How Porn Shattered My Life (Scholarship Winner)

I was 36, married for 15 years, serving in our Church, attending life group and sending our girls to a Christian school to help raise them in the ways of the Lord. I thought pornography was something non-believers looked at. I didn’t really know what it entailed. I never imagined it was about to play a starring role in my life.

I grew up in an evangelical home where my perspective of the world was binary. I had a simplified way of viewing the world as either right or wrong and had very little room for nuance or complexity. Obedience, discipline, and self-control were highly touted. I had never spent time thinking about what pornography was or why it was dangerous. Truth be told, I don’t think the word entered my vocabulary until well into my marriage. Certainly, Christians didn’t struggle with this. Porn was a secular choice that people intentionally pursued. In hindsight, I was very naive.

How Pornography Changed My Life

My whole world changed in November 2021 when I discovered a questionable post on my husband’s phone. This led to a series of devastating revelations of adult phone lines, chat rooms, cyber relationships, in-person encounters, and prolific pornography use. It turns out, my husband had been keeping decades of secrets which all stemmed from early exposure to pornography. He had engaged in many of these behaviors before he was old enough to drive a car. I can hardly articulate the sense of shock, the incomprehensibility of the person I built a life with being involved in a world at complete odds with our values. It was like watching a fantastic movie when there’s a crazy perspective shift that you didn’t see coming, knocks your socks off and leaves you reeling. Except that this wasn’t fiction. This was my new reality.

I have now become educated on what pornography encompasses. How it dehumanizes women, glorifies abuse, and exploits the vulnerable. I am grieved to know that the multi-billion dollar industry intentionally targets young viewers and that the vast majority of exposure to pornography occurs when children are 8-10 years old. I found it enlightening to explore the neurochemistry of why this is so addictive. Porn capitalizes on our God-given reward centers in the brain. Oxytocin is a hormone designed beautifully to foster deeper bonding between covenant lovers while dopamine floods our brains with pleasurable sensations and leaves users searching for their next rush. Pornography has infiltrated millions of marriages while men and women in the Church are entangled in its snares and left battered by its aftermath.

I have experienced the fallout and destruction pornography and sex addiction has left in its wake. The rupture of trust by the person you hold closest to you in the world causes intense pain. I have struggled with betrayal trauma. For me, this manifested as physical symptoms like the inability to eat, extremely distressing nightmares, anxiety around completely mundane tasks, and a pervasive feeling of danger. I learned to cope with flashbacks, insecurity, difficulty trusting myself, and tortuous intrusive thoughts. I still struggle with the pain it has caused our children. Their lives were drastically upended while their father was absent attending 90-day residential treatment and now, as we navigate being separated. There have been countless relationships damaged. Financial consequences. A marriage destroyed and attempting to be rebuilt from the ashes.

How I Live With Integrity

I am having victory in coping with triggers from the trauma and overcoming the shame of both being a betrayed partner and the shame of considering rebuilding after infidelity. The Lord is opening doors and creating spaces where people feel safer to be authentic with their struggles and wounds. My partner and I recently celebrated a milestone of 18 months of being free from pornography! Personally, the Lord has humbled me. I see this as an enormous victory. He is slowly shifting my attitude of condemnation to curiosity. He has gently been exposing my wounds and tenderly piecing me back together, a more Christ-like person than I was before this transpired. He has revealed so much of His character to me through this painful journey and I know in a more authentic way the meaning of grace, mercy, and forgiveness.

Integrity can be defined as thinking and behaving in a way that is congruent with the values we profess to hold dear. When we consider the challenge and allure of the internet, it provides endless novelty and instant accessibility. It is an avenue where users can remain anonymous and allows a duplicitous existence and compartmentalize their fractured selves. This dichotomy between proclaimed values and lived experience is the hallmark of a life lacking integrity.

I believe living with integrity in our current age requires us to move from isolation and secrecy to inviting others to know the most vulnerable parts of ourselves. It involves intentionally building community and accountability in our inhabited world and our digital one so we are able to live authentically.

We should be challenged to think critically about the media we consume and if it aligns with the values we proclaim. Does it pass the high bar posed to us by Paul in Philippians 4:8? Is this true, is it noble, is it right, is it pure, is it lovely, is it admirable?

I Offer Hope and Healing

Covenant Eyes protects my young girls from inadvertently viewing something that could be indelibly stamped in their developing minds. It reduces their chances of seeing content that is both arousing and potentially shame-filled. It will be an additional safeguard when my partner is permitted to use a computer without supervision or if he eventually returns to having data on his phone. Internet accountability software will be one of the facets of our recovery check-ins with each other and our groups. I’m not sure which company led me to the other, Covenant Eyes or Pure Desire, where we found fantastic resources that have been integral to our personal recovery journeys.

I went through Betrayal & Beyond, our church is now leading Sexual Integrity 101, and I am hopeful more people will begin their journey to find lasting freedom & healing. It has equipped me to embrace the challenge of sexually discipling our children and hopefully prepare them to live a life of authenticity and integrity. I have been thrust into a place I never envisioned being and now feel a call on my life to offer hope and healing to people struggling with sexual integrity, abuse, and betrayal trauma. It has opened my eyes to a huge group of hurting people whom the Church has historically not served very well. I hope to partner with churches to offer biblically-based, trauma-informed therapy and journey with people as they submit their sexuality under the Lordship of Christ. I hope to be a part of cultures of grace and safety where we can bring our brokenness before others in community and trust Jesus to redeem and restore us.