How can we stop men from looking at porn?
There is a growing group of online provocateurs who claim that porn would cease to be a problem if more wives lost weight and turned themselves into their husband’s own “personal porn star.” (I wish I was kidding.)
This assumes that every man is walking around with some sort of horniness quotient that can be fulfilled through orgasm, much like every human requires 1500-2000 calories per day to survive. Just as one can get those calories through a grande frappuccino or a dinner of beans and rice, so people seem to assume that one can have this quotient satisfied through some kind of sexual activity.
This “horniness quotient” hypothesis (let’s call it HQ for short) is untrue. While the redpill influencers represent this view taken to its extreme, their misunderstanding is found more broadly. As deep and powerful as a person’s sexual desires are, no one will die if they are denied sexual release. A husband whose wife gets a terrible stomach virus on the night of their wedding anniversary will be disappointed, but he will not waste away from sexual starvation if he has to wait another week or two before the next time they come together. If watching porn was simply a matter of sexual release, it would not be the social catastrophe that it is. There are many ways in which people misunderstand porn, but perhaps the best way to summarize the corrections necessary is to say that porn is not the same as physical sex and porn addiction is not merely a matter of sexual temptation.
It may seem obvious to say that porn and sex with another person are not equivalent, but the confusion about this lack of interchangeability is fueling tolerance towards porn-watching and encouraging people to make excuses for those who are corroding their souls through this behavior. It is undoubtedly encouraging people who are watching porn to make excuses for themselves.
The Problem
Despite a multitude of filters, books, resources, conferences, articles, and men’s groups, Christians are still watching a lot of porn and reporting that they’re addicted. (The more religiously observant someone is, the less likely they are to watch porn.) Sadly, more and more Christians are not only watching porn, but they are also more likely to think watching porn is no big deal. This problem is not going away anytime soon.
There is already an abundance of resources explaining why watching porn is bad and how to quit (or how to help people you love quit), so this essay is not about those things. Rather, it’s about correcting misunderstandings about porn that lead people who don’t value the pursuit of holiness to make excuses for watching porn. Among Christians who believe that sex is a gift of God designed for marriage, a belief in the HQ seems to sneak in from time to time. These misunderstandings also confuse and frustrate Christians who understand, on some level, that watching porn is bad: how could any Christian invite such evil into their minds, particularly Christian husbands who can and do have sex with their wives?
There are probably some people for whom porn is functionally equivalent to sex—they feel sexual desire, they watch porn and masturbate, and then it’s over and done. Yet this is not the typical activity of a porn addict. They are often scrolling for hours and hours, searching for more and more intense highs. Very often this leads to a search for images that are more varied and extreme—few men, for example, start off looking at child porn, but tend to seek it out after looking at adults starts to bore them. Porn is a hyperpleasure, a divorce from reality that reshapes the minds of those who watch it until it begins to define all of their interactions. Like opioid addicts who no longer get high but use drugs just to feel “normal” and avoid withdrawal, so porn addicts are often miserable whenever they are not looking at porn.
There is a natural confusion between the nature of porn addiction and the act of looking at porn itself. This is entirely understandable for people who do not look at porn and is especially painful for wives who first discover their husband’s pornography addiction: why is an otherwise decent Christian man doing something that he knows to be sinful, harmful, and time-wasting? Why can’t a porn addict’s habit be broken by sex with his wife?
The simplest answer is to ask another question: could a Christian husband’s temptation to idolatry be broken by sex with his wife? Of course not. Neither would his anger or pride. It is like asking if a person addicted to cocaine could have their desire satisfied by eating a delicious steak. If someone’s choice to sin by looking at porn is merely a matter of sexual temptation, then overcoming this temptation is simply a matter of growing closer to Christ, and Paul’s exhortation that couples give generously to one another in 1 Corinthians 7 should be heeded. If it’s more than that, we have a much bigger problem on our hands.
Someone who is addicted to porn is almost never simply tempted by sex. For porn addicts (and many non-addicts), looking at porn is not merely a matter of giving in to sexual temptation because they are facing a whole host of other temptations. They are using porn to deal with other problems in their lives. The temptation to look at porn, in many cases, is a temptation to pride, acedia, control, despair, or any other number of sins—which is why having sex, even good marital sex, cannot fix the problem. Men who are addicted to porn can even experience a profound sense of disappointment when they have sex with their wives—for if they are hoping to get from marital intimacy what they are used to getting from porn, they will inevitably be unsatisfied.
The Solution
Addiction is not one thing, but it is at least both a disease and a choice. Medical and psychiatric authorities may not recognize porn addiction as an addiction, but it bears enough similarity to other behavioral addictions like gambling to be taken seriously as such. Even if one rejects the idea of addiction as a disease, it is undeniable that the first time someone chooses to look at porn is very different from the 500th time he or she chooses to look at porn. Breaking any addiction requires a whole host of changes to one’s life.
Recovery from porn addiction requires a wide variety of new behaviors. There is a spectrum between a purely practical intervention like an internet filter and spiritual transformation to fully appreciate the grace and love of God. It is incredibly difficult for Christians to “just say no” and white-knuckle their way through temptation when they do not give thought to all of the different temptations that porn represents for them and the different hurts that they have been using porn to numb. Indeed, many recovering porn addicts will have to take an extended period of abstinence (90 days is generally recommended) in order to train themselves to live well without sex and give their wives time to heal from the wounds caused by their betrayal.
Redpill influencers are quick to blame “dead bedrooms” and a lack of wifely vigor for men’s choices to look at porn, but the reality that every addict must face is that they have a choice to sin or not. For some men, their porn addiction was a means of self-medicating profound trauma like sexual abuse when they were children. For others, an incredibly stressful job or a terrible marriage led them to seek out porn. In any case, no matter what happened to them, it is up to porn addicts to make their lives better by staying sober from porn.
Every addict learns at some point that even if they have described a good explanation for why they started or continued using porn, it is up to them whether they will choose to sin or not going forward. Recovery involves not only dealing with past issues that played a role in someone’s addiction, but also preventing relapses when they encounter new griefs, disappointments, or disruptions. Even if a husband is being mistreated in his marriage (or a man is being mistreated by society, another common trope on social media), it is up to him whether or not he will make his life worse by self-medicating with porn.
Most marriages will have ebbs and flows in their sexual intensity; bearing, breastfeeding, and raising small children all sap a wife’s energy for lovemaking (both physiologically and mentally.) Christians who do not learn sexual continence will be miserable whether they are married or not, for sexual sin will create deeper and deeper forms of hunger the more that it is indulged. Porn in particular will destroy a person’s appreciation for all of life’s joys and make real sex feel miserable compared to the hyperreality of virtual licentiousness. A man’s HQ can go to infinity if he chooses to allow Satan to take him to the bottom of that pit.
The good news is that God forgives us our sins and draws us near to Him. Hanging on the Cross, Jesus Christ saw us porn addicts watching vile things and still chose to remain there so that our lives could be redeemed. The Holy Spirit gives us power to overcome sin. The God-given plasticity of our brains means that we can construct elaborate prisons in our minds to help trap us in sin, but those prisons can be torn down and rebuilt as altars to worship God.
The meaning of sex is ultimately eschatological. All erotic longings are ultimately longings for the source of all goodness, and lately I have been praying that God would help me understand that my sexual temptation is merely a desire for Him that has been misdirected. Understanding the depth and shape of that misdirection will help people stop making excuses for sin and start helping sinners recover.
