Integrated
You don't realise how different your values are till you have to explain them.
Saving myself for the man I'll marry is not so bad. It's not unheard-of, although maybe a bit old-fashioned. But when it comes to eschewing porn and other so-called "harmless" activities, that's a different kettle of fish altogether.
Talking about "cybersex", someone said to me recently, "It allows you to express yourself sexually without breaking your moral principles." Implication being, since it's online and you're not really doing anything physically with another person, it doesn't count.
Sorry, but in my book it does count. We can't go around separating different parts of ourselves. "This one doesn't involve physical intimacy, so it's okay." But it still involves your mind and emotions, doesn't it?
Dad was the one who taught me that it is important to have congruence and live an integrated life. If you hold onto something, then you have to apply it across the board, otherwise it has no meaning. How can you apply values selectively? If you apply them selectively, they become mere excuses and rationalisations.
I can't be fragmented and say that I sin with porn but it's not that bad because I don't sin by having sex with guys I'm not married to. I can't compartmentalise like that. If I want to live a moral life, let me go all out to live a moral life. If I want to be profligate, Iet me live a completely dissolute life. After all, if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing well.
I suppose this is what gives me problems... when I try to overcome addiction to porn and keep failing, it makes me feel fragmented. Kinda like what James wrote about the tongue:
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring? My brothers, can a fig tree bear olives, or a grapevine bear figs? Neither can a salt spring produce fresh water.
Of course some people tell me, "It's okay, you have needs and need to fulfill those needs." To which my response is, yeah, of course I have needs -- I'm only human -- but I don't have to let my needs rule me, do I? Shouldn't I be in control of them, rather than the other way around? Again this is why addiction to porn tears me up so much... because it puts the so-called 'needs' in the driving seat, and the rest of me is just dragged along on the ride. There's something so wrong about that picture.
I admit that I have high standards -- others might say impossibly high or unnecessarily high. But you see, trying to figure out what I can get away with isn't an exercise I allow myself to indulge in. I simply can't (and don't) function that way. It's very difficult to explain this to a person who thinks I'm just being too hard on myself and putting too much pressure on myself. It's such a fundamental part of me that I take it for granted.