Frequently asked questions
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 fiancĆ© or our husband/wife in the context of their whole personality, including their body, spirit, heart, intelligence, sensitivitiesā¦ 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 āimbibedā 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.
Weāre 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 weāve done things to damage it. Itās possible to reclaim this purity, whatever weāve got ourselves into. Firstly, through Godās 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, advertsā¦). You can be certain that little by little our goodwill will win through and weāll find peace and joy of heart.
Etienneās story
Claire and I lived the first two years of our marriage as a young āmodernā couple: going out, seeing friends, films, the cinemaā¦ We wanted to see everything, know everything. Itās 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 didnāt want to let ourselves feel guilty. In fact, when being intimate, it wasnāt exactly Claire I was seeing anymore, and it was the same for her. The images weād 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 ābuy intoā 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?
Source: extract from an article in āHe is Alive!ā, special edition July 2007 “50 questions on life and love”
