Every Man’s Battle Podcast

Announcer: Welcome to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast brought to you by New Life Ministries. In this podcast, you’ll hear honest conversations and encouragement for living a life of sexual integrity. In every episode, licensed marriage and family therapist JJ West and licensed professional counselor Doug Barnes break the silence around sexual integrity struggles that millions of men face but rarely discuss openly. Each episode offers practical strategies and genuine hope to dissolve the shame and isolation that keeps men trapped in destructive cycles. Let’s get to today’s episode.

JJ West: Hey everybody, welcome back to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast. We are, as usual, so glad that you are listening. We can’t believe that we continue to get to serve in this way. It’s a privilege and an honor. It’s kind of stunning that they would let us on the microphone, yet they do, and so we’re really glad that you joined us today.

We are continuing our series on getting to know the facilitators for the Every Man’s Battle Intensive. Today we have the privilege of being joined by Bob Sklar. Bob is the OG of facilitators for Every Man’s Battle, and we are privileged to have him. Bob, welcome and happy podcast day.

Bob Sklar: Thank you so much. The OG. That sounds great. In our vernacular, it’ll be the original guard. The guys who started it all. We’re usually so busy on the weekend that we don’t sit around and talk about our stories a lot. We talk about what’s going on in our lives and the challenges.

My first time working with Every Man’s Battle was like me attending my first weekend and going through the process. It changed my life. Not only did it change my life, but I met connections like I’d never met before, which revolutionized my recovery. It was the missing piece.

I got into recovery in 1990. That was 36 years ago. I bottomed out in my addiction and I got into recovery. I had been in recovery for 18 years before I got to Every Man’s Battle. I had a relapse right before I went to work for Every Man’s Battle. It was God’s perfect timing because He had something more for me. It was entering into real recovery and connection, which connects to core bottom values of connection with God, self, and others. It changed my life.

JJ West: That sets up exactly what we want to talk about. I can’t wait to hear. Let’s dive in there with what led you to recovery in the first place way back in 1990. You said you bottomed out, so tell us a little bit of your story of how you ended up in recovery.

Bob Sklar: My story actually starts way before bottoming out. I grew up in a home where my dad was Jewish and my mom was Southern Baptist. We had no religious background or foundation. The rule of our house was that we just didn’t talk about it.

Most of us come into recovery wanting to know the one thing that got this all going. As I tell you my story, it’s not one thing. There are a lot of things. I think it’s important for us to pay attention to all of the different systems that are involved in getting us here. I spent a lot of time in therapy trying to work on that one thing, but it was a lot of different systems that were doing it.

I’m going to point out a few of the "one things" that ended up in the "many things." It identifies my triggers and identifies some of my core pattern behaviors. I’m a big fan of identifying the patterns. They are templates. My dad was an engineer and he had this little template thing on his desk. When you put your pencil around it, you got the same shape every time.

For me, there were little templates that got set up all through my childhood that were the setups for what became my sexual addiction. My sexual addiction was an illegitimate way of trying to meet my needs. My dad worked for an oil company and we moved every three years, so I was leaving friends and making friends. I was also a creative, artistic, musical person. I wasn’t a sports guy. That left me not feeling like I fit in a lot. There was a core wound of "I don't belong" and "I want to be accepted."

When I was six years old, my brother was six and a half years older than me, and he was inappropriate with me sexually. What dropped out of that was poor boundaries around my body, learning how to manipulate other people to be sexual, and objectifying. The other thing was the pattern of hiding because of shame because I couldn’t tell anybody. It fit in with the rules of the house of not talking about stuff.

When I was 10 years old, I was visiting one of my male cousins who also molested me. I was 10 and he was 16. He could drive and he was a football player. He was all these things that I didn’t feel I was, and I wanted to belong. He paid attention to me and I was vulnerable to that. When that happens to you, it changes you at the cellular level.

My viewpoint of the way I saw the world became sexualized. Objectification really hit there because I started seeing everybody as a potential sex partner, not as a person, because that’s what all I was. I didn’t even realize how much that had all shifted, but my world changed.

When I hit puberty around twelve and a half, my older brother bought the next-door neighbor kid's Playboy collection, and that got moved into our home, into our bathroom. The other thing that was occurring at 12 years old was that I was the shortest, fattest, non-athletic kid at school, at least in my mind. All that angst where I didn’t feel like I fit in, I would come home and there was pornography waiting for me with open arms.

None of us ever plans when we start looking at porn and masturbating that one day we're going to become a really good sex addict. We have no idea. But that was the beginning. The pattern started. A bad day at school, couldn't sleep, anxious, depressed, whatever, I could come home and I could thermostat my feelings.

That became a life pattern for me of moving out of reality into unreality. If my reality wasn't good, I could take a shortcut. Instead of doing the work that it took to feel better, to connect with real people, and to talk about stuff, I could do my shortcut and get out of reality. Recovery is turning that process around and learning how to not take the shortcuts emotionally and physically to get my needs actually met.

JJ West: By the end of high school, you had created a lot of wreckage in your life.

Bob Sklar: In the 70s, it was very promiscuous. I didn't realize it, but I was already a sex addict. Every girlfriend was a potential sex partner. I had pornified my brain. All my values and the way I saw sex and sexuality were all reflected from the stuff that I had learned there. I certainly couldn't talk to my family about it. My peers only gave me bad information, so that just reinforced it.

JJ West: There’s a quote by Nietzsche that says when he’s talking about the addict, he lies his way out of reality because he has been hurt by reality. That’s our life as the addict. Reality hurts, and so we create a whole new reality that doesn't hurt as much.

Bob Sklar: Shame reinforces that because shame tells you there's something inherently wrong with you. You know you're in shame when what you want to do is hide, withdraw, and be angry and defensive. That shame held me and it really showed up later on.

By the end of high school, I was playing in a rock band. That band broke up, life kind of blew up, and I ended up working at this vitamin factory. All the kids that worked there were these hippies with long hair that were going to church and talking about Jesus. They invited me to go to church and I heard the gospel and gave my life to Jesus. My life totally changed. Even my parents got saved because they noticed this huge change.

JJ West: How old were you then?

Bob Sklar: I was 18 years old. A new pattern emerged. After about three years of being really on fire for Jesus, I thought that Jesus was going to fix all this. He has been a part of fixing it and He has been redeeming me all along, but I didn't realize how much I had not really given my life to Him. There were still secret parts that I wasn't letting Him in on yet.

I started a new pattern in my life called my relapse pattern. The relapse pattern goes like this because I’d negotiate with my addiction. I told myself I’m not going to really do this, so I’d start looking at something like a Maxim magazine, but it’s not porn. Then that wouldn't be enough because of dopamine. Dopamine always wants something new, novel, and more intense. It would move to something else.

It would move from Maxim to a real pornographic picture, but then that wouldn't be enough, so then I’d start doing flirtatious behavior. Flirtatious behavior would lead to an indiscretion with somebody. That was the pattern. I’d repent and go back.

That’s what happened when I met my wife at 23. I thought that with Jesus and being able to have all the sex I could have anytime I wanted, that would solve this problem. I thought this problem was a sexual problem. It’s a connection problem, not a sexual problem, but I knew nothing about emotional connection. It took another 18 years.

Announcer: You all have done me an excellent service through this referral network of counselors. For over 35 years, New Life has been the most trusted name in Christian counseling. I found a counselor through New Life Ministries and it’s just been outstanding. If you need a counselor, whether in person or virtual, New Life can help. We have a nationwide network of licensed Christian counselors. Call us today at 1-800-NEW-LIFE. That’s 1-800-639-5433. To get someone that’s competent and good at what they do has been day and night compared to what I’ve had before. 1-800-NEW-LIFE.

Bob Sklar: I told my fiancée at the time that I had a little issue with sexual stuff. I minimized it and I was not honest. I have a lot of regret about not being honest with her on that day so that she could make a real choice about her life. She has loved me, cared for me, and forgiven me all through this journey. I should tell you her story of bravery of walking through this.

We got married and there were two bottoms. About five years in, I had an issue and broke sobriety. I did my act-out pattern and we went to our pastor who told her that if she lost weight and gave me more attention sexually, that would fix the problem because it's a sexual problem. That was so hurtful. We have recently had another conversation about how harmful that was to her to lay the blame on her.

I stayed sober for a little bit more time, but I still hadn't gotten into any kind of recovery. About 10 years into our relationship, which was about 1990, I relapsed again. As I wrestled with telling her, God was telling me I had to be honest with her and tell her what happened. I thought I could shove it down and I could lie, but the Holy Spirit wouldn't let me do that. I wrestled and then I told her.

This time, it wasn't like she said she was glad I told her and we were going to get through this. She said she had paid for this all this time and I needed to do something or get out. I’m so glad she did that. I had a friend that was going to AA and he had told me about the 12 steps and getting sober. I thought I’d call him and maybe he could help me. I was too ashamed to go to a sex addict's meeting, so I went to AA and identified as an alcoholic. I started working the 12 steps and doing recovery at AA because I was too ashamed. They were very kind to me there and I got some really good recovery started there.

Then I started going to regular 12-step meetings. There was a lot of really good stuff about doing regular 12-step, but one of the things that was really harmful for us was that idea of you working on your side of the street and me working on my side of the street, and hopefully, we're going to get well enough and be okay.

The problem with that was that it allowed me to do a really bad disclosure to her because I drip-fed stuff. I blew holes all through her road, and I bear responsibility for being a part of helping her heal that. I didn't wake up to that until 18 years into my recovery. In that initial thing, I did a really bad disclosure. I kind of hid behind the idea that if it harms her, then I probably shouldn't tell her. But I’d already harmed her. By not really being honest, I created mistrust. We ended up having to redo disclosure again later on down the road. I postponed my wife's healing process by having that attitude.

About midway point in my recovery, I quit going to regular 12-step meetings and I thought I could do this in my men's group at church. I didn't have to say what was going on. I would just surround myself with guys that I could lie to really well. I wasn't totally breaking sobriety, I was just edging here and edging there. Eventually, that caught up with me.

When I got sober the first time, there was not internet porn. I had to go buy stuff. 18 years in, someone told me about internet pornography. I took that for a year because I thought I was okay now and I could do it one time and I’d be okay because I can manage this. My addiction is a terrorist. It will capture you and kill you, and it did. Simultaneously as I had this relapse, my wife got thyroid cancer.

She re-evaluated her life and said she didn't want to live like this anymore. She said we need to get right or I had to get out. We went back and we redid disclosure. we started being absolutely candid about all the stuff in our lives. The other thing is that I learned how to be a container and a holder of my wife's grief, pain, and her feelings. Thank God we were really fortunate we got to counsel with Miley Yurkovich, which was life-changing.

I left out the part that I was originally a barber. Then I became a marriage and family therapist. As I finished up my therapy thing, I really wanted to work with men who struggled with sex addiction. About that time, I got hired to do Every Man's Battle. It all converged. He answered my prayer for help. I little did I know really what God was going to do in my life by becoming a part of Every Man's Battle.

JJ West: How did that happen? How did you get connected to Every Man's Battle?

Bob Sklar: As a therapist, I had clients that were coming in that had gone to the weekend and they were telling me about their experience. I made a call and started trying to get in to work for them and work with them, and it happened. Where things really changed is that I attended and doors got blown off. I really learned some new things about the core value of connection with God, self, and others. My wife said the two things that really changed is that I quit blaming her and I started telling the truth by being rigorously truthful.

How I learned that was being in relationship with the guys that I met. My first group was Doug and Jim. It wasn't officially Sustained Victory, but I can't even tell you what I didn't know when I met those guys. One is that there was honesty, transparency, and challenge in those relationships. It was scary to hang around them because they'd ask me questions and I learned how to be honest about my life.

I remember not even knowing how to talk about my feelings. So many times I would call Doug and I’d say I don't know what I feel right now, but I feel something. He'd back me into the parking place and I started learning feeling words and I started learning to talk about my needs. Through my relationship with those guys, they challenged me that we can't ask the guys that come to our weekend to do things we aren't doing.

That stuff started permeating and living out in my life and it transformed things. I didn't just get sobriety. I got a life. God redeemed my life. Instead of coloring with the eight crayons in the crayon box, I got the 64-crayon box. Life totally changed. God's redemption is amazing.

JJ West: It’s so much bigger and better than we ever imagined. Many of us tried to do sobriety and tried to do it on our own. We tried to negotiate with our addiction. How many times did we think, "Will this satisfy you? If I just give you this much, that'll be enough, right? Then you'll leave me alone and then I can be okay." No, it wants that and all that you have. It just keeps clawing.

If you're in the audience right now and you've heard Bob's story, you saw how many times me and Doug raised our hands because we were like, "Yep, that's me." If that's you, you've bottomed out several times and you started your sobriety over and over, but you kept trying to negotiate with your addiction. You were able to maintain sobriety for a little while, but you kept coming back to those same core patterns that Bob's talking about. You never really entered into recovery where you learned how to do connection and intimacy with God, with your own heart, and with others.

If you've never done that and you've even been listening to the podcast thinking this will be enough, don't you get exhausted? How many decades did you delay your wife's healing? Don't delay your own healing and don't delay those who are with you, your wife, your children, your parents, the people that you go to church with. Don't delay the healing for them because you're still trying to negotiate with your addiction. We don't negotiate with terrorists. That's what our addiction is. It's a terrorist and all it wants to do is destroy you.

So, if that's you, if you raised your hand as many times as I did today, pick up the phone and call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. Go online to newlife.com/emb and sign up for the next Every Man's Battle Intensive. Get to your breakthrough. Move from sobriety to recovery. Move from managing your addiction to getting a redeemed life. Bob, thank you for being on. Next week we're going to continue our discussion with Bob. We're going to talk more about his story but also specifically how his story relates to the importance and the impact of Sustained Victory. Until then, let's keep walking in integrity.

Announcer: Thanks for listening. This podcast is one of many ways we can encourage and help you. If you’re looking for more help, visit us at newlife.com or call 1-800-NEW-LIFE. To receive bonus content exclusive to EMB podcast email subscribers, send an email to embpodcast@newlife.com with the words “bonus content” in the subject line. If you have a comment about this podcast, we’d love to hear from you too. Drop us a line at embpodcast@newlife.com. And please remember to review, like, and share the podcast as it helps others find us. See you next week.