CHAPTER 13

PORNOGRAPHY AND THE INTERNET

WANT A TRULY GREAT SEX LIFE?

Want to fulfill your biblical calling to honor your wife?

Want to raise your kids in a godly way? Then stay away from pornography!

What’s So Bad about One Little Website?

The primary pipeline for bringing pornography home these days is the Internet. This powerfully addictive force is invading marriages and families like yours with a destructive impact beyond most people’s imaginations.

The Rise of Internet Porn

Forty years ago, getting a pornographic “fix” was hard work. A man had to go to a sleazy part of town, park his car some distance away, pull his hat down over his eyes and lift up his collar, look about furtively, and slink into an adult bookstore or massage parlor.

The need to sneak started changing when pornographic videos became available for rent. Still, the process of getting them held the danger of embarrassment or discovery.

The risk was reduced with cable television, which brought porn right into the home. But there were still limits. A subscription was required and could be discovered by others. A visitor surfing the channels might notice. And the TV was usually centrally located, making it hard to watch without detection.

Then came the Internet—introducing the greatest possibilities for variety and privacy.

Last time we checked, there were 785,000,000 (yes, that’s million) websites under the subject of sex. Surely some of those are healthy sites that offer medical and psychological information, including our own www.passionatecommitment.com. The great majority, however, are pornographic.

If you started visiting these sites at a rate of a hundred per day, it would take thousands of years to visit them all—not to mention those that would be added each day. At this writing, sites are being added at a phenomenal rate.

By the time you read this, who knows how many sites there will be? The only sure thing is that there will continue to be an endless supply of sexual material, most of it garbage and most of it addicting.

Ease of access to Internet porn is staggering. It’s available on the computer in your home or office, on cell phones, tablets, and any other device; you can view it in complete privacy. Sites don’t screen for your age, they’re available 24 hours a day, and thousands of them are free. You can visit for five minutes, five hours, or five days at a time. There’s always new material, featuring every possible sexual variation or deviation.

And no one gets hurt, right? Wrong!

Effects on Your Marriage

Some guys think occasional viewing of pornography is harmless. But it can hurt your relationship with your wife as well as your relationship with God.

Even casual viewing of pornography can change how a man thinks and feels about women and how he treats them. This has been called the “centerfold syndrome.” Looking at idealized images of shapely women offering themselves in the most provocative ways changes how you see your wife. She’ll seem less attractive, unable to compete with these pictures.

It’s wrong to force your wife to compete with fantasy women. It may very well make her seem inadequate.

Pornography also degrades women, making them mere objects designed to fulfill men’s fantasies. It precludes any possibility of intimacy. How can anyone be intimate with a series of pixels on a computer screen?

Men and women were created to share the deepest parts of themselves, not to be mechanisms for another’s sexual gratification. When you enter the world of pornography, you opt out of intimacy. Your relationship with your wife—to all women—goes off track.

Even casual viewing of pornography can change how a man thinks and feels about women, and how he treats them.

Effects on Your Children

What happens if children discover their father is visiting pornographic sites?

A boy who looks up to his dad probably would get the message that pornography is okay. A daughter could be confused at best; during adolescence, when a girl begins to find she’s a sexual being, she needs to see her father cherishing her mother. Discovering that he looks at perverse images of female sexuality could make her cynical about men or cause her to feel dirty or uncertain about her own sexuality.

Some men may think they can keep their web surfing a secret from family members. But most Internet browsers include a “history” function, which lists sites you’ve visited recently. Many spouses and probably most adolescents are aware of this feature and may check to see where you’ve been. Yes, you can erase your history. But that in itself could raise suspicions.

Do You Have a Problem?

Most sexual addictions begin early in life, usually between the ages of eight and fifteen. Not so with the Internet. We find that many people who’ve never struggled with sexual addiction get hooked on Internet porn in their thirties, forties, and fifties. Men—and some women—of every educational and socioeconomic level are potential addicts.

If you struggle with any of the following, you have a problem. Do you . . .

Chances are that you know deep down whether the Internet is a problem for you. That struggle won’t go away by itself. It will not evaporate because of willpower, or feeling terrible afterward, or confessing it, or promising God you’ll never do it again, or white-knuckling it for a few days or a week. You need help!

What Is a Sexual Addiction?

An Internet porn addiction is one kind of sexual addiction. Simply stated, if you lack control of a sexual behavior, you’re struggling with a sexual addiction.

The sexual addict feels controlled by the urge in the same way an overeater is controlled by the eating disorder or an alcoholic is controlled by the urge to drink. If he’s married, his preoccupation interferes with his marriage; he isn’t satisfied by an intimate sexual relationship with his spouse.

When the sexual urge is pressing, the addict feels anxious; he’s captured by the drive. Afterward he’s guilty, ashamed. This secret drive escalates to become the major focus of his life. It’s his way of hiding from realities he doesn’t want to face.

Sexual addiction provides an adrenaline high that perpetuates the behavior. It’s similar to relying on cocaine or marijuana. The addict feels he’s no longer able to make choices about his activities but is compelled to engage in them even though he’ll hate himself later.

A sexual addict isn’t satisfied by an intimate sexual relationship with his spouse.

Not every wrong sexual behavior is an addiction. For example, some men occasionally view pornographic material or go to a topless bar, but are not hooked on those activities. We’re not implying that these are advisable or morally acceptable—they’re not! But sexual addictions have obsessive and compulsive qualities that drive the person almost against his own will to act them out.

Sexual addiction may be a symptom of underlying, unmet emotional and relational needs. The person may have an addictive personality that tends to “zone out” or “split off” from his real self and act in ways that differ from his usual personality and convictions.

Dr. Patrick Carnes has been a pioneer in the study and treatment of sexual addiction. He first brought the subject to public awareness with his best-selling book Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction (Hazelden 1983/2001). Other great resources by Carnes are A Gentle Path through the Twelve Steps: The Classic Guide for All People in the Process of Recovery (2012) and In the Shadow of the Net: Breaking Free of Compulsive Online Sexual Behavior (2007).

We’ve come to believe in Carnes’s formulations because they fit so well with our clinical experience. We’ve also come to accept his treatment approach because it’s the only one we’ve found to work.

We’re indebted to Carnes for virtually every concept presented here.

The Addictive Pattern

As the sexually addicted person retreats from normal relationships with wife, family, coworkers, and friends, he moves into his own world. In that world he carries on a secret life. The loneliness grows, propelling him ever further into his private realm.

The addict’s aloneness reinforces his belief about himself—that he’s an undesirable person no one can love. He becomes more convinced that only he can meet his deep needs. Sex seems to be the deepest need and promises to fill the void.

Because relationships have usually brought pain, the addict avoids closeness. In fact, sexual addiction and avoiding intimacy almost always go together. Neither the Internet nor magazines demand a relationship; the images cooperate completely. The addict never has to give of himself.

This self-centeredness is rationalized:

“I deserve it.”

“I work hard.”

“My sexual needs aren’t being met.”

“It doesn’t hurt anyone.”

If you use these “explanations” to excuse your sexual behavior, you’re struggling with an addiction whether you know it or not.

What to Do If You Have a Problem

If you find your preoccupation with sex on the Internet (or any other sexual habit) growing, and you’re acting on that impulse with ever greater frequency, you have reason for concern. Maybe you’ve tried to control your habit, but always find yourself back and more involved than before.

Here are five steps you can take.

Step 1: Start with the Heart

If you’re hooked, acknowledge that the addiction won’t go away by itself. Only God’s power and the help of His people will enable you to break the chains of addiction. Until you admit that you’re powerless and decide to turn your life, will, and actions over to God, nothing will change.

Remember the parable of the prodigal son? When he’d tried everything, he found himself in the pigpen. The King James Version says it so clearly in Luke 15:17-18: “And when he came to himself, he said . . . I will arise and go to my father.”

The starting point of change is the moment of repentance when you “come to yourself.” You face yourself in the mirror, accept the reality of your powerlessness, hit bottom, and put your life in God’s hands.

If you’ve been “busted” by your wife, friend, boss, or kids and are only acknowledging what they know, you haven’t truly repented. It’s time for a full moral inventory and admission of your sin before God and to those you’ve wronged. The first step is a change of heart.

Step 2: Change Your Life Patterns

To stop drinking, an alcoholic has to “get the booze out of the kitchen.” That by itself won’t control the addiction, but it’s a necessary step. Going to a bar to hang around with old drinking buddies has to stop.

What needs to be changed for you? It depends on your addiction. If you always buy pornography at a certain shop, you can never go there again. If the massage parlor or strip joint is on your normal route home, choose a different route.

If you “act out” during business travel, you can stay only in hotels that have no “adult” movies. If that’s not possible, have the front desk shut off access to those movies—just as an alcoholic would refuse to take the minibar key.

If the Internet is your area of struggle, take these steps:

Step 3: Focus on the Internal You

When repentance has taken place and you’ve changed direction, the long haul begins.

This is a war. You have to attack from the air, the sea, the ground, and outer space.

What does that mean in real life?

Join others to “work the steps.” An accountability group can walk you through a 12-step process. Commit yourself to that process.

Don’t concern yourself with group labels. What’s necessary is regularly facing your powerlessness, your dependence on God, and your flawed moral character. Be willing to make amends—and, perhaps for the first time, live an honest and open life. Such involvement in a group is central; we rarely see long-term change without it!

Learn new ways to think about your sexuality. Read books by Dr. Patrick Carnes, especially Out of the Shadows and In The Shadows of the Net. Read Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction (Zondervan, 2004) by Mark Laaser, a good friend who struggled his way out of a sexual addiction; he has been on Carnes’s team of professionals and has a biblical and psychological perspective. His three-part video series (The Geneva Series from the American Association of Christian Counselors, Nashville, Tennessee) is practical and offers a powerful message of hope for marital restoration.

There are other resources—books, tapes, videos, and programs—that can be of great help, too. Don’t try to go it alone; that rarely works.

To bring healing to your emotions, you may need to get into therapy. A caring, insightful, biblically guided counselor can help you work through wounds from the past and the low self-concept that led in part to your addiction. You’ll be served best by a therapist who understands and regularly works with sexual addictions.

Step 4: Focus on Your Relationships

Your relationships also need changing, especially those with God and your spouse.

Sexual addiction has strained your relationship with God. You’ve probably cycled through many rounds of acting out, despair, anguished confessions, sincere promises, and earnest devotion—only to find yourself practicing your addictive behavior again.

You may have rationalized your behavior, denying it had any detri-mental effect. But all the while you knew it wasn’t right, and you were violating yourself and your marriage.

Get into a group or class where you can connect with others as you grow spiritually. Recommit yourself to practice the disciplines of Bible study, prayer, worship, and service. The work of God’s Spirit in your life is essential to your healing.

It’s important to work on developing your capacity for intimacy with your spouse. This includes not just sexual intimacy but, first and foremost, emotional and spiritual intimacy. Since you may have spent a lifetime avoiding intimacy, this may be the hardest dimension of the healing process.

Be willing to make amends—and, perhaps for the first time, live an honest and open life.

At first it will have to be intentional—talking, reading, praying, connecting. It won’t come naturally.

After focusing on emotional and spiritual intimacy with your spouse, begin building sexual intimacy. This will help fill the void you were trying to satisfy with your addictive behavior.

When a husband comes to us ready to let go of his sexual addiction, we bring his wife into the therapy soon after control is established. We take the couple through a sexual retraining process from our book Restoring the Pleasure, concentrating on touching, talking, and teaching exercises to build sexual intimacy. You may want a counselor to help you do the same.

Step 5: Be Accountable

Remember, you can’t do this alone! You need to be accountable to someone.

In 12-step programs, this person is called a sponsor. The title doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have someone with whom you’re totally and bluntly honest.

There can be no secrets with this person. If you’re going to heal, you need complete openness. That means you fully trust this person’s confidentiality and judgment. You’re also confident that your good is his highest concern.

Hope for Healing

So how do you get control of an Internet pornography addiction—or any other sexual addiction?

Even casual use of Internet pornography will damage your relationship with your wife and keep you from having the great sex life you both desire. Make a covenant with your family that you won’t visit those sites.

If you can’t keep that promise, take it as an indication that you need help—and get it.