Have you ever been rejected? Roy Kim explains how rejection and internalized racism drove him to pornography. He also opens up about what it's like to struggle with with porn as a pastor—and as a male betrayed partner. Roy offers real hope through the power of compassion and community.
Roy Kim, M.Div, CSAT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Southern California focusing on sexual addictions and betrayal trauma. He is a former pastor and enjoys partnering with pastors to educate churches about sexual addiction and betrayal trauma. Roy facilitates groups for sexual addiction, and betrayed partners, and facilitates specialized groups for pastors with sexual addiction. He also hosts the SA Speakeasy Podcast, which centers around sexual addiction conversations.
Connect with Roy here...
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Thanks for listening!
Have you ever been rejected? Roy Kim explains how rejection and internalized racism drove him to pornography. He also opens up about what it's like to struggle with with porn as a pastor—and as a male betrayed partner. Roy offers real hope through the power of compassion and community.
Roy Kim, M.Div, CSAT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist in Southern California focusing on sexual addictions and betrayal trauma. He is a former pastor and enjoys partnering with pastors to educate churches about sexual addiction and betrayal trauma. Roy facilitates groups for sexual addiction, and betrayed partners, and facilitates specialized groups for pastors with sexual addiction. He also hosts the SA Speakeasy Podcast, which centers around sexual addiction conversations.
Connect with Roy here...
Take the Husband Material Journey...
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Hey man, my interview with Roy Kim was awesome.
Drew Boa:Roy is a former pastor who has been working as a certified sex addiction therapist for many years and he tells his own story of how his attachment to porn developed as he was growing up Korean American internalizing racism and self-hatred and how that became a coping mechanism. Later on, after he got married and was a pastor, he also experienced betrayal when his wife cheated on him. So Roy shares vulnerably his own story of addiction and being betrayed as a husband. And Roy not only tells his story, he also brings it to life using Lego figures. Roy uses Lego figures in therapy. It's a type of work that he has pioneered and it really makes it more emotionally powerful. So if you are only listening to the podcast, you may want to watch the video for this one. I think there's something everyone can resonate with here. We have all experienced rejection. We have all experienced self-hatred, and the kindness and acceptance that Roy brings to this conversation is beautiful. Enjoy the episode. Welcome to Husband Material. Today on the show we have Roy Kim Welcome.
Roy Kim:Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Drew Boa:I'm really glad you're here. You have such an amazing story. What do people need to know about you and how you got into this whole thing?
Roy Kim:Well, I was born and raised in California Northern California actually but then my adult life I've been in Southern California where I came down to study at seminary to become a pastor. This was back in 98. And I did become a pastor a youth pastor at a Korean American church down in SoCal and then I became the pastor for a young adult's English speaking congregation at another Korean church down in SoCal. So overall I pastored for close to 10 years.
Roy Kim:I'd popularly say to people that the more that I pastored, the less I wanted to pastor, and it's not because the pastor is some sort of bad thing, it's just it didn't match me. I think there were certain expectations that I had going in that didn't come to reality for me, and so I had to do kind of experience, the dark night of the soul sort of season and I eventually landed upon counseling as the direction that I felt like was a good match for me and the way that God gifted me, and so I've been a full time counselor since 2010. And I primarily specialize in sexual addictions and betrayal trauma. So I'm a certified sex addiction therapist as well as a licensed marriage and family therapist in California.
Drew Boa:Roy, growing up Asian, american, in a predominantly white context has shaped you and it's part of what contributed to what later became an addiction. What was it like growing up with your sense of self?
Roy Kim:You know, I grew up in the 70s and 80s as a kid right, and the landscape of our communities looked much different than it does in the 2020s. I grew up in a small city in Northern California, near like halfway between San Jose and San Francisco, named Redwood City. These days it's a suburban town with a lot of people working in tech, so a lot of folks from India, china, korea. The neighborhoods are filled with people who are just primarily just brain assets for the tech industries in San Francisco and Palo Alto, but when I was growing up, it was Caucasians. In their late 50s, mid 60s, we would have 4th of July parades. You know, growing up in neighborhoods where it was predominantly Caucasian, you know that was normal for me, and yet I always felt a little bit of otherness because no one looked like me, you know. So that experience definitely spilled over into my grade school experiences, and so I will switch my camera angle and I'm going to show you kind of a demonstration with my Lego figures about what that experience was like for me in particular.
Drew Boa:Yeah, so if you guys are watching on YouTube, then you're able to see this, but we'll describe it for you if you're just listening.
Roy Kim:So here is me. It's kind of in my likeness, right. This is maybe the adult version of me standing up, and so if I sit him down, this looks like the kid version of me Growing up in or going to school in a school setting where it was predominantly Caucasian. I was filled with. I'm going to represent them as blonde people, blonde girls. Okay, so this is what it's like, and as you can see immediately that I don't look like them.
Roy Kim:And so what does it feel like to be me with girls that I'm starting to get attracted to, because I'm now kind of entering into puberty and you kind of craft your sexual preferences, maybe from TV viewing, and so all the actors and actresses are Caucasian as well. No one really looks like me on TV or in the movies, and so you start to feel attraction for the people who are available around you, and so if I show through the legal figures, maybe my attempt to talk to them or flirt with them or whatever, and this is now me pointing myself towards these females, it's not that they were mean to me in return, but there was really no reciprocation for my attempts. So that would look like this All these blonde girls are turning their backs on me and that leaves me with just feeling like, okay, well, that sucks, is it, is it me, is it? Did I do something wrong? But I think human nature is especially back in those times, and maybe to an extent these days. Is that, you know, we, we prefer who we prefer.
Roy Kim:Sometimes it's just kind of a cultural thing when we want to be, we are romantically attracted to the people who look like us, have the same culture as us. That's why we see so many Asian, asian couple, black, black couples, white white couples. That's just kind of what happens. But what happens when you are young and you really have no luck at all with reciprocation because no one looks like you, even when there might be an Asian classmate who comes in maybe she's a transfer student or something like that and if I were to put her into the mix, there is, let's say, I'm going to put in the background some Caucasian guys. Well, what happens is the blonde girls are attracted to the Caucasian guys and so I'm turning their figures towards them.
Roy Kim:And even the Asian girl, because, again, like the TV stars, the music stars are all Caucasian. Even they are turning towards the Caucasian guys. And so here's little me feeling like well, what about me? I grew up into my teen years and this same dynamic that I just pointed out is occurring in high school as well. And so pause and think. What does this do to your psyche as a 14-year-old, 16-year-old guy? Well, the effect isn't very good where you're feeling rejected all the time.
Roy Kim:So I experienced what sociologists call internalized racism right where I hated my race. I hated being Korean, because being Korean meant rejection. I wanted to be white, I wanted to talk white, I wanted to be like the white guys, because they are the ones who seem to be getting positive affirmation from the very girls that I liked. So I had to experience internalized racism for a long, long time, and in the midst of that, earlier in our talk, drew, I talked about emotional regulation, and when I felt so bad about myself, I had to find some sort of coping for my distress. And so I'm going to put this little dragon over here to represent porn and essay behaviors, and I would turn towards this as my way of dealing with so much internalized racism and so much pain of rejection and this Godzilla figure became habitual for me because of again, I don't blame them for what happened, but this was just the situation that I was in and I couldn't deal with that level of distress for me. This was my primary way of dealing with it, in addition to maybe just focusing on studies and things like that. Even focusing on studies was loaded. It wasn't for its own sake. It was basically like I need to make something of myself because I'm nothing to them. So I hope that this demonstration shows a little bit what I went through, because it's a very real thing.
Roy Kim:Growing up, even in California, where it's like these days it's like 14% Asian, but back in the day it was maybe like 2% Asian. Even if being the most populous state when it comes to the Asian population, that's still not a whole lot. But when you compare that with other states in the US, where I think the state of Maine, I think it was like 93% or 95% Caucasian and that means 5% is other, and I wonder if there are Asian people living in Maine who can resonate with what I'm talking, because that's what it felt like for me. There are no people who look like you and there's general feeling that like attracts like. So good luck for any Asian people, any Asian youngsters living in Maine who are going to have some sort of romantic luck with a 95% Caucasian population.
Drew Boa:That demonstration was so powerful. I felt my heart go out to you in compassion. Thank you, roy. Later on, you did get married, yes, and you said that you had this fantasy of finding a dream girl.
Roy Kim:The Lego demonstration showed what it was like day in, day out. As a prepubescent, adolescent kid now college age guy, who I just grew up with a whole lot of low self-confidence, I was conditioned to assume that Caucasian girls would be uninterested, and now Asian girls would be uninterested, black girls would be and anyone, anyone, would be uninterested. Just because of the amount of rejection that I either received overtly or that I perceived in my own imagination that they would reject me. It's almost like why even bother trying so to grow up with just the assumption that I wouldn't be able to find my life partner, my dream partner, and then to find someone who was in fact, my dream partner. Do you think I would ever let that go? I think it would be foolishness for me to ever break up with her, because would there ever be a chance after her, given all the toil it took to get to that point? So that's where I had such a scarcity mentality and I don't know whether I really treated the dating process in a very healthy way. I feel like I overlooked some real opportunities to grow with her in an emotional way, in a good relational practices that I missed out on. I think it was very bottom line. For me, it's almost like we had to convince her to not run away from me and I had to do whatever I can to make her happy so that she would not abandon me. But then, when we were married and I think truly we were happily married for the first several years, but when she went into an emotional spiral and she pulled away from me and that was the beginning of her affair, I started realizing that all my nightmares from when I was younger, all my fears, were now becoming true.
Roy Kim:Here is the other shoe dropping for me, and it's an important part of my story, because I think that I'm not the only person, male or female, who goes through life with certain narratives in your head about how you view yourself, your value in life, whether it's your value to people around you or your value to God. So when you step into life with this feeling of I'm less than and not a whole lot of people would like me well, when bad things happen in life and they will happen not because you're bad, but just because bad things happen then it kind of magnifies that narrative in your head that you suck, and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people who already have a history of sexual addiction would now find themselves kind of exploding in sexual addictive behavior. Because now it's like, oh man, the shoe has dropped, like I feared it would, and I truly do suck. And now the only way for me to find any comfort in life is to find it through fantasy, and find it through these tried and true comfort ways that make you feel good in a moment but make you feel really awful immediately afterwards.
Roy Kim:So that's what happened to me, and it took me a while to heal, not just from the sobriety aspect of things, but it took me a while to heal the heart aspect, which is to not think of myself as someone who just sucks and who deserves all these bad things in life, but to really think about myself as a son of God who God loves, and that there are truly people in this life who love me, not because I offer anything to them, but just because I am who I am and because I feel the same way about them. And I think that's an essential part of any person's healing process is not just the sobriety part, but to really work on your sense of yourself. And so, yeah, my ex-wife and her dream girlness. It taught me some really painful lessons about my own way of operating in the world, but I'm so glad that I was able to kind of reframe that whole thing so that I can navigate the second half of my life in a much different way. Yeah.
Drew Boa:That's so amazing, Roy. You depicted the development of your attachment to porn so powerfully using Lego figures. Could you also depict your healing journey?
Roy Kim:Yes, yes, drew, I want to introduce you to my favorite Lego figure. This is the Jesus figure.
Drew Boa:Yes.
Roy Kim:I'll give you a before and after.
Roy Kim:So, yes, there was this whole image and I felt like I think, as many Christians do, we kind of feel like I need to clean up my act before I could ever turn towards him.
Roy Kim:So that means perfect sobriety, just perfect behavior, because it just you carry so much shame and really trying to kind of be presentable to God. But rather than me trying to clean up my act, like, well, while I was yet a sinner, christ died for me right, and while I was still in my sexual addiction, christ approached me and as I have felt his healing touch, you know, I turned towards him and I'm able to have dialogue with him about this. I'm able to, even though I don't think it's possible to completely eliminate I should be careful in saying this sexual addiction or eliminate sexual temptation. But there's kind of like this will never truly be rid of all the pitfalls that come with original sin, and that includes sexual temptation and just the how difficult it is to refrain from any of these things. But as we are on a kind of a progressive upwards arc, the way I see that is you know Christ is walking with us and you know kind of going towards sanctification, more and more sanctification, and you know this is getting a bit more distant from me.
Drew Boa:So the dragon is farther away.
Roy Kim:The dragon is farther away but, you know, still kind of in the corner of my eye, which means that temptation is always lurking, and so I need to be careful. I need to have certain structures in place, like a wall, you know, like accountability, folks like him, this guy, this new figure that's coming in, and a new way of looking at women.
Roy Kim:They are not objects for my unbridled pleasure.
Roy Kim:They are people who are made in the image of God, and so, you know, we need to kind of train our brain to really view people as precious in the sight of God, and I just I depict this as Jesus partnering with me closely, and I think that's what I want to encourage people who are either watching or listening to this that I feel that a lot of people will feel like they've got no right to call upon God for help because you know their behaviors has been just so shameful.
Roy Kim:But I feel like instead, it's God's delight to draw close to us and to have us bring our sin and our addictions to his attention and asking him for help in the daily, because there's a lot of things that are required for our recovery, like a lot of courageous things, a lot of wisdom things, and we need God's help to be able to do that well and to do that consistently. We need to be able to have humility as we talk to our sponsor, as we talk to people in our accountability group, as we are honest with our spouse about things. It takes a lot of spiritual energy that God can supply, and I think it's unfair for us to just ask God to take our addiction away from us with a snap of a finger. I don't think that's the way that God normally operates, but I feel like the way that we partner with him is the way of sanctification, and so that's what I would recommend is to people to reframe the whole journey as just another important part of our sanctification process.
Drew Boa:I love that.
Roy Kim:Yeah.
Drew Boa:Roy, we've brought up a number of really big topics in your story being a male-betrayed partner, growing up Korean American, internalized racism, how Jesus can gently, patiently, lovingly lead us out of our attachment to porn. And there's one last layer that we haven't really talked about, which was as a pastor.
Roy Kim:Yeah.
Drew Boa:How did that affect your journey?
Roy Kim:Oh, let me just clarify, for every person who has not really thought about this, that pastors carry any unaddressed sexual addiction that they've had since they were young into their adult life and into their pastorate. It's not as if getting an ordination or putting on the collar or the suit or whatever it is that you wear the Hawaiian shirt. It's not as if having the title of pastor now eradicates years and years of sexual addictive history. So for me, what that looked like was, you know, my sexual addiction was never addressed, I didn't reveal it to anyone and I never sought help for it. I just sort of felt shame about it and I would ask God to take it away, but God didn't answer that particular prayer, and so when I was pastoring, I experienced a lot of stress because I felt like my weekly messages needed to be very impactful. All the time. I felt like it was up to me for it to be impactful. There were a lot of meetings to facilitate, there were tasks to delegate, there was vision casting to do, there were unhappy people. There were just a lot of moving parts and things that were very stressful for me, and I didn't know how to handle that other than by defaulting to my old sexual addictive behavior. So if you can imagine, drew, this is again like in the late 90s and early 2000s me having my computer on and then still using dial-up yes, and I had my set of Word biblical commentaries open. I had my NIGTC, I had other commentaries that just allowed me to understand the scripture better as I was preparing for a message. And then I would have a couple of tabs open on my computer. I would have StarCraft, which is a Blizzard entertainment game that was very popular back in the day, and I would have porn. I would have porn whether it was in the form of a DVD that I was playing through Netflix subscription. This is prior to streaming. This was the red envelope and I would actually queue up sexually explicit DVDs to come to my residence in these red envelopes and I would have to pay them on my computer.
Roy Kim:As, shamefully, my break time from my sermon prep. Again, it's me bringing into my pastorate life all the unaddressed sexual addictive behaviors into history. 30 minutes of sermon prep. Take a break. Play some StarCraft for 15, 20 minutes. Take a break. Watch porn for 20 minutes. Take a break from that. Go back to the sermon prep.
Roy Kim:There's everything being able to have some sort of a way to not even think about what I just did and go straight back into sermon prep as if nothing happened. That was just. The brain is an amazing thing that God created to be able to handle that kind of compartmentalizing, but that's what it's capable of doing. So if there are any listeners right now who are pastors, who understand what it's like to now have high speed internet, to have all these other ways to view sexual explicit material, and you are feeling the pressures of ministry, of people being displeased with you, of wanting to have the perfect sermon, to have the great responses from the congregation, yeah, it's a real thing to have that pressure and to carry with you all these old behaviors.
Roy Kim:And the only way in my mind to really deal with that is to whether it's joining the community at husband material, whether it's finding like-minded people who understand you, who won't judge you, who you can be in accountability with and say I've got to address this. Whether it's joining a 12 steps group, whether it's finding a sponsor, whether it's some way of being in a safe community where people can know what you're doing and you know what they're doing and you're both in that journey of trying to make that less and less of an issue over time. I don't see any other way, because the alternative is to keep on doing what we're doing and we're just kind of pulling the wool over our congregation's eyes saying I'm this holy person, when in fact we're hooked on porn hub. It's never too late to reconsider how much health you can experience for the rest of your life, but it does require some work to do that.
Drew Boa:And this is coming out of your own story, of your own addiction and your own betrayal as a partner. How did that happen for you?
Roy Kim:To try to make it as succinct as possible while I was pastoring. It was that second stint as a young adult's pastor that I discovered that my then wife was unfaithful and she had been having an affair with a person in our congregation, so basically someone that I was their pastor.
Roy Kim:And it was the worst imaginable season that a person could go through, because there was betrayal on so many levels. It was the person that I loved. It was the person that I was shepherding. There were people that I expected to be there to support me during that time that didn't support me in the church. So a very difficult and dark time for me as I tried to cope with my historical ways of coping, and so what I mean by that is I had been introduced to porn and sexual explicit material since I was maybe fourth, fifth grade, and when I entered into maybe my adolescent years, I used those behaviors as my emotional regulating coping mechanisms, if you will, and that carried over into my adult life as well. And so I think, as I was pastoring, I still did some of those behaviors, and I would shame myself and say, yeah, I'm never going to do this again, and that binge per cycle would just keep emerging for me. But then, when I discovered the affair and when I realized that this, the reconciliation process, was really not going to happen, I really dove into the deep end and my sexual addiction history really caught up to me and things escalated badly for me.
Roy Kim:I started doing things that I would never have imagined that I would be doing.
Roy Kim:It was both shameful for myself but also kind of dissociative for me.
Roy Kim:It almost felt like a big middle finger to God because I was so angry at him for allowing all this stuff to happen to me.
Roy Kim:So it's like, hey, I've been trying to be moral for your sake, god, I've been trying to be an example to my congregation and this is how you repay me, sort of thing. I've been praying for you to do this XYZ for my life and to repair these things, but this is how you answer these prayers, god. Well, hey, if you're not going to support me in this, then I'm not going to be in alignment with what you want from me. So it's a very kind of a reactive, juvenile way of dealing with life. But that's what I did and, yeah, sure enough, my essay behaviors became so overblown and thankfully God has been patient with me and merciful to me and faithful to himself and he gently and steadily brought me back to his loving care, and so I'm glad for that. But it was been a really horrible process of pain and shame and darkness and just grossness. That's the clinical way of saying, of explaining what I went through.
Drew Boa:That grossness, that level of darkness, is something that we don't often hear from men who have been cheated on. It seems like there are not enough resources and there are not enough voices talking about what that's like for anybody who's experienced something similar. How would you like to respond to that person?
Roy Kim:I would first like to say it does feel like there's an imbalance as far as stories are concerned. So if the listener feels that imbalance, then I really validate that. I have theories as to why there is such an imbalance, but if I'm trying to take a look at it as objectively as possible, men who cheat on their female spouse typically that female spouse not all of them are just single people. Many of those female spouses also have a male spouse, like they are married as well, and so those male spouses who are cheated on, like where are their stories? Why are we hearing about them? I think the numbers will probably show that there are just almost as many men who are cheated on as women are cheated on, unless all the women that men are cheating with are all single people, but I don't think that's the case. For whatever reason, the stories are not being shared, and I feel like there needs to be a lot of attention given to the married men who are being cheated against.
Roy Kim:If I can be one of those voices, I'm happy to do it, especially now that I've experienced some healing since that all happened for me, and I also want to say that pain is a universal experience for human beings, and so maybe there are some men out there who don't like to express pain because it maybe signifies weakness or something like that.
Roy Kim:But I think if Jesus is our main model of humanity, you think about how he expressed his pain. He expressed it in private, he expressed it in the company of his friends, he expressed it publicly, hanging on the cross emotional pain, physical pain, and I feel like if we are going to really model our lives after Christ, then we should free ourselves to be able to express our emotions, not just the good ones, but really painful, dark, sad, fearful ones as well. And I've been practicing doing that. I think I've gotten better at that. I think I can still have more growth in that area, but I would encourage other male listeners who have been betrayed to find safe people to practice that kind of emotional expression with, because we don't get good at something by just wishing it were true. We get good at something by actually doing reps, like almost at the gym. So, yeah, not some sort of gym rat, but still I've heard right.
Drew Boa:Well, that's it. Learning any skill takes practice, and especially when it comes to something so vulnerable as sharing our pain, even small steps are big steps.
Roy Kim:It took me a while, drew, to admit to both myself and to God and to my fellow brothers and sisters, that my identity was wrapped up in being married to a dream girl. So almost like elevating my status by proxy. So if I could find out one girl who I was head over heels about and then she could be head over heels about me, then I was deceived into thinking that my life was now complete and so, as long as that marriage can stay intact and it can thrive, then my identity was golden. And I didn't realize until much later, after all the dust settled, I realized, holy cow, I really did depend upon her and the marriage to be my saving grace. That's what caused me so much spiraling is that I couldn't handle like just you know, the pain of betrayal in itself is awful. That could put someone to a tailspin for months, if not years.
Roy Kim:But now the loss of my identity and my security, my emotional salvation, my social salvation, me losing that made the betrayal so much worse and so much harder to recover from, and that being able to realize that and to be able to express that to people was very embarrassing for me, because I'm like, come on, I'm a Christian, my identity should be in Christ.
Roy Kim:Right?
Roy Kim:I know what the right Sunday school answers are, but, honestly, for me to recognize that, practically speaking, I did put my identity into these other things other than God, it was painful to say, but it was also clarifying for me to say and that's important, you know, I think if we're going to grow and heal from anything, we need to be putting all of our cards onto the table and saying, oh wow, this is what I've really been thinking, this is how I've been operating all along.
Roy Kim:And that's when it becomes a prime opportunity for us to invite God into that and say God, show me what to do with this. And that's where his grace comes in and says I know you've been operating like this and I've been waiting for this moment, for you to be open, for me to just speak tenderly to you. And he was tender with me and I've, with a bit clarified vision, can really work on not allowing things other than God to be my salvation, but rather allowing the Lord to be my salvation and these other things in my life to be wonderful blessings that I celebrate and I can grieve when they're gone, but at the same time those aren't my identity anymore. I'm not saying that I'm doing that perfectly all the time, but I'm just saying that that's what I'm conscious of now, as opposed to back then. I was not even conscious of that.
Drew Boa:It sounds like being radically honest opened you up to receive more grace and healing than you imagined.
Roy Kim:Well, said yeah, that's right.
Drew Boa:It's so difficult to be honest about the pain, about the hurt, especially when we have also caused pain and hurt. I wonder if some guys might be thinking well, I can't allow myself to say I was betrayed or to talk about that. I wonder if some guys might be resistant to identifying as betrayed when they have also engaged in unwanted sexual behavior.
Roy Kim:Yeah, that's a real tricky one. I have some opinions about that. I think there's such a thing as healthy compartmentalizing. I guess what I mean by that is that not everything gets lumped into one bucket all the time. It's not one of those zero-sum game kind of things where if I have betrayed another person or if I've heard another person, then I have no right to express my pains or my need. I don't think it works like that. I feel like there is space to be able to say I have truly caused harm to another person for which I need to make attempts to amend.
Roy Kim:When it comes to being hurt by other people, I think it's good for us to be able to acknowledge that and to keep expressing our needs for those wounds to be addressed and healed.
Roy Kim:I think maybe where the wisdom comes is who we're asking that pain to be addressed. For example, if I betrayed my partner and then I say, yeah, but you hurt me too, that sort of thing, and so you should tend to my needs, well, we're asking someone who is devastated and traumatized by our behavior, who maybe, metaphorically, is lying on the concrete bleeding because of our damage to them, and we're saying, hey, get up and tend to me because you hurt me too. Basically speaking, who would do that? You'd be kind of sociopathic to do that. But as we tend to the person that we hurt, there can be this weird alternate universe where we're also addressing our own pains but we're trying to get another person who can see that hurt and validate that and have them minister to us in a way that's helpful, while we tend to the person that we hurt too. So might be a bit convoluted explanation of what I'm trying to say, but I think that there's room for both to be happening at the same time.
Drew Boa:Yes, especially with outside supports.
Roy Kim:Yes for outside supports. I think that's the most effective way that I can think of.
Drew Boa:Yes, and it can be so frustrating when we're learning a lot about freedom and healing in isolation versus taking these steps in relationships with others. That's right and that can be so hard when we have experience rejection and betrayal and shame and self-contempt.
Roy Kim:That's right, that's right.
Drew Boa:Roy, to me you are evidence that all of that can be overcome. What would you say has made the biggest difference for you in your years of moving into healing?
Roy Kim:Honesty with myself, honesty to God, honesty with, first, the key people in my life and then, after realizing that they accept me and that they are there for me, I can now be honest with the public.
Roy Kim:Jay Stringer talks about self-hatred as being one of the biggest factors for our sexual addiction, much more so than just pervertedness or horningness, and I really agree with that statement.
Roy Kim:When we hate ourselves because we feel we are less than and we assume that other people hate us too, of course that's going to drive us towards isolation and secrecy and just keeping our mouth closed.
Roy Kim:But when we can be honest with ourselves and we can be honest with other people and we experience that kind of unconditional love from people, which doesn't mean that they are leaving us off the hook they want to be there to support our growth and us in return to them and when we can do that together, it makes all the difference.
Roy Kim:Because now the self-hatred melts away and we can actually embrace ourselves as a work in progress, as someone that God loves and that people love. And even when we kind of mess up right that we get back onto the horse and we keep trying, that turns into a healthy kind of self-love, not a vanity, but it's like loving your neighbor as yourself means you got to love yourself too. So I think when we can be kind to ourselves, there is less fuel for us to numb ourselves from all that pain, because now we're like, we're able to kind of output care and compassion toward other people because we've experienced having care and compassion towards ourselves. So I think it starts with that kind of honesty and then it kind of spreads from there into compassion, both to the self and to other people.
Drew Boa:Amen Roy. What is your favorite thing about freedom from porn?
Roy Kim:Do you know how much energy you invest? One invests into keeping something a secret. I mean, I feel like all that energy has been re-diverted into just enjoying simple things in life. You know what it's like to have your phone lying about and if your kid or your spouse, like says, oh, can I check your phone for something? It's not to check up on you, but can I check it for whether this one app is showing what I'm showing on my own phone. And if I'm trying to be secretive, like, no, no, don't open my phone. I'm now focused on trying to prevent damage towards myself because I have things to hide in my phone.
Roy Kim:But if you are freed from porn and freed from that kind of lifestyle, then when your kid asks you, when your spouse asks you, when your friend asks you, oh, can I check your phone for something? You're like, of course, why? Because I've got nothing to hide. And so, yeah, to free yourself up from that kind of anxiety. That kind of tension is priceless. If I go on to an interview like this, if I'm going to be asked by someone else at church about something I'm like please don't ask me that, please don't ask me that.
Roy Kim:There's a lot of tension and anxiety there as well, but I'm at a place where, because I have my people in my corner and I know that God's got my back and I have compassion towards myself, I can speak freely about myself without fear of judgment and shame at least not crippling judgment and shame maybe a little bit of judgment and shame but I can get over it.
Roy Kim:You know, yeah, and it's a wonderful feeling to just feel liberated, not just from the behavior, but liberated, kind of, in daily living. It's a great feeling and I hope that listeners and viewers can experience more of that as they keep going in their recovery journey. And yeah, drew, I think that you and I are both involved in this process of spreading the word about this and starting the conversations about this, and I hope that people see the spaces that you create as well as something to really invest their time and energy into, to find that there is vast potential for a person to feel more and more liberation in this area, and it'll be surprising. I think there are things that they had never expected them to benefit from because of the freedom from porn and all that stuff. I think God's amazing in that way he gives us surprises that we never would have expected.
Drew Boa:So true. Thank you so much for being with us.
Roy Kim:Oh, thank you, Drew. It's a pleasure being on your show. Just pray that this is the kind of conversation that leads to growth for a lot of people.
Drew Boa:Absolutely, and if you guys would like to connect with Roy and learn more about him, go down to the show notes and you'll find all his information. Always remember you are God's beloved Son and you he is well pleased.