Married men: your porn habit is an adultery habit
Posted on November 25, 2013
I know a guy who cheats on his wife. He cheats on her every day. He cheats on her multiple times a day. He’s a husband and a father and a serial adulterer.
I shouldn’t know this fact about him, but it came up in conversation a few days ago. We were talking about the divorce rate; both of us gave our theories as to why the statistics are so high. I mentioned in my diagnosis a few studies that show pornography to be a root cause in over 50 percent of divorces annually.
He laughed. “People don’t get divorced over porn.” He went on to explain that porn isn’t a “big deal” to most people. It’s not “like it’s cheating or something.” He told me that he looks at it multiple times daily. His wife, he insisted, might be a little peeved if she knew the extent of it, but only because women overreact about “that kind of thing.”
What kind of thing? Their husbands spending all day obsessively plunging through the darkest regions of the internet for graphic sexual images of rape, abuse, perversion, exploitation and other forms of filthy depravity previously unknown to mankind?
Yeah. That kind of thing. No reason why any wife should be too upset about that, apparently.
Listen guys, I know this is an uncomfortable conversation. But it’s time we man up and get real about pornography. First things first: if you’re married and you look at porn, you are cheating. Period. From a Christian perspective, this can’t be debated. Christ laid it out very clearly: if you lust after another woman, you have committed adultery. When we look at porn we are choosing to succumb to that lust; we are indulging it, fertilizing it, giving it respite in our minds. We are diving into it headfirst and soaking in it like a sponge. We are lessening ourselves, betraying our wives and participating in the violent exploitation of women (and girls). Or minds and our bodies belong to the Lord and to our wives; pornography, therefore, intrudes on their domain. If we look at porn, we are adulterers. We are adulterers in all the worst ways.
We don’t even need to refer to Scripture to figure out the simple equation that porn equals adultery.
Why wouldn’t it?
Because you aren’t physically in contact with another woman?
So what? That’s merely a matter of semantics and circumstance. The absence of physical touch doesn’t automatically free you of the scarlet letter — if it did, ‘sexting’ with other women would be fair game, I suppose. How would you feel if you looked through your wife’s phone and found racy, sexually graphic text messages she’d sent to a man at her office? Would you be alright with it as long as she could prove she never had any physical contact with him? Or is that totally different because she knows the guy, whereas porn is anonymous and impersonal? See, we find ourselves constructing many arbitrary lines of distinction when we are determined to rationalize behavior we instinctively know to be immoral and wrong.
But, OK, what if she didn’t know the guy? What if she was engaging in “fantasies” with men she never met? Imagine that, in your cyber travels, you stumbled upon a porn site featuring pictures and videos of a particularly alluring young female: your wife. How would that sit with you? Your wife selling digital sex all over the internet — how would you like that? It might cause a bit of a marital dispute, wouldn’t you say?
If you wouldn’t want your wife being a porn provider, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to be a porn consumer. If you wouldn’t want her to invite and encourage other men to violate her in their minds, you ought to understand why she wouldn’t want you to accept the invitation to violate other women in your mind.
I don’t mean to concentrate only on married men. Porn is poison for everyone, married or not. And I’m not here to castigate you if you’ve stumbled. We live in a society that preys upon a man’s weaknesses, shoving sex into his face at hyper speed every day, all day, all of the time. This isn’t an excuse; just an attempt to put things into context. I won’t yell at a guy who fights a porn addiction anymore than I’d yell at a guy who fights a crack addiction. But at least the crack addict likely won’t encounter very many people (besides his dealer) who will tell him that it’s actually healthy to smoke crack. If he ventures outside of the abandoned shack where he scores his dope, he probably won’t find any respectable people who will say, “hey, crack isn’t a big deal — it’s totally natural to smoke crack, man!” In that way, the crack smoker has a leg up on the porn addict. The porn addict, by contrast, has to fight both the compulsion itself and the myriad of creeps who will try to convince him that it’s all just a bit of innocent fun.
That’s a lie, of course. It’s not innocent. It’s not fun.
I could cite for you the mounds of psychiatric research proving the detrimental effects of pornography on the brain. But you can do that research yourself.
I could tell you about sex slavery, human trafficking, drug abuse, and child molestation, and I could explain how the porn industry wouldn’t exist without these necessary ingredients. But these are conclusions you can draw on your own, if ever you take even a moment to think about it.
I could remind you that these women you find on your porn sites might not be women at all — they could be children — and there’s no way for you to know for sure. I could then point out that any avid porn customer has most likely at some point been a child porn customer, whether he knew it or not. But this is, indeed, an obvious and inescapable reality.
I could tell you that many children view graphic porn for the first time before the age of 12. I could tell you that we haven’t even begun to reap the atrocious fruits that will come from an entire generation raised on the heinous perversions of internet pornography. But it’s probably too late for these warnings.
So what is left? Perhaps nothing, really. Pornography is evil, empty, deadening, dirty — this is something we all know. That’s why, unless you are either psychotic or utterly despicable, you wouldn’t want your daughter to get into the porn business. That’s why most people hide their porn habits. That’s why it still isn’t considered acceptable to browse “adult” websites at your desk at work or at a table in Starbucks (although people still do, in both scenarios). That’s why you only find porn shops and strip clubs in the slummy, rundown parts of town. No matter how hedonistic and “open minded” we become, we still recognize porn as something that ought to be stowed away in the dank, dark corners of our lives. This is Natural Law, and we can’t escape it. We have an innate understanding of right and wrong, whether we want it or not.
Married men: I think we should be spending our free time with our families, or reading interesting books so that we can sharpen our minds, or building things, or exercising, or doing anything else that will make us better men. Porn will not make you a better man. It will make you smaller. It will make you a liar. It will kill that instinct inside you that calls you to protect and honor women. It will turn you into something you never wanted to be. It will turn you into a sneaky, shameful pervert. It will turn you into an adulterer.
Real men don’t look at pornography.
Used with permission.
About the Author: Laurie Hall
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Hi Tom Hillson,
There are some foods that raise the testosterone levels – eggs, meat, chicken, (animals have their own hormones which are ingested when people ingest their meat plus then farmers feed these animals extra hormones and inject them also with hormone increasing drugs). Certain hormones injected into dairy cows cause them to produce larger quantities of milk. So you might want to decrease your intake of those hormone raising foods. Also, the power of God in times when you simply can’t resist in your own power, is there to call on in that time of need. I know that God removes those urges at that stage, but you must be willing to submit that to God. That is the most severe struggle, but the most wonderful when God removes that powerful urge. Praying you find this helpful.
Laurie,
Thanks again for your lengthy response. I will try to do the things you say to help make God seem more loving and less scolding.
Lust lost me the love of my life. The year you wrote ‘An Affair of the Mind’ was the year I lost the most beautiful, loving, sexy, sweet-hearted woman that ever lived. But my curiosity and desire for getting close physically to other women, of different looks and shapes, cost me this angel. I broke up with her. A couple years later when I realized my mistake, it was too late. She had married another. 17 years later and I’m still hurting. I will always be hurting from this. But I don’t dwell on it anymore. I live my life as it is now.
I realize my responsibility in this immeasurable loss. But I also have always been deeply bewildered as to why God, who I firmly believe answered my prayers in “getting” this woman, didn’t show me mercy by keeping me from ruining things. This was my first love, and being a man, I bought into the lie that I was supposed to have others, other “data points” to compare to.
So I know the damage that lust and masturbation can do. (I don’t remember if porn played a factor back in 1996.) This makes me all the more confused as to why God created me with such sexual desire. I also know that there were other factors at play. I have no brothers, and my dad wasn’t very close to me. I thus grew up shy, and it killed me socially. Only in the 90s did I develop self-confidence, which eventually led me to winning the heart of that amazing woman. But then I must have gotten a tad too self-confident. That’s when I blew things.
But shyness and fear were a big part of the reason why porn has been such a draw for me. I didn’t have a thick skin for rejection, so I retreated to the safety of porn. How could I have done otherwise? Like I said, I had no male role models to help me be tough-skinned and expose myself to the inevitable rejection that men successful with women have to bear on their path to success with the fairer sex.
I found my copy of your book tonight, and I skimmed it quickly. Like other Christian books written on porn, I don’t understand why little or no acknowledgment is given to the sexual differences between men and women. Authors talk about the chemical and psychological draw of porn as if it applies equally to both men and women.
So my beef with God is “Why? Why did you raise the bar so high for me (and men in general) then punish me because I couldn’t jump over that high bar?”
I’m glad there won’t be marriage in heaven. It means the consequences of my folly in 1996 won’t last forever, even though it currently feels like it.
Sincerely,
Tom
Dear Tom,
I see your pain over how your belief that a lie was the truth about you led to choices that caused you to lose something precious.
It is our beliefs about how life is or how it ought to be that create our outcomes in life. EVERY TIME. Which is why, if we want to create better outcomes in life, it is so important to let go of misbeliefs and replace those misbeliefs with the real Truth. It’s the Truth that sets us free from recreating patterns that we find painful.
This means if you want to change the outcomes you are experiencing, you have to first change the beliefs that are driving those outcomes. In your emails, I see one fundamental misbelief that underlies a number of misbeliefs. Do you know what that is? What would it take for you to decide to let that misbelief go?
I see you stepping in to a joyful awareness of who you are in Christ and dancing as you discovery your authority to create the life you want,
Laurie
Thank you Laurie. I can be obtuse. Obviously I am a slow learner on things spiritual. What is that fundamental misbelief I have?
Hi, Tom, As you’re thinking about your reply, please meditate on these words from Jesus, “It is done unto you as you believe,” and their corollary from Henry Ford, “If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing you’re right.” Have a blessed Christmas! Laurie
Laurie,
What happened to my post? I just have one question – what’s that fundamental misbelief of mine??
Hi, Tom, your post isn’t automatically visible. I have to approve all comments before they go public so it’s been waiting for me to get to it. I was involved with a project yesterday so I’m answering your post today. You are looking at life as if you are at effect. Everything else is the cause. “What could I do?” given this or given that. You believe that biology (testosterone) or the circumstances of your life (relationship with your father) or your personality (shy) are the cause of your choices; that you are powerless to make other choices. The Spiritual Truth is you have been given dominion and you get to choose how you live your life. God is in you, with you, for you. So, you are at choice. You are not a victim of forces that overwhelm your ability to make choices. Making good choices starts with replacing the misbelief that you can’t with the belief that you can. You tell yourself that every day. I’m in charge here. I get to decide what I want to create. I only make decisions that are going to lead to the outcomes I want. I only tell myself things that Focus on what I want most in life and I make decisions that are in harmony with that outcome. God is for you, not against you. There is nothing in you to be healed, only the Spiritual Truth of who you are as a unique expression of God’s creation to be revealed. Let go of the story that you are anything else, because it’s not the Truth of you. In this season of Immanuel–God with you, in you, for you, to you, and through you, let that Truth sink in and inform your view of life. Have a blessed Christmas, Laurie
Oh no, I know my post isn’t automatically visible. It’s just that I saw it going from awaiting approval to missing, so I thought you just deleted it and weren’t going to respond.
Thanks for answering my question. I’ll respond when I get some time. Merry Xmas!
Merry Christmas to you, Tom!!
Laurie,
Things have quieted down now after the holidays. Hope you had a great Xmas and New Year’s. Thanks for your response again.
I really don’t believe I’m powerless to make choices other than lust/porn/masturbation. But it’s very, very, very to the 100th power, hard oftentimes. It seems from your book and your responses to me that your feeling is “Ok, it’s hard. Perhaps much harder for men than for women, but I won’t admit that now like I didn’t admit it in my book. If I were to admit it, then I might be admitting that God is perhaps unfair, and I will not imply that. But God gives all of us power through His Holy Spirit to overcome, so I will only focus on that.”
You realize this is a tough pill to swallow, don’t you? I’m not saying that your attitude is necessarily a bad one, but it’s a tough pill to swallow nonetheless. Because I can’t see how God is not being unfair to men. Let’s say God made an arbitrary rule that all people will walk at a level 5’8″ or below. Now, for most women, this is no problem at all. They just walk as normal. But, for most men, they need to always crouch when they walk, or they need to roll around in a chair, so they don’t break this rule. It’s a strange scenario I’m painting, but I think it shows the point I’m trying to make on divine fairness.
As for saying I have dominion over sin as a Christian, are you saying that a non-Christian cannot defeat their sins?
Why did you, in general, gloss over gender differences in your book?
I hope I’m not offending you in any way with this message. It’s just the honest questions of my heart and mind.
Thank you,
Tom
Tom, why is your focus is on whether or not God is “fair” instead of on “how can I change so I don’t live with regrets”? You do realize that there are many, many men who successfully and happily live without porn?
How does God come into the picture though? All the years I’ve struggled I’ve turned to God for help. Where is that help? How come prayer doesn’t help? What part does God play in this, if any?
Tom, God is IN you. You are looking outside yourself, like a victim, expecting Someone you’re mad at, Someone you’re judging as an unfair bully, to rescue you. God is NOT out THERE. God is IN you. You can’t live beyond the God you believe in because you are created in the image and likeness of God. If you believe God is an unfair bully that is the image and likeness you create of yourself. Re-examine your thoughts about this and dump what doesn’t serve you.
Your response sounds to me like the new-age stuff in A Course In Miracles. It sounds so esoteric. But you’ve gotten beyond many of your struggles, so I value your advice. Unfortunately, I don’t understand it too much, from a practical perspective. But I thank you.
Hi, Tom, I know very little about A Course in Miracles. It doesn’t interest me. What interests me is what Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free.” He also said, “So every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.…” From these statements, I reason backwards and it looks like this: If I am not free, it’s because there’s something I believe that is not Truth. If a teaching is bearing bad fruit in my life, the teaching is bad. Your belief that God is outside you, way UP there, setting you up to fail, and then judging you for failing—is that setting you free? Is it bearing good fruit in your life?
Laurie,
Some questions after reading your post:
(1) As a Christian, how do you reconcile the fact that God made men to be much more prone to the lures of pornography than women? How is that fair of God to do this to men? How is it fair to make men with some 10 times the amount of testosterone (the chief chemical culprit for lust) as women?
(2) I assume that if a major retailer like Walmart or Target began selling hard-code porn magazines, you would take issue with that, and probably would not shop there. However, those same stores sell racks of books geared toward women which hold up unrealistic expectations of real men, as porn mags hold up unrealistic expectations of real women. Should you not shop at those stores then?
Tom, I don’t believe this is about “fairness.” And I don’t believe God sets us up to fail by creating us in such a way that we’re bound to fail. That sounds like victim thinking to me. That also sounds like a very cruel God–an abusive Father. I don’t accept that view of God. Those beliefs generate feelings of helplessness, resentment, and self-hatred for perceiving yourself as “being prone to lures”. Those beliefs are not the Truth about you. The Truth is you are created in the image and likeness of a whole, complete, and perfect God. That means whole, complete, and perfect is in YOU. Right here. Right now.
Instead of focusing on the “weakness” you perceive testosterone causes men to have (lust), why not focus on the positive qualities of testosterone such as the strength to overcome an adversary and give thanks for that? Sexual desire is part of feeling alive. So, rather than judge yourself for it or think that God set you up to have sexual desire only to shame you for having it, why not be grateful for and feel joy that the life force is within you?
What we resist persists, but what we give thanks for and manage according to our values becomes a source of blessing in the same way a fire that is kept in the fireplace becomes a source of heat and light rather than a destroyer of hearth and home.
We get to choose what we do with it. We can choose to allow that life force to control us or we can choose to channel that life force in a way that’s consistent with the values we hold and the outcomes we want in our life. Focus on what you want to create with and in your one precious life and let go of beliefs that say you can’t do that because they don’t serve you. If you believe you can or you believe you can’t, you’re right.
As for where I shop: You assume too much about me. I do, however, agree with you the there are many books out there that give women unrealistic views and expectations of men.
Pornography is an addictive agent and that addiction is not caused by testosterone. If you are addicted to it, there are resources that can help you find freedom, if that is your intention.
Peace be unto you,
Laurie
Laurie,
I see the positive stance you’re taking on lust and porn. You’re stressing that men should focus more on the fact that they’re objects of God’s love, and that they should not focus on shame and sin so much. That’s a refreshing take on things. I certainly am dominated by thoughts of how I can avoid displeasing God in my daily life, and how I can beat lust and porn. I usually feel that God is unhappy with me, and that each day I succumb to porn and masturbation is a day when God is sad and frowns. I often think of God as a stern parent who demands perfection, or near perfection. I guess I’ve heard too many scolding sermons to not think this way. Or maybe I’ve just read too many stories in the Bible that make God out to be a stern Father.
But God does set us up to fail, to a certain degree. I read once that anthropologists believe that there have been about 100 billion people ever born. And how many of those have not failed? Only one. 1 out of 100,000,000,000. And that one was God Himself, so that 1 doesn’t even count. So we have been certainly created to fail.
But let me talk about fairness again. If I were a woman, I would likely not be very attracted to porn. That’s a statistical fact. And that’s not fair. Not fair of God. Why am I cursed just because I’m a man? Humans aren’t fair, but God is supposed to be. And yet He created men and women the way He did.
I know you’ve emphasized over the years the powerful brain chemicals that make porn as addictive as stuff like heroin. What do you mean then that porn addiction isn’t caused by testosterone? Now I understand that there’s more at play than just testosterone. There’s loneliness, there’s a lack of self-control, there’s sexual images in the media, there’s several other things. But it seems to me like you’re discounting the chemistry that I know you’ve spoken and written about since at least the 1990s.
Looking forward to your response,
Tom
Dear Tom,
What an honest response you have sent! You’re a very bright and articulate man. If you’ve been following me since the 1990′s, you’ve done your research and probably are aware of counseling centers that deal with porn addiction. Fortunately, there are a number of great videos now online (some on this website and more to come) that talk about the biochemical aspects of what porn does so I’m not going to cover that territory in my response.
I agree that the church often focuses on our sinfulness and preaches a gospel of “God’s going to get you for that.” Whatever happened to “God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world through Him might be saved”? or “There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus.” or “If anyone hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge that person. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.” or “For I know the thoughts I have for you, says the Lord. Thoughts of good and not for evil–to give you a future and a hope.” God looks at you with pure love. He is not making a list and checking it twice so He can keep track of when you’ve been naughty and nice. We make those lists for ourselves and we torture ourselves with them.
I’m not sure the church really believes that God loves us and does not condemn us. I’m not sure the church really believes that we are F.O.R.G.I.V.E.N As in no condemnation. No judgment. Just peace. Just love.
Let me suggest three daily exercises that may help shift in your thinking to a place that brings greater peace.
When you go to bed at night, think about all the great things you got accomplished that day and all the special happy moments that happened that day–even small things like the way the wind felt on your cheeks that morning or how great your morning coffee tasted. DO NOT ALLOW ANY THOUGHTS OF WHERE YOU FAILED. If they come up, just tell them “I don’t have time for you right now” and go back to thinking about all the good in your life. In the morning before you get up, remind yourself of the things you thought about the night before (e.g. the good and happy things that occurred yesterday). Then, think about what you plan to accomplish that day and see yourself doing those things and feeling great about them. When you shave, look in the mirror and looking yourself in the eye say, “Tom, God loves you and I love you, too.”
Then, go to your window and look outside and open your arms wide and say, “God, I thank you that you love me. I thank you that you are constantly there for me. I thank you that you are constantly singing over me with joy. Thank you for dancing on the day I was born. Thank you for continually sending blessings my way. Thank you for delighting in me and supplying me and guiding me and strengthening me. Thank you for never leaving me or forsaking me. Thank you for weeping when I weep and rejoicing when I rejoice. Thank you for giving your angels charge over me. Thank you for giving me eyes to see the beauty all around me. Thank you for the life force that is strong within me.”
As you go through the day, instead of thinking about “what’s fair or not fair” think about what you want most in life and how much of that you already have and keep your focus there.
As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. Your thoughts create your reality so think the thoughts that will create the reality you want for yourself.
Blessings,
Laurie
Boom!
I realized this exact same comparison this year as the Spirit spoke to me in the car – if I view porn – it is like my wife providing it. Then I fell apart. . . It sank in.
Good for you Jon!!! I love your heart to be a man of integrity! Laurie