Official Blog For Author Fred Stoeker

I emailed you a few months ago and told you my story and asked you what books you recommend for me, and I want to thank you for responding. I just finished your trilogy tonight (Every Young Man’s Battle, Tactics, and Hero) and I have been challenged in ways I have never dreamed possible.  I’m still single, but God has laid it on my heart to prepare for marriage by fighting for my purity, by reading Christian books on marriage and by asking my pastor for advice about marriage even before God allows me to meet my wife. The most important thing I’ve learned besides how to fight for my purity is that I need to encourage my brothers and my sister’s in Christ to join me in the fight. God has laid it on my heart to buy your trilogy for the other guys in my youth group. I already bought one set for one of the guys and I’ve let my youth pastor borrow my set. I’m so excited to see what God as for me in the next few weeks and months with in this battle. I also want to congratulate you on being a strong influence upon your son and family, and tell Jasen and Rose that I said congrats on their marriage and winning their fight. Thank you again for writing these books. May God bless you!

My husband and I are both ordained in our denomination. We married just after he graduated from seminary and right just before I began my first year of seminary. During our first year of marriage, we spent one semester in separate cities a good distance apart, so we only saw each other every four weeks. In the between times, we relied sexually on lots of phone calls and a few revealing pictures of each other.
 
Here’s where my thinking was at that time: Since we were married and living apart, I thought giving naked pictures of ourselves to each other were okay. I also thought that battery-operated vibrators and other sex toys were okay to use in the meantime, especially when we used them over the phone while talking to each other.
 
After that first semester, my husband resigned from his call at his first church and he moved to my city for my seminary years. During that time, we gave birth to our firstborn, and though we had agreed long ago that porn had to go completely from our lives, now it seemed even more important. I thought it WAS completely gone from out lives. One evening while my husband was at work, however, I stumbled across our browsing history and found we had been getting huge amounts of x-rated emails “for no good reason.”  Well, I found out there had been a reason…my husband’s porn habit.  
 
I called my husband at work and told him to come home immediately. While he was on his way home, I packed his bags. When he came inside the front door, I took his wallet and keys, and gave him his car key, his driver’s license, $50 and his suitcases. I told him we had some work to do and that I would talk to him the next day, and then sent him back out to his car. I also called his mom in Texas and gave her a heads up so that she could help by praying for us both.
 
I allowed him to move home the next day, but I insisted he stay in the guest room for six months. We began counseling, and he joined a SA group. We bought your book Every Man’s Battle, as well.
 
I couldn’t understand all this, because I still thought that his sexual sin was about me, a reflection on me as his lover. That’s why it didn’t make any sense. I’m one of those women who loves to have sex with her husband. I love it, lots of it. I love creative stuff, too, so I couldn’t imagine why he was going elsewhere. It just blew me away.
 
It wasn’t until I’d gone through similar “discoveries” like this three more times over our twelve years of marriage that I finally got it. It isn’t about me. But do you know what else I’ve learned over this time? I always thought that those sex toys and vibrators were helping our sex lives together, but I’ve found that they can be just as damaging in a marital sexual relationship as the porn.

It is obvious why the porn is hard on a sexual relationship. I can NEVER live up to the images he sees online, because I’m real. There is no airbrushing, and I’ve had three kids.

But just like I can’t live up to the porn images, he can’t live up to what those batteries and vibrators can do to my senses. The more I used them, the less sensitive my body was to him. I became dependent upon that extra-impressive stimulation. Worse, the vibrators were available when he wasn’t. He didn’t mind that I used them on my own at first, since my sex drive is a good degree higher than his is and he saw the toys as something to bridge that gap for us. Not anymore. 

We have now banned the battery toys and vibrators from our bedroom. In fact, we’ve banned any form of self-stimulation from our home. I am happy to say it is a battle I am winning and that my body has returned to normal. Now that I’m allowing him to be my sole source of stimulation, I respond to him better than I ever did before.
 
While we are still battling the hold porn has over my husband, we are standing together with each other and with God. Some days I wonder how long it will be until we are totally free. That may sound discouraging, but I don’t see it that way. We are advancing together, and it is at least a big difference from wondering IF we will ever be free, like it was before.
 
Thank you so much for your work. I just wanted to help your work by sharing my own struggles with self-stimulation, a struggle that exacerbated our problems. There are many wives just like myself with high sex drives. We feel the same shame of rejection that you say husbands feel when a wife tells him “no” for no good reason. We, too, often look for substitutes. The problem is, our substitutes are just as destructive to the marriage bed as our husband’s substitutes. 
 
I continually praise God for revealing that to me. Can you help me share this revelation with your readers?