How to stop watching porn: 10 techniques

Top 10 unfailing techniques to stop using porn.

“Just stop watching it!” someone has undoubtedly said this to you before, or maybe you often repeat it to yourself. As if it were simply a question of deciding… To stop watching porn is of course a choice. But it doesn’t happen by clicking your fingers and willpower alone is not enough.

So, just for you, here are the top 10 techniques to stop watching it. Each one of these techniques is a rung on the ladder helping you rediscover your freedom.

This article is written just as much for men as for women.

1. Talk about it

This may seem a little simplistic, but it’s the foundation stone. Freeing yourself from pornography begins by addressing the subject, giving words to what’s going on, the difficulties, the realisations, the suffering. Talking about it enables you to shine a light on a habit which is so often our dark little secret. By keeping it to yourself you risk developing a parallel life, and the habit of lying: hiding this part of your life can become an obsession. In short, talking about your pornography consumption will liberate you and put you in the right disposition for stopping.

2. Install blockers

If you want to radically increase your chances of stopping, and dramatically reduce the time you spend in front of porn, I recommend you put blockers in place, on all devices that can access the internet, whether it be your personal computer, professional computer, your smartphone, tablet… There are excellent systems that exist, like Covenant Eyes or Cold Turkey. These systems aren’t the whole solution but they will help you become habituated to not giving in to the smallest sexual urge.

3. Cultivate a healthy life-style

Sometimes porn erupts into our lives for one very simple reason: biology. Yes, our way of life has direct consequences on our consumption of pornography. Don’t be surprised that you watch porn if you’re often going to bed late, or if you don’t have a regular eating pattern, or you don’t do any sport. Taking care of yourself and your rhythm/style of life is the second key stone in structuring your liberty. Fix a sleep routine, take up a sport that you like doing, and start cooking more instead of giving in to fast food. Simply speaking: take back control of your daily life. These three ingredients will have an impact on your pornography consumption. They have an effect on your physical, psychological and emotional state and will make the task of controlling your urges easier.

I suggest starting with:

• Going to bed at 11pm
• Getting up at 7am
• Going running every day
• Stop snacking

Once these new habits are in place; physical tensions, frustrations and set-backs will have a less powerful effect on you, and will lead you into porn less easily.

4. Do some research

We aren’t the only ones questioning the place of porn in our life. A lot of people have trodden this path before you. Some have developed brilliant resources: whether they be researchers, experts, witnesses, ex-addicts… the internet is also a virtuous tool where you can easily find content to give you the intellectual and mental weapons you’ll need in facing your urges. Here are a few questions to help start your research: Do you know who is really hiding behind all the videos? What strings are being pulled in the pornography industry? How does its business model function? Just a few examples, but I’ll leave you to start your own research like any good internet surfer from the 21^st Century.

5. Identify patterns

You’ve probably already noticed that you watch porn at particular times of the day, in particular situations, after certain events… Maybe you’ve put into place a codified ritual with your own rules and ways of practicing. Every consumer has their own pattern. Are you aware of yours? Sometimes the reasons we watch porn aren’t clear. In any case, there are times we are more disposed to watching it. Write them in a journal, your battle book. Every day, look at what is « going on ». Firstly, note what you observe: places, times of day, and the context of each one of these relapses. Then, try and analyse what is happening: why did I desire to watch it?

6. Identify preconceived concepts

You might be saying to yourself, you’re done-for, there’s no exit door to this. That’s false. Your body has become used to porn. It can just as well become “un-used” to it. Do you believe what you’ve just read? Deep inside each one of us there are certain beliefs we need to identify and deconstruct. The objective of this step is to change the way you see your relationship with porn. Note down in your journal all the preconceived ideas you manage to identify within you. If you need, talk to a friend about it. This will help you to really put your finger on it.

I’ll give you a few examples:

• I’ll never be able to stop watching porn because I’m too weak
• I watch porn from time to time because it teaches me how to be better in bed
• I need porn to manage my sexual urges
• I have wounds that go too deep to be able to give up pornography
• I’ll never be able to get a girlfriend/boyfriend, I’m condemned to watching porn whenever I have a sexual urge
• Porn helps me to manage my negative emotions, I can’t give it up or I’ll have an episode or it’ll make me go through something that’s too painful
• The men of today have to watch porn otherwise they’re not virile
• I am dirty because I watch porn and I’m a woman

There are hundreds of these… It’s up to you to identify the ones in you.

7. Identify the wounds

You now understand the reasons we watch porn are sometimes difficult to explain. You’re successful in everything, you’re happy and fulfilled and yet you sometimes feel the irrepressible need to watch porn. Clearly, sometimes there are simple factors, of a biological nature, for example:

“I see an advert in the street, it awakens a sexual urge in me, I get home, I open my computer and I masturbate compulsively.”

• Read also : Hom to stop masturbating? 8 ways to break out of it!

This is when a relapse is easier to explain and understand. But, there are also underlying causes, linked to our personal history and the first few years of our life. We’re talking about emotional wounds which orientate us towards attitudes of self-protection when faced with suffering similar to that endured at the time of the wound. This could be a wound of rejection, abandonment, betrayal, injustice or humiliation. The vast majority of us are affected by these wounds. Pornography often intervenes as a painkiller or an emergency escape when the effects of these wounds make themselves too present or felt too much. I advise you to dig deeper by reading books and why not consider a therapist?

8. Consult a specialist

At this point, it’s important to be able to lean on the insight, the listening ear and the wisdom of a specialist. You can do a lot by yourself and I would even say it’s good to experience the solitude of the combat of getting rid of pornography, to draw as many solutions as possible from within you. But then, it becomes clear we can’t go very far without a companion on our journey, someone we can confide in. But after this, this friend is too involved in your life to help you make the following step.

For this you’ll need to see a professional; a man or woman who has experience in accompanying people towards freedom from pornography. This could be a psychologist, a sex therapist, an addiction doctor, a gynaecologist, anyone who is trained for it. This person will help you break your standard thought patterns, take a bit of distance, question certain interior beliefs, engage differently with the subject, undo certain knots…

• Read also : Is counseling a must for the porn addict?

9. Get out and see people

For some people, the consumption of pornography can go with a certain form of isolation or at least a preference for solitude. The reasons for this are diverse, shame, fear of how others perceive you, self-deprecating thoughts, more general fears… In all cases, I recommend you make the effort of reaching out to others and developing your social life, whether it’s through your professional network, university, sport, or any other sort of hobbies or activities. If you don’t have a network like this, it’s up to you to find an activity that you like and which enables you to meet people at the same time. Prolonged isolation and solitude create conditions which encourage relapse. Tell yourself as a general rule, when facing urgings to watch porn, you are stronger when you are not alone. Maybe it’s time for you to get a housemate if you live by yourself…

10. Take a cold shower

The ultimate wildcard to play, a major trump: the cold shower. In a critical emergency, anything goes. A cold shower is like a nuclear weapon. You can use it as an effective dissuasion device by making it a rule to have a cold shower if the rest isn’t working. It’ll have an instant vasoconstrictor effect in your body, meaning your blood vessels contract on contact with the cold water in an effort to preserve heat. This will instantaneously relieve any physical sexual tensions and evacuate stress. It’s your ultimate safe-guard, and it’s up to you how you use it…

Until next time, as the adventure continues…

If you need to talk about these techniques, we’re there for you via the chat (free and anonymous).

Bonus : ask for a deliverance prayer!

Warning, this is not a magical formula, but it can help a lot, and, if God wants it, it can heal you too!

If you want to receive help from heaven to get rid of this addiction, we are here to pray with you and ask Carlo Acutis for his intercession:

Going further:

• “I feel guilty, how do I break the cycle of guilt?”
• Porn: What’s the problem?
• Prayer for deliverance from porn addiction, what good can it do?

A miraculous cure through Carlo Acutis. The heartbreaking testimony of a wife and mother who discovered that her husband was addicted to porn, and how he broke free from it.

I am now thirty-eight years old… Two years ago, we went through a terrible ordeal as a couple. We were married in church fifteen years ago and I can testify to the wonderful graces of the sacrament of marriage. When I discovered that my husband had fallen into the grip of pornography, I fell apart. “Anything except that!” I can’t explain it but you feel totally devastated and yet it wasn’t me who was searching for those images.

I loved my husband too much to believe that it was true, that he had fallen into this trap. I could see that he wasn’t feeling great. I have to say that there were many extenuating circumstances but I felt terrible about the fact that he was watching these videos. I felt alone. This subject is still considered a taboo, so who can you talk to about it? It is so hard; and it affects our intimacy as a couple.

God is so good that He hasn’t abandoned us. At the same time, the SOSPorn website had just been launched and I got an email about it. I had the courage to visit the website and I discovered the prayer of deliverance through Carlo Acutis’s intercession. So I prayed for my darling husband. Prayer is essential, but I still felt alone. I then took the decision to use the Chat facility and the Lord, in His infinite goodness, put me in touch with the right person at the right time. Thank you!

• Does this affect you? Talk to us via the chat! (There is no charge and you remain anonymous)

I was able to have a friendly chat and discussion. I was also able to confide in a friend who was a priest and who had given us a lot of support. I had a desire to save our marriage, our love and the man to whom I had committed my life and whom I loved. That’s when I moved heaven and earth. You know, when you have a sick child, you do everything to care for them, reassure them and cherish them, even when you are exhausted. Well, that’s what I set out to do for my beloved husband!

A prayer for a miraculous cure through Carlo…

I wanted to fight, to tell myself that it was possible to help him. It was a lot to take in. For sure! I used to cry a lot when I was alone. I got angry too.
Sometimes I said things to him and it was as though he’d been electrocuted. I also tried to continue to love him as he was, with his wounds, and to let myself be loved…

None of this would have been possible without the support of prayer. Thanks to SOSporn and its members, I really felt supported. I can truly say that my husband was miraculously cured through Carlo Acutis and thanks to SOSporn. In fact, during the beatification of Carlo Acutis and the veneration of his body by the faithful, members of SOSporn placed my husband’s name before Carlo, and Carlo’s mother also prayed for my husband. For my part, I prayed to Carlo a lot. He has become my little brother in heaven who watches over my darling husband, our marriage, and our family.

When my husband realized that he was hurting himself and our marriage, he agreed to let himself be helped… by me. I felt so weak but we had entrusted ourselves to each other on our wedding day. I let myself be led by the communion of saints, especially Carlo and Saints Louis and Zélie Martin.

We love the sanctuary at Alençon. We had planned to go and pray in the chapel, where there was Adoration of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, but the sanctuary had to shut because of the Covid pandemic and it just offered an evening livestream. There was no way I could accept that! I explained to the nuns that it was vital that we pray in person at the sanctuary. They told me that they would discern what to do and call me back. In the meantime, I expressly asked Carlo for his intercession because if my husband was ready to let himself be loved by the Lord, we really shouldn’t lose the opportunity! The sisters called me back an hour later to say that they would make an exception for us and that we could go. Thank you Lord! Thank you Carlo!

A few months later, my husband agreed to go on the At the Heart of Men retreat. But then the possibility of a third lockdown started looming. I prayed… I had my family and friends pray… I explained to the Lord once again how vital it was. Thank goodness! The retreat was still on and my husband left with his good friend. His wife said that I really had faith because the retreat was so close to being cancelled. Thank you Lord! Thank you Carlo! He returned from this retreat transformed. Over time, my husband has changed a lot, for the better. We have nothing to hide anymore. We love each other as we are. This may seem easy to say, but it is a daily struggle. I lost confidence in myself and in him, and today I am trying to regain my confidence.

The only thing for me now is that we love each other in weakness. This trial has made me understand how a wounded person can let themselves be fooled. Since then, I have become more compassionate towards human suffering.
The battle is not yet won because temptation exists. We are vigilant. Patience and perseverance make it possible to keep going. I know with a deep certainty that Carlo is watching over us. I ask him to look after my husband every day.

Now, these words are for you, my darling husband. You know how much I have always loved you. You know how much I have always believed in our calling to marriage. Just like the great hero King David, you – the hero of my heart – have fallen. I’ve learned that forgiveness has a price, especially when it hurts a lot. But you can be sure that I have forgiven you. Thanks to you, I understood how patient God is when I walk away from Him. You have taught me patience… You have taught me to forgive. I love you.

Do you too want to receive help from heaven to get rid of this addiction? We are here to pray with you and ask Carlo Acutis for his intercession:

Going further:

• Help! My husband recently disclosed his porn addiction to me.
• What does pornography do to marriages? 
• Liberated from pornography by Carlo Acutis

 

“I feel guilty, how do I break the cycle of guilt?”

Being imprisoned in pornography can lead us to feel guilty, we are torn between the immediate artificial pleasure brought by looking at pictures, and the awkwardness of a broken chord somewhere, feeling that something is being damaged within us. We would like to give ourselves to another, in fullness and in truth, but our sensual preferences make us close in on ourselves, like Adam hiding from God, after sinning. In facing all this, we can take one of several different paths.

1) Despair

Every time we end up falling again, it’s so easy to say it’s all useless, we’ll never manage to be successful. We let ourselves give up, to despair, to experience depression, perhaps worse…

2) Pride

Yes, I fell, but I’ll get up again, for sure, because I’m strong, I can control myself… vanity of vanities, all is vanity…

3) Humility

The third solution, and the only one to help us break the infernal cycle of guilt, lies in recognising that we can’t succeed alone. It creates an opening to God, for those who believe in him, acknowledging before him that we’re weak, and imploring his mercy: this is the sense of confession.

This opening can also be made through a third-party, someone who has our trust: a friend, a priest, a psychologist… Lots of options exist, competent individuals ready to provide help. I’ll mention a couple here:

• Talk to us about it via the chat!
• Novena to Carlo Acutis. The possibility of reciting the same prayer for nine days, asking the intercession of a young Italian who died in holiness and who was passionate about new technologies.

So we should never give up, we need to use the ways given to us to make progress, getting to know ourselves and our limits, and always staying hopeful.

If you’re asking yourself, ‘how do I break the cycle of guilt?’ Don’t hesitate to talk to us about it via the chat (free and anonymous):

Going further:

• How to stop watching porn: 10 techniques
• Liberated from pornography by Carlo Acutis
• Watching porn, what does it do to you?

Jessica Hariss was a porn addict : her testimony!

Do women struggle with porn too? Author and ex-porn addict Jessica Harris says women can succumb to a porn addiction just as easily as men do. She also warns parents: it’s not a matter of if your child will be exposed to porn, but when.

Jessica Harris is now the founder of Beggar’s Daughter, a ministry dedicated to walking with women who have an addiction to pornography. Telling her own story of porn addiction and struggle with lust, Jessica seeks to help other women find hope, healing, and grace. Jessica enjoys traveling and speaking on the topic of female lust addiction and how churches can minister to women who struggle. She resides just outside of Washington DC where she works as a teacher and serves on the Biblical counseling team in her church. She is the author of Love Done Right: Devos—A Journey From Lust into the Love of God.

• To go further: read his many articles about porn addiction on Covenanteyes.com

So, what do you think about what says ex-porn addict Jessica Harris? Come and talk to us via the live chat’! (Free and anonymous listening service)

And you, what do you think? Do you believe it’s possible to stop using porn? Do you too want to receive help from heaven to get rid of this addiction? We are here to pray with you and ask Carlo Acutis for his intercession:

Going further:

• Edgar’s testimony: “what if marriage could resolve my problem?”
• Ran Gavrieli: “Why I stopped watching porn” (vidéo)
• “My husband was miraculously cured through Carlo Acutis thanks to SOS Porn!”

Watching porn, what does it do to you?

Watching porn, pornographic pictures or porn videos, distorts your vision and renders you incapable of having a normal relationship, with neither men nor women. It destroys love.

In fact, surreptitiously, through watching porn day after day, we start considering woman or man as an object for consumption, there to serve our pleasure. Instead of discovering our fiancé or our husband/wife in the context of their whole personality, including their body, spirit, heart, intelligence, sensitivities… we cut everything down to one thing: the pursuit of bodily pleasure.

In relationships with our friends or in the professional sphere, the longer we continue watching porn, the more our attitude becomes focussed on sex, as our memory is “imbibed” with erotic images. Interactions with others become ambiguous.

Within a couple, pornography destroys love. True love is the gift of yourself, is listening to the other, being delicate, tender, and attentive to the other. And our hearts can become blind, suffocated by the sadness and disgust invoked by eroticism.

We’re conscious that, God, the Creator, has inscribed in the depths of our being a desire to be pure. An aspiration which remains in us, even when we’ve done things to damage it. It’s possible to reclaim this purity, whatever we’ve got ourselves into. Firstly, through God’s forgiveness. And then keeping it, through daily life, by guarding our hearts: this is an interior posture which consists of simply but firmly distancing ourselves from anything which could blemish our hearts (turning our eyes away, cutting a daydream short, not reading magazines, adverts…). You can be certain that little by little our goodwill will win through and we’ll find peace and joy of heart.

Etienne’s story

Claire and I lived the first two years of our marriage as a young ‘modern’ couple: going out, seeing friends, films, the cinema… We wanted to see everything, know everything. It’s like this we went to watch erotic films. We would laugh a lot going into the showing, trying to hide the fact we were a bit unsettled, disgusted. We didn’t want to let ourselves feel guilty. In fact, when being intimate, it wasn’t exactly Claire I was seeing anymore, and it was the same for her. The images we’d seen imposed themselves on us, subtly and slyly, and it was clear we were drifting apart.

Following a difficult and heavy family issue, we started asking ourselves questions about who we were and about the life we had. We realised these images, preserved in our memory, were suffocating our love. We decided not to go and watch these films anymore, and more generally, not to “buy into” everything that was thrown at us just because it was fashionable! This enabled us to have a life that conformed more closely to what we really wanted.

What do you think? We are here for you, via the chat to listen and answer your questions:Go further:

• How to stop watching porn: 10 techniques!
• Liberated from pornography by Carlo Acutis
• What does pornography do to women?

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Source: extract from an article in ‘He is Alive!’, special edition July 2007 “50 questions on life and love”

Addiction to porn, sign of pschological distress?

Addiction to pornography or to masturbating regularly, even if your partner seems to ignore it, has an effect on the trust within a relationship. Shame, breaking the rules, or sinning, the subject is taboo. How can we address it differently? How do we talk about it, in all simplicity?

A man admits to his friend that he’s addicted to porn. His friend replies directly: “Your combat is essentially a question of control. You like the control that pornography gets for you. You’d prefer to dive deep into this universe rather than run the risk of real intimacy.” Stupefied, the man recognised that it was true: “I wanted control over the way I experienced pleasure and I didn’t want to face the perspective of not having my needs satisfied by a real person.” (1)

Exercising your sexuality in a solitary way is totally paradoxical. Contradictory even in the terms we use, if we accept that sexuality is made for relationship. Each one of us has a deep need for intimacy with another. To be intimate with someone, is to live in close physical and emotional proximity with this person. We have a first experience of this intimacy in the relationship with our parents. When a lack of intimacy, or a displaced intimacy with them, or with one of them, affects the child, a distrust is planted in them. The child hardens their heart, in an effort to survive it. Later, this can make them become a “detached” adult, who finds it difficult to be intimate and incapable of talking about it, because it implies surrendering. An adult in this case can become narcissistic, not able of taking another person into account. The partner of someone like this is clearly bound to suffer.

Porn addiction, sign of psychological distress

Porn addiction, like sex addiction, is not in the first instance a moral problem, but a psychological problem, and sign of psychological stress. Moral convictions will not help a person in breaking out of it. Rather, they need to become aware of the reasons behind their addiction, by working on themselves, accompanied by someone who is competent.

And where is God in all this? More intimate than my own self. God can be a source of healing.

• Read also: Liberated from pornography by Carlo Acutis

Therapy can also help you become aware of the causes behind these inappropriate sexual habits.

Sexual impulses and urges are the sign of a greater and deeper desire: that of being loved and of loving. In quenching this great and good thirst through solitary satisfaction we deprive ourselves of the inter-personal dimension of this desire, it deprives us of love. Break out of it! Get help!

So, how do we do it? Talk about it with your partner and/or talk to us using the chat’!

Going further:

• Is masturbation harmful?
• Joseph, ex-porn addict: “One day, I thought to myself: you’re not happy!”
• What are the consequences of porn on your health ?

 

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Notes

Extract of an article written by Sophie Lutz for ‘Famille chrétienne’, March 2013.

(1) Vers une sexualité réconciliée, by Andrew Comiskey, Éditions Raphaël.

Dos porn make it harder to meet people?

Porn doesn’t completely block an encounter with someone else, but it does lower the chances of a having a sincere exchange. Here, we’ll explain why.

• Porn is time-consuming

Porn use is aimed at producing the pleasure to satisfy urges which are more often than not the result of being unhappy, stressed, feeling undermined in your masculinity or femininity, an excessive fatigue, or not looking after your body.

Consuming porn like this, firstly creates a habit or reliance, and secondly an increasingly stronger need for it, because it functions on the same principal as using drugs. The time spent consuming porn is detrimental to other activities, which get pushed aside, mathematically limiting occasions for meeting and making friends, or entertaining the possibility for something more, if things go well.

• Risk of isolation and self-satisfaction

Addiction and individual pleasure, without the constraint of involving another person, can encourage us to be satisfied with the situation and not look to change. Taking the risk of meeting someone, then building a friendship or relationship with them, involves making certain adaptations to the other person. An attitude like this may be more difficult to adopt if we are used to a way of life where there is unrestrained pleasure, and as the consumer we select our merchandise, porn, in a unilateral way.

• Basing the relationship principally on its sexual potential

The habit of using porn, with its ‘drug’ effect, develops an increasingly greater need for it. This dependency will have an effect on the way you see the people you may meet, and what you expect from them. They’ll end up being judged and compared to model or porn actors you’ve seen and there’s the risk of prematurely breaking up relationships, and missing out on finding your lifetime partner, when porn is not at all a reference point for real life.

• What will your future partner think?

If you go on a date which launches into a relationship, what’ll your partner think? Will they be annoyed or disgusted with the comparison? And what if they accidently come across your porn consumption? If you don’t manage to get out of porn before meeting someone, the best option would be to talk to them about it, so they can help you on your journey. Contrary to the image given to us by society, which insists on presenting an idealised projection of yourself, sharing your wounds often strengthens the bond between two people because it’s a sign of trust and honesty.

And this combat, that you’ll face together, can give foundations to your couple, and bring something good out of something bad.

If you don’t have a partner to help you face this combat, come and talk on the live chat’, we’ll give you a shoulder to lean on in this fight:

Going further:

• Why do we need to educate ourselves about sexuality and Feelings?
• Porn: What’s the problem?
• François’s recovery from a 25-year porn addiction

Help! My husband recently disclosed his porn addiction to me. Answer by Peter C. Kleponis, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Therapist (*).

• Also read : My husband watches porn: is it my fault?

Question

I’m a 25 year old wife and mother. Recently my husband disclosed his porn addiction to me. He has been looking at porn since our engagement four years ago.  I’m completely broken by this discovery. I feel that our marriage is soiled, I feel inadequate as a wife and I feel so angry and pain beyond description.

He assures me that it has nothing to do with me and that I am beautiful and attractive to him. He says that he hates this addiction/compulsion and it’s broken him. While I believe him and forgive him I cannot understand how it has trapped him. How can something he hates pull him in?

I want to see what he’s been watching so I can accept it/understand it and move past it, my imagination constantly torments me. When we speak about it I see the pain its caused him, and that makes me angry too and i feel guilty for bringing it up. I feel so deceived thinking I was the only woman my husband has intimately been with. How can I move on?

Answer

The emotions you are feeling right now are quite normal and, believe it or not, healthy. What you are struggling with is Betrayal Trauma.

Most women when they discover their husband’s pornography addiction feel deeply hurt and betrayed. While pornography may be nothing more than images on a computer screen to men, they aren’t just images to their wives. Those images are other people!

For wives, this is as serious as an extramarital affair. It’s adultery.

Knowing her husband views porn also hurts a wife’s self-image. The women in porn are generally between the ages of 18 and 25. Most have had extensive plastic surgery and thanks to makeup and digital enhancements, these women don’t exist in real life. When a wife discovers what her husband is viewing, she thinks to herself, “How can I compete? He must think I’m ugly. I’ve lost my beauty and I am no longer desirable!” She feels rejected and replaced. This can be devastating for a woman. I believe that if all men really knew how much their pornography use would hurt their wives, no man would ever want to touch it!

Right now, it’s okay to feel hurt, angry and betrayed. You have the right to feel this way. However, you also need to work on healing and forgiveness. Your husband is correct in saying the pornography us is not about you, your beauty, or your adequacy as a wife.

To him you are beautiful and he would never want to replace you for the women in porn. He realizes how the addiction has enslaved him and how it has hurt you and your marriage. Naturally he hates pornography, and that he has become addicted to it. It sounds like he is truly sorry for how he has hurt you. It also sounds like he sincerely wants to overcome the addiction and restore your marriage.

The reasons

There are many reasons why men become addicted to pornography:

First, men are wired to be visually stimulated. When they encounter an erotic image, they automatically look! This sets in motion a series of neurochemical reactions that produce a “high” feeling. This, accompanied by orgasm, can lead a man back to it over and over again. The body then becomes dependent on this neurochemical/orgasm reaction.

There are also psychological and social reasons why men become addicted to porn. Many men grow up in a world where pornography and exploiting women is accepted. This makes it easy to use porn. They may also use porn to self-medicate deep emotional wounds. Thus the porn use is really the symptom of deeper emotional conflicts. Moving on from here means seeking help for healing and recovery. I recommend contacting a licensed Catholic therapist who is certified in the diagnosis and treatment of sexual addiction. Your husband needs to be in a
comprehensive recovery program to overcome his addiction.

You may need counseling to help you recover from the betrayal trauma. Both of you will also need marital counseling to restore your marriage. While this may seem overwhelming, the process is very gentle. It’s all about healing and restoration – becoming the individuals and couples God created you to be!

Do you too want to receive help from heaven to get rid of this addiction? We are here to pray with you and ask Carlo Acutis for his intercession:

Going further:

• “My husband was miraculously cured through Carlo Acutis thanks to SOS Porn!”
• My husband watches porn: is it my fault?
• What does pornography do to marriages? 

 

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(*) Dr. Peter C. Kleponis, Ph.D. is a Licensed Clinical Therapist and Assistant Director of Comprehensive Counseling Services in West Conshohocken, PA. Dr. Kleponis has over 17 years of professional experience working with individuals, couples, families and organizations. He specializes in marriage & family therapy, pastoral counseling, men’s issues, and pornography addiction recovery. Dr. Kleponis is creator of the Integrity Restored Recovery Program for pornography addiction and cofounder of the Integrity Restored Network. He is author of the book, The Pornography Epidemic: A Catholic Approach. Through his Fighting Porn in Our Culture…and Winning! conference Dr. Kleponis travels internationally speaking about the pornography epidemic, how to protect families, and how to help those who struggle with addiction. His website is www.IntegrityRestored.com.

What is Chastity?

We might sometimes ask whether “chastity” is a term still in use, or a virtue which is less and less present today… But we should understand it’s meaning and how it can be beautiful to experience.

Does it still exist?

If you asked a young person of today what the virtue of chastity is, they would look at you, almost confusedly, asking what it is you’re talking about. Some might reply it’s “something” we don’t do anymore, from the Middle Ages. Chastity may be seen as a mortification practice, to humiliate; a sort of “castration” of the person. This conviction seems to only get stronger when we look at the Christian tradition where monks and nuns take a “vow of chastity”, never marrying and locking themselves into a monastery or convent. And so, today, if we mention chastity, it’s almost always in a negative or outdated context.

Deprivation or liberation?

When talking about chastity, the real problem is we believe that those who live it have to renounce carnal pleasures, without knowing why, depriving themselves of a human joy.

It’s true, pleasure is not something negative in itself and it’s not considered so by those who experience it. Sexual experiences, at increasingly younger ages and more widely spread among the youth, testify to the search of a pleasure without limits. We are “free” when we can live our sexuality without constraint or cultural limitations. However, living like this doesn’t seem to make us any freer; a sexuality left to its own devices, provokes addiction, frustration, wounds and a feeling of being empty in our hearts.

Giving, is really gaining

Chastity is the path on which I will learn to love the other. Egoism defines itself in possessing, provoking pleasure for itself; love is founded on the gift of self which elates the other’s heart. Living chastely is choosing to respect the other, their existence, their body, their being and welcoming all that they are, in a profound mystery which exceeds us. True joy is when I am able to make another feel they are a special and unique being; it’s in valorising gestures like holding hands or caressing. The trivialisation of sexuality dries out relationships, destroying them and taking away the beauty of being together, damaging trust and tenderness.

Object or person?

The television tells us of an ever-increasing violence towards women. This is due to an objectification of the person, which gives us the impression we’re allowed to use the other, to do what we want with them, and how we want it. This means the other feels ‘abused’, ‘robbed’, ‘violated’ in their body and their being; even if, underneath it all there may be sincere feelings of affection or attraction. Indeed, it’s not enough to feel something for someone, to then be able to give ourselves entirely to them.

In love, there’s no rush!

To avoid becoming dry instruments of pleasure, here’s the key word: patience! I know, especially for young people, it’s a synonym for torture, but waiting for important steps and key moments, when it comes to love, is essential for a romantic or friendly relationship to be constructed and endure in the long term. Love, in its deep and intimate reality, cannot be experienced immediately. Time has to be given to get to know the other, to understand their feelings and whether they’re real, and their way of thinking, their character, their expectations and desires. The fruit of love can only be picked when it’s ripe, at that point it’ll be sweet and a source of happiness.

What do you think? We are here for you, via the chat to listen and answer your questions:

Going further:

• Is masturbation harmful?
• Managing your sexuality: how and why?
• Why do we need to educate ourselves about sexuality and Feelings?

Wich path of recovery from porn addiction?

By Dr. Peter Kleponis, clinical psychotherapist*.

You want to recover from a porn addiction? Let’s look at what does and doesn’t work:

What Doesn’t Work

• Trying to overcome pornography use on your own
• Believing that praying more and being more religious will take it away
• Minimizing the problem, hoping it will just go away
• Hiding the problem from your wife
• Being too embarrassed or ashamed to ask for help

What Does Work

• Admitting to your self and at least one other person that you have a problem
• Taking responsibility for getting help
• Letting go of shame associated with pornography addiction
• Seeking the help you need
• Being accountable to others
• Walking with the Lord every day in recovery
• Being willing to do whatever it takes to recover!

Over the past ten years I have evaluated many recovery programs. I have seen what works and what doesn’t work. From them I have developed a 7-point plan for recovery that includes the best of what does work.

7-point plan for recovery

1. Self-knowledge and Commitment: Every day admitting to yourself that you have a problem and that you are responsible for getting help. Being committed to doing whatever it takes to recover.

2. Purifying Your Environment: Getting rid of all pornography and anything that reminds you of it. This includes destroying magazines, videotapes, and DVDs, blocking sexual Internet sites, avoiding certain businesses or parts of town, and even ending unhealthy relationships.

3. Support and Accountability: Anyone who has been successful in recovery knows you cannot do it alone. There are no “Lone Rangers” in recovery. You need other men who can support you in recovery as well as make you accountable for your actions. 12-step groups, such as Sexaholics Anonymous, and Catholic men’s groups, like The Kings Men, are needed for support and accountability.

4. Counseling: This is needed to get to the root cause of pornography use. Often issues like shame, loneliness, anger, childhood abuse and abandonment, and pure selfishness are the root causes of pornography use. These emotional conflicts need to be resolved for recovery to be lasting. Without this, any sobriety will be a “white knuckle” sobriety, and there will always be a struggle with strong temptations to use pornography. Counseling is also needed to insure that all other points of the recovery plan are in place and working properly. For married men, marital counseling is needed to heal the deep wounds to their marriage caused by porn use. Wives may also need counseling to help them recover from the trauma caused by their husband’s pornography use.

5. Spiritual Plan: Anyone who has been successful in recovery also knows that a strong relationship with our Lord is necessary. This includes daily prayer, spiritual reading, the sacraments and even working with a priest in spiritual direction. A healthy spiritual life can help reduce selfishness, loneliness, anger, and fear. It can also help strengthen confidence and raise self esteem. In addition, it can help heal deep emotional wounds. Daily walking with the Lord can make recovery a lot easier.

6. Education: You need to educate yourself on the dangers of pornography, its addictiveness, and what it does to relationships. You then need to share this knowledge with others. It becomes increasingly difficult to fall into using porn when you know the truth about it. In recovery, several books are recommended to educate men, and their wives, on the truth about pornography.

7. Virtue: This is unique to this recovery plan. By working every day to grow in virtue, men find it easier to avoid pornography. It is said that the true measure of manhood lies in virtue. The virtuous man strives to live a life of integrity that avoids all vices, including porn. It can be very difficult to fall into using pornography when a man is striving to grow in chastity, honesty, faithfulness, charity, and courage.

I call this a seven-point plan of recovery and not a seven-step plan because each point is of equal importance. They all need to be worked on in unison. This is not difficult as the points overlap. True success comes when recovery becomes a lifestyle. When this happens, working on all points daily becomes easy.

It has been my experience that when all points of the plan are addressed daily, sobriety and recovery can be achieved. Often when a man reports he has fallen into using porn, at least one of the points was not addressed.

The first step in recovery is asking for help. This is done by finding a qualified therapist who can work with you to develop and effective recovery program. I have worked with hundreds of men to overcome pornography use and addiction. I want to invite you to contact my office to schedule an appointment and to begin the healing process.

• His website : PeterKleponis.com

Do you too want to receive help from heaven to get rid of this addiction? We are here for you, via the chat to listen and answer your questions:

Going further:

• Prayer for deliverance from porn addiction, what good can it do?
• What are the consequences of porn on your health ?
• Jessica Hariss: “I was a porn addict” (video)

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Notes

(*) Dr. Peter Kleponis is a clinical psychotherapist. He’s a faithful Catholic who specializes in helping those struggling to be free of pornography. He can conduct counseling sessions via Zoom or can recommend a Catholic psychotherapist in your area.