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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 are talking about sexual fantasies. I know this is not the most comfortable topic, but it's so powerful. The biggest breakthroughs in my life and finding freedom and healing from pornography came when I finally understood what my sexual fantasies were about and I learned how to relate to myself in a whole new way. So five years ago I was watching a video by Dr. Patrick Carnes. I was researching everything I could on sexual addiction and he started talking about sexual fantasies and all of a sudden it clicked and I realized I'm not a freak. It's not my fault. I'm not the only one. And my fantasies are not random. There are reasons behind them. There are always reasons. And this is what I help my clients figure out when they come to me and they're talking about their sexual fetishes and fantasies. Sexual fetish has been part of my story. We interpret them. We actually focus on them until we can figure out what they really mean. And that's what I want to help you do today. As one of my clients, Jacob said, I no longer run for my sexual fantasies. Instead, I listened to the story that they're telling. So how do you listen to that story I'm about to teach you. A sexual fantasy is not the same as a sexual preference. So let's be clear here. A sexual preference could be like, Oh, I like blue eyes or I like Brown eyes. The sexual fancy is a story. It's an image or a video. It's more visual and it captures you. It has this magnetic pull on you. It's arousing , it's exciting, it makes you feel alive and you might not understand why. You might even hate the fact that it's arousing to you, but it's a fantasy because it's a deep seated dream. And those usually are what pornography offers us. Not just preferences about certain traits, but fantasies about a specific kind of person and a storyline. And maybe there are physical things that you find arousing. For me, a sexual fetish was part of my story and I hated myself for that until I understood why. So if you're watching this, I want you to know you're not a freak, it's not your fault and it's not a random occurrence that you have specific sexual attractions to things that might be weird. It might be strange. I'm the same way, or at least I have experienced the same things and I've also experienced a lot of healing. So let me give you a couple of categories for how to understand your sexual fantasies, repetition and reversal. So repetition is when you go back into your story and you say, okay, what have I seen? This kind of thing that's showing up in my fantasies. What have I seen that before? In reversal you're saying, when have I seen the opposite? Or you can say this sexual fantasy, how it make me feel. One of I felt that way before. That's repetition and one of I felt the opposite. That's reversal. So for me, my sexual fetish, which was very specific to middle school, goes back to when I was 13 years old. And what was happening in my life at that time. Well , I actually moved from Canada to Texas and I had a deep, deep longing to be accepted to be someone who belonged, and this specific sexual fetish symbolize that for me, not verbally, but visually. And there was also a theme in all of my fantasies of power and domination where the other person involved in my sexual fantasy was either submitting to what I wanted or resisting it, and I was in control and I didn't like that about myself. I hated that, but it was still attractive to me and I kept coming back to it. Why the power and domination thing turned out to be a reversal when I moved from Canada to Texas and I have no control over that move. I went from a small boy school to a large public school. I felt completely powerless and so these teams of power and domination were giving me what I longed for, what I wanted, which was to be the one who decides what I get to do, to be the one in the driver's seat, to be in control. And that's not part of who I am. That's part of what happened to me. And so therefore it was part of what I deeply desired. And when I could go back into that story, find that little boy who needed love changed everything. So I actually created a free video series with Jay stringer, the author of unwanted on this topic, it's called the sexual fantasy framework. So go to the link for this episode, watch the video series, and this will give you specific guidance from a Christ centered psychotherapists and me on how to interpret your sexual fantasies and love the little child on the other side of them. Because that's ultimately what we need. The self hatred, the self-loathing that is so much of the power of why our fantasies continue to haunt us. And when you can see that, Hey, it's not your fault. This is something that happened to you and you can understand why. And you can go back and [inaudible] bring self compassion . Woo . It is amazing the level of freedom you'll be able to achieve. So go down to that link, go to the sexual fantasy framework. And always remember my friend, you are God's beloved son in you. He is well-pleased .