2. Beginning to Face the Problem: Porn
In this Practice:
Intro to thinking about your sexual life and if you really want to change it
If porn is your only problem, do you have a problem?
What’s the problem with porn, anyway?
Second Practice Assignment
Before you go any further, I wasn’t you to realize something very important. You are worth doing this hard work. Your life matters, your life is important. I really believe this.
Why am I making such a big deal of this? Because one of the reasons we misuse our sexuality is we have inadvertently learned sex can be a very effective in escaping reality.
Now I’m asking you to face reality! For most of us that can be threatening and painful. So why do it? For you. For a better life. For a life you can respect. Because you are worth it.
So the work of this Second Practice is for you to come to terms with the reality of what you’re dealing with. If you’ve become compulsive in your use of your sexuality to handle life, you are losing your life—bit by bit—even as you think you’re living it.
As you get into the Twelve Practices you might be tempted to think this is too much, you don’t need this, might even feel scared. Either of thee reactions is quite normal. But if you’ve got a problem that’s taken root in your soul, it reinforces itself. You will need help breaking its hold on you.
This compulsion—if you don’t do whatever it takes to break it and live a different life—will take you places to which you really don’t want to go. If you’ve been compulsively using your sexuality, you may already see yourself engage in behaviors that you don’t actually respect.
Most of us who are compulsive have begun to cross some lines in our viewing appetites and behaviors we never thought we’d cross. That’s what compulsive sexual behavior does, it takes us to places we never thought we’d go to, places the better part of ourselves doesn’t want to go to.
Because today most guys with compulsive sexual struggles begin with Internet porn use, let’s take a few moments to ask what goes on when we use porn.
But let’s be very clear: whether your struggle is with porn or with other sexual behaviors, the dynamics are the same: attraction-hook-progression-loss.
If your predominant sexual activity is using porn and masturbating, you’ll occasionally wonder if you’re really doing anything bad. You’re not doing anything with other people, so maybe this is no big deal, right?
Is pornography bad for you? Why would you want to break your porn habit? There are three important issues for you to face when you’re a regular porn user and you’ve become compulsive.
First, it’s really important for you to think about what’s actually happening to the people in porn. If it’s professionally produced, there are increasing stories of how the folks in these scenes are being abused in the process. Drugs, stds, entrapment, pain, degradation and some grievous personal losses are standard aspects of porn actors lives.
Even with amateur porn, these are folks who are giving away their own personal sexuality and personhood. You and I consume their image and use their sexuality for our arousal. That is not what their sexuality was intended for. Whether or not the persons putting their sexuality on display recognize their own value, you and I should. When you and I are looking at porn, we’re violating the sacredness of others.
Second, when you and I use porn, we’re developing an attachment to an erotic sexuality that is artificial. You were meant to be in relationship with people, and your sexuality is one way for you to express love and receive love in an intentional, committed relationship. Porn bypasses all that, giving you a one-sided piece of the experience (arousal, climax) and leaving you absolutely empty afterward.
Third, once you’ve become compulsive, you need more and you need different to achieve arousal. This means that the more and longer you use porn, viewing the same porn won’t arouse you as much because this is really about stimulation. So to get the same buzz, you’ll need more pornographic material, different content.
And here’s an important dynamic to be aware of: since you’ll need more and different to become aroused, you’ll move across lines and boundaries towards extremes in your porn appetite. Your arousal template will change and expand, sometimes in a very disturbing way. The breaking of taboos becomes a very real experience and a threat to your well-being.
And for most of us, sooner or later we reach that place where porn is simply not enough. We have to have touch, tangible experience. The boundaries just keep moving.
Again, whether your struggle is with porn or with other sexual behaviors, the dynamics are the same: attraction-hook-progression-loss.
So if you’re compulsively using your sexuality to handle life, you are losing your life—bit by bit—even as you’re living it.
In the next Practice, we will look at other ways we compulsively misuse our sexuality.
Assignment for Engaging the Second Practice—Beginning to Face the Problem: Porn
As I said, work at the pace which is best for you; it may be best to do only one or two assignments a day.
1. Think about the time you’ve spent on porn, masturbating, distracting yourself. Now think about when your life is over: do you want to look back and see that you spent hours that turned into days that turned into years of your life on behaviors that only took from you and never gave back?
2. Go to http://www.fightthenewdrug.org scroll down to “Porn Harms in Three Ways” click on the “Brain” tab and read: “Porn is Addictive”
3. Go to http://www.fightthenewdrug.org scroll down to “Porn Harms in Three Ways” click on the “Brain” tab and read: “Porn Addiction Escalates”
4. Go to YouTube and find a sixteen-minute video, “The Great Porn Experiment” by Gary Wilson, TEDxGlasgow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU
5. Now ask yourself:
What have I learned about how porn works in the brain?
Do I recognize the progression of attraction-hook-progression-loss in my own sexual life?
What kind of sexual life am I willing to settle for?
6. Here is a prayer I recommend you pray daily:
My Creator, please help me. Help me to be honest with myself. Help me to be open to the Truth. Help me to see my life as it really is. And help me to realize you are here with me and you will help me. Amen.
From Here
So do the work of the Second Practice. This will lay an important foundation of your personal willingness to do whatever it takes to change the pathway of your life. In the next Practice we’ll look at other ways we become compulsively sexual and the effects that has on us.
© 2017 LivingIntegrated