A Journey of Recovery and Transformation with Logan Hufford

 

Logan Hufford

[00:00:00] Ed Watters: To overcome, you must educate. Educate not only yourself, but educate anyone seeking to learn. We are all Dead America, we can all learn something. To learn, we must challenge what we already understand. The way we do that is through conversation. Sometimes we have conversations with others, however, some of the best conversations happen with ourselves. Reach out and challenge yourself; let's dive in and learn something new right now.

[00:00:56] Today we are speaking with Logan Hufford, Logan is a sexual addiction recovery mentor and we're here to speak about recovery. So Logan, could you please introduce yourself? Let people know just a little more about you, please.

[00:01:15] Logan Hufford: Yeah, I am Logan Hufford and I'm no longer in bondage to sexual addiction. Uh, and those are words that I don't take lightly. For two and a half decades, um, at least up until I was, until I was twenty-six years old, I guess maybe I can't speak of the first couple of years of my life, but until I was twenty-six years old, uh, my life was a constant cycle of self hatred, and shame, and acting out to pornography, affairs, um, complete double life, including several, I mean, the last several years of my addiction was as a dad, as a husband.

[00:01:53] Um, and so, you know, I, I hated what my life had become and yet I also felt trapped in it. I felt like I couldn't do anything different. This had become my MO, this was how I interacted with the world around me, this is how I trained my brain. And, and I don't say any of that as an excuse. It was just, just from the simple fact of like muscle memory.

[00:02:13] Like I, how I responded to life was to, to act out of my addiction, to be unhealthy. And all the while having this incredible, beautiful wife and these incredible, beautiful children, and all of these blessings staring at me in the face. And in, in my thoughts, in my mind, just like, and yet all I'm going to do is keep hurting everyone around me because that's, that's all I had been doing, you know, for, for the last twenty years. Uh, God began to change that when he introduced some people into my life, recovery into my life, serious recovery program. And then the next eight years,

[00:02:53] has just been an ongoing journey of recovery and healing and incredible transformation. So for me to be able to sit [00:03:00] here and talk about, you know, I'm going to go home and have dinner with my wife and kids, I'm going to be able to tuck in my boys and kiss them on the, kiss them on the head, and say goodnight to them, and pray with them, and, you know, snuggle and watch a movie with my wife, or whatever it looks like. The things that maybe, you know, some folks might just take for granted as part of a normal family life, right? And yet I cherish those things because I should not have them.

[00:03:27] Ed Watters: Yeah. Well, I want to dive right into the pit with you and openly tell you I've been in that situation. I've, I've been married for thirty-nine years this year, I've been together with my wife for forty-one years. And I put her through heck, you know, just dirt and it's not a good feeling. And really, I want to dive into that with you today about, you know, recovery is not just about us, it's about our spouse. And, you know, I witnessed for many years, because I like to look back at what I'm doing and thank God for that because it allows me to shift and, you know, pivot when I need to,

[00:04:19] and I sat there and watched my wife for years in frustration, anger, hostility and a life of bitterness because the baggage that she had in her previous life with her father and family, it wasn't pleasant either. So there's a lot of emotions that we don't take into account when we selfishly act out of our own wants and needs.

[00:04:49] And sometimes I really take and reflect on the pain that I put on my wife and how strong that woman is in her faith and her commitment. And it really makes me proud today, like you just stated, that I can be here, have conversations openly with this beautiful woman, and have her really open up and have conversation back instead of holding that in and hurting and wanting to say something, but not having what it takes to step up and make the change happen. So my wife really took it upon herself to say, Look, I love you, but it's got to change. There's always that point in a relationship. Could you talk to me about that point in time when you realized, Oh, I do [00:06:00] have to change.

[00:06:03] Logan Hufford: Yeah. The, the point, so much of my story doesn't have like necessarily singular moments where something shifted in a giant way. So much of it is a progressive slide, right? Um, you know, me going from photos of women in lingerie and bikinis in the JCPenney catalog, which is, that's literally, that's how I started, which, you know, that's not even included within the definition of porn. And yet it was me sexually objectifying pictures of women, right?

[00:06:33] That was the start of it. Going from that to hardcore videos, you know, going from flirting with women to having affairs. I mean, all of this, it took, in a lot of cases, took years for me to go, get from this point to get to that point. It was a progressive, slow burn. But there are some singular moments that I look back on.

[00:06:51] I'm like, Yep, that's when that shifted. And so in the summer of 2015, it was either the end of July or the start of August. Um, I, I guess, let me go back just a little bit. So when, starting from six months after marriage, six months after our wedding, I would confess when I would have an affair, I would confess that to Carrie. I would, um, basically I would tell her, and I want to really emphasize, like, this was not healthy confession and repentance and change behavior,

[00:07:22] this was me getting it off my chest. So basically I would share the worst of the worst stuff when it would feel bad enough. I wouldn't share all the other stuff. I wouldn't share all the porn, all the flirting, but I would share the worst of the worst. And so that, you know, this, this whole other destructive cycle that I had going.

[00:07:40] And so I did another one of these confessions, um, I had a month on affair in July of 2015. I confessed it to Carrie and then at that point she did something she'd never done before, she gave me an ultimatum. She said, If you don't get help and get some serious change, then I'm gone and you're going to lose me and the kids.

[00:07:59] We already had three boys since and she was pregnant with our fourth boy, Isaiah. And, you know, if anyone's doing the math at home, uh, you know, I guess maybe I didn't give my sobriety date, but it's May 19th, 2016. So she gave me that ultimatum and then I still had almost ten months before I got sober, but it did, it did, it gave me a kick in the pants.

[00:08:21] It made me, I absolutely took her seriously in the sense of like, I knew she meant that. Now there was a lot of half hearted attempts at change, but I did start to do things. I started to reach out, I started attending some groups, I tried some things. Um, and, you know, whether she should have, um, chosen, chosen to leave me during those next ten months or not, she, you know, she chose to stay. Because ultimately, I mean, she, she did see that there were some attempts to change.

[00:08:50] Um, but also, you know, she was still just starting to figure out what it was to be healthy and to respond to me in a healthy way, right? But that, the biggest shift [00:09:00] there was, you know, from her end, recognizing, okay, I can't control Logan, I can't fix my husband, I can't make him stop. But I can control how to respond. And

[00:09:09] then for me to realize, okay, it's one thing for me to hate my life and hate how I've treated everyone around me and hate who I am. But now there's a very real, okay, I'm actually going to lose her, I'm going to lose my kids if I, you know, if I don't make some changes. And so that, again, there was no, I didn't flip the light switch on and suddenly I'm healthy.

[00:09:34] Uh, it was ten months of, you know, kind of swirling around and flailing around, but it did keep me motivated to try meetings, to try things, you know, to, to talk to people. Even though, you know, it took a, it took a few different meetings, it took, uh, several months before I started to get any sort of traction in terms of building healthy relationships with recovery people.

[00:09:57] But, but then once that happened, the best kind of snowball effect started. You know, now because I met one guy who was really healthy, who had a lot of healthy living, a lot of sobriety, and, and a lot of transformation in his life, and then that made it a little bit easier to open up to another healthy guy. Which made it easier to open up to more healthy guys

[00:10:18] and then that snowball effect of recovery. Cause that, that I can have the snowball effect of destruction, right? I make one bad choice and then it makes it easier to make another bad choice, but it can also be true for healthy living, you know? And I'm thankful for that because that, ultimately, it led to the point where

[00:10:34] I'm in a recovery program for two years, I've got a couple dozen phone numbers of guys who have similar stories to me who are working on healthy living. Maybe they're in my shoes, you know, maybe they're right next to me in terms of on that path, maybe they're a couple years down the road, maybe they're ten years down the road.

[00:10:50] But all of these guys, they understand my story. They understand what it is to be in my shoes and we're all focused in the same direction, healthy living. No longer going back to our addictions, working on being a better man.

[00:11:05] Ed Watters: Yeah. Yeah, that's good advice. You know, and through researching you, I actually ran across the story of when you met Rick and I think that's a very vital, important part of your story. Because when we get confronted with truth, it sets us free in many ways. And we need Rick in our life. So, could you share who Rick is in that story with our listeners today?

[00:11:35] Logan Hufford: So Rick, I mean, sometimes I say he was my mentor and I, I got to remember, like, it's not a past tense thing because that man will always be my mentor. Um, he was my, my program sponsor, you know, for those two years that I was in that voluntary house arrest program. And when I say voluntary house arrest, like that's, I can go into that later, but that's, that's not an exaggeration, it was a hardcore program. He was my primary mentor in terms [00:12:00] of, you know, I'm checking in with him multiple times a week,

[00:12:02] I, I'm reviewing my homework assignments with him, all this kind of stuff. And for, you know, you know, you can almost think about it like a PO, right? And yet this guy, I mean, he had an incredible, I mean, the paycheck's not great, it's zero, right? He's doing it for the love of, of, of recovery, the love of recovery brothers.

[00:12:23] And so, you know, starting out this man was that. He was my mentor, he's my sponsor. He has become my best friend outside of Carrie, he's become like a father to me, he's, my boys call him grandpa Rick. Like he, that's who he is to us now. And yet the, one of the very first memories that I have of him in my life, this was several months before I got in the program, several months before I really started to take some things seriously, but I started to attend some meetings and I met him at one of these meetings and a little while after, I don't, maybe it was like a week after,

[00:13:00] I was talking with him and I go, Hey, um, can we get together for coffee and, and talk about this? And in my mind, I'm like really putting myself out there, right? Like that's, I'm trying something. And I already, I already described to you what he's become, right? Like this is the most loving man that I know.

[00:13:18] And he looked at me dead in the eyes and he goes, Logan, if you want to get together for coffee every couple of weeks, I'll have time for you. And that like hurt my feelings, right? That offended me. That took me aback because number one, I mean, I've been, I'd spent years becoming this manipulator and this liar and this person who just, I got my way, I would work the room.

[00:13:41] Um, and also just in general, even outside of addiction and recovery, most people, we try to be polite, right? We try to, we don't want to ruffle feathers, we want to be nice to people. Rick loved me by saying that, but he wasn't nice. But he was loving and then he quickly followed it up with more love. He said, If you want to seriously work on things, I'll work with you, but it's not going to be getting together for coffee and just chatting.

[00:14:09] It's going to be hard work. And, you know, of course, you know, without me really understanding what he meant, you know, he's talking about the recovery program. He's talking about this, um, you know, this mentorship program that, yeah, it was, it was two years of daily phone calls every single day, um, mandatory, required, uh, required homework, hours of homework every single week, multiple meetings every single week,

[00:14:33] uh, basically giving up, not necessarily giving up the freedom to do anything, but giving up the freedom to do anything just because I wanted to. Like, if I want to change my routine, if I want to go on a camping trip, if I went, I had to get permission. I had to write up a safety plan, I, all these different things.

[00:14:47] I went through a twelve step program that took the entire two years. This was not, Oh, we're going to go through the twelve steps in twelve weeks. Or, you know, it's six months. And I'm not here to dog on other recovery [00:15:00] programs, but there needs to be, like, if I've taken years to become this person, it's not going to take three months.

[00:15:09] It's not going to be a ninety day program, it's not going to be a six month thing for me. And then it's like, Okay, now you're back out in the, back out in the wild. Um, the, the program was going to be, it's going to be rigorous and hard work. And I, I'm so thankful that that's how our relationship started off though.

[00:15:28] Because even though he became my buddy, he became this guy that, you know, will snuggle up with my boys on the couch and, you know, show them some animal video on his phone, or, you know, we'll go to the diner and just have breakfast and just, but it didn't start out like that, it started out with tough love.

[00:15:46] Ed Watters: Yep, it's salt and light. That combination will heal anything. And if, if we dive into that, it's a beautiful thing. Recovery is a process, it's not a game. But a lot of people try to start it as a game and that can be disastrous in many ways. Because that, that puts us into this loop of, uh, reoccurrence and that's not a good game to play, it really is destructive in many ways. Because every time we do one of these destructive things, it's not just us, we're throwing a rock and it's creating ripples and everybody

[00:16:34] that we come into contact with, well, they can sense these ripples. And so, what, what is it like for your wife at this point? And how is she feeling? And is it a chronic, uh, point of disgust where she doesn't want anything to do with you? Or does she actually take the time and reach out and bare her soul to you?

[00:17:15] Logan Hufford: That journey, my wife's healing journey, is this whole other side of the coin and yet it is The way I look at it is like, there's so much beauty in what God has done in my life. There's so much to be thankful for. And yet when I get to think about what He's done in Carrie's life, in my family's life, because of, you know, a lot of the results of my actions like, but that just magnifies it.

[00:17:39] It's like, It almost makes it, to me, it makes my feels, my story feel like one dimensional, but now it's three dimensional when we think about it. Okay, it's not just me and me not doing the bad stuff and becoming a better, it's like, but she has experienced healing from something that healing should not exist. The way that I abused her for years through sexual betrayal, [00:18:00] and not just sexual betrayal,

[00:18:01] but I mean, I was, I was a jerk. I was manipulative, I was emotionally abusive. You know, I, I was, I lived a double life. You can't be married to somebody who's living a double life. Who's an addict and not come away with scars completely outside of the addict behavior, right? And so her being able to survive that should not really be possible.

[00:18:26] And yet God's not given her survival. Like God has given her this thriving life where she can openly talk about recovery. And we, we've both jumped, I jumped into recovery for me, she jumped into recovery for herself, um, in July of 2016. So just a couple of months after I got in the program, she got into recovery from sexual betrayal trauma.

[00:18:46] And she's never looked back from that recovery just like I've never looked back from mine. So like I lead a men's group for men struggling with sexual addiction, she leads a ladies group for women that have been harmed by sexual betrayal. And through that, I mean, God has, you know, put women in her life. And she made a commitment early on that she would always attend and she would always share no matter how she was feeling.

[00:19:09] She would always be willing to share her feelings, share her struggles, share her pain, uh, whether it was with a brand new lady or a woman who'd been in recovery herself for, you know, for two decades or whatever it looked like. And it's so incredible because what, what, what that has done is, she is not, because we see this all the time,

[00:19:33] it's a very, very common thing is that if, even if, even if an addict gets healthy and they no longer are trapped in their addiction, they're no longer acting out, but their spouse, and really any loved one that doesn't seek healing, can forever be kind of frozen in time. Because they're trapped in this, like they're, they're kind of, they're forever the embittered victim.

[00:19:57] And, and it's, it's a really tough thing and it might sound weird coming from me cause I was the one who, I was the perpetrator in, in this. But of course I'm, you know, it's only me on the podcast and I'm going to show the truth is, you know, healing exists. And of course, number one, though she had to recognize that she needed that healing, even though it wasn't her fault, she didn't sign up for it,

[00:20:20] she didn't cheat on us, you know, it wasn't fair for Carrie to have to spend hours, you know, of her time seeking help, and doing homework, and going to meetings. It wasn't fair, but she was wounded. And so she could either seek healing or she could ignore it. I'm so thankful. And she is so thankful that, you know, she chose to dive in and seek that healing.

[00:20:43] Ed Watters: I think that's very important for people to realize that, that you've got to choose. You know, I can't make my wife forgive me, that'll never happen. I betrayed some trust and like you stated just a few moments ago, [00:21:00] that will take years to rebuild 100 percent trust with my wife. But it's really important that you show 100 percent commitment to repairing that distrust.

[00:21:16] And now with my wife, I'm totally truthful. If I have a thought, a feeling, I'm communicating that with her. And that way I can get her blow back on that, and I can feel how, how I should adjust my feelings. And it's really important when we become couples to learn to communicate effectively with our spouses, because when we first start our little romance and engagement, well, we don't want to offend and we, we tend to put things behind curtains, and closed doors, and, you know, tidy up the main area. But yet there's still this garbage everywhere and we still have to confront that garbage.

[00:22:13] And when we don't confront that, it really is destructive in many ways. Do you understand that our behavior is seeking attention? Is that what you realized overall? Because what I found is, I might be searching for attention that I'm not getting here, but maybe I should be getting it here. But yet, I'm looking other places. So is it an attention seeking thing for something that you may not, seem that your wife is going to supply for you?

[00:23:01] Logan Hufford: Okay. So I, I really liked the question that you asked and the way I'm hearing it, there's like two different questions kind of wrapped into that. So I want to get to both of them. Number one is like the attention piece, seeking attention. And the short answer to that is a hundred percent, yes. So much of my addiction was wrapped up into insecurities and seeking attention. And then the other piece of like, it might, was I seeking something that my wife wasn't giving me? The answer to that is technically yes. And yet it's probably not the thing that somebody is thinking of, especially if they're not, if maybe they've never heard of sexual addiction or they're not super, super familiar with it because it's, it's not an addiction to sex.

[00:23:41] It's not an addiction to sexual behavior necessarily. It's an addiction to the high that I get from chasing after deviant behaviors. Um, so and that, that might sound like tomato, tomato, but I'll, I'll kind of unpack that a little bit. So I, I, you know, I'm attention, insecurities, [00:24:00] wanting, you know, people to like me, which again, that's the thing,

[00:24:03] it's not just the sexual part. Like I, my whole life I've struggled with insecurities, and I want people to like me, I want to feel accepted. So, you know, way outside of the sexual realm, it's definitely, there's commonalities. But when it comes to, yeah, the opposite sex and attention, that's definitely, that was a huge piece of my addiction.

[00:24:25] My wife, Carrie, I mean, she did everything she could to be the best wife possible. To, to be all the things to me, because again, for, for many years, she thought that it was something that she was lacking, something that she was not giving me, had nothing to do with that. But what you asked was, you know, is there something that she wasn't giving me?

[00:24:47] And like I said, the answer is technically yes. The thing that she didn't give me, she couldn't get me the thing that she didn't give me, but she couldn't match up to porn. She couldn't match up to the me having trained myself to seek after deviancy, to seek after new and different and more, and something harder, something more extreme, something riskier.

[00:25:13] I mean, in that sense, it is just like a drug addiction. I got to chase more, I got to chase something different, I've got to get something harder. So the old, you know, the old type of porn couldn't keep up with my addiction, let alone my human wife. Who, she can be all, she can be lots of different things, but she's still only one human, right?

[00:25:37] She could dye her hair, she, she's still only Carrie. And so she, I mean, it's porn. I don't care what somebody's beliefs are, like what, no matter what, just from a physiological standpoint, porn is such an incredibly destructive thing because it trains myself. I train myself if I'm, if I'm watching porn that I can have whoever I want, whenever I want, and I can change, you know, to a different website, I can change to a different video.

[00:26:11] I can do this, I can do that. Uh, that's again, bare minimum that is so incredibly immature, right? Like that's not how life works. We don't just get to have whatever we want, whenever we want. And yet that's what porn trains myself to think this. That's how porn trains myself to behave, which is a recipe for disaster if monogamy means anything to me, right?

[00:26:33] Ed Watters: Yep. Well, that, that's very good, Logan because that's precisely the direction I was pointing. You know, we, we always crave more and the best thing in our life is begging us to, can you look right here, please? And, and oftentimes many men miss that plea and they end up walking away from the best [00:27:00] thing in their life. And all it takes is a little bit of time and commitment. And, and you can resolve those issues. Go ahead.

[00:27:10] Logan Hufford: We just, I mean, here's, here's an example. Now this is a, maybe kind of a goofy analogy, but I, I remember I heard about this like early on in recovery. And it's such a helpful way to think about it. So if we're thinking about porn, think about how destructive it is.

[00:27:26] Again, even, even if you and I, or a listener, we don't share all the same spiritual religious beliefs, I mean, that's its own piece, right? The idea of sin and, but even just from a physical standpoint. So again, if the baseline question is, does, does monogamy matter? Cause if monogamy doesn't matter, then we can't really have a discussion.

[00:27:44] But if, if monogamy is important, think about it like this. So if you think about your favorite fruit, which for me, man, I love a good strawberry. Like we get some wild strawberries that grow around our house and like, if you get one of those guys, perfect, right? Nothing like it. So much better than store bought strawberries.

[00:28:06] A good strawberry is so yummy, so sweet. And God created that strawberry to be like one of the sweetest things that nature can provide. And then I think about, what's my favorite candy bar? So, for me, I like, I like Twix. Twix are pretty yummy. If I eat a Twix bar, cool, I eat a Twix bar. Now I go pick the best strawberry in the garden,

[00:28:33] that strawberry's gonna taste bitter. A strawberry is this incredibly sweet, yummy fruit. It's again, like it's one of the sweetest things that nature can give us, right? And yet it will taste bitter and sour if I've just eaten an artificially man made created sugar, a created sweetness. And that's exactly what porn is.

[00:28:57] I can have the most beautiful, loving, incredible wife and if I'm chasing after porn, it literally does not matter how beautiful my wife is, how sexually available my wife is, how faithful my wife is, she cannot compare from that dopamine hit level of way of, of behaving. She cannot compare to pornography.

[00:29:20] Ed Watters: Yeah, yeah. I like that a lot. And, you know, really, I, I think it's important for people to understand, in my belief, I am a believer and I believe God makes everything possible. And I think God puts everyone with a mate that is suitable to that person. And I really, I, I challenged that many times in my relationship early when I was younger. And there was a couple times, both [00:30:00] my wife and myself, we've experienced it,

[00:30:02] and I want to share that here. I was off doing bad neglectful things without my wife with another woman. And, you know, there's no way my wife would have known where I was, it's impossible. But out of the blue, here's my wife knocking at this lady's front door. And when that happened, that shame/guilt feeling, boom, it hit like instantly. And it let me know,

[00:30:42] wow, that's freaky. Okay, there's something to that. Years later, you know, I, I was being a jerk to my wife and she decided she's leaving me and she packed her bags and took off, left me for an entire week. You know, I, I had to sit with that. And out of the blue, I'm in Salt Lake City, this, this is a big metropolitan area,

[00:31:15] out of the blue, an old gentleman walks in to the shop that I was the manager at and said, Hey Ed, I was happening over here and overheard this young man saying that he was, uh, having the wife of this shop person come and live with him. And that's you. Is your wife's name so and so. And I said, Wow, Cooper, that is, that's mind blowing.

[00:31:55] And I closed up shop and I went directly to where I was told my wife was. That's just a miracle to me that out of the millions of, uh, possibilities where she could have been, I was directed right to her. So what God puts together, no man can tear apart. And I believe in that conviction, that, that, that is so evident to me. Has anything occurred like that in your relationship yet?

[00:32:36] Logan Hufford: I mean, not quite to that level, maybe in terms of like that, that type of extreme, um, you know, that dramatic nature, right? Um, you know, again, like I was saying earlier, so much of my story for better and for worse has been progressive. It's been, you know, building one brick after another kind of a thing.

[00:32:58] And yet, yeah, [00:33:00] I'll share it, you know, kind of a different story from, this is early on in recovery. Um, this was, so this would have been in the summer of 2016. So maybe I'm a month sober, maybe I'm three months sober, some, somewhere very early on in. And I was supposed to go to the park with my wife and kids. And we were going to

[00:33:23] have an afternoon at the park and have a good time. And, I can't remember what all was going on, but I remember I was frustrated. And, I can't, I think maybe we had an argument outside of, outside of this or something. But, I'm frustrated, I'm already upset, and then I can't find the park. And, I didn't know where I'm supposed to go, because we're meeting separately to go there.

[00:33:45] And ultimately, fast forward, I'm ticked. I'm stressed, I'm frustrated, I'm annoyed. I'm like blaming Carrie for not giving me better directions or whatever. And I'm, and so I'm just being, to say I was being sour and unhealthy is an understatement, but it's still the truth, right? And I remember thinking, I realized like I was near kind of a see area and were thinking like, You know what? I'm going to go down this street and I'm going to go see what I can find down there.

[00:34:13] I remember having that thought. And I'm, again, I'm sober by a few weeks, a few months, I'd started, I've started to build some traction and yet I was willing to do that. I was willing to go down the street and just see, you know, what kind of things might, might put themselves in front of me, so to speak.

[00:34:33] And I go, and I'm just about to turn onto this other side street and right then I look over and I see the park is right there. And the sign Wonderland is right there. And I just like, I, I see that as, as that was a God moment, that was like, because I was already in the program. Like I'd started the program,

[00:34:57] I had started to show a little bit of believable behavior. Like the early beginnings, you know, believable behavior, which is what my wife is always taught to look for. Don't look for words, don't look for promises, but look for healthy, progressive, believable behavior. And yet, on some level, mentally at least, I was willing to possibly risk, risk it all, you know? Possibly throw it all away because I was mad.

[00:35:22] And to that point in life, what did I do when I was mad? I acted out. What did I do when I was stressed? I acted out. And I was about to go down that same path and, but I mean, I really do believe God gave me, because I was thinking like this in my addiction, I'm like zooming down the highway and it just feels like I just can't stop.

[00:35:42] I'm just going 150 miles an hour down this highway. And then in recovery, you know, I learn, okay, yeah, I'm driving, I'm driving down the highway, but there's all these off ramps that I can take. There's all these ways to get off of the unhealthy cycle. And yet in my addiction, I didn't take them. In my addiction,

[00:35:59] [00:36:00] I felt like I didn't have any other choice or however I want to look at it. And so recovery, it doesn't mean that there's not temptations, and it doesn't mean that there's not triggers, and it also, it, recovery doesn't mean it, like the highway ceases to exist. I could still get back on that highway, but it's my choice, right?

[00:36:18] I don't have to get on the highway unless, if, the highway being my addiction, right? The highway being old Logan. Like if I wanted to, sure I could get back on the highway, but it's my choice. And so in that moment, God gave me an off ramp that I previously just, you know, would not have seen. Like, Oh, I don't have to go down this street. I don't have to, you know, give myself over to let's see what I find. Um, but that's, even though that's what I'd done for so many years.

[00:36:47] Ed Watters: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. Uh, when I first really started seeking help for the problems I was facing in my life, it was back in the early eighties and I remember a counselor pointed us to Gary Smalley.

[00:37:08] He was a Christian marriage couples counselor and he often talked about men and women are different. And you, you have to realize that being a man, you're not a woman and you will never fully understand how a woman feels. And it's also true for, women won't ever understand totally what a man is. However, if you set healthy boundaries,

[00:37:42] you can really identify these trigger points that you were just talking about and take one of those off ramps. So healthy boundaries in a relationship and being truthful with those boundaries are really one of those, you know, emotional intelligence values that we hold and that builds over time. So I really

[00:38:12] enjoy that you're out here sharing with people all of these things. Where was God in the process of your recovery? And what I mean by that is, in my evolution and growth towards a better person, a better me, I, I really have this faith and I believe that God through the Holy Spirit will shift and guide us through experiences. And, uh, if, if we listen to that still small voice crying out, we can understand each other better. What's your take on that? [00:39:00]

[00:39:00] Logan Hufford: This is definitely an example where there isn't going to be a singular, a singular moment, you know, a singular day where it's like, Oh, everything shifted completely that, that time. But it was, it was about two years into the program where I felt like, okay, I can pray, I can talk to God.

[00:39:21] Uh, I don't have to pray just because I'm confessing sin, which is like, that's basically what prayer had been for most of my life was. I prayed and I, I mean, really like, you know, was it even prayer or was it, you know, me trying to talk to the vending machine god, right? It's like, Oh God, please forgive me

[00:39:39] and I'll never do it again. And, you know, it's like, um, but just, okay, I can talk to God. I can, I can read my Bible, not as a check in the box, or as a legalistic thing, or to try to make myself feel better. Um, cause I, I would read my Bible before, but it was mostly like, okay, I felt like I was doing the right thing and that's kind of the only reason I did it.

[00:40:02] But now it's like, okay, I can, let me, let me see what the Bible has to say. Let me actually understand it or try to understand it. Um, and so it was definitely, it was awhile into recovery that, before I really started to feel that way. And then it's, it's just been this, again, snowball effect, this beautiful snowball effect since then.

[00:40:24] Um, in fact, especially the last couple of years, that's been a big, big journey of, uh, just God revealing new things to me and new, um, new areas of, of growth that are needed. And just, uh, yeah, different, different, you know, convictions the Holy Spirit is, is laying on my heart. Um, cause, you know, I, I mean, I know I didn't, I didn't share like my full story earlier.

[00:40:51] I mean, but I was raised in a family where I, I knew the Bible. We, we, we didn't, we, we went to church every week, not just out of like a traditional thing, but it was like, no, like we, we were, we learned about the Bible and we talked, you know, about these things. I, I had Christian values definitely instilled in me from day one.

[00:41:10] And I, and I'm thankful for that. I'm very thankful for that because it did give me a lot of foundational knowledge, a lot of foundational understanding. But, you know, foundational knowledge and understanding doesn't mean personal ownership of beliefs, right? And even personal ownership of beliefs doesn't necessarily mean that I'm going to be healthy with how I approach life.

[00:41:35] Um, because for me, it was like, I, I mean, I've always believed in God, I've always believed that Jesus died for my sins, but did I actually seek after Christ and Christ like living? Did I invite external counsel? Did I allow people into my life? You know, not really. No. So, uh, you know, [00:42:00] through, through recovery and, and people that God has put into my life and just having this, this transformed life from the bottom up, you know, from the inside out over the last almost decade now. Um, it's, it's been incredible cause it's, yeah, it's, it's allowed me to, to seek after Christ, not perfectly, but from this standpoint of like, yeah, I'm not perfect and I'll never be perfect on this earth. And yet I'm not dragging around this thousand pound weight behind me, right? And that's how it felt, you know, for most of my life.

[00:42:36] Ed Watters: Yeah. You know, it's interesting because I, I personally feel that God crushed me into rubble just to put me in a specific form. And then He put the other ingredients in and made this solid concrete block

[00:42:59] and that's a solid foundation. And from there, I can build a solid house if I remember to take care of my foundation. And God is truly that foundation to me and I seek refuge in Him every day. Every day I pray and I thank Him for everything that He gives. I don't have a lot, everything that I have is precious and it's, uh, a value of ownership that is beyond that materialism.

[00:43:35] It's a personal ownership and that's more wealth than any man can ever spend. And I think through that growth cycle, that crushing, that learning, it really is an experience when a man and woman walks that together and experiences it together. Now in our rebuilding of our framework for this beautiful house that we are building together, I always give her the option and opportunity to explore for our relationship.

[00:44:15] Every Friday we sit down and we read out of the Bible, and then every Saturday we take time and we read out of a self help book to better ourselves, either mentally, spiritually, or as a couple, relationship values. Do you and your wife participate in that sort of behavior now?

[00:44:42] Logan Hufford: Yeah, we do. And yet it's definitely something that, I mean, when I talked about like areas of growth, areas that I work on, I want to focus on I statements, you know, not speaking for other people.

[00:44:56] But I mean, I can, I can say it [00:45:00] is definitely something that we, we have to be intentional about is, is working on some of those areas, being in some of those spaces, uh, because we're raising four kids and we, we do put a lot of time and energy into recovery. And we do have a lot of, sort of like incidental, um, growth in these areas, incidental, uh, moments of like, you know, we get to work on something together.

[00:45:29] We get to have these bondings. We, you know, we get to, to, you know, whether, whether it's recovery minded or not. And so sometimes it can be very easy to not intentionally plan out, intentionally carve out those spaces. Um, so to be totally transparent, that's kind of, that's, that is part of the season that we're in right now is, is recognizing, okay, where, where can we carve out, where do we need to carve out more of these spaces?

[00:45:58] Um, so a hundred percent, not arrived, uh, working on it. You know, one of the pieces of my relationship with Carrie, and this is kind of crazy is, we've always been best buddies. And I mean, literally always. Like, I mean, from the day that we met and started talking before we even started dating, we've always clicked, we've always connected, we've always just been buddies. Even in addiction, even in the darkest times, we always enjoyed spending time with each other.

[00:46:29] We always enjoyed hanging out and, you know, snuggling and watching a movie, whatever. Um, and, and so I'm thankful for that because it, we, we enjoy each other so much. And yet sometimes because we, we get to enjoy like the daily grind, so to speak, you know, together, you know, going to the grocery store, just, you know, me doing dishes while she's cooking and we're having a conversation or something. Like we get to feed on all that and all of that energizes us, which I'm thankful for.

[00:47:02] Um, but because of all that, it also means that sometimes I can forget to like, okay, but like, let's actually carve out a date night, right? Let's carve out time to, you know, stay in, you know, can we, can we grow in God, you know, together in a separate space? Um, so I, I know I'm starting to ramble, but that's, it's, yeah, it's something that we're, that we're working on.

[00:47:29] No. That's what life is, you know, Logan, that progression, it happens just like that. And, you know, just from living and experiencing that growth with my wife and myself, I can tell that that cycle is there and you'll, you'll build and you'll structure it the way God intends for you and your spouse to put your family together. And that, that's why I really [00:48:00] think it's important to include that special time to take care of that bond because we get so busy with other things, it, it's devastating at times. So our time is running short here and I could keep going on for hours about this topic because it's a very important topic. Do you have a call to action for our listeners today?

[00:48:29] Yeah, just twofold. And I'll, I'll try to keep it short and sweet. Um, first and foremost, you know, I'm, I, I'm not coming on these podcasts to sell anything. Uh, I don't have a book or a course that I'm trying to point people towards. I, I really truly do, I want to shed light on the fact that sexual addiction exists and what a problem it is.

[00:48:48] And if somebody struggles with it, hey, you're not alone and start there. Number two, awareness for recovery. Healing exists, healing is possible. No matter how far deep in that cave I've gotten myself, there is healing possible. Um, so that's, that's first and foremost, that's, that's my purpose. Um, if, if somebody does want to connect with me or, or learn more about this, um, just, if, if any of this has been insightful, if any of this has been helpful, uh, check me out on Instagram.

[00:49:19] Uh, that is where I do a lot of, of work on this. And it's, my Instagram is not going to be, uh, B roll of some waves with a trendy Bible verse over it though I'm not trying to, you know, take shots at it. This is like, that, it seems like that's, you know, ninety percent of Instagram. This is for better or for worse, it's, it's recovery content. It's the meat. Uh, I try to get down to, Hey, here's some practical, this is what maybe addiction looks like. Or here's a video talking about, here's what recovery tools look like. Here's a practical application that you can put into place if you want to work on, um, whether it's, even if it's not sexual addiction, even if it's not addiction, you know, if you have destructive cycles in your life, if you have an unhealthy habit in your life, if you have areas that you need growth,

[00:50:05] okay? Well, then most of my content is going to be relatable. Because it's not about whether you and I have the exact same label or we have the exact same past. It's, we're humans. We all have brokenness, we all have selfishness, we all have areas where we need to work on things. That's what recovery is all about.

[00:50:23] Um, so on Instagram, I mean, you can search for Logan Hufford, but my handle's, uh, No. Longer. In. Bondage and there's periods in between each word. Um, but yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said like, that's, you know, that identity is very precious to me, no longer in bondage to sexual addiction. Um, so check me out there.

[00:50:41] I mean, I usually put a couple videos a day, uh, out and I try to be very practical and relevant and stuff that's just straight to the bone. Um, the other thing is just, you know, I, I don't ever try to like convince somebody or scare somebody, [00:51:00] you know, I, I don't think that's how we tend to learn as humans.

[00:51:03] Um, I could hear somebody give me, you know, the scared straight, you know, Hey, I was in prison or I had, and, and I go, Hey man, that's cool. That's like, that's a motivating talk, but I'm different, you know? I wouldn't get caught or I wouldn't struggle the way, that's how I always thought as a kid, as a, as a young adult.

[00:51:21] Um, and I think that a lot of people are like that. So what, the only thing I would say is, I mean, number one, again, just want to plant these seeds that, you know, Hey, it's real, but there's healing. But also just, no matter where you're at on your journey, build your infrastructure. Like we're all, we all have an infrastructure.

[00:51:46] We can't help but have an infrastructure in life. Infrastructure, my routines, the people I spend time with, right? Uh, what I spend my time and energy doing, what I enjoy, what I surround myself with, all of that is my infrastructure, my habits. And it's either going to get handed to me by my life where I passively accept an infrastructure, in which case it's probably not gonna be healthy.

[00:52:11] So then the people I spend time with are going to be people that use me, people that, you know, exploit me. Um, it's going to be unhealthy habits, it's going to be selfishness, it's going to be, you know, laziness and gluttony, and all that. That's, that's going to be my infrastructure or I can build a healthy infrastructure.

[00:52:26] And first and foremost, in my opinion, that's going to be, I mean, well, first and foremost, I would encourage you, you know, healing through Christ. I mean, if it's not centered around Christ, then it's, it's going to burn. It's, it doesn't last. But beyond that, I need people, I need people who care about me. And so

[00:52:46] depending on what, where somebody's at, you know, they may need a therapist, or recovery group, or who knows. But find people that have the type of life that you want, right? The type of marriage that you want. They've got the relationship with the kids, the kids that you would want. Um, they have an approach to finances that you want, or the fitness, or, or hopefully somebody that's got a few of these, you know? They, they got a few of these traits, but find people like that.

[00:53:15] And you know, you're not necessarily going to be best friends with all those people, but seek out open doors when it comes to connection. And if you seek out open doors, when it comes to connection, you will find open doors. I promise you that.

[00:53:30] Ed Watters: That's huge right there, Logan. Uh, if, if we are at bottom basement, rock bottom. There's no place but up. And the best, quickest way to get there is through help. And there's a lot of genuine people out there that's not out there trying to attack you for your money, or get something from you, they actually care. And I really feel that you're one of those individuals [00:54:00] and I want to say thank you for sharing here today with us and being part of the Dead America family and being who you are.

[00:54:15] Thank you for joining us today. If you found this podcast enlightening, entertaining, educational in any way, please share, like, subscribe, and join us right back here next week for another great episode of Dead America Podcast. I'm Ed Watters, your host, enjoy your afternoon wherever you may be.