Where it started Pt2.

So now I had access to some really strong stuff. Little did I know that I would be drawn to far darker material later in life. At this point the "High" I was getting off this new material was more than enough. My self-gratification was also reach an all time high. Some days it was hourly. And as far as I knew this was not out of the ordinary. All my friends, privately, admitted to do it, so what could the harm be. In my mind this was all just preparation for getting a girlfriend. When that happened I wouldn't need to do it. Now that may have been the case if I wasn't revving my engine up so high, and it definitely would have been the case morally as I had no relationship with Christ.

This cycle went on year after year. In some ways I knew that it was wrong, but it felt so good. And who was it hurting. In reality it was hurting me! I didn't get a girl friend until I was 18. It didn't take long for us to start into sex. Now this was what I had been waiting for. I was sure that this would replace self-gratification completely. Boy was I wrong. Between experiencing "The Real Thing" and my magazines, of which now I had access to picking up my own. I was burning even hotter than before. I was a dog looking for a bone. So this relationship went on for a couple more years, until I found out that I wasn't enough for my girlfriend and she had been "busy" with a few other guys. I decided I would become like some of the guys I knew. Getting what I could from a girl, then dumping her. It was all about trying to quench the fire now. No love, just lust. No relationship, just sex. No romance, just the fastest moves that would allow me to get into a girls pants. God, of course, had other plans.

The next girl that I met and started to date, would eventually become my wife. Now to begin with I just wanted to get her pants off. I played it cool. She was interested in me, I was interested in her, but not in the same way. We had coffee, out with mutual friends. I would ride my bike, yes bike, home and would ride with her as her place was on my way. We talked, and talked, and talked. She was very interesting. We kissed and she was VERY good at that. We touched... and the fire burned hot. It wasn't long and I had been able to save for a car, so now we could drive to coffee and park when we came back. Cars and sex seem to go hand in hand with young people who burn without knowing the Lord.

Coffee, talking then sex, became the new order of business. Self-gratification and magazines still played a large part of my life. There seemed to be no issues with any of it. God was being very patient with me, and keeping me from getting either of these two girlfriends from getting pregnant. Thinking back on it, I can't believe how stupid I was.

Well eventually my wife needed to move out of her mom's house. Her father had passed away and things were a little out of control there. It didn't take long for us to move in together, my parents house was starting to suffocate me, and she couldn't afford anything decent.

Now playing house when you are young and burning may seem like a good thing, but I now understand how it robbed us of a great deal of intimacy in our, later, marriage. Life went on!

We were together several years, still childless (thank you god), and Tanis just asked me one day when I was going to marry her. I hadn't even thought about marriage. I was getting regular sex, had a place to sleep, eat and find entertainment. My magazines were mostly tame ones, the others were stashed were Tanis couldn't find them. And when needed could be brought to the bathroom to deal with any issues as they "Arose".

Now Tanis knew about the tame ones, and she really didn’t think it was as big of an issue as it was. She didn’t see me looking at the playboys. She never once caught me self –gratifying. So to her it wasn’t a big deal. May be if we had dealt with it then it wouldn’t have caused the problems it did later. (That is later part of the story)

Now to me getting married should not have changed our lives much, but it really did. Tanis got pregnant within the first couple of months, our sex life started to slow down, and life became stagnant. It wasn’t long after Stephanie, our first daughter, was born that Tanis recommitted herself to God. She had grown up with a strong Christian father, a man that later in life I would strive to become like. So this reconnection was new, and our sex life suffered for it. In talking about it later on, Tanis admitted that she had always felt guilty about having sex outside of marriage, but until she reconnected with God, she hadn’t cared. All I knew was that I was pissed off. How could she do this to me, didn’t she know how hot the fires in me burned? Didn’t she understand what she was making me do? It was like being a teenager again. Little to no sex, lots of magazine “reading”, lots of taking care of MY needs. I was sure that when we found out Tanis was pregnant again that things were going to get worse. And I was both right and wrong. God was about to give me a wake up call!