Be a Victor, Not a Victim

“Be a victor, not a victim” is a quote I heard when I was in sixth grade, during a church service at an extraordinarily large church around the corner from my home and my dad’s relatively small church in Redford Michigan. The mindblowing scale of the church and the simple directness of that quote have stuck in my memory for decades. These six words can help reframe a situation that appears hopeless, by encouraging a shift in mindset from “I’m going to wallow in sadness and stay stuck,” to “I am going to do something about this to change it.”

When first getting into recovery for sex addiction or pornography addiction, men almost always show up sitting in “the victim seat” as a counselor I once worked with calls it. The problem with that is twofold. First, when you are in that mindset, you are relinquishing power to change your circumstances because being the victim means you are blaming someone else for where you are and you are not taking accountability for your own actions that put you there. Essentially, you end up waiting for the person you are blaming to change, so you can change and that completely robs you of your agency to get out of where you are and so, you stay stuck. Second and most importantly, you are not the victim.

At the beginning of recovery, guys want to point the finger at their wife. They shine the spotlight on all of the things she has done, all of the wrongs they perceive she has done to them, and in many ways, they blame their wife for all of the struggles and strife in their marriage. While of course, no one is perfect and their wife may not have handled every situation perfectly, the thing that is undoubtedly, actively burning their life and marriage to the ground is their addiction and the accompanying lying and deception to hide it or minimize it. In my experience, when husbands or partners finally look in the mirror and realize “the problem” is staring back at them, that is when real recovery begins.

That is what happened in my own recovery journey. I spent the first precious years of my marriage concealing my pornography addiction. I lied to my wife, played the victim, pointed my finger at her, and blamed her for all of the problems that plagued our relationship. My wife and I wasted dozens of hours and hundreds, maybe even thousands, of dollars on counseling trying to fix “the problem” all while I was showing up to sessions unwilling to tell the truth. Honestly, during that time, because I was so lost in my addict mindset, I did not realize how much my addiction and deception were hurting my marriage and even worse, hurting my wife. It took me a long and very painful time to finally realize that I was not the victim, I was the problem.

Once I had made that realization, I had a choice. I could reach out for help and choose to be a victor, or I could choose to stay hidden, keep blaming my wife, and decide to remain the victim. My wife made it very clear to me, in no uncertain terms, that she was not willing to move forward in our relationship in any way whatsoever until I came clean and told the truth. So for me, the choice was pretty clear-cut. If I wanted any chance at saving my marriage I had to choose to tell her the truth and seek help.

At the time, the decision to bring my addiction into the light was excruciating. I did not feel like a victor, I felt like a total loser. After getting into a recovery program and taking ownership of the problem I dragged into my marriage without my wife knowing, I began to experience victory over not just my addiction, but in my relationship with my wife. Because I finally admitted that I was the problem, stopped blaming my wife, and sought help, my wife and I are still married today. I am a victor.

While choosing to stop being the victim was a choice I made for myself (with some very strong motivation from my wife), my recovery would not have been possible on my own. I needed the support and feedback from my recovery counselor and the guys in my recovery group to help me fully examine who I had allowed myself to become in my addiction so I could make changes to become who I am created to be. If you are struggling with sex addiction or pornography addiction and you are ready to choose victory, I would love to connect with you and hear more about your story. Recovery in isolation is not possible, reach out today.