Welcome to the husband material podcast where we help Christian men quit pornography so you can change your brain, heal your heart, and save your relationship. My name is drew boa and I'm here to show you how. Let's go.

Today we're talking about relapse. I know relapse sucks. Preventing it is important, but responding to it is even more important and when you respond to it well, you will also prevent it in the future. I have relapsed many times and most of the approaches to relapse I've seen just don't work. So today I'm going to teach you what is a relapse, how to think about it and how to respond to it. Personally. My first strategy for responding to relapse was keeping a tally. Every time I successfully resisted temptation, I put a little check on a piece of paper and every time I gave into temptation I put an X and eventually this became really discouraging and it actually reinforced the shame and self hatred that kept me coming back to porn. I wonder if you resonate with that. I wonder if you count the days since you last sexually acted out and then when you do, you have to start all over again and go back to days zero. Well, today we are going to change that. There is a much more healthy, effective, empowering way to respond to relapse and I'm going to teach it to you. Let me tell you first of all, what is a relapse because that's super important. You might be surprised to learn that different people think differently about this. My favorite definition comes from Michael dye and the faster skill where he says relapse is returning to the place you swore you would never go again. Doesn't that resonate with you? That's exactly how I feel about relapse and yet not all relapses are created equal. So Mark lacer, the grandfather of Christian sex addiction treatment distinguishes between a slip and a relapse. A slip S L I P is a sudden lapse in progress. It's like you're on the road to freedom and then you pause for a moment or you go onto the shoulder for a moment, but then you come back. Maybe there was an instance of masturbation late at night when you were in the middle of a wet dream and it was a slip or maybe it was a thought that you dwelt on or a fantasy that you entertained for a while, but it didn't turn into a full scale relapse. Now for him, a relapse is a more sustained lapse in progress. Maybe you start going in reverse on that road or you swerve into the swamp. The point is, it's important to recognize that there are different levels of relapse here, but returning to the place you swore you would never go again is what I'm going to be talking about in this video. How should you think about relapse? This is my favorite, most important insight on relapse. I want you to reframe, don't view relapse as failure. View it as feedback. Reframe relapse. Listen, I know in the middle of a relapse you feel like a failure. It feels like you failed. Don't dwell on that. It's going to push you deeper down into the self hatred. It's going to push you right back into porn. But if you take a different angle on it and viewed as feedback, you're asking yourself, what just happened? What does this tell me about myself? What can I learn from this? Let relapse be your teacher. So here's the motto. You can use research your relapse, treat it as this treasure chest and you have so much to learn from it. Look into that relapse. Go into every detail of the events leading up to it, the emotion surrounding it, the wounds you might've been medicating, the experiences you might've been repeating or reversing. Listen, relapse is probably the most honest area of your life where you are telling yourself what's really going on. So listen, as Jay stringer says, listen to your lust, research your relapse, and it will be an amazing teacher for you. Some of the best lessons I've ever learned in my own journey have come from me with, and in 2014 I learned lessons that have sustained me for the last five years. My final relapse taught me some of the biggest lessons that I've continued to teach other guys. So reframe your relapse not as failure, but as feedback and how should you respond to it? Three ways except three things. Number one, accept the invitation. Intimacy. God is not surprised by your relapse. He is not ashamed of your relapse. While you may be picturing him having a, a feeling of distance towards you or disappointment in you, when you picture the expression on God's face, listen, here's the reality. It is one of loving the light. The father, the son, Jesus Christ. The Holy spirit are drawing you into intimacy. They're saying, my son, my daughter, you've been far from me. Come home, come back. Let me love you. Let God love you in the middle of your relapse. That is the first[inaudible] you need to accept. I know you want to push him away during that time. I know you feel so sinful and unworthy during that time. He wants your sin. He came for your shame. He pursues you when we run away from him, he runs after us even faster, so stop resisting and just accept the love of Jesus Christ in the middle of your relapse. Then except the information you relapse. It's telling you something. So accept the information, research it, and then say, alright, this is what it says about me. This is what it says about how I need to grow. This is what it says about what was really going on in my heart, what was going on in my mind. And then number three, except the instruction for every relapse, each time there's a takeaway. I promise you there's something you can do differently. There's something you can learn. There's some kind of repentance, not just confession and telling somebody about it, but repentance and taking action to prevent it in the future that you can implement and you probably will have a very clear view of this. Once you do the first two steps, you accept the invitation to intimacy with God. You reject the shame, you reject the lies, you receive the truth of the gospel. Secondly, you accept the information, but what this relapse says about how you're doing, about what's been going on, and then you accept the instruction about how you can move forward and continue to gain momentum on your road to freedom from porn. Question of the day, what do you do to prevent relapse? What do you do to respond to relapse, either for yourself or what do you teach others? Let me know and if you want to use this process that I just outlined for you of how to respond to a relapse and you want to keep doing that. Well, I made a worksheet for you and you can download it at the link attached to this episode on how to respond to a relapse. Until next time, always remember, no matter what's going on with your sexual behavior, you

are God's beloved son in you. He is well pleased. Download your free worksheet. How to respond to a relapse@husbandmaterial.com slash five.