What if I told you that your use of pornography could reveal your way to healing? As a licensed mental health counselor and ordained minister, I’ve seen firsthand that sexual brokenness is the stage through which the work of redemption can play out in our lives. Although we are prone to hiding or despising our pornography use, I invite you to the counterintuitive path of curiosity. The journey to freedom from pornography involves the humility to recognize there is far more you do not understand about why you use it.
I recently completed research on over 3,600 men and women struggling with unwanted sexual behavior, be that pornography, an affair, buying sex, etc. I found that the sexual fantasies, porn searches, and sexual behaviors we pursue are not random. They are a direct reflection of the parts of our story–past and present–that remain unaddressed. If you want to find freedom from pornography, you must identify the reasons that bring you to it.
Related: What Your Sexual Fantasies (Might) Say About You
Perhaps you’ve found yourself not able to turn off your allure to porn. If so, a far more beneficial approach to recovery than combating lust is to focus on the themes that drive and necessitate your use of pornography. Until these themes are transformed, you will find yourself in the same, pernicious cycle of pornography use. So who watches porn? Here are three major themes that predicted pornography use from men and women in my research.
Those with a Lack of Purpose
There was a very predictable increase in pornography viewing for men who experienced a lack of purpose in their life. The main takeaway is porn appeals to men who do not know who they are or do not know how to get what they most deeply desire. If you lack purpose in your life or you feel an acute sense of paralysis in your career, pornography can easily become an incessant squatter in your life.
Futility and lack of purpose are opposite sides of the same coin. In Genesis 3, the curse for a man is that everything he does will be characterized by futility. Genesis 3:17 -19 (NLT) states the curse for a man: “All your life you will struggle to scratch a living from it. It will grow thorns and thistles for you…By the sweat of your brow you will have food to eat until you return to the ground from which you were made.” Men intuitively know that even in their greatest seasons of accomplishment and connection, there will be a looming sense that it will all fade away. Futility is the ominous experience that whatever we attempt to build will inevitably fail, crumble, or be surpassed.
It is against the backdrop of futility that pornography seduces men. Pornography is appealing precisely because it creates a world without thorns or thistles.¹ Only requiring you to bring your lack of purpose, your futility, and your disappointment, porn will give you a world where, for a moment, it all goes away. The madness of pornography use is that it appeals disproportionately to men who lack purpose and identity. When these men attempt to find freedom from porn, they inevitably fail because they attempt to maneuver through life without their most dependable getaway car. Their failure then becomes further evidence that they are consigned to a lifetime of futility.
Those Who Experienced Sexual Abuse
The heaviest consumers of pornography in my research had 8% higher rates of past sexual abuse compared to those who did not watch porn or moderately consumed it. As awful as it might sound, trust is the paradoxical foundation of sexual abuse. The majority of people who have known sexual abuse were groomed by someone they knew–their parent, brother, sister, babysitter, neighbor, or pastor. Trust sets up the diabolical impact of abuse–the same person that ushers us into sexual arousal (which may include the introduction of pornography) and sexual shame is also the one who delights in us, connects with us, and pursues us.
Perpetrators of sexual abuse are aware that their victims likely come from dysfunctional family systems. They carefully position themselves as the antidote for the harm, neglect, or boredom a child is experiencing. The madness of sexual abuse is that the initial relationship feels so right before it begins to feel so wrong. They may comment on how strong your arm is, how nice your outfit looks, or invite you to a privileged position within a group of friends. These initial moments of praise and attention set the stage for future sexual abuse.
Later in life, pornography becomes appealing because it recreates some of the original sexual experiences established in the sexual abuse. In porn, like abuse, we feel bonded and aroused by the same material that also ushers us into sexual shame and secrecy. Many people who have histories of sexual abuse often devote a lifetime to combatting pornography at the cost of healing the harmful sexual template established in abuse.
Those Who Feel Shame
The more you feel shame, the more porn you will watch. It might sound obvious that shame drives pornography use, but the stagger power of it may alarm you–men in my sample were nearly 300x more likely to pursue pornography for each unit of shame they felt about their behavior. Women were 546x more likely to increase their porn use depending on the level of shame they experienced. It has to be said, shame, not pleasure, drives pornography use. As a clinician and researcher I am convinced of this reality: we are bonded to shame and judgment, far more than to erotic material.
Related: Silence–The Sound of Female Sexual Shame
When we experience shame, it attempts to convince us that we are unwanted. In response, we pursue behaviors that confirm it. Although contemporary addiction thinking is that we go to pornography for escape or medication, I’ve found that men and women pursue pornography for the purpose of judgment. We intuitively know that each time we indulge in pornography, we will feel less lovely and connected. Therefore, our pursuit of pornography is intended to convince us that the holy longings of our heart will never come to pass. Knowing our hope has been compromised, we experience shame.
Related: Destroying Porn Addiction Starts With Destroying Shame
Most of us attempt to hide or run from our shame. Herein lies the problem: shame’s power is so often derived from our flight from it. This sets us up to live as prey to shame rather than take authority of our life. The antidote to shame is to turn towards it by telling others the places where we harbor it. In the scriptures, the presence of God and the transforming power of the Spirit are most often found in places of weakness and shame. Why would it be any different for us? Sexual shame can be the geography for the arrival of God.
Pornography Reveals Our Way to Healing
Pornography reveals your sin, but far more, it reveals the themes of your life that God is relentlessly committed to transforming within you. In this way our sexual struggles are messengers. You may not like the news they bring, but they will continue to knock on the door of your heart until you listen to what they are attempting to tell you. Rather than exclusively focusing on saying ‘no’ to pornography, learn to say ‘yes’ to purpose, ‘yes’ to healing the harm of abuse, and ‘yes’ to turning to face your shame.
Resources and investments for your journey:
- Get a free chapter of my upcoming book, Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing.
- For lack of purpose: Watch this TEDx talk “How to be more powerful than powerless,” based on a ten-year research study by Ron Carucci. Most of us vastly underestimate the power we have in our lives. If career paralysis or confusion is present in your life, check out the work of Liminal Space to guide you through career transitions.
- For healing sexual abuse: Register for the Allender Center’s e-course on sexual abuse. Use the promo code COVENANT for $50 off their course. Dr. Dan Allender is an expert in understanding the harm of sexual abuse and the path to healing.
- For beginning to explore sexual shame: Watch the film The Heart of Man (or read the guidebook). Through magisterial storytelling and stunning imagery, we see that sexual shame is not a barrier, but a bridge to healing.
Start Your Journey to Freedom
To help men and women on the recovery road, Stringer, The Heart of Man movie, and Covenant Eyes are working together to provide support. Journey Into the Heart of Man with Jay Stringer provides a five-month course that includes inspiring presentations, a self- assessment for people to see how their story shapes their sexual choices, and exercises to bring change. Stringer said, “Just as our sexual brokenness is not random, our journey to freedom is not either. In the Journey Into the Heart of Man, I wanted to equip accountability partners, small groups, and faith communities in a way they have not been equipped before to find healing.”
The recovery journey takes time and focus…to grow, learn, have fun, explore, and discover. How long? Stringer said most of his clients find freedom in two to five years. That doesn’t mean they are acting out during that time, but it takes time to shake off the debris of the past and live free.
Start Your Freedom Journey TodayThis post contains affiliate links. Covenant Eyes receives a portion of the profits of purchases made as a result of the links above.
¹I am indebted to Dr. Allender for this insight into futility and pornography.
I also started view porn on frequent basis when I did not have purpose . Bored at work and home I found myself opening my laptop and searching porn sites for a release feeling guilty after each viewing . I was abused sexually as a young boy by a neighbor and was very sexually active in my early teens. Confronting the shame , guilt and being purposeful with my christian walk has put me on the path of healing. Thank you covenant eyes for being a tool for me and so many others.
Bobby,
Thank you for your vulnerability in this post. With at least 1 out of 6 men with histories of sexual abuse, we need more men like you with the courage to break the silence. One of the things I am most upset with about pornography (aside from the obvious) is that it distracts people from engaging the key drivers that bring them to it in the first place – like lack of purpose and sexual abuse.
For me, I think a large part of my addiction in addition to the three points above of which I have and do experience is my fear of abandonment from the mental (hangover) from me being adopted. My adopted father molested me, my neighbor molested me, friends I hung around with as teens, we all experienced experimental behaviors that went further then we expected. The drugs that went along with the behaviors reinforced the behaviors through association triggers. Molestation continued and resulted ruined lives. Today I still struggle with porn when alone and the shame that comes along with it but it appears as if being alone or fear of being alone is the strongest trigger. However of the three points above I believe the one that is the greatest deterrent is having purpose. Yes, I was abused, yes, I fel shame but I also feel like a child of God called to do and live out His will when I have a sense of purpose that is greater than my own selfish pursuits. My prayer for me and for all reading this is that we all find that purpose that will set us free from the bondage of our sinful fleshly lusts to serve our Lord and God fulfilling His purpose and His will.
Angel,
So much heartache you have undergone. Thank you for sharing and thank you for your prayers for those caught in this pernicious cycle. I highly recommend the work of The Allender Center that I mentioned at the end of the article (they are giving CE readers $50 off the e-course). It addresses so many of the themes you named. I also wrote another article on female shame and the role that abuse often plays in a woman’s pursuit of pornography.
https://www.covenanteyes.com/2017/10/26/silence-the-sound-of-female-sexual-shame/
This was a gift from God today. We have an adopted 13 year old who is loved by all but has not blossomed academically or truthfully or spiritually. He started sneaking porn viewing at home right UNDER our nose….
HE then tried to sodomized a trusted family friend,s 6 year old. We are lost, shocked, broken. He is also. He claims no one ever messed with him; that he was just curious.
Since he has always been very different, we do set othetwise
Teresa, as a therapist, I’m curious whether your child is in therapy?
Porn use and sexual curiosity are very normal at this age; of course we want to protect a child from those things, but they are so prevalent that it’s just very common and not an indicator of pathology at all.
However, attempting to victimize another child is a very serious red flag. Please make sure that your child is getting the best professional help available. I would check the listing at Psychology Today for an experienced therapist for your child.
Peace,
Kay
Teresa,
Oh wow. So agonizing what you are undergoing. As Kay mentioned, do pursue support as much as you are able. That is so much to metabolize on your own. Various states have good programs to help adoptive parents with these types of offending behaviors. Additionally, it could be a good idea to meet with a psychologist for an assessment for your son. Early intervention is often scary to pursue, but it is one of the best ways we can love and protect too.
Depression piggybacks with my lack of purpose. I was raised by alcoholic parents who would argue in the evenings. Whoever shouted the loudest won the argument. I’d leave the house to avoid them (I could hear their raging voices halfway down the driveway). Both of my parents came from abusive families and they have still not dealt with the baggage of their past; they’ve spent their life shoving skeletons in their closets. I remember feeling as if I was in their way, was never good enough, and felt shame for failing them. Posters of bikini-clad women were permitted in my bedroom from a very early age.
I have been free from porn 10 months. My marriage is strengthening. This article is eye opening – understanding porn will reveal a way for me to heal. I’ve never thought about it from that perspective. I need to continue changing what I think and how I think.
Thank you for all you do.
Mark
Hi Mark,
The kind of childhood trauma you described here is exactly the kind of experience that makes pornography a welcome refuge for painful emotions. I hope you’ve found a good therapist who can help you process through all that pain and learn how to connect to others rather than disappear into the world of porn when life gets painful–at it always does at some point or another!
Peace to you,
Kay
Mark,
So so tragic what you shared. You certainly seemed to understand your parent’s tactics well. I have no doubt this clarity and conviction will only continue to serve you. So glad to hear your marriage is strengthening and that your resonated with the article. In my upcoming book (Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing) – I talk more about how our struggles are messengers or prophets that have so much to teach us, if we are willing to listen.
You might be interested in this article too: https://www.covenanteyes.com/2017/09/28/what-sexual-fantasies-might-say-about-you/
I think this (esp shame )applies to any addiction,big or small or habit we have a hard time to change. Thanks for helping to protect us and esp our children.
Friederike – indeed!
I’m not sure how or why I got into porn in the first place, other than maybe just teen hormones combines with access and not enough supervision at a time when it was most needed, but the shame section certainly makes sense for me.
I can’t count the number of times I was struggling and despite not wanting to give in I remember telling myself “I don’t want to but I know I will because I’m an idiot.” And within the hour I’d be at the computer totally ashamed of myself for what I was doing.
I’ve been free for almost 3 years now (not that there haven’t still been struggles) and it wasn’t till my wife found out I was able to finally get past it.
I don’t necessarily think everyone in your life or even your church needs to know about it (after all if shame is what drives it, more shame may not help) just one or two people close enough to you to help should be enough. With that the threat of it going beyond that combined with the assistance from those that do should be enough to get most people on the road to recovery.
It worked for me anyways.
Nick, thanks for sharing some of your journey here. Yes, hormones really can not be underestimated, especially as teenagers. When we live in a society that fails to offer comprehensive sex education about what is unfolding in bodies and then just warns us against doing “bad” things, it is a recipe for disaster. As you can imagine, the message “don’t do it” ends up also meaning, “there is something wrong with you if you do.” When we feel the shame of being an “idiot”, we will so often pursue behaviors that confirm it. And yes, wise words on who and when to share your story with.
Thank you for this. Especially for the discussion on shame. I want to follow up on the links in the article about this and do some intense Bible study. I believe that emotions are one of the more prominent ways humans exhibit the image of God. Shame is one of those emotions and I would like to use it, feel it, react to it in the way God desires.
Thanks, Landon. Yes, I highly recommend the resources I put in the article. I think so much of what God desires with our shame is kindness. Romans 2:4 is so clear in saying that kindness is what leads us to radical life change (The Message).
Great article! Best I’ve read in a while. Some really good points here, I think.
Thanks for your kind words, Daniel!
Jay,
Thank you for an excellent article about finding out what drives our sexual addictions and use of porn. I have not read some of the resource materials you linked to but intend to do just that. I went through a very deep problem with depression, anxiety, and inability to cope with life recently. This ended up with a six week stay at the Menninger clinic in Houston which I consider a level one trauma center for depression. While there it became evident to me that shame has pushed so much of the symptomatology of what I have been going through my whole life including depression, anxiety, sexual addiction, and use of porn. Before going there, I hate to admit I was clueless about the interaction of shame in my life with all these different problems. However; while there I started the journey of dealing with shame in my own heart. One of the best resources I came across was Brene Brown’s book called “Daring Greatly.” I bring this up just to make sure that it’s not overlooked. It is not an actual Christian book although I do think that Brene has a working faith. However the book is extremely well done and instead of having to slog through it I could not put it down. It spoke to my heart at many different levels. Perhaps it only worked as a primer to help me start to understand this but it made me very aware of the interaction of shame and my life. Your article goes further to help us identify how we can heal from the problem once it has started. The hard part, is finding actual practical suggestions about how to do this. I am working with a psychotherapist and I am asking about this whole process of shame resilience. Do you have any other resources or even perhaps some of the ones you already mentioned that would be specifically aimed at practical things that can be done on a day to day basis to help to decrease the influence of shame in our hearts? I am finding out also daily that this process involves very hard spiritual warfare. Satan is not willing to give an inch. Your words give hope for the future. Again thank you so much for this article. Looking forward to seeing more from you.
Steve,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. What a season this has been for you. I am so grateful you found some good people and resources. Re: additional resources on shame – I would check out the film The Heart of Man. All of the interviews really address shame in some profound ways. Additionally, I highly recommend the work of Curt Thompson, who wrote a book titled, The Soul of Shame. Here is an article CT did with him a couple years ago: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2016/julaug/how-neuroscience-and-bible-explain-shame.html
I will also be writing on the topic of shame on the CE blog in the coming months, so stay tuned!
“Surfing for god”
John Michel kusick
Hits the nail on the head and it’s an amazing eye opener to the struggle
I was sexually molested in my preteens years by a family member and it’s not until reading this I comevto realize why I turn to porn when am bored, alone and at time when I feel undesired. But in all readings I haven’t heard or seen the trigger or hormonal arousal triggers for women especially in that menstrual cycle time because that’s one of my biggest triggers. So I do hope that’s some research and topics can be done on that. But thank you to covenant eyes for helping my move towards change
Karen,
Yes, one of the maddening features of pornography is that it appeals to the wounded portions of our story. So many of my clients come into my office thinking their primary issue is with pornography only to find there are other key drivers that necessitate their porn use. Sadly, trying to “stop” porn use gets the attention rather than transforming the key drivers beneath our pursuit of unwanted sexual behavior.
I highly recommend the work of The Allender Center I mentioned above for addressing sexual abuse. And I also wrote a blog with Covenant Eyes addressing female shame and themes of abuse : https://www.covenanteyes.com/2017/10/26/silence-the-sound-of-female-sexual-shame/
Thanks for your courage to contribute to the conversation.
Jay
Karen, I agree! Both I and another female I am related to experience profoundly intensified temptation and triggers related to sexual sin around the time of our menstrual cycles. You are definitely not the only one struggling with that specific issue! I have found that keeping a list of tasks that aren’t urgent, but are something that should get done at some point (clean out the car, organize a desk or room, finish some half completed project, etc.) helps me to have something to distract myself with when those times hit. If I can keep my mind busy I do way better at overcoming a potential setback in my recovery.