This is part four of a series on the cost of porn.
Let's get real about the cost of porn on what is most likely the most important
person in your life, yourself. This will be raw, unchecked and real.
I speak as a loving, caring and generally nice,
Christian man who started looking at porn at the age of 13 and could not stop
despite repeated efforts. I'm not coming from a 'stuck up, i'm so much
better than this' place. I'm coming from the perspective of a man
fighting in the trenches, bloody and beaten up from too many battles, too many
wars and too many failed attempts to even begin describing them.
I speak as someone who could quite easily have been
addicted to it, depending on your definition of the word. If you mean addicted
like "cannot stop despite desperately wanting to" then
yeah, I was an addict. The problem is, so many of my fellow men and woman are
shackled by the same thing. We tell ourselves that it's ok, that everyone
struggles and that we could stop at any time but we never really count the cost
of our actions.
So let's get real.
What is the actual cost of looking at porn, to you?
#1 - Porn rewires your brain until you lose
sight of reality.
Watching porn creates momentarily, intensely
pleasurable experiences. It also creates neural pathways. Over time, these
neural pathways become stronger; every time you look at porn they are
reinforced. They then become the automatic pathway through which interactions
with the opposite sex are diverted into. You have unknowingly created a circuit
that imprisons your ability to see the opposite sex in reality.
This isn't surprising, as an orgasm is one of the
biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasms with your wife, then
your wife is what, over time, will turn you on. If you associate orgasms with
porn, then over time, that is what it will take to turn you on...
You lose the ability to define what actually
appeals to you, what 'turns you on', what you find 'sexy', what you find
attractive and what you want in a member of the opposite sex.
Porn does not free sexuality and it does not free
you to have a long-lasting relationship. It shackles it, brings it down and
destroys both.
You lose the ability to love someone for who they
are.
You lose reality.
#2 - Porn can, and will control you.
I have never met anyone who is 'in control' of
their porn. I have met many men who are slaves to porn, regardless of whether
they know it or not. They think that they can use porn as a 'tool', for just a
bit of fun or relaxation but what happens is that they respond to the porn, not
the other way around.
They are quite literally pawns in the game of porn.
Checkmate.
When the pull of porn has you responding then you
are under its control, not the other way around. When I first started viewing
porn, I was in control. I was the one who decided if I would look at it. Very
quickly, the relationship became reversed. Its pull was overpowering, the
temptation putting me into situations where I would lie, hide and actively
break my own moral desires to feed this insatiable beast that was never
satisfied.
Are you in control of your porn, or is your porn in
control of you?
#3 - Porn destroys true beauty.
For most of human history, our erotic images have
been reflections of real woman or men, idolized for their curves or their body
shape. For the first time in history, real naked people are just bad porn - Naomi Wolf.
Porn has a unique effect. It destroys real beauty
by delivering what the world says is beautiful. It distorts it to the stage
that beauty is in fact, no longer recognizable.
Make no mistake, porn is a fantasy world. It pulls
you further and further in until you are no longer able to separate fantasy
from reality. It emphasizes what you will never find and leaves you with an
expectation that can never be satisfied.
You lose sight of what is truly beautiful.
In a relationship, be it a friendship, dating or
marriage, one of the most beautiful things is the incomplete, messed up beauty
you find in each other. Knowing all those little idiosyncrasies is what real
friendship is all about, loving people’s imperfection.
What you find in porn is incomplete perfection. You
see, porn sells perfection, but it is neither complete nor satisfying. It
distorts the truth by selling itself as an end product, as reality. It masquerades
as beauty, by concealing its incomplete core. Have you ever wondered why after
looking at porn you are never satisfied despite getting what you want?
This goes both ways.
By looking at porn, guys will never find the beauty
they seek. By having porn as a standard, you will destroy the very beauty you
seek. No woman can measure up to the fantasy that porn conjures up and by even
thinking it; men take another step towards fulfilling a destiny of
dissatisfaction. The more you delve into the fantasy world of porn, the less
chance you have of finding your life partner.
By reading erotic novels and looking at porn, women
destroy the very manhood they seek. The amount of times I've heard a woman
remark they want a 'real man' yet actively seek an incomplete version of one
portrayed on any glossy magazine. He may have a six-pack, rock-hard pecs and a
chiselled jaw but that cannot satisfy you. It also destroys the beauty to be
found in real manhood, one rooted in responsibility, purpose and overcoming
challenges.
#4. Porn destroys security, adequacy and
safety.
My girlfriend wrote this section. She's
awesome.
From a woman's perspective there
is nothing more degrading than knowing you are inadequate. In today's society,
beauty is related to what you look like on the outside, what you can do with
your body and how good you are at it.
Some of this is true, but we have to
understand that beauty is so much more than what you look like.
Where do our feelings of inadequacy
come from? Mostly, the come from feeling that we are not beautiful enough, that
our bodies are not perfect enough, that we can't use them perfectly and that we
are not very good at whatever we can do.
For a woman to be compared to another
woman is utterly terrifying, yet it happens all the time. We
compare ourselves to woman, all the time. This activity has become so embedded
in us that we not only compare ourselves to girls we meet, but to fantasized
images found in porn.
A little while ago I unintentionally
viewed a porn site and was disgusted. It wasn't what I saw that disgusted me,
because it was only a fleeting glimpse before I shut it down but rather my
stomach felt overwhelmingly sick. All of a sudden, from what I saw, I was
overcome with feelings of inadequacy, unworthiness, ugliness and sadness.
Immediately I saw all of my flaws and
felt a load of expectations settle on me.
It crushed me.
It isn't just what a guy says that
shows a girl that he loves her, but it is what he does. Making the
effort to eradicate porn and say 'I want real, live beauty. I want you' says
more than you could ever imagine.
To know that I don't have to measure up
to some unrealistic reprenstation of what is 'beautiful' is reassuring. Knowing
that I am in a relationship where beauty means walking through pain, saving all
I have to give to one person who is saving all they have to give back rather
than giving it to anyone will take it, being loyal through adversity means more
to me than I can communicate.
Porn will always be a lie. It will
never be a reality.
It only has a fleeting effect, whereas
knowing real beauty is actually having that tangible beauty by your side to
share life (including sex) with is something that leaves a permanent effect.
Porn alters our perceptions of what
beauty really is, because it will always be a fake, unachievable fantasy.
So why settle?
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