Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries:
The Handbook
by Tommy Jones and Bobby Schauerhamer
First Edition
© 2014 by Tommy Jones and Bobby Schauerhamer
Book Layout and Design by Bill Dobbs
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2150-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission.
Introduction
Acknowledgments
First, Tommy would like to thank his wife, Gail, and his son, Matt, for their loyalty and support at a time of overwhelming crisis in his life. I love you both.
Thanks, also, to the entire staff, clinical and administrative, at Project Pathfinder, Inc., (projectpathfinder.org), St. Paul, Minnesota, with special gratitude to Jannine Hebert, for fixing me when I was seriously broken, and to Warren Maas for helping to restore honor and trust to my life. The healing power of this treatment program, its staff and support people, continues to contribute immensely to the health and safety of its community.
Thanks to my great friend and colleague, Bobby Schauerhamer, whose idea 10 years ago resulted in the wonderful group on which this book is based.
Bobby would like to thank all of his family, friends and employers who supported him in what he does now, rather than judging him on the mistakes that he made in the past. Thanks to all of the men who have attended the Healthy Boundaries groups over the years and share their courage and wisdom. Lastly, and most importantly, I would like to thank Tommy Jones for being steady and consistent in his friendship even as I struggle to keep from falling.
Both Tommy and Bobby would like to thank William (Liam) Dobbs for his professional design and editing work preparing this manuscript for publication.
And, of course, thanks to the Twin Cities Men's Center (tcmc.org), Minneapolis, Minnesota, for sponsoring, supporting, and providing space for the wonderful group on which this handbook is based to live and grow.
Preface
Mission Statements
The mission of Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries: The Support Group is to promote healthy sexual behavior among men, encourage responsible relationships, and to improve community safety through choice and maintenance of strong, well defined boundaries.
The mission of Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries: The Handbook is to share the cumulative experience and wisdom of this group with a wide audience of men and women who are committed to community safety.
Intended Audience
When we started our support group, Choosing Healthy Sexual Boundaries, we had general ideas about our intended audience. First, we felt the need for a peer facilitated, volunteer group that men convicted of sex offenses could choose to attend voluntarily, following a treatment – aftercare regimen. That is, a mechanism that would enable and strengthen maintenance of newly acquired skills and strategies learned in treatment. It would also provide a safe, comfortable and confidential venue to discuss matters of sexuality in a nonjudgmental and supportive manner. This group, we thought, would be composed of men with child sexual abuse, indecent exposure, child pornography, and molestation convictions. Many would have received court ordered treatment through private providers, not-for-profit clinics, and some from prison programs completed while incarcerated or while engaged in civil commitment. Most would be motivated to maintain and strengthen boundaries that would preclude return to jail, prison or other forms of confinement.
Our second target included men whose sexual choices were beginning to generate negative consequences, but who had not yet crossed the criminal justice boundary. Or more likely, men who had not yet been caught and arrested for illegal boundary transgressions. In education, this would be called Early Intervention. “Early,” here, would mean “before going to jail.” These were men cheating on wives or partners, using prostitutes, frequenting strip clubs, watching excessive pornography —including child-pornography— and engaging in unhealthy fantasy involving children and underage teens.
The goals for this audience focused on establishing or redefining individual boundaries in ways that would allow for satisfaction of sexual needs in an appropriate, healthy and harm-free manner.
A third group emerged over a period of two to three years. These were men referred by private practitioners, treatment programs, and by probation officers. They were men with potential to benefit from participating in a support group concomitant with ongoing professional treatment.
And from our time spent working with the men in this, and similar groups, comes this handbook. So who might gain from reading it? Any man who is who is concerned about his sexual behavior, choices and boundaries, who is feeling pressure from those around him to make behavioral changes, or who is experiencing negative consequences for sexual choices that are increasing in frequency and severity might benefit. Likewise, any man completing, or who has completed, voluntary or court-ordered treatment as a convicted offender and who needs help maintaining sharply drawn boundaries and remaining vigilant might give the book a try. It won’t hurt; it sure may help. Good luck!
About the Authors
Thomas Jones (Tommy) was a public school teacher for 26 years. He was addicted to alcohol for much of that time. In the fall of 2001, he was in jail… a guest of the county, you might say... serving a four-month sentence in a correctional facility. It could have been worse; it could have been longer and it could have been prison. Bad choices and poor, dysfunctional and missing boundaries cost him his freedom, friends, money, trust, respect... his teaching profession.
The reasons for his incarceration are not as important as the changes within him that those consequences generated. Those changes included his decision to quit using alcohol, to choose and maintain good, healthy boundaries, and his determination to help keep his community a safer place to live.
Tommy is currently a husband, parent, friend, community volunteer and college graduate; he is also a Vietnam Veteran. In April 2013, he and Bob Schauerhamer were recipients of the Distinguished Service Award presented by MNATSA (Minnesota Association for the Treatment of Sex Abusers.)
He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two very special cats. This is his first book.
Bobby Schauerhamer was born and raised in Minnesota, only living in other states while engaged in college studies. He graduated from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, earning a B.A. with magna cum laude honors and a major in psychology in 1973. He then attended and graduated from Western Michigan University with honors earning an M.A. in experimental psychology in 1976. During the past decade he has attended several classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis where he finds valuable solace, balance in his life and the opportunity for creative expression.
He had the opportunity to work in research throughout his college education starting with surgical research at the University of Minnesota as an undergraduate. Four professional publications resulted from that research with his first article as primary author, which was published in The American Journal of Surgery in 1972 (1972, Schauerhamer, R., et al).
Mr. Schauerhamer was licensed as a psychologist in the State of Minnesota in 1979 and surrendered that license in 2001. He pursued a second career in the print and manufacturing industry following a brief period