Romance and O.C.D. Part 1

If I asked you who your first major crush was, would you be able to describe him or her? 

My first crush was “the new kid on the block”. He was a new transfer student to our town in middle school. And, given that we were in a tiny town, with a tiny pool of options, all the girls went crazy for him! He spiked his hair perfectly every day, had a natural tan, occasionally wore Hawaiian shirts, wrote the cutest home room notes, and always had on a white pukka shell necklace. Hubba, hubba!! Or at least my middle school self thought so!

I get tickled when I remember “dating” back then. It consisted of possibly speaking to each other while at school in the hallways, writing notes during home room, and making occasional calls on our land line phones during the week. And if we were really lucky, maybe, just maybe, our parents would drive us somewhere for a “date”, (where they were most likely near by watching us closely). 

Ahhh, the good ol’ days! Simple. Innocent. Uncomplicated. Safe. That’s how dating felt for me. 

But then things begin to happen in our culture. And what felt innocent, simple, uncomplicated, and safe…began to feel scary, confusing, and complicated. What felt fun and natural, suddenly felt like a threat. In the time between early middle school and my late 20s, my O.C.D. was so deeply affected by these changes, that dating, marriage, and intimacy no longer felt like an option for me. They became off the table, unbearable to even think about.

So what changed? How does a person, or a culture for that matter, go from one extreme to the other?

Two words: Accessible Pornography. 

I understand that pornography existed long before I was in middle school. But during my middle school years, our society began to bombard us children with graphic, vulgar, explicit, aggressive, and even violent images and videos of sex at the touch of the finger through the internet, social media, and cell phones, like never before. Images and videos would pop up before we even knew what we were seeing. 

And with that change, I began to notice a shift at school through out that period as well. Suddenly guys were huddled in the corner of a classroom looking up porn on the internet, and planning how to accomplish such “goals” with their girl friend. Girls began dressing so differently, and flirting in ways that weren’t familiar. Shopping with the girls became all about finding the sexiest underwear. I began to sense a new wave of expectations surrounding conversations, hang outs, dates, and the exchange of numbers.

The safe felt scary. The innocent felt tainted. The natural felt uncomfortable. 

Honestly, looking back, it feels like the culture at that time ripped our safety net right out from under us as children, exposing us to things we didn’t even fully understand. The result in our culture, in my generation?  A sky rocket in sexual addictions, pornographic addiction, sexual abuse, sex trafficking, abortions, STDs, rapes, divorce, affairs, and so much more.  Not to mention generations of relational, sexual, and marital devastation. And that’s just for the common man and woman produced from that cultural shift. 

Now add in a mental disorder, like O.C.D., that traps images and experiences in the mind, replaying them over and over like a graphic horror movie… The result? Utter devastation—a mind so warped by intrusive images, irrational fears, and overwhelming feelings, that true healing seems impossible. 

So how do we heal? How do we even begin the process of recovery when the new “norm” seems to be living with deeply rooted scars, fears, insecurities, addictions, heavy baggage, abuse, past traumas, and unrealistic expectations when entering a relationship? 

I hope you’ll follow along in this very open, very vulnerable, but very needed conversation. Why? Because I don’t know many individuals from my generation, and the generations right around my age group, that haven’t been negatively affected by this in some way or another. This conversation is not meant to shame, to guilt, to put down, or to criticize anyone. Quite the opposite! This conversation is meant to enlighten, renew, re-claim, and refocus a pretty broken culture.