The Fantasy Fallacy Exposing the Deeper Meaning Behind Sexual Thoughts Shannon Ethridge [[TNI logo]] © 2012 Shannon Ethridge All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc. Thomas Nelson, Inc. titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected]. To protect the privacy of clients, some names and details have been changed, and some stories are composite characters. All of the contextual elements and results, however, are true. 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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [[TO COME]] ISBN 978-0-8499-6469-5 Printed in the United States of America 12 13 14 15 16 XXX 6 5 4 3 2 1 - Contents Foreword: by Stephen Arterburn [[TO COME]] Note to the Reader: Fifty Shades of Reality Introduction: Reading Between the Lions 1 Why Discuss Sexual Fantasies? Behind the Curtain: How Is Fantasy a Friend? 2 The Benefits of Boundaries Behind the Curtain: Retraining Our Brains 3 The Faces Behind our Fantasies Behind the Curtain: Sophia’s Layers of Loneliness 4 Pornography: The Fantasy Factory Behind the Curtain: From Pain to Pleasure to Pain Again 5 Bartering With Our Bodies Behind the Curtain: Searching for the Softer Side of God 6 When “One Flesh” Isn’t Enough Flesh Behind the Curtain: Brent’s Rock Bottom 7 The Lure of Lesbianism and BroMances Behind the Curtain: Tracing the Roots of Same-Sex Fantasies 8 Our Fascination with Pleasure, Pain, and Power Behind the Curtain: What’s Up with Sexual Fetishes? 9 Putting Fantasy in its Place Behind the Curtain: Free at Last! Conclusion: The Rest of the Story Appendix 1: Ten Excuses that Turn Fantasy into Painful Realities Appendix 2: Providing a Spiritual and Sexual Safe Haven Appendix 3: Twelve Steps to Recovery Appendix 4: Additional Resources Notes About the Author A Note to the Reader Fifty Shades of Reality My friend Natalie was the first to alert me to the existence of the Fifty Shades of Grey fiction trilogy. Through a brief e-mail she asked, “Have you seen this? It’s about BDSM—bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism!” I didn’t think much of it, until I started hearing more and more talk about it on television. I saw an interview on our local news with a married couple. The wife was saying how she and her husband were reading the book together to create some steam in their sex life. He sat beside her nodding slightly, grinning from ear to ear, hand on her thigh. I thought, Hey, that’s great! I’m all about a married couple fueling their sexual energies for one another! Woohoo! Maybe we’ll read it too! The media droned on about it, but I noticed the interviews becoming slightly more hostile. Many folks were looking at the books through a completely different lens. “They’re pornography…smut…trash!” many declared. I recognized those as fighting words, and wondered what all of the hubbub was about. When someone sent me a link to Saturday Night Live’s “digital short” spoof about the Fifty Shades of Grey, my radar lit up. It aired around Mother’s Day, featuring well-meaning husbands and children bringing gifts to mom, only to discover her reading the book and masturbating in bed…in the bathtub…against the washing machine. Hmmm…obviously not all women use the book to fuel their marriage bed. Some must be lighting their own fires and hiding the smoke signals from their husbands. I set a Google alert and began reading what others were saying about the series. Some insisted that reading the book was harmless. “Readers know the difference between truth and fiction!” was a common mantra from the advocates. However, adversaries insisted, “If society believes that this is what women want, we’re in danger!” My red flag waved wildly when yet another Google alert revealed that sales of whips, chains, and other BDSM-related paraphernalia were on a drastic uphill climb… thanks to the Fifty Shades trilogy. Soon the series had sold 10 million copies within six weeks, and a friend told me there was a waiting list for the book at her local library of over four hundred people. As I read blog post after blog post, some proclaiming the pros of the literature, others crying out about the cons, I realized a culture war wasn’t just brewing—it was raging already! Although I didn’t see the Fifty Shades onslaught coming, no doubt God did. And I think He let me feel the ground rumbling. For three years I’d been saying, “Someday I want to write about sexual fantasy!” However, I realized through all of this media madness and literary-critic chaos that the time for the book wasn’t someday. It was now! Fortunately, I’d already read so many books, combed the professional research, conducted tons of interviews, and done lots of praying and soul searching about where I stood on the matter of sexual fantasy. Other than actually developing the manuscript, I knew I had one more bridge to cross. I had to actually read the Fifty Shades series. I couldn’t write a “Christian Response” to something I’d never read. My husband bought it for me, and we prayed that God would give me eyes to see it through His lens. I confess I secretly hoped that it would throw gas on my already-steady sexual fire for my husband. The verdict? I didn’t need him like I thought I would. Oh, I needed him to hold me, but not in response to sexual arousal on my part. I needed him to hold me while I wept. My heart absolutely broke for the naive twenty-one-year old girl who, after knowing him less than one week, gives her virginity away to a man who wants her to sign a “domination/submission” contract which will allow him to ritualistically beat her anytime he wants in the name of sexual pleasure. The theme that runs through the book is chilling: “Wow, this older, incredibly handsome, filthy rich guy wants me! That must mean I’m something special!” and “Sure, he’s sick and twisted, but my love will change him!” It actually reminded me of a girl I used to know. I still see her reflection in the mirror every morning. I’m just thankful that she looks at herself, relationships, and sex very differently now. And I pray every day that my own 20-year old daughter will never experience anything even remotely similar. Whether you’ve read Fifty Shades of Grey or not is entirely beside the point. If you’ve chosen not to I assure you that you will not be lost reading The Fantasy Fallacy. We won’t even mention anything else about the book until chapter eight, mainly because we’ve got a lot of foundational work to lay exploring the broader topic of sexual fantasies in general before we explore BDSM in particular. If you did read Fifty Shades of Grey, whether you were fascinated with it or freaked out by it, I’m glad you’re holding this book. I believe it’s going to help you “chew up the meat and spit out the bones” when it comes to sexual fantasies. And I’m praying the same prayer over you that I’ve prayed over myself – that God would give you eyes to view all things sexual through His lens, and no one else’s. Introduction Reading Between the Lions At the time of this writing, I’ve been alive almost 45 years. That’s 16,425 days…or 394,200 hours…or 23,652,000 minutes. And of those 23.5-plus million minutes, there’s one minute in my history that’s been incredibly pivotal, incredibly holy. Oddly enough, I slept through that one minute. But I awoke with an unshakable “knowing” that the sixty-second dream I’d experienced would have a deeply profound meaning for me the rest of my life, and perhaps for many others. If I could only be faithful to what had been entrusted to me in that dream. This book is my attempt to do just that. It was the fall of 2011 when, snuggled beneath my goose down comforter with limbs wound tightly around my full-length body pillow, God slipped into my slumber and brilliantly brush-stroked a cryptic message that was simply too marvelous for my own brain to have produced on its own. In this dream, I am standing out in the middle of a sun-ripened-gold wheat field, wearing a flowing white dress. Perched on each side of me, one to the left and one to the right, are two majestic lions. I have my arms positioned at my side with my hands dangling in front of their heads, as if I could be petting their manes. However, my hands weren’t in their fur. My hands were in their mouths! I sensed I should be terrified that the powerful jaws of two such mighty beasts were enveloping my defenseless hands. But I noticed that I was experiencing absolutely no pain…no blood…and certainly no fear in this dream. I did have a fleeting moment of concern that “if my hands are occupied in these two lion’s mouths, then how will I ever get anything done?” Yet there seemed to be a supernatural peace blanketing me completely. I awoke, suspecting that until I’d thoroughly analyzed and successfully deciphered this dream, there’d be no rest or satisfaction for my soul. I was right. But what could it all mean? A few days later, I was talking on the phone. As the time approached for me to wrap up the call and get ready for bed, I was startled to recognize what I’d been subconsciously doing over the past half hour. Although I don’t usually do this, I’d been doodling with a ballpoint pen on the back of an envelope. And what I had obliviously drawn was an embarrassingly amateur sketch of a girl…standing in a wheat field in a flowing white dress…with a lion on each side of her…you guessed it, her hands in the lions’ mouths. No longer satisfied with disrupting my slumber, now the image was invading my waking hours too. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. Perhaps some sort of trumpet call, proclaiming my eminent epiphany. Soon thereafter, I was driving down the same road I’d traveled hundreds of times. But this time, a particular sight caught my peripheral vision, and I found myself stomping on the brakes without even thinking, craning my neck to take it in. There on someone’s front porch steps were two small concrete lions, and further back on the porch, closer to the house—in the background yet positioned directly between the two lions—was a white statue of an angel in a flowing gown. It was as if that angel and those two lions had some sort of supernatural power to suck the air right out of my lungs because that’s exactly what that sight did to me. I sat there in the car staring out of my window, jawbone almost touching my sternum, tears rushing into the corners of my eyes. I wanted to knock on the front door and ask if there was some kind of story behind this configuration, but I realized that this wasn’t their story. It was my story. And here it was, resurfacing once again…begging to be unraveled…longing to be understood. I snapped a picture on my iPhone to capture the moment. It would be the first of dozens of similar photos taken. The following week I was riding my bike when suddenly what felt like a heavenly hand grabbed my head and twisted it gently to the left as if to say, “Shannon, don’t miss this!” With absolute amazement I recognized that of the hundreds of houses I’d passed on today’s bike ride, this one that had set off some sort of supernatural radar was decorated with…yep…lion statues. I thought it might just be a Tyler, Texas thing to have two lions in your front yard. I just found it so odd that I had lived in this area and driven throughout this city for almost fifteen years yet never noticed a single set of lions anywhere until after I’d had this dream. Then I saw them everywhere. And in the coming months, my stone lion radar proved amazingly accurate regardless of where I was traveling. I can take you directly to stone lions perched in places as rural as Grand Ledge, Michigan or as metropolitan as Los Angeles, California. My spiritual GPS was guiding me to them, pointing out the soul work I had yet to do. Soon my psyche began screaming, “How long before you unravel the deeper meaning behind all of this?” So I set about my research in every way I knew how. I combed the internet for the symbolic meaning of lions. I began reading books on interpreting dreams. I met with two different counselors who both had some great insights. I asked certain people to pray for me, and to offer any explanations that God may impress upon them. While I can’t say that I’ve completely solved the mystery, I will say that I have made significant progress. And I have come to believe that the dream has multiple layers of meaning. Some of those layers have been kind enough to explain themselves. Others have proven a little