Pornography – Sovann Pen

Porn and marriage

man using phone — photo credit: https://unsplash.com/@eddybllrd

Porn and marriage. It’s overwhelming. (Just take a glance at the stats here: https://www.covenanteyes.com/pornstats/)

Years ago when I started I started doing pre-martial counseling asked “Has porn affected your relationship?”. Now I ask “How much has porn affected you and your relationship?”

It’s deeply painful and pervasive.

It can make marriage, or even the hope of getting married, feel so hopelessly broken. Or it just kills all feeling, leaving just emptiness and death of spirit. It’s hard to know where to start.

The bravest and best place is with the truth.

It’ll be the fight of your life. Be brave. Freedom is possible. You might be able to go through the motions of working on your marriage and have this destructive area in your marriage and heart for years or already have.

But don’t you want more? For the both of you?

There was a marriage book that Julie and I read 25 years ago called Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts by Les Parrott.

I know this video just scratches the surface but tonight I want to challenge you to Save Your Marriage Before You’re Caught.

If it’s been a part of your life, since you were young, you won’t fix it overnight but you can begin tonight.

For your sake.

For your spouse’s sake.

For love’s sake.

This is a video on porn and marriage I made as part of a month of daily videos on marriage on Facebook a few years ago.

How going to bible college or seminary can make your porn problem worse.

The Bible tells the story of Abram, being chosen by God, to set off on journey to a far country.

The season before starting college or seminary can be similar: an exhilarating time with a sense of clarity about God’s calling and purpose for your life, a start of a new chapter, a new adventure.

It can be a time of growing faith and a strong sense of God’s presence and purpose for your life.

It can also be a time of hidden danger.

Like Abram dealing with pharoah, lying about his wife Sarah to save his skin in Genesis 12 , along the way to where God wants you to be, there can be unexpected challenges at key moments, that can threaten To compromise your character, destroy your integrity and inflame any hidden shadows or addiction in your life. Particularly porn.

For about the past 11 years I’ve been meeting with seminary and bible college students about porn. Tragically, it’s something that threatens to derail their dreams and goals of serving God in ministry before they’ve even really had a chance to start.

Starting at a new college or seminary may include moving to a new town, a new living situation, new roommates.

It may involve a new job, new relationships, social groups.

There will probably be new shiny, attractive people for you to flirt with or connect with/stalk on social media.

New churches to try, small groups or ministries to be involved with and serve with.

Putting your best foot forward or even the desire for a fresh start, a clean break from the past, can make you vulnerable to putting on a mask again (or maybe you’ve never taken the one your wearing off) but now there’s more at stake in your new role as someone who is devoting the next few years of your life to being essentially a “professional” christian.

There can be this assumption that because you’re a youth pastor intern or a counseling student counseling people about porn, that you are doing fine in this area. Being in leadership, or being a “bible college student” or a “seminary student”, can be a trap.

There’s more at stake when you’re not just one of the guys in youth group who’s struggled with porn. What happens when you’re the youth pastor who people are now looking up to as the example of sexual purity?

It may have been something that you’ve worked hard to overcome, something you been authentic and honest about back home. The temptation with new relationships is Why go through all that again? What if these new people aren’t as gracious and understanding as my friends and family back home? What if my past is a deal breaker with the cute girl I’m just starting to know in class?

In seminary and bible college, there’s regularly scheduled come-to-Jesus moments, aka chapels, that also can be life-changing and grow your faith. Your professor may even start classes with prayer.

There’s also the danger of becoming complacent, taking it for granted, or even becoming numb to these opportunities to worship and meet with God.

There will be new teachers and leaders to look up to, new books to read, new subjects to learn and explore which is exciting and what you’re paying lots of money for.

But you may find yourself studying and reading (very likely) much more than you have in your life and feel like your head is going to explode.

You may struggle with feeling stretched, challenged, maybe even overwhelmedacademically for the first time. Feeling incompetent or doubting whether you’ll be able to handle the workload might be a shock.

You may even have to drop a class, or fail, the first time.

You might start a new student ministry, which may be awesome.
But sometimes, it’s not.
Sometimes, you may end up with a poor fit for your skills and strengths, who you are.
You may not click, for different reasons, with your supervisor or mentor.

New rhythms, a new room and bed, new gym or CrossFit box.
You have to find new self-care spots and times.

Depending on how you deal with change, if you struggle with social anxiety or introversion, this may or may not go smoothly.

You may even lose some sleep in the transition.

Your sense of self, your confidence, can be shaken.

For these reasons, and more, even as your committing your life to learn more about God and serve Him with your life you can become more vulnerable to a problem with porn (or other addiction) either getting worse or resurfacing.

Addendum: Even if it’s a problem you’ve had victory in, sometimes a problem that been dormant can flare up again because often porn can be “managed” with rigid boundaries, filters, computers in public places, accountability, busyness – a host of strategies and outward restrictions – back home. But if the root causes of the addiction aren’t addressed, without those usual safeguards in place, the beast of porn easily can be unleashed and come back just as strong, once the lid is taken off.

So, here’s a few suggestions.

Be mindful and prayerful. Be honest and stay honest about what is really going on in your heart and mind.

If you’re moving away from your usual support and accountability in this area try to connect as soon as you get a bit settled with a supportive community. Find safe people. Don’t give up if it’s hard at first.

Don’t spend too much time church hopping or trying to find just the right church, try to get plugged in sooner rather than later.
Finding a community will help you from feeling isolated.

Pay attention to your relationship with Jesus. You can spend hours studying and reading about God, about theology and Jesus and at the same time become very distant and disconnected from Jesus.

Be mindful of self-care, your mood and stress. Working and going to school, financial pressures, academic workload, full ministry calendar, social events, just being a college kid (aka taco runs at 2am), hours on the computer, can quickly add up to depletion and survival mode which make you vulnerable to rationalizing, minimizing, justifying and compartmentalizing acting out.

If porn becomes worse, or has never been something you’ve addressed in your life, it might be helpful to start counseling or recovery group to work on it. Many schools offer student counseling services that can help.

In the end, Abraham isn’t remembered most for his dishonesty with pharoah about Sarah, he’s known for being a man who walked by faith, whose faith was credited to him as righteousness, a man who ultimately God has used to bless the nations.

If you struggle with porn, this can be true for you too.

I hope this post hasn’t been discouraging or intimidating but has encouraged you if you are starting bible college or seminary soon (or if you work with students) to be wary of this potential pitfall.

And I hope you’ll see God’s plans and purpose for you clearly as you start the school year.

When’s the right time to deal with porn?

I’ll deal with it when
…I’m dating.
…we’re engaged.
…we’re married.
…it hurts her.
…I get caught.
…we have kids.
… I have a girl.
… the kids are old enough to know.
… my son starts struggling too.

I’d deal with it if
…she leaves me.
…it affects my work, my ministry.
…it gets as bad as *that* dude.
…it wasn’t so hard.
…it hadn’t been a problem for so many years.
…it wasn’t so embarrassing.
…I wasn’t so broken.
…I wasn’t alone.
…God would help me.
…there was a God.

I’ll deal with it when life – these lies – becomes unmanageable.

10 reactions people have to getting caught in their porn use

I wrote this list of reactions 10 reactions people have to getting caught in their porn use.
It struck me how similar it is to getting caught in an affair.

I’ve added a little more detail than the initial list I posted then.

Andee Zomerman saw this when I posted it on Facebook and she invited me on her local radio show The Rose City Forum to talk more about the list and the problem of porn. You can listen to the podcast here. I really appreciate Andee’s willingness to increase awareness of the problem on her show. (If you listen, you’ll see talking “about” porn and answering questions is outside my comfort zone. I’m much more comfortable asking the questions and listening in sessions.)

1) Lie – when porn use first comes to light, what’s you see is usually just the tip of the iceberg. And anyone cheating or using porn has been lying to you and themselves for awhile usually. Porn is just a symptom, dealing with the problem is not just about stopping the behavior but getting the many factors that feed it.

2) Minimize – the person caught will usually just admit to what they can’t deny, cover up or explain away. They’ll only fess up to what you have the the evidence on. And even with evidence, they may try to make you crazy and question your ability to see the evidence for what it is. They will also minimize or excuse and rationalize their behavior. They will also try to minimize the damage it has done to themselves and those around them.

3) Get angry, attack back – when backed into a corner and with the evidence mounting they may try to attack you, throw you off with their anger and cross-complaining. If you tend to avoid conflict, they may try to use anger and intimidation to scare you and get you to back off and back down. Sometimes, the anger stems from fear. Fear of being found out, from all the truth of what they’ve worked so hard to hide and manage coming out. Fear of hurting you. Fear of what you will do. Fear of disappointing you. Fear of seeing the pain in your eyes. Fear of what they’ve been afraid of, for so long, coming true. Fear of being rejected and alone. So, sometimes that anger, that comes out, is really anger at themself for what they’ve done to the one they love.

4) Get depressed – this may be genuine but often more in a shame-based manipulative way to get you to not be hard on them and leave them alone. This can look like playing a victim. And don’t get me wrong, very often those trapped in porn are in a very real and significant ways victims. Thing is, it is extremely difficult (maybe impossible, at first) to hold both the role of having healthy boundaries and being angry enough to confront them with the truth and break through the denial and lies, and the role of the empathetic, understanding supportive spouse, at the same time. That is why when porn use comes out it relationship, it can be helpful to not only have couples counseling but individual counseling support for the roller coaster of emotions that come out.

5) Blame – similar to getting angry but worth a separate note. Blame is making you the reason for their behavior. How what you do and say, or don’t do and say caused them to cheat or to view porn. “If you were more interested in sex. If you weren’t so unavailable. If you hadn’t gained so much weight. I wouldn’t be tempted to use porn.”

6) Get worse – this one is a big one, I’ve heard this a lot. Telling the truth is risky, often confronting someone about an affair or porn the offended person is afraid of the other person’s behavior getting worse. They are worried if they set boundaries, like a temporary separation, their spouse or partner will cheat more, get more self-destructive. If they set boundaries about intimacy, they will escalate and instead of viewing porn they will start going to strip clubs, or it’ll give them more of reason to turn to the other person for solace and intimacy or worse. And, the thing is, it’s true, they may. But it if they chose to make things worse instead of better it reveals a lot about their heart, commitment and willingness to change.

7) Leave, give up – similar to 6. Another fear of confrontation is that the person caught will just not want to make the effort to change and leave the marriage or relationship. Sometimes the pain of being alone seems worse than the pain of being cheated on. After years of not being unsuccessful at breaking free from porn, it is easy to feel hopeless to change. Sometimes the pain and devestation that has occurred is overwhelming, instead of facing it and taking responsibility, running away seems like a much easier choice.

8) Scramble to “get better” – sometimes someone gets caught and it is a bit of a wake up call. Thing is, just focusing on behavior, getting filters, Open DNS, accountability software, etc. doesn’t address the root issues. Patrick Carnes describes this as a first order change. Changing because they “should” or “have to”. These can be good, wise first steps but long-term recovery requires more.

9) Confess – disclosure is a start, taking responsibility, telling the truth and the whole truth, without distortion and minimization. But confession is not enough. Confession without action, a plan, support and accountability can just perpetuate the problem, repeat the cycle of best intentions, false starts, broken promises and failure.

10) Repent – starting recovery. This is moving from 1st order change to more internalized motivations for change, working on changing on the inside as well as the outside. Actions speak louder than words in restoring trust and relationship.

Listening back to the podcast and re-reading this list I realized this can come across as harsh, not very accepting or compassionate towards folks struggling with porn. I have lots of empathy for those caught. I understand. They are who have spent most of the past 12 years sitting with and counseling. I will write another blog for resources for recovery soon.

What would you add to the list?

How does it strike you?

Let him who hasn’t viewed porn cast the first stone, on porn and shame

I’ve seen this quote a lot in social media and the news lately

“Let him who is without sin cast the first stone”

It’s from John 8, and it’s a story about a woman caught in sexual sin about to be condemned and punished for it by the scribes and Pharisees and Jesus.

The folks quoting this in the news often get the characters mixed up.

But this blog isn’t really about the my reactions to the Duggars or patriarchy or The Village Church or Caitlyn Jenner.

It just reminded me that dealing with porn, child porn, abuse, sexual history, shame is very very difficult.

And sometimes the phrase: “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” is used as a way to just not talk about it.

Here’s a modern paraphrase “Let him who hasn’t viewed porn cast the first stone”

The scribes and the Pharisees were watching how Jesus would deal with sin, they wanted to trap him.

Modern day Pharisees also are watching how the Church deals with sin.

The problem Jesus dealt with then is the same as it is today.

For the Pharisee, behavior and controlling it is paramount.

There is no empathy for what’s driving the behavior.

For Jesus, the person and the story behind the behavior is most important.

Judgment and shame, especially around porn, isolates.

It disconnects us from God and others.

If you struggle with porn the message for you is the same today as it was then for the woman caught in adultery.

You aren’t damaged goods.

You’re not worthless.

You’re not done, a lost cause, a cast off.

At the same time, it isn’t casting stones to say

You can be free from porn’s grip, you don’t just have to accept it.

Porn hurts others.

Porn hurts you.

Living a lie is unhealthy.

It isn’t what God wants for you.

There is hope.

You can change.

Your story isn’t over.

“Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”

He didn’t want her to die and be judged.

He didn’t want her to stay the same.

He wanted her to know that He was there to enable her to be free from her past.

This is the best thing I’ve read about porn and shame lately.

By Aaron Smith, who also recently spoke and wrote about what it’s like living with bipolar disorder.