I can’t stop watching porn.
No really, I want to.
I have made promises and tried fresh starts in the New Year. I have even gone forward in church, gotten down on my knees, and begged God to help me stop watching it.
But I can’t quit porn! What is the real problem? Will I ever be able to stop watching porn? Because based on my past it seems impossible.
Porn addiction is an extremely complex issue with no simple answers or cookie-cutter solutions. But most people I talk with fall into what I call the “Zap Trap”—praying that God would just heal them or looking for some other instant solution. They want to stop watching porn without having to fight the fight for recovery.
However, in working with hundreds of men over the past ten years, I have learned that instant healing in this area is rare. So, let’s look at three main reasons why it is so hard to quit looking at porn.
How Hard Is It to Quit Porn?
Editor’s note:
As Dr. Alvin Cooper noted many years ago, the anonymity, affordability, and accessibility of digital porn make it much easier for people today to become addicted.
Not everyone experiences the pull of pornography in exactly the same way. However, some former drug addicts and alcoholics attest that pornography is more difficult to overcome. This is not everyone’s experience. Many factors contribute to the severity of an addiction, such as the age of first exposure and how many years they’ve been consuming pornography.
Additionally, pornography addiction often begins when porn is consumed out of a desire for genuine intimacy. As John Doyel notes below, isolation fuels addiction. Part of the challenge, however, is that pornography often feels like a substitute for real relationships.
3 Reasons It’s So Hard to Quit Porn
1. Porn is addictive.
Apart from the spiritual battle you are in by simply being a Christian, you are in a physical battle with a physical addiction that traps you into watching porn. You have literally become a drug addict. The drugs you are addicted to are those released in your brain when you become sexually aroused.
God designed those drugs as a wonderful part of His plan to bond a husband and wife as one during times of sexual intimacy. They all have a distinct purpose and are marvelously effective. However, your brain does not differentiate between having sex with your wife or having sex with porn. The same drugs are released with the same effect. Pleasure, focus, energy, release, and other things happen that make having an orgasm one of the most enjoyable things God has given to us.
We can’t quit porn because we like it. We like it a lot. So, we want it again and again. With that experience accessible in a five-minute trip to the bathroom with your smartphone, we start using it more frequently. When we get stressed. When we get angry. Or when we want to escape from problems, we can easily get a fix that does not fix anything.
Dopamine, testosterone, norepinephrine, oxytocin, and serotonin flood our brains, and we feel good for a while.1 Then shame and fear return, and it is not long before we want another escape. It’s hard to escape porn when porn is your escape. Scientific research shows that porn warps the brain like any other substance.2
Those who can’t stop watching porn do not like it when I tell them they are drug addicts, but that is the truth. The drugs are between their ears. They don’t need a pusher. Their drugs are basically free of charge and are extremely effective. We can now access whatever things we want to view and get a quick fix within a few seconds.
Also, we can walk out of wherever we just acted out and seem fine to everybody. No hangover. No trace of what you have done unless you forget to delete your history. Breaking free from this addiction takes a lot of work, and most men are not ready to fight that battle. Especially due to reason number two.
See Why Is Porn So Addictive?: 4 Reasons It’s Tough to Resist.
2. We remain in isolation.
How many people know about your secret struggle? You can’t quit without telling someone about it, but you feel like you can’t tell anyone. Telling means risking your job, your friendships, your wife, and your family. People will drop dead in shock because everyone thinks you have it all together, and so that pressure keeps the truth buried deep in your darkest places. You feel trapped because you are in a prison of your own making.
I know this from experience. As a pastor for 26 years who struggled with sexual addiction for eight long years, I hated myself. I committed many sexual sins, and there was no way I could just say to my wife and my board, “By the way, I am addicted to sex.”
However, God in His mercy revealed my secret life and my recovery began in September 2005. Talk about a train wreck and painfully injuring my wife and our four adult kids.
See Understanding the Shame Cycle.
Remaining in isolation makes it seem impossible to stop. Recovery demands confession, disclosure, coming clean, and genuine repentance. If I had been a better and braver man I would have stepped forward and asked for help. But I lived in denial and minimized my actions by telling myself I knew enough to be able to stop watching pornography.
We like to say that a lone sheep is a dead sheep. If you remain in isolation, you are a dead man and won’t be able to break free. Porn has its hooks in deep, and you will need a team of people to help you pull the hooks out and stop watching porn.
To make it through a withdrawal period of about 90 days, you need people available to you on a constant basis. You need to learn how to reach out to them when the whole temptation process to watch porn begins. We like to say reach out before you reach in. Reach out to your team before you reach into your pants.
The opposite of isolation is community. Scripture has a lot to say about community and our ministry was founded on this passage in 1 John 1:
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
Secular research conducted outside the Church likewise underscores the vital importance of accountability:
- One study found that having an accountability partner can make you 95% more likely to accomplish your goal.
- Gallup Business found that accountability is a key component in employee engagement. Businesses with highly engaged—and highly accountable—employees reported up to 17% higher productivity, 21% higher profits, 10% higher customer satisfaction, and 59% lower turnover rates for employees.
- One study suggests that accountability can even help people treat one another more fairly.
Fellowship is community. It is being daily connected to other men to help you fight the battle. How many armies send their troops out alone to fight the enemy alone? None. Stupid question. So why are you trying to fight it alone? Lone sheep are dead sheep.
3. We don’t take it seriously.
It is so easy to say to yourself that everybody is doing it. It is not such a big deal. Are you kidding me? Porn use is destroying families and marriages at an alarming rate.
God says sexual sin is a big deal. He calls us to purity and holiness. He has started a good work in us and plans to finish that work, but if we are walking in sexual sin like porn, we grieve and stifle the Spirit within us and will continue to be pulled into deeper areas of sin.
Every Monday night, about 100 men gather at our church because their sexual sin has been and is ruining their lives. They cannot stop and are heading into very dangerous and dark waters. We lie to ourselves when we think that we can handle it. If you could handle it on your own, why are you reading this article?
Not only should we take it seriously because God does, but we should take it seriously because of the effects porn has on us and society.
Did you see the cover of Time on March 31, 2016? They found that Millennials who have used porn over the years are experiencing erectile dysfunction because they have trained their brains to see sex as something you do online. So, when it comes time to have a real relationship, they fail to answer the call.
Are you aware of the rise and prevalence of sex trafficking around the world?
We Need Daily Encouragement to Stop Watching Porn
I believe with all my heart that God’s Word holds the path to stop watching porn. He calls us to community with no condemnation. He wants all of us to be connected and truthful with one another (and Covenant Eyes can help with this). We need to do as James says. We need to confess our sins to one another and pray for each other, and then healing can begin to come. Lastly, we need encouragement. Look at this passage in Hebrews 3:
“See to it, brothers and sisters, that none of you has a sinful, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness.”
We need encouragement every day or we will be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. To start your journey, check out How to Quit Porn: 6 Essential Steps.
1 William Struthers, Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2009).
2 Frederick Toates, “A motivation model of sex addiction – Relevance to the controversy over the concept,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 142 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2022.104872.
I have been struggling with that addiction for about 6 long years… and i began to hate myself more and more. Please pray for…. I’m so tired of this…i want to be free
Hello, Sasha – I’m so sorry that you’re struggling. What have you tried?
I am 20 years old and I have been struggling with this addiction for 3 years. I confess my sins to you and hereby I proclaim in the holy name of Jesus that I am free of this sin. It will be hard, but I can do all things through Christ that strengthen me!!!
Please pray for me, I now know that am addicted to porn and I beg God for forgiveness. Am also hopeful that one day I will be free from it, if the Lord let us live. May God in his infinite mercy set me free in Jesus name. Amen
Pls pray for me am really stuggling with porn addiction I need God to help me through it all. I know he will
Pls pray for me too. Im struggling to stop
I’m a Christian Jedi, we don’t have these problems. But I hope all of you will find the help that you need! Rockatoa, Brickticks out!
Does anyone know of a forum or support/accountability group for Christian women with this problem? I haven’t found one. Judging from these comments, there seems to be a need for something like that. Also, my problem is with sexually explicit writing rather than pictures or videos. Does anyone else battle against that? For every person in these comments who asked for prayer, I am asking the Lord to deliver us from this temptation, and from the shame and self-loathing that comes from it.
Check into the groups at XXXChurch.
And remember that you are perfectly and completely loved, no matter what.
The advise that I can give someone who feels trapped by porn addiction and other addiction is simple, don’t underestimate the matter, to be honest you’re in bondage but Jesus Christ can break that bondage, just pray and fast over the matter all in the name of seeking deliverance and believe that God will remedy, see God wants to see you free and delivered, do away with the condemnation. Shalom
I pray everyday for forgiveness of sins but by time i realise i do the same thing again. I put my trust in JESUS by praying and reading my bible but still i cannot stop it.
Hi, Joel – I’m sorry that you’re struggling. Can I ask some direct questions? What have you tried? Have you gotten rid of your phone? Do you have accountability in your life? Have you made a clear and effective decision about this sin? You will not be able to break free unless you’re willing to do whatever it takes to break free. Counseling, dumb phone, whatever it takes! Are you willing to do that? If you’re not willing to “pluck out your eye,” and only “kinda want to quit looking,” then you will continue to fail.
Chris
I am a teenager but due to technology i have a laptop in which i use in watching porn anytime i return for vaccation i have tried to prepare a time table to help keep me busy at all times but the billboards and pictures that are posted on the roads always reminds me anytime i walk on the road.Infact it let me sin anytime i return home
Please i desperately need help .I have been in this shameful act for 8 years now.I hold a position in church,this act judges my position as a Christian people look up to. I have tried possible ways to stop but hasn’t.Now I declare I am a porn addict,please help me
Hi, Ernest – I’m so sorry that you’re struggling. Can I ask some direct questions? What have you tried when you say, “I have tried possible ways to stop but hasn’t”? Have you gotten rid of your phone? Do you have accountability in your life? Have you made a clear and effective decision about this sin? You will not be able to break free unless you’re willing to do whatever it takes to break free. Counseling, dumb phone, whatever it takes! Are you willing to do that?
Chris
Firstly, change your confession, start declaring that you’re not an addict and that you’re gonna conquer this problem. Secondly, Fast and pray over the matter, you can try a partial dry fast from 6 am to 6pm and use prayer points like,’Holy Spirit fill me up with self control to overcome the flesh and its desires’ or ‘Lord God deliver me from this porn addiction’ and I kid you not, you’re gonna see a change.
I posted a comment saying that watching porn and masturbation are normal for men, unless it becomes all-consuming. I also said that this advice from conservative Christians that are NOT doctors with legitimate credentials. My post was deleted. Did I hurt someone’s book sales, perhaps? So much for open discourse, eh?
Hi, Gulagg – no, we’re not like that. I simply fell behind on a few posts over the holidays, but I believe I have accepted that comment, and I’ve now also accepted this one where you tried to pick a fight. No problem. I’d be happy to have open discourse about the statement in your previous post once you provide me the “clinical studies” that conclude that men require ejaculation every 72 hours or their testicles explode. Thanks!
Chris
See as christians, we shouldn’t conform to the norms of this world. So what’s acceptable for the world is destructive for the child of God.
Isnt it obvious that the individuals who are speaking out about their struggle here on this page arent happy to be bound to addiction they hate the idea that they are disadvantaging themselves and are blocking their destinies and want out.
So why are you expecting us to welcome your discouraging views with open arms?