The TV show MythBusters is known for taking popular myths and showing if they are true or not. More often than not, true to the show’s name, myths are “busted,” shown for the falsehoods they really are. I hope this article serves as a buster for two popular myths single men and women follow:
- I’ll stop looking at porn when I get married.
- My porn and lust aren’t harming anyone because I’m not married.
Often singles believe because God gave them a sex drive, it means they must be sexually active. If being sexually active isn’t feasible, or they’ve made a decision to wait until marriage, porn seems like a natural replacement. In fact, porn can almost feel like an act of righteousness for some singles—their way of making sure they aren’t having premarital sex. A Christian single man recently told me he has to look at porn because it’s his way of making sure he doesn’t have premarital sex.
Underneath this mindset is the idea that if and when a single person gets married, they’ll be able to simply turn off the porn switch since they can now have sex with their spouse.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The Sex in Porn Is Much Different Than Sex in Marriage
I’ve written about this extensively before, so I’ll sum it up in a nutshell here: the sex in porn (and lust) is of a totally different substance than the sex God designed within marriage. Porn is a smorgasbord of unlimited, perfectly-shaped bodies who have no problems and who “want” you. Your spouse is not going to be a smorgasbord; they are one person. They will not have a perfect body, even if they have one when you get married. They will have problems. They will not “want you” every second of the day. In other words: they are a human being.
Porn conditions us to be attracted to something that isn’t human. Stop and digest that for a moment. That fact alone ought to make us flee from porn as we know in the depths of our being that we are created to be in sexual union with human beings, not objects of any kind.
God’s sex and porn’s sex are apples and oranges–two totally different substances. If you’ve created an appetite for oranges, apples aren’t going to satisfy you. This shouldn’t shock anyone as millions of married men and women continue to struggle with porn, so why do you think marriage will be unique for you? It won’t be. Your spouse will be a human being, and you need to condition your mind now that sex is about human beings, not objects. Not only for your future marriage, but for yourself and all those around you.
What If You Don’t Get Married?
In addition to this strange infatuation with non-humanity, porn conditions us to turn people in real life into objects. Here’s where the rubber really hits the road: you may never get married.
If marriage is your Plan A to stop looking at porn, will you simply look at it endlessly if God decides you will remain single your entire life? The myth that such a life doesn’t do any harm to anyone is destructively flawed. While you may never get married, you are called to be in community with other believers.
If you’ve been conditioned by porn to turn other human beings into sexual objects for your consumption, then by no means do I want you around my wife or my daughters! Honestly, this is a scary situation to be in as a man when you can’t be around women in your church because you can’t stop yourself from lusting over them. And this is absolutely true for single women interacting with men in community as well, the lust knife has no gender preference.
The Stakes Are Too High
Sure, the stakes with porn are high in marriage. You can break the heart of the one you love, and sometimes, lose your entire marriage and family as a result. But those high stakes by no means diminish the stakes single men and women face every day. It’s not an either/or, it’s a both/and. The situation for single people is different than for married people, but we all serve the same God who designed sex and humanity the same way for all of us.
The irony is, both married and single people alike look to porn to give them what only God can give. Too often, the advice given in porn conversations is “look to your spouse to satisfy your sexual desires, not to porn.” Or single people are told, “Look to your future spouse and save yourself for them.” Both of these bits of advice are flawed. They are flawed because they put a spouse (or a hypothetical spouse) in the place of God, assuming a spouse can give us what only God can give. This is called idolatry. At the end of the day, no one needs to have sex. It’s true. You won’t die without it.
What we all long for from sex, porn, and romantic relationships is to be told we are valuable, approved, and desired. No one, married or single, will ever truly find these things from another person (or a depiction of a person in porn), but the great news is that every Christian has already found these things from Jesus. When we each live into these truths in the specific context we’ve been given by God, whether that be singleness, a bad marriage, or a good one, we’ll find we need nothing else to satisfy us.
The section “What If You Don’t Get Married?” had the opposite effect on me. I was looking all over the internet for help as a single man on how to quit….
But saying: “What if you don’t ever get married?” really has the opposite effect… Like it made me think “What am I even TRYING to quit porn for if I might never get a wife?? Especially in this culture, why would I bother?”
I now have decided to give up completely. I will now forever give up on trying to abstain from pornography. I’m done trying to quit because now I realize there might not be any actual benefit to quitting pornography.
So… thanks… I guess… You killed my desire to get over pornography.
(P.S. I would’ve left this comment sooner, but I didn’t know you could reply. Haha!)
Hello, thanks for sharing your comment. We have a whole ebook written for singles (by a single person) that I think you’ll find more encouraging and helpful in your struggle with pornography: https://learn.covenanteyes.com/more-than-single/
God bless!
Keith
2021 and we still need this article. I am trying to overcome an addiction myself. Its been the worse experience of my life. I absolutely hate how its affected how I see women but more importantly my relationship with God. I’m single but its become evident to me that it bt no means is less impactful on my present and future relationships. There are no loop holes to living a sanctified life thinking we can get away without it affecting us now in the present. I pray i finish my race well. I can hope its not too late to make a difference. blessings
I completely disagree with your sentence that a spouse cannot make you feel valuable approved and desired. Why would you encourage us to be with a spouse that doesn’t value, approve or desire us?
God did not design humanity to be content with just a walk with God. When God made adam he said it was not good for man to be alone. He did not say it wasnt good for man to be unmarried. One of the major factors in my porn addiction was that I did not have a right fellowship with my brothers and sisters in Christ, and in fact I needed to leave my church and go to a totally new one to finally have a right relationship with my brothers and sisters in Christ. Nearly every book in the new testiment deals with this subject. God did not design us to have all of our fellowship needs filled by Him and Him alone. In fact that kind of preaching kept me from obeying God and kept me in porn addiction. As christians we are a body. If there is a scism in the body it leaves us vulnerable to addictions like porn. As an american it is culturally correct to pull myself up by my own bootstraps and be a self starter and say I got so close to God I licked this addiction. But as a Christian I must say I eventually humbled myself and obeyed God and developed a right biblical relationship with those around me and those relationships really helped me overcome my addiction.
Thank you Noah for the courage, articulation and excellent skill you have in dealing with a very pervasive but not spoken about problem that ruins many thousands of committed love relationships.
Question, would you say that much of the content in your articles also applies to mental affairs, entrenched ogling habits (with real people) then fantasizing, etc?
Thank you and may the Lord protect and bless you as you take a stand for Him and the sanctity of God’s marrige model.
Hello Noah, would you kinfly give a quicj reply to the question posted by Pureminds, Nov 23 at 12:18pm ?
Thank you for you very important ministry!