I went to Celebrate Recovery (CR) the other night, and at the meeting we start with a standard introduction as found in all twelve step groups. CR is different because it is a “Christ centered” recovery group. Regardless, at the meeting after the introduction we are supposed to answer the question: “How was your week?” Well every guy always answers this in a few ways: “It was fine,” “It was good,” “It was all right.” What do we mean by these short sentences?
I remember talking with a college buddy of mine, and he told me that he defined FINE differently than the rest of the world, which allowed him to say it every time someone asked him, “How are you today?” I believe this is what a lot of guys do. “All right” for one person is different from another. “Fine” means one thing to one guy and another to someone else. Take my wife and I. When I say, “It was pretty good,” my wife interprets this as something bad while I actually am using “pretty” as an adverb subsitute for “very” meaning that it was very good. Funny eh?
So when it comes to porn addiction is there a hierarchy of phrases or terms? Does “fine” mean I slipped a couple times while “all right” means I slipped several times? And what does “pretty good” mean? Is it bad or good?
Beyond these vague “good” terms, what does someone mean when they say it was a bad week versus a terrible or horrible week. I believe these vague terms allow sexual addicts and porn addicts to communicate without accountability. Porn and sexual addicts need specicifity. They need people to demand them to be specific (with the only exception being a description of something, some place, some website that may tempt another person). Maybe CR or elsewhere needs to come up with a definition of these terms so there is uniform languge being spoken. What do you think?
