5 Misconceptions That Kept Me Addicted to Porn
God has shown me some things that have allowed me to overcome my porn addiction for nearly a year and a half now. Maybe it’s my back ground in karate, but I don’t think I overcame my addiction because I was really strong but I think I overcame my addiction because God began to give me good understanding.
Sure some strength and endurance are necessary for any hard thing, but without understanding where to put that strength and endurance you are going to lose every time. Mythbusters (episode is entitled crying wolf) did an experiment one time on shotgun shells. In the movie “the grey” a guy killed some wolves with shotgun shells on the end of a stick. So they checked out to see if it would work. Turns out setting off shotgun shells would have really hurt but it wouldn’t have even broke the skin. Shot gun shells need the barrel of a gun to focus their strength enough to be lethal. As such we need to understand some things about our addiction to focus our strength to the place where we can overcome it.
This is the list of things I now know I misunderstood, and the misunderstanding kept me addicted to porn, and if I were to be honest the misunderstanding is probably what got me involved in porn in the first place. I am listing the things down in chronological order as the Lord showed me the truth. It has probably taken me 4 years to see these five things.
Note I am a single guy and a virgin, right now I am very grateful to be a single guy because it allows me to get past these misconceptions that would have really hurt whomever I married. I suspect these misconceptions morph into something different for the married men.
1 Sex is about pleasure. Truth, sex is about bonding.
I am actually really upset with the Christian community over this one. Whether it’s James Dobson, focus on the family, or any other ministry in the Christian community. Before I ever looked at porn I believe I had every misconception here, but it seems to me that every church and ministry falls all over themselves to tell young people how pleasurable sex is. In James Dobson’s book on Adolescence he describes sex as enjoyable, satisfying, special, and fun. He doesn’t say anything about bonding. Every other Christian ministry does the same thing more or less (some go as far as to brag about how graphic they are in describing sex).
Its not so much that what they said led me astray, but it perfectly synced with everything the world had been telling me about sex. Because it perfectly synced with everything the world was telling me it became my avenue to starting my porn addiction.
The Bible on the other hand has dozens of verses describing sex as knowing one another. The Bible talks a lot about being one flesh. The majority of the time when the Bible talks about sex it deals with the bond sex makes. This is contrary to what the world taught me, and unmentioned by the Christian community.
Two years before I overcame my addiction I was ready Marcy Aiken’s biography “The Crooked Stick” and in her book she had one paragraph that says that God made sex to bring two people closer together than anything else could. That paragraph shook my world. It was the first time I ever viewed sex as something other than for pleasure or making babies. It was the first time I began to see sex as intimacy instead of a biological release.
Eventually I began to be discipled by my current pastor. A few months into that discipleship I confessed my addiction to him, and one of the main points of conversation I nearly had to force out of him was the bonding aspect of sex. Apparently during sex two people feel spiritually connected. And a lot of men cannot feel emotionally connected to anyone outside of sex. There is a bond that forms through the act of sex. The more I learned about that bond the more I was able to resist my porn addiction. The more I learned about this bond the more porn felt fake.
The idea of God making sex for the purpose of bonding answered so much for me. It explained why I always felt crappy after I masturbated. God made sex for bonding. Sure masturbation brought the orgasm, but without the bonding aspect, you are missing the purpose. Without the purpose being met you cannot but help feel empty.
Outside of Marcy Aiken and my pastor I had a high school teacher in my Christian school one time mention that once you have sex you are permanently connected to that person. I still don’t understand what they meant. It seems to me the entire Christian community is terrified of telling the unmarried about the bond that comes through sex. I cannot wrap my mind around why it’s okay to tell young people that sex is amazing, great, pleasurable, fun, satisfying, etc. but you cannot tell the same young people about the emotional and spiritual bond sex makes between two people.
If it seems like I am really angry, it’s because I am. All five of my misconceptions are rooted in this idea that sex is only about pleasure. Sure babies happen, but I used to think sex is only about pleasure. I would never have been able to overcome my addiction without that obscure paragraph from an obscure book. Go to any website in the Christian community where parents are looking up advice on how to help their kids through a porn addiction and the advice given on every website is to tell their kids, who cannot legally get married to have legal sex, how great and awesome and amazing sex is. Porn has the exact same message.
I can clearly remember one day after I confessed my addiction to my pastor and overcame my addiction where I was frustrated and angry. I had all these burdens put on my heart about what sex was and what sex would be like when I got married and I finally said screw it. I determined that porn was a lie, everything the world said about sex was a lie, and everything Doctor James Dobson, Focus on the Family, any other radio ministry said about sex was a lie, Everything my church said about sex was a lie, everything anyone ever said about sex was a lie. Most of these guys talking about sex couldn’t even remember when their children were virgin. So how could they accurately tell me (a single) anything about sex? I am decades away from their view on sex.
The only truth I knew about sex was the bible says sex is knowing one another, so when I get married I will discover her and she will discover me, and that only works if I reject everything everyone ever told me about sex. I gave up all my expectations, in a fit of frustration. Whether its good or bad, doesn’t matter. Only discovering my wife will matter. Once I determined everything was a lie it really helped me reject fantasies.
If there is one thing I would love to do one day, it would be to sit down and talk to these experts about why they focus so much on the pleasure of sex, and seem to intentionally avoid any aspect of the bonding nature of sex, when they talk to the unmarried. I am sure they have good, logical reasons for it. They’re wrong, but I would love to know their thought process behind it.
Until I changed my views on the purpose of sex, I had no way to fight my addiction.
If you are wondering why I mention all these Christian ministries by name, it is because I have had to reject everything they taught about sex to overcome my addiction. What they say may be very helpful to the married men, but to the single guys like me it was toxic. It took me a long time to admit these experts, who do a lot of good, were wrong and really screwed up here.
2. Intimacy is sex. Truth, Sex is a very minor part of intimacy.
A few weeks after I confessed my sin to my pastor and I was in the most turbulent time of my withdrawal symptoms I had a question. What is intimacy? Up to this point I had only ever heard someone say the word intimacy when they really meant sex. I knew at this point I had gotten some really horrible information from pretty much everyone on what the purpose of sex is, so I felt really compelled, and I think it was the Lord leading me, to study out what intimacy is.
I went to amazon.com and put in the word intimacy, or perhaps the question, what is intimacy, into the search engine and the first book that came up was “The Seven Levels of Intimacy” by Matthew Kelly. I looked at the preview of the book, and the first line in the book is “Intimacy is not sex.” I immediately bought and downloaded and read that sucker.
Intimacy is not a Bible word, but the concept is in the Bible. The Bible verse most closely tied to intimacy is Galatians 6:2 “Bear ye one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.” Intimacy has to do with sharing one another’s hearts and helping each other with the burdens on your heart.
According to the book there are four kinds of intimacy. There is intellectual, emotional, spiritual, and physical intimacy. Up to this point, to me intimacy was only about sex. But according to this book, sex was only a SMALL part of physical intimacy. According to the book you share a different level of intimacy with everyone you meet. Levels 1-7. Most people are only intimacy with you on level 1, but only once you get to level 6 are you doing what Galatians 6:2 says to do.
I read this book at a time where I had confessed my sin to my pastor and was keeping him updated on my withdrawal symptoms. There was nothing I was keeping from my pastor. This book really explained what I was doing, and how I could do it even better.
I realized immediately that before I ever got married I would need to be intellectually, emotionally and spiritually intimate with my wife on a deeper level than my pastor. When I was having a hard time with a fantasy I would instead focus on fantasizing about the day I would confess my struggle with whomever I get engaged too. Right now I am closer to my pastor than anyone else in the world in part because I confessed my fault to him and he stood by me. To be closer to the woman I marry than my pastor I will have to one day confess my sin to her. Will she stand by me? Will she confess her struggles to me? This will be the most vulnerable time in my life. But you cannot have intimacy without vulnerability.
God made sex so two people can know one another better than anyone else in the world. The Bible clearly describes sex as knowing one another over and over again. The way I figure it, once I am deeply intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually intimate with my wife, it will be an amazing thing to see how sex makes all those connections even deeper.
My current goal is intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. I can and should have all these things without a wife.
For all of you guys wondering how you can deal with this sin without sexual release I would argue that mainstream Christianity is wrong. We are not sexual creatures, we are creatures of intimacy. Limiting that intimacy to sex is devastating for us as people because it limits our intimacy needs, not to just physical intimacy but a small part of physical intimacy. Sex is only a tiny part of physical intimacy which is only a small part of intimacy. As a single you can practice 75% of intimacy without touching anyone, and since most touch is not sexual in nature you can still practice the majority of physical intimacy.
Personally I think an accountability partner is only effective if you are developing intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy with them, because you have to replace porn with something. Replacing it with three parts of intimacy absolutely overwhelms your addiction.
3. Lust is the sin keeping me in porn. Truth Envy is the real problem.
For years and years I thought I was involved in porn because of lust. Then 364 days from the time I confessed my addiction to my pastor and stepped away from porn I realized my sin was envy.
I remember when I was young, in elementary school talking to the other little boys about how amazing sex was, and how you had to wait until you were married to have it. Well, year after year I cant wait to be married so I can have this sex thing. Then as time goes by I know sex is supposed to be reserved for marriage, but I want to know what it is so bad I start looking for answers. Why? Envy. Sex is fun, feels good, special, exciting, and something I cant have.
So I started looking for answers, first through one of James Dobson’s books. Then through different books I found more answers. And then it started developing into pictures, and rated R movies. Why? Because married people did this, and I had to know what sex was because sex is this great amazing awesome thing.
Then I natural started masturbating. Then I started telling myself once I got married it would stop. If I was only married I could quit. Married people have an outlet. All those phrases come from envy, not lust.
As a single guy, to overcome my addiction I had to stop envying the married guys. In fact I got to the point that I was grateful to be single so that I could deal with all this stuff without dragging a wife through my muck. In fact I believe once you give up envy this addiction is easier for the singles to deal with than the married guys.
I think it goes back to the intimacy issue. Many of our married brothers are not intellectually, emotionally, or spiritually intimate with their wives, and many of them are only physically intimate with their wives so they can have sex (and even then they do not have sex as often as they would like). They are missing out on ¾ of intimacy. As single guys we can practice ¾ of intimacy, especially with an accountability partner.
Once I figured out I was a creature of intimacy and not a sexual creature, and that I was practicing ¾ of intimacy with my pastor I felt pity for all the married men who were only having sex with their wives. They are missing out.
I am not saying lust plays no role in my porn addiction. But I am saying that my major sin was the sin of envy. Without the sin of envy lust would never have overcome me.
4. All physical intimacy is about getting sex. Truth most physical intimacy is about appreciation
The media taught me by the time I was very young that all physical intimacy between a man and woman leads to sex. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a kiss, a hug, holding hands, or sitting next to each other. Its about sex.
When you are dealing with a porn addiction one of the hardest things to deal with is the fantasies that attack your mind, so whenever I would see a kiss, hug, holding of hands, or even people sitting next to each other, my mind would work out how that would lead to sex, because that is what Hollywood taught me. I haven’t looked at porn or masturbated in a year and a half, but my fantasy life is still a real struggle because of horrible beliefs like this.
God let me see an article and chew on it for two months before I finally realized how broken my mind is.
The Lord showed me that most physical intimacy is really just about showing affection. Even when you go to the Bible nearly every kiss in the Bible is about affection. The only one that MAY not be is found in proverbs 7.
Physical intimacy is to help us develop intellectual, emotional, and spiritual intimacy. I did karate a number of years and I can actually remember being confused about why when I touched those girls, in karate, either through a hold, or sparring, or they touched me, why it wasn’t sexual. But in doing karate I was showing intellectual intimacy through touch. Nothing sexual about it. But that was confusing to me.
Sometimes we show emotional or spiritual intimacy through touch. One day if you should ever have a daughter I sure hope you never think touching her is sexual in nature. Over and over again I read about the problems caused by men who wont touch their daughters because they are like me, their mind has been broken with this belief that all physical intimacy is about sex. When their touch should be telling their daughters, I love you, your awesome, your safe. Porn, Hollywood, the world has done a great job of telling us all touch is sexual.
When I get married most of the time I touch my wife, it will be to say I love you, your awesome, and your safe. Now when I see touch, either kissing, hugging, hand holding, etc. that is the message I see. I cannot tell you the change in my fantasy struggle to see the affection in touch instead of the sexuality in touch. But then it took me a long time to get here.
5. I agree with the Bible on purity. Truth I was double minded.
I am really embarrassed by this. I always thought that I agreed with the word of God on the issue of purity. But as I was struggling with my thought life I prayed that God would show me some more of my misconceptions, and he showed me that even though I believed that sex should be saved for marriage alone, and that sex should be only between a husband and wife, I also believed on some level that sex with more than one person was okay.
The Bible tells us in James 1:6 that a double minded man is unstable in all his ways. The problem with my double mindedness is that I did not even notice it.
Year after year I thought that I was looking at porn despite what I believed. I never realized that my thought life had gotten twisted and on some level I thought it was okay. Here I was believing the Bible on purity, and the world on sex with multiple partners. I was holding on to two totally different beliefs.
How often have I been messed up in this addiction because I believed two contrary things at the same time? It has taken me over a year and a half to see my double mindedness. But it has really helped me with my thought life. Not having two completely opposite beliefs constantly battling in my mind has significantly calmed down the war in my mind.
Conclusion.
I am very careful to say I have overcome my sin instead of saying I have victory over my sin. If you watch a football game whomever has the most points when the time runs out wins. In this battle against my addiction the time doesn’t run out until I go to heaven, so I am still in contention with fighting my addiction. My understanding has given me great insight in how to overcome my addiction, but my addiction is still fighting me so I am careful to not say I have victory.
I believe that I still have misconceptions that are still calling me to a porn addiction. I don’t know how many I have. I think I have one that deals with pride, but the Lord has not yet given me good understanding there. I also think I have one that has to do with lust, but I think that because of a conversation I once had with my pastor. He told me a married man does not lust after his wife. So until I am married I don’t think I will be able to deal with that misconception.
I look forward to the insight God gives me so I can add things to this list. I think the reality isn’t that I have struggled with porn since I was 14 but that I have been struggling with sexual sin since I was old enough to watch tv. TV has put so many misconceptions into my mind about sex I don’t know if I will ever discover all of them. But I am so grateful for the ones I have found so far.
I expect as I continue to recognize more misconceptions I will more easily be able to continue to overcome my addiction.
Look out for your misconceptions. You likely have some that I don’t have, or others play a much bigger role in your life. Ask God to show them to you. It may take months or years before you are able to see a misconception so pray and be patient, and talk to your mentor about what God has shown you.