A common misconception I see men believing in is the idea that good education, good looks, and solid spirituality implies a healthy relationship with money, power, or sexual behavior.

I’m here to tell you, brother, that oftentimes this is not the case. Society tends to operate under the assumption that success comes to those with a combination of good looks, intelligence, and good morals.

Simply put, many of us define success as access to money, power, and sex. Whether you’re upfront about it or not, this combination tends to be the driving force for the majority of men in the Porn Reboot program as well as most of society at large.

Oftentimes people hide these three main desires behind the term “freedom.” They want the freedom to live by their terms, to spend as much time with their family as they want to, to be free from worries about things like finances and health, and so on. 

In their pursuit of freedom, men go to school, build up their skills, take care of their bodies, learn to carry themselves well, associate with the right people, establish a place in their church, and more. Working toward all of these things is a positive thing to do. They’re chasing after success and working to become the best possible versions of themselves.

Ultimately, though, what these men hope for after achieving their definition of success is the freedom to purchase any material item they want, to influence or control situations to their advantage, or to fulfill their deepest sexual fantasies with whomever they please. This again boils down to the desire for money, power, and sex.

If you’re honest with yourself this description probably applies to you, too. There’s nothing wrong with the pursuit of these things, though, brother. They’re natural desires and something that everyone in the world works for. But it doesn’t matter how much you achieve if you cannot build a good relationship with these things once you have them.

Again, the idea that men who have these things have a good relationship with them is a misconception. There are plenty of men who have millions of dollars but squander their wealth, men who have more power than you can imagine but use it to cause harm, and men who have their choice of whatever woman they could want but go about their conquests in an abusive way.

Good relationships with money, power, and sex are skills that must be developed. They aren’t necessarily an inherent part of us. Unfortunately, society doesn’t often teach us how to build good relationships with these things. Too often we take our pursuit of them to the extreme. 

Our parents, mentors, and teachers told us we need to be smart, knowledgeable, moral, and spiritual. We must follow all of society’s rules. They said that if we adhered to all of these then good things would happen to us. We would find the right woman, have access to sex, experience marital bliss, and have financial prosperity.

But they didn’t teach us the most important part: understanding how money works and what a good relationship with it looks like; understanding power and how it should be wielded; and understanding the truth about our natural sexuality. These are things that weren’t spoken about and it fell on us to develop an understanding for ourselves. 

How often have you seen celebrities, politicians, athletes, high standing religious individuals, famous pastors, or people with great intelligence, incredible beauty, or good character lose everything to money, power, or sex? They pursued these things to an extreme and ended up failing because of it.

You may have secretly or even openly judged them but are you honestly any different? 

I know I’m not.

As you know, I fell prey to my sexual behavior for many years. Fortunately, during my mid-twenties I developed a system to help me control it. That system was the early beginnings of the porn addiction recovery system that’s still in use today. It changed my entire life and helped me eliminate the control that porn addiction effect had over my life.

Despite this newfound control over my sexual behavior, I still struggled in other areas. I made a decent amount of money in my sales position but squandered it due to my lack of financial understanding. I was a poor leader at the company I worked for, burning many bridges by letting my imagined power get to my head.

While I had learned to control my problem with porn and masturbation, I didn’t have a good relationship with money or power. I had to develop an understanding of what positive demonstrations of these things looked like before I could build a healthy relationship with them like I had with sex.

So now I ask you, brother, how is your relationship with sex going? If it were perfect you wouldn’t be here reading this blog. You’re likely struggling to control your behavior and now realizing that its impact on your life is getting worse.

Or maybe you’re like me at the beginning where you have gained control over your sexual behavior but now you’re struggling with your spending habits or lashing out at your subordinates in the office. You have one part of the equation solved but there are still two more sides to the triangle that you need to even out.

But here’s the thing: eliminating your behavior with porn and masturbation removes a significant roadblock. Men who struggle with porn addiction problems and compulsive sexual behavior cannot develop healthy relationships with money or power, either. Once you control the sexual part of the equation you free yourself up to control the other two aspects.

The skills of managing money, power, and sex are not innate for some men, brother, but the ability to learn them is out there. It’s up to you to take responsibility for learning how to build healthy relationships with these things for yourself.