How Porn Impacts Real Intimacy and Real Relationships [free call]

I can’t promise to be on the call tonight, but I wanted to share a message with anyone who might happen to stumble across this page.

My addiction to porn started innocuously enough. It was a rite of passage as a young guy, gathering with friends to flip through pages of a Nude magazine… and marvel at the spectacle. By the age of 12, I had seen the mags, watched a few tapes, and prank called a few sex hotlines from pay phones. All fairly typical and relatively harmless from my vantage point. I don’t even regret those actions today. Nostalgia for an innocent time in life, I suppose.

But once my family signed up for Internet in the house, the experience once shared with friends had become an exercise in stealthy web surfing. I got caught a number of times, but I was undeterred. The message for me was to hide my tracks better. Over the course of 15 years—from 12 to 27—the attraction to porn had become more fanatic and frantic. It was the first thought in my brain after classes on most days. And then after work. And then during work. Not too long ago, I realized that I couldn’t stop thinking about porn. My smartphone became a ready, available, and private way to get my fix… and it wouldn’t matter where I was. Work, school, home. My problem was getting worse.

My fiancée at the time—now wife—expressed her concerns, but attributed this to the fact that I’m a man… and so she let things slide. Now I look back at her viewpoint and feel ashamed that I helped her to define what it means to be a man. I don’t think she realized the true extent of this addiction and what it was doing to our relationship, but she has stuck by my side. By all measures, my wife is a beautiful person. And yet somehow, my expectations for our sexual intimacy was not founded on our relationship, buy rather upon that which I had come to know growing up… Without realizing it, I had effectively ruined my appetite for an intimate sexual experience. Porn had ingrained thousands of fantasies in my head, none of which featured the woman of my emotional desire… my wife. It was a frustrating experience, and left me dissatisfied with the physical aspects of our marriage. I became bitter and resentful, and turned back to porn to satiate that side of me.

And so the spiral continued.

Upon the birth of my son last October, I decided that I didn’t want him to be raised by a man who couldn’t control his urges. My son needs a role model. And my wife needs a husband. And I need to be a man for the all our sakes.

I recognize that i am not the type of person that can have a casual relationship with porn. I have an addictive personality. And so I’ve decided to cut it out of my life entirely.

It has now been almost 80 says since I’ve looked at any sort of pornography, and my intent is to keep that chain unbroken.