

My body has an urge for sex. My body wants sex. All I can do is ignore it, or give it sex. Like food temporarily makes hunger go away, “sex” (achieving a physiological response) temporarily makes the urge for sex go away. I’m trying to ignore this urge, trying to focus on my work; I’ve already prayed to God, asked God what I’m supposed to do with this urge, and the only answer I’ve gotten has been to ignore it. But ignoring it hasn’t made the urge go away. I can understand the cat outside my apartment that’s been meowing loudly, almost in pain lately, apparently wanting the same thing. My problem is that it is nearly impossible for me to meet women to begin dating in my current situation in life. God seems cruel to give me this urge and not have it go away and give me no approved means of escaping/satiating it.

A lot of challenges or difficult skills or jobs look unsurmountably difficult in the beginning but childishly easy when you practice and acquire some skill. Even computer games are a good example of this (especially arcade or simulators). Some time ago I ended up playing Dirt 3 because I’d enjoyed rallies etc. in Dirt 2… but in Dirt 3 there were those awfully hard twitchy non-races known as ‘gymkhana’ and believed to require a game controller (wheel or something) and not be doable on a keyboard. I could only do the easiest, most entry-level ones and then without great success initially, for a long time. Eventually, not only did I start to beat the #### out of the most advanced tracks — on a keyboard made for professional typing and not gaming (tactile Cherry MX blue switches) — I even began to enjoy it and have fun and move effortlessly through the ‘challenge’ like I wouldn’t even think possible several weaks earlier. ‘Not doable on a keyboard; you need a wheel for that,’ pshaw. Apparently, a guy with legimitately impaired co-ordination (born 2 months pre-term) and not only a keyboard but the wrong kind of keyboard did it. So much for impossible!

And it’s similar at work too.

It’s similar at work when you put many hours into something and allow yourself to settle in, sometimes because you have no other choice, sometimes because you’ve forgotten how it’s supposed to be difficult and depressing etc. I’m sure you know a couple of people who seem very agile and dexterous with their hands or even white-collar jobs. Skill works like this. It’s no different learning to live as a healthy young male with no wife, though the bar is obviously set very high. But it’s possible. Yourself, you’re actually making it, it’s only that the difficulty level seems to be getting to you. But don’t worry about that. As long as you’re getting results it doesn’t matter you’re forced to push yourself to the limit to even stay in the game. The game moves on and you’re still in, that’s what counts.

Think about Korean Starcraft players. Stuff those people do… But few people even have an idea of what a training day looks like.

Applies to me as well, I’m hardly in a different situation from you.

One very useful thing to realize is that an urge is an urge. It can make you feel miserale, it can lead to emotional anguish and even produce acute physical pain and impair your intellectual powers (concentration and focus mostly but also discernment to some extent), but it doesn’t have the power to actually move your limbs or make you agree or disagree with something. There’s pain, but you’re still in control and you’re allowed to tell the urge no, unlike what some modern people think — simply feeling a powerful urge doesn’t mean you’re somehow obligated to either give in to it or eradicate it. And living with unfulfilled needs and even urges doesn’t make you a loser, either. You aren’t a loser if you’re still fighting, because the fight’s not over yet, so there’s no winner or loser.