It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m wrapping up my work week before I head home to help my wife setup for a birthday party. Just as I’m about to lock up, my office phone rings.
I hesitate to pick it up. I am usually finished with my office work by this time on Fridays, but today’s work has lingered. In my 15+ years of working in the counseling field, I know that calls from clients after Thursday night tend to be heavier as whatever they are facing at home looms large on the weekend.
My work today is not yet finished.
Almost immediately upon answering the phone I hear the fear in Jim’s voice. He launches into a panic filled story about the lunch just had with his wife. “She found out about my porn struggle last night, and is telling me she is thinking about leaving, and that she is done trying with me.” He’s ashamed, scared, and desperate to come in and see me for counseling. After several minutes of discussion we setup an appointment for the first appointment I had open the following week. Referencing Proverbs 1:5, I tell him to be patient and wait until we meet before he makes any promises or disclosures to his wife. Too often men respond reactively when confronted in a situation like this, and it makes the relationship with their wife worse, not better.
I spent a few moments reflecting on the conversation I’d just had. Jim said a few things about his situation that stuck out to me. I made a note to make sure and address these few comments he made. As soon as I wrote down these four specific areas to revisit with Jim next week, I realized that these four areas applied to the countless other men I have worked with over the years that have been in a similar situation.
When Jim and I get together in person, I share these four statements about his porn use. They were extremely helpful for him in his understanding, responsibility, and healing.
In our phone call, Jim made a statement about how he thought his porn use had something to do with her appearance and availability to have sex with him. Genesis chapter 3 speaks specifically to this dynamic between a husband and a wife that Jim unknowingly referenced with his comment. When God finds Adam and Eve after they sinned, he comes to Adam first and asks him a series of questions to which, in verse 12, he blames Eve for his actions (hello, shame). “The woman you put here with me – she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”
1. It is not about your wife.
First and foremost, no one enters into marriage sexually pure. Everyone has a story of some kind of sexual brokenness or harm. We all have sexual baggage, and porn is a certain kind of sexual baggage.
There have been very few instances when I have heard a man speak about developing a porn habit or addiction after getting married. The overwhelming majority of men bring a history of porn into the marriage. Now it’s possible that the porn usage increases after marriage because of a husband’s inability to handle a variety of factors: Disappointment in sex, performance issues, or frequency of sex. While it would be nice and clean to put the blame on the wife, that’s not really what’s happening. She’s not the problem.
Porn use happens because it’s easy. Because the man wins. Every single time, it’s a win. You win because there’s no risk of rejection. When you pursue your wife sexually, there’s a good chance it won’t go the way you hope/want/need. The viewer of porn never experiences this pain of failure. Porn says, “You can come as you are. You are welcome here. Alone. Tired. Afraid. Ashamed. No problem, You’re ok here.”
Sex with oneself is infinitely easier than with another person, but it’s also infinitely more empty. Sex in real life is rarely easy. It’s very vulnerable, and the possibility of rejection or failure is ever present. But it is this vulnerability and risk that make sex in a marriage a unifying, healing, and connecting experience. Porn is about your own sexual story, not about what your wife is or isn’t doing.
2. Porn use happens because of your shame.
When Adam and Eve recognize they are naked, they feel shame for the very first time. The natural response to shame is to cover up and hide. Shame is the feeling that there is something wrong with me. That I am bad. I keep doing things that are painful to myself and/or others, and only bad people do those kinds of things again and again. Because of this, I feel the toxic shame of being bad.
Porn is a readily accessible way to forget about the deep disappointment in yourself. That is, until the porn binge/use is over. Then you are on your own to face the mess. The mess in you emotionally, and physically. This is when the tidal waves of guilt and shame come with great intensity. A great reprieve from this toxic shame is to soothe oneself, and what better way to do that with someone on the screen that will always say “yes”.
Shame keeps us from connecting with other people. And this isn’t just about porn. Anyone who deals with shame has trouble being in caring, intimate (not just sexual intimacy), vulnerable relationships. We were created for relationships, and if one is too shameful to have real relationships, porn is a momentary outlet for this longing and need, but it is a fractured and broken way of feeling connection.
At the end of Genesis chapter 3 we see the unique consequences of sin for both Adam and Eve. For Adam his consequence centers around the fulfillment of his life through his work and provision. Verse 17 says:
“Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. 18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
His consequence of work and provision provokes a shame in him that threatens everything he desires for his life. This shame says that he is incomplete, incompetent, and without potency. He will toil in the fields to produce food. Nothing will be easy, peaceful, or without challenge. The sex he enjoyed with Eve prior to his sin provoked no concerns of rejection, no worries of “being enough”, and no possibility of revenge actions aimed at fulfilling his needs at the expense of Eve.
Now that his sin has changed the world, it has changed his life. His nakedness will now have rejection as a possibility. He might not have “enough” to woo his wife. She will be uninterested in him, and he will be enraged with the shame of impotency (in the curse for Eve, God tells her that her husband will “rule over you” which implies a sense of dominance, violence, and rage against his not being enough for her). As a result of these painful feelings, he will look for ways to easily satisfy his longings.
What is easy? Sex without the possibility of failure. What kind of sex is always without failure? Porn. It’s a one way street with no possibility of the man’s desire being shut down. Porn answers the question for him, “Yes, you are enough.”
3. Porn use is cheating.
One of the most problematic dismissals I hear about porn is that it is better than having an affair. Most men are smart enough to not say this outright (or consciously think this), but if you believe that using porn isn’t cheating, you are effectively saying that it’s better than going out and having an affair.
Hebrews 13:4 exhorts husbands and wives to avoid behavior that defiles the marriage bed. The Bible does not specifically mention pornography (or masturbation for that matter) but it does speak directly to sexual immorality. The modern culture would have you believe that porn is an act that does not harm anyone, and there are those that believe the use of porn in the marriage relationship enhances the sexual experience between husband and wife. The marriage bed is the sexual relationship between you and your wife, and the use of porn is bringing other people into your marriage bed. This is the very definition of adultery.
Porn use is cheating because it involves getting sexual and emotional needs met in a relationship outside the marriage. Yes, to some it might not feel as devastating as an affair, but it’s incredibly problematic for a couple to deal with the effects of porn.
Studies show three significant issues that come from porn usage. First, the more men use porn, the less successful they are in their intimate relationships. Secondly, they tend to have (and need) more sexual partners in life. Lastly, they confuse sex with something that is relationally experienced with something that is watched. Sex becomes about orgasm, not about connection. This habit of watching sex transforms people into objects, and connections into transactions. In this framework, men and women become nothing more than genitalia.
4. Healing does not happen in isolation. It requires community.
What has been said thus far might have been difficult to read, but keep heart. There is hope. First John 1:9 reminds us to keep heart and respond to the forgiveness that is available: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Usually porn has been something done in secret and isolation. The easiest thing to do is attempt to correct this behavior in secret. However, I’ve yet to meet a man who has healed from the use and effects of porn on his own. Healing always requires community. Recovery happens in relationships, not in isolation. Community is a direct assault on toxic shame. Evil cannot thrive in a community that is oriented towards hope, healing, and forgiveness.
The men, women, and couples who attempt to recover from their sexual brokenness on their own face an impossibly difficult uphill ascent without any safety gear to keep them from falling. The impact of porn is such a personal and shameful experience (for both husband and wife), the last action most want to take is to invite others into that process. But that is the only way that I know of how healing and forgiveness take place.
Don’t try to do it alone. Join or start a recovery group. Seek professional counseling. Get help! Talk with a friend, invite them into a healing process with you. You’re not alone: Barna research group found that 73% of men ages 18-49 viewed porn once a month. Others are waiting to be invited into the light of day, just like you are.
Jim left my office after that first appointment with a list of 3 things that he was going to do. He committed to finding 3 men that he could share with about his struggle, join a recovery group at his church, and begin working on his sexual history. The biggest thing I wanted Jim to walk away from our time together was a focus on his relationship with God, not with his wife. When he is able to square himself up with God, the relationship with his wife will take care of itself. It was easy for him to feel like he needed a miracle with her that first week we started working together, but he didn’t get to that place over night, and he was not going to address all the challenges with his marriage overnight, either. Change happens with small and consistent incremental adjustments that take place over an extended period of time. Don’t try to rush the process, seek guidance, and as the Psalmist says, wait patiently for the Lord.
