The 21st Century Pandemic

We’re all pandemic experts at this point, right? Well, if it’s a viral pandemic, then we've all learned a lot. Unfortunately, some pandemics have gone mostly unattended, and are killing our society. One that has impacted my life personally and the lives of every man I’ve ever met is pornography. I did not misspeak in saying this affects every single man I’ve ever met. Ever. That might be shocking to some readers, but I can’t be more clear about this. Every man has some sort of battle with this, whether it’s something they are currently involved in, they are trying to recover from addiction, or it was just in their past. But even those who are not currently indulging, it is always a temptation that could lure them in at any moment. Although the issue is so widespread, that does not mean it should be normalized and accepted, just a reality to be well aware of. But a big part of the issue is the way that society and media have normalized it. I have talked with many men about this issue in their lives, and I know a lot that have fought tooth and nail to rid the disease from their own lives. And as a disclaimer I should say I am far more qualified in speaking to men who are facing this issue more than women who are. I imagine a lot of what I write here will reach women who are struggling just as much, but I can’t say that I have the experience or knowledge to speak to them directly. Nonetheless, this article is just as much for women as it is for men. I truly believe it is for everyone, I am passionate that everyone needs to hear at least part of this discussion. We all need to see this disease for what it really is.

About three years ago, I was spending time with my friend Josiah walking around Golden, Colorado just chatting about life. We got on the topic of pornography and how it has affected each of us. We had both had at least given some consideration to how it was affecting us and seeing it as an issue in our lives. We both had some sense that what we were doing was wrong, and there was certainly shame tied up in it. I know that at that point in my life I had already put a few years of effort to separate myself from the lustful habit, without much success. But at this time in our lives, it was something on both of our hearts.

Daniel: “When were you first exposed to porn?”

Josiah: “The 6th grade. Some friends and I were at a sleepover and literally typed porn.com into the search bar. How about you?”

Daniel: “I looked up images when I was in 4th grade. That was when I learned what ‘Google Images’ was in school, and I was curious enough. Guess I was an early bloomer”

Talk with any guy who is willing to share and they will tell a similar story. It’s simply a story of accessibility, and we all know and see that accessibility is only on the rise. Back when I discovered porn, smartphones and tablets didn’t exist. I was doing my google searches on the family computer. Regardless, the internet is a world of infinite possibilities. So for a young boy who is flushed with confusing hormones, it doesn’t take long for them to fall into all that is out there on the internet. And every guy does it one way or another. As I said, the spread of this pandemic hits every young male I have ever met, and you will ever meet. It’s just a matter of when.

As Josiah and I continued to talk, I grew more and more frustrated. Why was his story so similar to mine? Not to mention the countless other times I had already heard it from others. Who had this figured out? Were there any survivors? I had been fighting this already for about 8 years of my life with little to show for it. Then I was suddenly struck with a devastating thought.

Daniel: “You know, I’ve talked with other dudes who are waiting for marriage or a serious relationship to put an end to this. The fact that we are longing for sex, but we resort to porn and masturbation to fulfill our longing for now. We think, ‘well once I have an active sex life with my wife, then I won’t have to worry about this’. But I’ll always remember a mentor in high school who told me that just wasn’t true. Once he got married, he still had to fight off the temptation to resort to masturbation. And I’ve heard other married guys say the same. Is there an end?”

Josiah: “Sounds like there isn’t one.”

He was right. We both sat that for a while and took it in. We thought about the future and the implications of this.

Josiah: “Can you imagine being a married man and feeling what we are feeling now? Can you imagine being a married man and being addicted to porn?”

Daniel: “Even worse, could you imagine being a married man, with children, and being addicted to porn?”

It hit us both at the same time. The thought was almost unbearable: with the way both of our lives looked now, that is exactly where we were headed. We were well on our way to having a marriage and children and bringing an addiction to pornography and masturbation right along with us. We thought about a man with a family who was addicted to porn, and I’ll tell you that both of us hated that man. The thought of such a man utterly disgusted us. There are two sides to this that make it such a terrifying thought. One is that you have to tell your wife about your addiction. She might already know, and she might have put up with it one way or another, but I believe that weighs on any woman. If she has no idea, then revealing it might be heartbreaking. If she already knows, then she has probably been putting up with it for a while and still has to even though you have vowed to commit to her. The second side is that it eventually will weigh on your family somehow. I’ll get into this more later, but watching porn warps your sexual desires and performance, and this will surely play into your sex life. Also, no father wants their kid to get addicted to porn, especially at a young age (as many are today). How do you face your child when you are addicted to it yourself? And the thought of this reality is what woke us up. We were terrified of becoming this image, and so we were shot awake and into action.

Daniel: “Now that I think about that, this is so much more serious than I ever thought. I’ve definitely seen this as a serious issue, afraid of how it might affect my future. But right now is affecting my future. If we don’t deal with this now, we may never get past it.”

Josiah: “Truly, I’ve been far too complacent about this. I’ve seen how porn has slowly been warping and perverting my sexual desires. It’s always seemed that there have been more pressing issues. Other problems have always seemed more glaring that needed to be tackled, and porn is something I put on the back burner to deal with later. It’s so obvious that if I don’t deal with it now, I’m screwed. It’s never going to become magically easier”

Daniel: “So what are we going to do?”

And this is the question every man needs to ask themselves, and I believe they do ask themselves in some way. But it really depends on the question: is this an issue? And the answer is very important. Widely, there are two responses that I believe divide men. One response is: No, everyone does it and it’s a healthy way for me to release the sexual tension I deal with every day. The result of this first response is that you go on masturbating daily, as you please, and you watch porn almost every time. And as I’ve seen in my own life and many others, you usually want to get more and more exotic with your experience and so you try out different things and watch new and exciting stuff to see what else is out there. A rabbit trail that is certainly endless, and most of all destructive. The other response is: Yes, what I’m doing is wrong, and I want to stop. But how one moves forward with this response is quite varied, and we will get into that more.

Let’s address this question, “is pornography and masturbation an issue?”, more thoroughly so I can try to convince you through what I have seen in many people’s lives. The truth is, I have heard all sorts of viewpoints from many people. Some have accepted porn as part of their life and some have no doubt that porn is an issue. The views on masturbation vary even wider. Side note: I am not going to stray away from addressing masturbation in this article. I know that it is a bit more taboo, but it is an issue all in itself and you will see that here as I share more stories. I promise not to get graphic, but I will not let it sit in the shadows or assume anything.

It wasn’t long ago that pornography was widely accepted as harmful.

Daniel: “Dude, it’s just so accessible. And even worse, porn has been so normalized today. It’s becoming common knowledge of how many people watch porn, and that seems to just make it okay for a lot of people. It’s referenced in TV shows often, people make jokes about it all the time, and this has just normalized it. The more normal it is viewed as, the less of an issue it seems”.

And the normalization has caused mass confusion. The more that it has become available, the more it has been consumed, and the more it has been accepted by our culture as a result. Watching porn, especially as a man, just seems normal these days. But in a lot of cases, if you decide that it is normal, you are ignoring how abnormal what you are doing is. What’s truly ironic about the normalization is that although people are fine to joke about it and reference it in popular media, they don’t really talk about it on a personal level. It’s rare for someone to talk about their own porn usage, and for them to reflect on it themselves. I find that someone doesn’t give much thought about porn’s impact on their life until they’ve opened up to someone about it. Honestly, a lot of it doesn’t sound all that crazy until you say it out loud. But people don’t. They just hide in it (and that is a big reason why I am writing this article, why it needs to be written). Fortunately, there are a large number of people that have recognized the corruption of porn. In recent years there have been tons of research and case studies that have shown the negative effects of porn on our mental, physical and emotional health. There is even the reality that watching porn is contributing to sex slavery. There are quite a few solid TED talks out there that address why porn is harmful (I’ll link a couple at the end). Search this information out, I encourage you to because I won’t spend a lot of time here going into the data or that side of things. But I will say this: anyone who has been addicted to porn and has had an active sex life cannot deny that porn has an influence. And It’s hard to erase some of the images that imprint in your brain. Anyone could attest to this (trust me, I know many that have).

I was only just talking about pornography though. Look at the science and evidence, do some self-reflection, most will agree at the end of the day porn is harmful and dangerous. But why do most men watch porn? What does it lead to? Usually, it is only a means to an end, and that end is masturbation. Masturbation is the satisfaction of the sexual desire/drive that is at the head of the ship. And unfortunately, this is where many more diverge in thought.

Josiah: “It’s too obvious to me how porn has warped my sexual desires and the way I view women. It seems obvious that it must be cut out. But masturbation? That feels a lot more natural. It’s harder to justify that”.

Many who choose the second response, “Yes this is an issue”, will either try to cut out both porn and masturbation altogether, or tackle one at a time, and the one they tackle is usually porn. Cut out porn from their lives, then deal with masturbation. And in some cases, men will decide that masturbation isn’t an issue at all. It’s clear to them that all the issues I described above (and more) with porn are something they want to avoid, but what is the harm in masturbation? Isn’t it just a natural release? If I don’t currently have a healthy sex life, how else am I supposed to relieve this tension? There are countless other ways people explain and justify it.

I have talked to many men my age about this issue in their lives. And as a result, I have seen many perspectives. One more recent story goes like this. A friend of mine has recently been introspective about how porn and masturbation have affected him. For many years, it had been a habit that he didn’t give much thought to. But after talking with some friends concerning it, he realized it might be worth analyzing. After some personal research, he found that pornography had many negative effects on his health and society, so it was easy for him to turn away from that (in theory more so than practice). But like others, he wasn’t sure why he would stop masturbating. After some external motivation, he decided that he would just try and quit masturbating to see if there was any difference in his life. But he did not expect what he found out. What happened after about 2 days of abstaining? He masturbated. He got back on the horse, disappointed. Only about 1 day this time before he caved and masturbated again. Maybe it’s just a habit to break. Well, this cycle went on for nearly 3 to 4 months. Sometimes doing as well to make it a week of abstaining, but rarely and never more. Why? What was going on? My friend came to realize he was addicted to masturbating, addicted to the high of the experience. This realization was a wake-up call for him. He set out to stop the “habit” but found that it was so much farther out of his control than he realized. And this isn’t simply an anecdote. This is the record of what it is always like. Sure I’ve heard of some going a month cold turkey for a bet, but it doesn’t last. This is the experience of anyone who sets out to find freedom. But unfortunately, most guys don’t try to quit and therefore they never find out. They don’t see that it’s no easy work: it’s a long, hard battle.

Let me also just say this concerning masturbation, when you masturbate without porn it doesn’t make the masturbation innocent. Just ask yourself: where is your mind at when you masturbate without porn? Or just ask a friend. It’s typically one of two places: objectifying women or men from your imagination (maybe from an experience) or reanimating past porn in your head. What’s safe about that? Ask yourself, who are you thinking about when you masturbate? Does that person want to be used for your sexual pleasure? Is it a friend? How could that affect your friendship? Or if it’s a partner, you are just imagining them for your own pleasure, it’s selfish, and you are only taking from them. Maybe you are thinking of a porn star or a video you watched, and you might say, “well they have given me permission by publishing their work”. But the issue with that is continuing to do this will just lead you back into watching porn consistently. Reconsider what I said earlier: you have far less control than you think until you acknowledge it. Some will try and say, “well I’ll just do it once a month”, but no man I’ve ever known has successfully done that. It isn’t long until you have returned to your vomit to consume it.

All this is a serious call to action for the men out there, young and old, that are stuck in the middle of this battle. And also to any women who are also addicted and can relate to all this, I know you are out there. Please hear me out, this is far more serious than you might think. And it’s just as serious now as it will be in the future, as it will ever be. Therefore, you must take it seriously now. Trust me, if you are waiting until you are married or in a relationship to take this seriously I promise it will be too late. If you learn how to figure it out now, then your future will be taken care of. And by my experience, that is the only way. If you plan on being married one day and having a family of your own, you owe it to them. Do what I did 3 years ago and imagine yourself a few years into marriage, the first kid on the way, and you still are addicted to watching porn and masturbating. That is not where you want to be. It’s not where I want to be. Think about the man/woman you want to be for them, and realize what you need to do now.

This is also a serious call to women to understand the reality that men face and what we are going through daily. This might be the bigger hope I had in writing this article. One of the grand downsides to men not talking about this enough is that it can be hard for women to understand our struggle, or even that it is a struggle. They just don’t get the opportunity to hear what it’s like for us, until maybe they are too close and it’s too painful. I must reiterate that every man deals with this, so every man you meet, and date, will have some past experience and present battle with this. If you’re looking for a man that has steered clear his whole life, I’m sorry, he doesn’t exist. That should not be hopeless, because there is a stark difference between a man who has accepted it as part of his life and a man who is fighting for change. Again, there is a huge difference between a proactive man and a complacent one. Please, have grace on us for the war we face every day. I am not asking that you just put up with this disgusting disease, but that you have grace on who we are for who we may become. Believe in us, and encourage us in this battle. We need it from the women in our lives most. A man who is vulnerable about his struggle and is only met with abandonment is a man who will dig himself into a deeper hole and never want to share his heart again.

But this is not the end. This is only the first part of this conversation. The next part is seeking the light at the end of the tunnel. In my next article, I will talk about the hope we have in this situation and the freedom that can be experienced. I will also talk more about how the women in our lives can encourage us and fight for us. There is so much good to come out of this conversation, and so more on that next time.

For all readers: I must reiterate that I have written this article to reach everybody. I am passionate that everyone needs to hear at least part of this discussion, men and women alike. But I do recognize that people have varied opinions on this, and will receive it differently. I’m okay with that. I am a young male, who grew up as a Christian, and so that is where I am coming from. But, I definitely am not writing this for only Christian men, and I do not try to take any sort of Christian approach in this article. But that is where I am coming from. I hope to reach all men and women, both of a religious and nonreligious background. As I said, I have far more experience discussing this with men. And I know women have widely varied views on the subject from personal experience. But I hope you will at least consider the call I am making.

Links:

Why I stopped watching porn | Ran Gavrieli | TEDxJaffa: https://youtu.be/gRJ_QfP2mhU

The Porn Paradox | Megan Johnson | TEDxGreenville: https://youtu.be/VU9v8h_OwcY