Every Man’s Battle Podcast

Guest (Male): 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 to the Every Man’s Battle Podcast. We are so glad that you are joining us today. I’m joined as usual by Doug Barnes. Hey Doug, great to see you.

Doug Barnes: Hey JJ, good podcast day to you as well. And I’m excited about our guest today.

JJ West: Me too. For those of you who are watching online, you can see that we’re joined by a special guest. And those of you who are listening, I will introduce you to Joe Elliott. Joe has been a facilitator at our Every Man’s Battle workshop for quite a while. We’re going to dig into his story today as well as just trying to understand how our stories help not only set us free but help set other people free.

So we’re excited about this. We’re kind of continuing this series in season one. Doug, you and I shared our stories and then earlier this season, we started in with learning the stories of some of the other men who facilitate small groups. Once again, this was started by a suggestion by one of our participants, one of our listeners, who said it’s really great to hear other men’s stories because there’s something in each person’s story that you can connect with. So we’re doing that today. So, Joe, welcome to the show.

Joe Elliott: Thank you, guys. It’s really a pleasure to get to hang out with you again. I want to welcome all the viewers and listeners, and hopefully, my story will resonate with some and give them some hope and keep them working recovery.

JJ West: Well, I’m sure that it will, and I’m looking forward to them getting to know you better and really for us to get to know you better as well because we get to dive deeper into your story, which is going to be so good. So but let’s start with the fact that you have been a facilitator for some time. Tell us how long you’ve been facilitating groups at Every Man’s Battle and how did you get connected with Every Man’s Battle?

Joe Elliott: I’ve been facilitating breakout groups at EMB Intensives since 2018. A couple of years later, in 2020, I started my first Sustained Victory group as a facilitator, not as a member. I had been doing that longer. Originally, I went to EMB because I needed it. I got hooked up with it by virtue of some friends of ours. My wife shared our difficulties with some close friends of ours, and how they knew exactly, I’m not sure. I’m speculating that they listen to New Life Radio. That was back in 2011, which by the way, for our viewers, here is a circa 2011 EMB manual.

JJ West: Wow, that’s a throwback.

Joe Elliott: Indeed. Well, aren’t we all? That’s true. Yes, indeed. Yes, we are. Not only are the workbooks we pull from throwbacks, but those that are talking to you are throwbacks as well. So, Joe, I’m so glad that in God’s sovereign providence, He allowed you guys to talk with your friends who then talked to you about the Every Man’s Battle Intensive and that you got to go to that.

So let’s back up a little bit. Let’s talk about the story before your wife shared with them what the struggles were that you guys were going through. The story that we typically share at that first breakout at the Every Man’s Battle Intensive. Can you give us a 10-15 minute synopsis of your story of your own sexual brokenness?

Joe Elliott: Absolutely. I have my EMB timer here to tell me when to wind it up. It will be very low-key, little dinging. I use that at every Every Man’s Battle, so everybody gets a chance to share in that first session.

First, I want to lay some foundation. I come from a very extended family of steps and halves and adoptives and foster families. As a result, that created a lot of discontinuity in my father figures. As hard as they all tried, as motivated as they were to try to father me, it changed every couple of years, it seemed like.

Upon reflection, I realize the primary male role models in my life were Colonel Hogan of Hogan’s Heroes and Jim West of Wild Wild West and number one was Captain James T. Kirk of the USS Enterprise. Only years later, as I was reflecting on that, did I realize or remember that in every episode, those stars slept with the guest star actress. Back in those days, I wasn’t consciously getting those ideas of manhood, but they definitely played a part. That was what you did.

But my sexual story starts back earlier when I was about six years old. I remember my folks had some friends, a couple, Ken and Joe. Ken was an artist and Josephine was his favorite model. They gifted our family with a life-sized portrait of Joe in the nude, except for a thin towel across her lap. That was up in a prominent place in our house. It is not my thesis that nudity in art is bad, but for me, it laid a foundation for objectifying that sunk in pretty quickly.

Fast forward not too long, about age seven or so when my folks divorced. Those were actually Mom and first stepfather, so they divorced, but he had adopted me, and so he got custody. When he was single, he kept pin-ups in his closet, but you have to open a closet daily. For the younger members of our audience, back in the day, there were magazines of pornography and in the center was a fold-out that we called a pin-up. I’m not being facetious. I’ve had EMB attendees ask me, "What’s a centerfold?" So that’s what they were, naked ladies on paper.

So that again continued my objectification or being programmed to use the human body for my own pleasure, even though I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do with that. I just saw it. I did know there was a pornography novel that was in my dad’s bookshelf. I know I read it, but I couldn’t have been that young because I recall it must have been a couple of years later that I accessed it.

But once I started doing that, I started noticing the sex scenes in other regular novels or commercially available ones. Everyone who is listening, do not go find the scenes in Jaws and in The Godfather. I was going back to them, so from those descriptions, I began to mimic them with neighborhood kids, with my stepsister, half-sister.

I began to frotturize while playing with other children. That’s a technical jargon for rubbing my body up against them. Then in school, a couple of years later, when my little girl schoolmates were beginning to have training bras, I would force my hands on them in the guise of popping their bra straps or pretending to tickle. But it was still me trying to explore these weird sensations that were beginning.

Around that same time, nine or 10, I began acting out such scenes. I was living with grandparents at that time and in privacy, especially at night after they would go to bed, then I would use the couch and the couch pillows and the space between the cushions to practice intercourse. Also, of course, the showers provided a privacy for me to masturbate without ejaculation until one day at about age 11, I accidentally ejaculated. Not surprising, I quickly became chronic. I was masturbating from age 11 or so, two, three, several times a day. I was quickly raw or scabrous and sticky with whatever sort of non-water-soluble slidey stuff I could find in the cabinet, conditioner or shampoo, anything like that.

I began to try to figure out ways to get schoolmates to join me in that. That led to seeking girlfriends. 13-14 was not successful. I think that’s where I began to adopt some masks of a caring friend, also the caring boyfriend, which was a primary mask that I used going forward. I was what we became, as soon as I could, what we call a serial monogamist. I did not attempt sex with a whole bunch of girls at the same time, but would find one girl and convince her that I loved her. We would go steady. Ask her to go steady with me and then eventually convince her to give me sexual access, which escalated to intercourse when I was 15. That young lady was the first of at least two ladies who gave me their virginity, a cost that I caused some other people damage I did to other people.

Somewhere in there, actually maybe a couple of years earlier, I had come across some gay porn. As the years developed, I really stopped caring what was the gender of the person that I was getting sexual pleasure from, though for all appearances and I would go steady with females. Then part of that serial monogamy, I would use my girlfriend for sex until I found somebody else. Then I would cheat on my girlfriend and get together and go steady with the new one and did this for several years. I cheated on all of the girlfriends.

When I was 16 years old, the night of my 16th birthday, I spent hours with a buddy at a peep show, an adult bookstore, pornography bookstore. My point there is in the EMB and Sustained Victory, we talk in terms of primary boundaries. Those are the sexual misbehaviors or violations of our sexual integrity. In my lifetime, I violated every single one. So that includes adultery, emotional and physical, strip clubs, masturbating to porn, everything except massage parlors and then later on the video chat stuff that came on. That was after my time. For whatever reason, those are two I never accomplished. And now I never will. I think maybe massage parlors were because I was a cheapskate. I didn’t want to pay that much at one sitting, so to speak, though I certainly would put as much down at topless bars.

After I got out of high school, I went straight into the Army. Army towns are pretty wild and woolly. Little towns pop up with businesses to cater to soldiers. That’s when I first began hiring prostitutes, spending a lot more time in bookstores, and actually got married for the first time there because of just wanting to have a wife and figured that would give me sex whenever I wanted, which by the way, is not true. Just in case we have younger, unmarried members of the audience, we want to dispel you of that myth.

By the way, I’ve been married three times. My current wife, Kyra, is the first and only one with whom Jesus is the third member of our union. I count the first two as victims, but really Kyra has been as well. By the time I married Kyra, I thought that all of that was behind me, all of my failures of sexual integrity were behind me. I had shown her my collection of porn and devices and such when we first started dating and she let me know in no uncertain terms that she was not interested in such things.

So I felt actually didn’t have a whole lot of stress in saying, "Okay, fine, I’ll give that all up for you." Soon after our wedding, she began to confront me about ogling women, which I consider a form of voyeurism. Ogling, checking out, those are ways that we minimize that behavior. Literally, I experienced psychological denial in its purest form usually when she would confront me. She would say, "Why are you looking at that woman?" and I really would have no memory. "What are you talking about? What woman?"

Of course, yeah, what? No. Now, occasionally I was indeed ogling and when she busted me, I would then just lie. "Well, no, I’m not looking at that female over there, I’m checking the price of cereal," and what a deal. But for the most part, it really was I was oblivious, just the sign of such ingrained failure of sexual integrity.

JJ West: And by the way, just for the audience’s sake, we’re laughing along there, not to diminish or make light of the deception, but we’re laughing at ourselves for how silly, how foolish our flimsy excuses were for our behavior. And we’ve all done it. Every one of us, right, exactly. So I just want to be clear in terms of the audience that you understand what we’re laughing at. We’re not laughing or minimizing the pain that that caused. We’re laughing at the foolishness of ourselves in behaving that way. So anyway, just want to be clear on that.

Joe Elliott: Thank you, that’s an important point. And yes, so whenever I laugh about such things like that, it really signifies this. So one day I was talking to Kyra, we were standing in a parking lot, standing by our car, and I got a crick in my neck. I realized that I had watched a stranger walk all the way across the parking lot until it cricked my neck.

I realized at that point, this is what Kyra’s been talking about. The times that she confronted me and I denied it, I immediately to myself said, "That’s no big deal, boys will be boys, she’s being oversensitive, and I’ll try to decrease that." But that hit me. I didn’t pay attention to paying attention and realized, wow, I’ve got some things that I do out of habit that are beyond my awareness. So if she’s noticing this, I’m hurting her and I need to do something about that.

That was the point at which we spoke openly about getting some help. She said, "Well, as it happens, I’ve been talking to Kathy, our friend, and she knows about this program, it’s called Every Man’s Battle, and I want you to go." And I said, "Absolutely, I will do that." Got online, now at this time we were living in Huntsville, Texas. There was an EMB a couple of weeks later in Dallas, Texas. So I jumped onto the email, filled it out, was able to get a scholarship to it, everything covered except my travel, I drove up, and some lodging, but for the most part was a beneficiary of the great donors that New Life Ministry has. Attended New Life, the Every Man’s Battle weekend, and I know that you have some questions coming about what I would do differently, and so I will prepare to segue by saying the weekend was outstanding, very moving, very motivating, and I did not sign up for Sustained Victory.

JJ West: You didn’t. Okay, yeah. For the, as Paul Harvey would say, for the rest of the story, right.

Guest (Male): Five years ago, I had been in porn addiction and I’d had a sexual relationship out of marriage. Every day, men struggle with sexual integrity: impure thoughts, strip clubs, affairs, pornography. For over 20 years, New Life Ministries has been helping men regain their integrity through their one-of-a-kind Every Man’s Battle Intensive and it’s coming to a city near you. To find out more, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE or go to newlife.com. 1-800-N-E-W-L-I-F-E.

JJ West: So thank you so much for sharing that, Joe. I mean, it’s just really helpful to hear the different stages of the story and the increasing awareness. Right, God kind of drops these little opportunities for us to recognize and to and these calls to repent and we get closer and closer. Then there’s that moment where it’s like, oh, I can’t hide from this anymore. I can’t deny this anymore. I can’t minimize this anymore. So really appreciate you sharing all of that.

As you went through Every Man’s Battle and then your subsequent recovery, can you share with us maybe one or two things that you’ve learned along the way that’s made an impact on your recovery?

Joe Elliott: Absolutely. The number one, and a lot of this will be straight out of EMB, of course, but it is not just an attempt to be obsequious to New Life Ministry, but also it’s true that the fellowship that we start with the brothers in the battle there as well as whether it’s in Sustained Victory or in just our brotherhood of brothers in the battle. Why we call them that. Similar experiences and similar dedication to working recovery. Through that, the EMB materials and the books through New Life Ministry, of course, are outstanding.

Then in that social network or that fellowship learning about other tools and models and just the sharing of information. Drawing out my life story was imperative. We talk about that at times because there are so many well, talking about four decades in my case. And so I can throw them together, but like you point out JJ, that we have false memories or confused memories, and some false memories actually.

But for example, that novel, that’s why I mentioned that novel. I know that I was six years old when I saw that novel and in my mind, I actually see myself in that apartment reading it. There’s no way because I understood that novel. So obviously it was a couple of years later, but the connection only by doing my timeline did I figure out, oh no, I left that apartment too young to have read it, so that must not have been then.

Then among the different concepts in talking concepts of shame, learning what that means, what it doesn’t mean, but how the we talk about the wounds of incompetence, insignificance, impotence, where they emerged or how they were gestated, if you will. I use those daily. Fortunately, I don’t have to use them daily, but when I am encountering some challenges, on an ongoing basis, yes, thank you. When relevant, I have these key concepts to think, "Oh, that’s what’s happening here." And so don’t react to that, but instead take corrective measure and talk about it. My wife knows what wounds mean and I can talk to her, "Hey, my insignificance wound got aggravated today," or "I’m hesitant to do this because I don’t want to feel incompetent." And so she, just like other brothers in the battle, we have that vocabulary and can support each other.

JJ West: Oh, that’s so good. I’m so glad that you and Kyra took that step of walking through that together, that you shared that with her. It’s not just you’re doing your recovery over here and then I talk to her about the budget and where we’re going to go on vacation, but no, I include you in these conversations about recovery so you understand me. Because that’s a heightened level of intimacy when I can know that I say, "Oh yeah, I’m feeling incompetent." Oh yeah, let’s talk about why you’re feeling incompetent rather than having to explain that or you’re just stuffing it and feeling it inside but never actually verbalizing it. I love the fact that you guys do that together. That’s so important.

Joe Elliott: Absolutely. Yes, she to clarify and to emphasize, a wife is not an accountability partner. Correct, agreed. But she absolutely has to know the vocabulary, the importance of when I make a check-in call or respond to a request for a check-in call.

For the listeners, I asked her for feedback or just for observations of her experience to be able to share with the guys at EMB and SV and she made a point or she answered one time to say, "I forgave you soon after EMB, but I did not begin to rebuild trust in you until you started Sustained Victory." In my case, that was quite a long period and that was eye-opening.

Just as a shout out for her, several years after I’d been in Sustained Victory, I would ask her, "Hey, is there anything as a wife in the battle you would like to say through me to men at EMB?" After several years, she recorded a very brief greeting and encouragement message to include a little prayer that I play at every EMB Saturday morning. She literally begins to pray for us a few days ahead of time. I warn the guys like, "She doesn’t know your names, but she has been praying for you, for us." She puts about a two-minute little recording and she goes, "Hey guys, I just wanted to say, I want to give you some encouragement and pray for you." She would not have been able to do that immediately, but several years in, she felt moved to gift us with that.

JJ West: That’s awesome. Yeah. So that does form a nice segue about asking the question, what’s one or two things that you would do differently? And I think certainly talking about your reluctance to join Sustained Victory. Can you walk us through that if that is indeed one of the things that you would do differently?

Joe Elliott: That is the number one thing on the list and by the way, I asked Kyra for her suggestions as I prepared for this recording and that was the only thing that she suggested was to get into Sustained Victory right away, which I did not do. And I say that not just in sycophancy to New Life Ministry, but it really was true for my case.

In about four years later let me back up real fast. I’ve given away part of the punchline, but it wasn’t really ego of, "Hey, I’ve got this." It was financial and though certainly we know the truth is the fee for Sustained Victory is a lot less than therapy and it’s a lot less than all the money that I spent on porn and breaking primary boundaries.

JJ West: Right, exactly. Somehow we find a way to fund our addiction but we don’t think we can find a way to fund our recovery. Exactly.

Joe Elliott: Exactly. Well, at the my experience now and there was my group had the typical Joseph Kazinski being my facilitator, by the way, a shout-out to that great guy. Our group did the usual, "Hey brothers, let’s all stay in touch, we all have our emails, we’ll keep this going," the informal connection which doesn’t last, usually doesn’t last.

The biggest thing for me at that weekend was I and it was shame-related. I didn’t want to call up Kyra and say, "Hey, there’s this thing to sign up for, to pay for monthly." I felt like I was asking her more, and so that was my own distorted thinking that prevented me that I used to choose not to sign up for SV right then.

So four years later, I relapsed and began masturbating to porn. I admitted that to Kyra and said, "I need to contact New Life Ministry, they have that Sustained Victory thing." And that’s when I plugged in, got plugged into a Sustained Victory group real darn early in the morning, but by golly, you just got to do it. Jim Phills, for those of y’all who know Jim Phills, is my facilitator. I am one of the odd ones. I started in 2015 and have not stopped. Been about 10 years, there’s one guy who’s been there longer. So don’t want to scare any folks off that you’re not expected to stay in SV forever, though I’m not sure how long I’ll stay but it’s not a requirement.

Not a requirement, but I get so much out of it. I don’t foresee leaving. So three things: I did not join up with SV immediately and what I would do differently also is have started doing a lot of check-in calls with brothers in the battle earlier on. That was something that I put off. And also journaling, as it happens. Those early years I didn’t do a whole lot of those disciplines and I would do that differently now.

JJ West: Oh, that’s so good. That’s so helpful. Actually, I mean it actually sparks I would love Joe for you to consider coming back for us to do a whole episode on some of those disciplines and specifically journaling and how how journaling impacts recovery because I think a lot of guys one, either don’t know what it is that they’re supposed to journal, what does that even look like? And then two, how would that have any impact on my recovery? Aren’t I supposed to just stop looking at porn, right? I’m supposed to just stop masturbating, I’m supposed to just stop having affairs, and isn’t that enough? But they fail to see the link, like you talked about, our cycle. They fail to see the link between the triggering cycle and the acting out and journaling does such a good job of helping us to see that.

Joe Elliott: I think that is one of the a strong example of the the distinction of the overlapping concepts of sobriety and recovery. What you were saying, "I just got to stop." Well, that’s sobriety is not doing that stuff, but that’s not recovery. Recovery’s broader.

JJ West: So true. This has been very good. Thanks, Joe, for being on. This has been really informative, just helping us to get and our and our audience to get to know you and for us as fellow brothers on the weekends, you know, that that’s going to make a difference in our our work together. So thank you for sharing, thank you for being here, and thank you for sharing all of that. It was really, really good.

Joe Elliott: Absolutely, thank you. It has been a pleasure and yes, we when we work the weekends, we got to work on those weekends. And so we’ve known each other for years, but you know, you’re hearing a lot about me for the first time.

JJ West: That’s right. That’s right. And it and it does, just like you said, Doug, it helps us know you better and so of course, it’s going to impact the way we work together. So yeah, thanks so much for being on.

And listen to the audience, let me say a couple of things here. Number one, as you heard in Joe’s story, you may have some financial constraints that would inhibit you from either A, attending the Every Man’s Battle Intensive or B, signing up for Sustained Victory. But you have to understand, there are scholarships available for those who have a need. It’s a really simple process to ask for that. But we don’t ever want anyone to be turned away because of finances. And so if that is your story, call 1-800-NEW-LIFE and talk to someone and just say, "Listen, I want to go to the Every Man’s Battle Intensive, I don’t have all of the money to cover the fee. Are there any scholarships available for that weekend?" Or same thing with Sustained Victory.

Because it’s such an important step in the recovery process. And if you have been to Every Man’s Battle, but like Joe, you failed to sign up for Sustained Victory, maybe you thought, "I can do this on my own," maybe you thought, "We’re just going to get together," right? And you’ve had the coconut on the head experience, right? Where you’re like, oh, my my best-laid plan didn’t work out for me. It’s never too late. You can call New Life today and get signed up for Sustained Victory.

And again, don’t let finances be the precluding issue for you. We want you to be a part of that because we know how important it is in terms of our sustained victory. That’s why we call it that, in terms of our continuing on in the work of recovery and not getting taken out, not being a casualty because of because of the enemy’s attack. So please, please, please take the time to do that.

And then my final thought, my final word to you is this: If there’s something that you connected to in Joe’s story, think about the impact of your own story on others. There’s other men who need to hear your story. There’s other wives who need to hear yours and your wife’s story if you’re married. There’s other people who need to hear your story because there’s going to be something in your story that helps them connect and say, "Oh, I don’t have to stay here anymore."

God wants us to be free and so let’s walk in that freedom. And until next time, when we by the way, our next episode we’re going to be talking about the key elements of transformation. Until then, let’s continue to walk in integrity.

Guest (Male): 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.