Trying Not To Look at Porn Nearly Destroyed Me
How permission and forgiveness saved my life
CW: depression and suicidal ideation
Like many North American boys, I discovered pornography in my early teens. That morning I’d been fighting with my parents and they left for church without me. Alone in my home, frustrated and upset, I booted up our family computer and Googled the word “pornography”. The thrill of finally seeing what I’d been imagining for some time already mixed with a massive dose of adrenaline from doing something so illicit would kick off a pattern of addictive behaviour, shame, and hopelessness that would continue well into my 20s.
I grew up as a Christian in a context where pornography was most definitely NOT okay. Sex was only for married, heterosexual couples. Pornography and masturbation would change your brain and make you addicted and ruin your future marriage. Purity was a big thing. Now that I had looked at pornography and realized that I’d been masturbating for years already, I felt disgusting, perverted, and sinful. I felt so much guilt and shame that I wished and prayed that my sex drive would be taken away or that I would be terribly injured as a punishment. I stayed up late reading almost every night trying to avoid being alone with my thoughts or feeling tempted. I used to only be able to look at porn when I was alone in the house (I would often copy pictures I liked into a Word document then print it out so I could take them to the shower with me), but once I got a device of my own that was capable of connecting to the internet the temptation was overwhelming. I kept track on my calendar, hoping that this small act of accountability would help me stop.
I felt hopeless. Despite all my efforts and prayer, I was unable to stop masturbating and looking at pornography. I started hating myself. I prayed every day to be free, but it never happened, and I never felt God’s presence or heard his voice. I felt like my addiction was ruining my relationship with God. Maybe he didn’t speak to me because I was such a failure. Every other part of my life suffered because I was always tired, and my focus was always on my failing.
The next chapter of my life started when I told the girl I was dating (we would later marry) about my addiction. I don’t know if it was a real addiction, but that’s how I talked about it at the time. She was also a Christian and she took it very seriously, but the effect it would have on our relationship wouldn’t manifest until after we got married a few years later.
The combination of my being a naïve conservative Christian and having intense feelings of shame over porn use did not bode well for our sex life as a married couple. I was terrified of making her feel inadequate or like I was comparing her to anyone I’d seen in porn, so I rarely initiated sex and never asked for anything.
I managed not to look at any porn or masturbate for most of our first year of marriage, but after that it became a pretty regular thing again. My wife was understandably upset and often let me know how bad it made her feel. She didn’t understand why I couldn’t just stop, and it really hurt her. She felt inadequate and undesirable. This added a new layer of guilt and shame on top of my moral/religious baggage and over the next several years, though we had lots of good times, the toll of the shame and self-hatred continued to build to the point where I frequently wished I didn’t exist anymore. Life hurt too much to continue. I would never get better, and I didn’t want to hurt my wife anymore. The self-image I had from my childhood was shattered. I had now lied, violated the sexual purity of my marriage, and failed to live up to any of the expectations I had for myself.
Around the time we had our first child, my mental state was so bad (due to this and other circumstances) that I was starting to have some pretty serious suicidal thoughts. I remember one time after my wife and I fought I went for a drive along the Fraser River. I stopped on the side of a back road and looked out over the rushing water. I wondered how much it would hurt to drown and whether I could really make myself do it or if I’d uncontrollably try to swim back to shore. I sent my wife pictures taken through the rain-streaked driver’s side window. I was being dramatic, but I was also hurting. I wanted help. I wanted to feel better.
Taking care of children brought a kind of essentialistic clarity to our lives. We were exhausted and out of our depth, but we did what we had to do. I was depressed, but I liked being a father. My wife and I had learned to fight less, and we were working on being open and honest with each other (this was really hard for me).
This is the first time I’ve told so much of this story all at one time. Please forgive me the indulgence of being dramatic and depressing. But if you’ve made it to here then you get to see the turnaround!
Finally, almost 2 years ago my wife said the words that would set me on a path to healing. We were a bit drunk after the kids fell asleep, and she said, “I don’t think you should be ashamed of it. Most people do it. Maybe we could watch porn together sometime”. Soon after that we had to drive a few hours to a friend’s wedding, and we talked almost the whole time about this. I had thought about nothing else in the intervening days and she had almost forgotten about it. It was just an offhand comment to her, but to me it was the first flash of hope I’d seen since I was a child. She was still concerned that I not do it on my own or compare her to the actors, but she also was turned on by me being turned on. She also admitted to kinda liking it herself. We didn’t want me to use it as an excuse just to get to look at porn or become addicted again (my porn consumption was down to about once a month), and we didn’t want it to become a crutch in our sex life together. She also let me know that she thought masturbation was fine as long as I only thought about her.
That was our first open and honest conversation about pornography, and it was freeing and so unbelievably hot. We tried out watching porn as part of sex soon after that and we both didn’t mind it. I spent too much time looking at her because I was paranoid that I would hurt her if I watched the porn too much. She thought I was a goof. We discovered that we both liked basically the same kinds of porn.
Over the next few months, I found that the permission she’d given me to masturbate actually made it easier to choose not to. I felt control and freedom in my life like I never had as an adult. My wife found out she loved watching me touch myself which was a nice self-esteem boost. We were really careful with the porn use as we had both been hurt before. I did end up messing up and lying about it another couple times and after the second time we took a break for a while. I had decided that I would never ask her to look at porn with me – we would only do it if she brought it up.
Then, only a few months ago, she made another offhand comment. “Maybe you could look at porn by yourself one time”. She thought if permission and forgiveness had done so much healing for me already, then maybe this act could clear out a few more of my hang-ups. She hardly gave it another thought, but for the next few days I couldn’t focus on anything else. My identity as a failure – as a broken, depressed, and hopeless boy – was crumbling around me. I debated whether my wanting to do it was a sign of my depravity or a natural sexual inclination. I couldn’t decide if she was just offering this because she thought it would help me even though it would hurt her or if she was genuinely okay with me looking at porn by myself. I didn’t know what I thought about the sinfulness of such an act (my faith has been pretty up in the air for the last several years) or whether I thought it would make me more or less tempted to do it again in the future. I couldn’t believe the emotional maelstrom that such a simple suggestion had whipped up.
When I brought it up again, she laughed at how distraught I was. She had just thought of it in that moment and hadn’t suspected for second how much it would throw me. My wife started out more liberal than me and over the years she had only gotten more so. The evolution of her worldview and everything she’d learned in university and now as a practicing accredited clinical counsellor had brought her to a place where she was much more concerned about what is good for people’s mental health rather than which actions various traditions think are right or wrong.
I feel much more in control of my sexual desires than ever before, but also much more interested in what they’re telling me. I spent so long disgusted by myself that it is genuinely difficult to think positively about my own sexuality. We’re still navigating what this freedom and openness will mean for our sex life. I still don’t want my wife to feel like I prefer porn to being with her, but I’m now okay communicating when I feel like watching it. We don’t know if we will open up any new frontiers, but we’ve started sharing our fantasies, silly crushes, and some of the weirder places our minds go, and we’ve never felt so emotionally close and connected before.
I haven’t felt as mentally free and healthy as I have in the last six months since I was a child, and I feel like the next steps are to figure out what exactly went right and determine whether I can apply it to other areas of my life or help other people find freedom from similar situations.
I’ll start with a quick list of the factors I see in my story:
- a supportive an understanding partner. It would be silly to ignore her influence in my life. She wasn’t always helpful in this area, but all the changes that happened recently can be traced back to things she said.
- Self-forgiveness
- Permission
- Removal of shame
- Exposure in relationship
- Rethinking the moral question of pornography and masturbation
I don’t think the most important key to my healing was my liberal-minded partner (although she certainly was the genesis of it). Instead, I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned is about the power of forgiving yourself. I spent half my life hating myself and feeling desperately ashamed of my failures. It can feel like you need to beat yourself up and feel really bad about your mistakes to make up for them or show whoever you hurt how sorry you are. Forgiveness can feel cheap, like you’re not really taking responsibility. In reality, however, forgiving yourself is incredibly hard and it is the only way to really move forward. Miring yourself in guilt and shame only sets the stage for more failures. Forgiveness sets you free to do better next time. It’s not cheap; it’s mature.
Each of the other factors was huge in its own way, but they all enabled forgiveness or flowed from the forgiveness that was given to me. We all have parts of our lives we are ashamed of. That make us hate ourselves. Forgiveness is acknowledging the damage, the suck, or the wrongness of what we’ve done and its effect in the world and then turning around and letting it go. Giving ourselves permission to be human — to have desires and needs and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Understanding that messing up is inevitable. Forgiveness is keeping all of that in mind and refusing to give up what therapists call “unconditional positive regard” for ourselves.
Find me on Twitter if you want to be internet friends. @jkasewrites
