Porn Kills

Porn kills.

Porn kills love. Porn kills trust. Porn kills self-esteem. Porn kills individuals.

Pornography can and will ravage everything in its path in order to get what it wants. And what it wants is to be put above literally everything else in your life. Porn wants to come before relationships with Others. Porn wants to come before your relationship with yourself.

Porn will consume your life to the point where it is no longer yours. It is Porn’s.

Porn tells you that pleasure comes first. It tells you that there are no restrictions, no requirements. You can have pleasure whenever you want. You don’t have to work for it. It’s readily available at all times, you simply need to take advantage of it.

Porn tells you that it is more important than any person. Porn whispers that you can have pleasure without a single Other. All you need is a screen. All you need is Porn.

Porn likes to keep its relationships private and asks you to respect that. No one needs to know about you and it. It's not their business.

Porn tells you everything you need to know about “love.” Porn shows you how it’s done. Porn doesn’t care that it’s not real. Not only that, Porn convinces you that it is.

Porn watches warily as you bring an Other into the picture. Other makes you happy, but not in the same way that Porn does, so Porn knows that it will still see you often.

Porn has taught you to expect "love" to be exactly like it showed you, and it encourages you to practice what it taught. If Other disagrees with Porn's methods, it is only because they don't know any better. Porn tells you to teach them, but that there is no need to tell them who taught you.

Porn tells you that if Other doesn't get it, you only need to be a more disciplined teacher. Porn understands that it is hard to compare to, so encourages you to do all that you can to instruct Other until they get it.

Other must meet Porn's requirements if they are to measure up. Porn denies that its requirements are unattainable. If Other can't handle them, then why do you even need Other? You already have Porn.

Other doesn't seem to like the idea of Porn, so Porn tells you to continue to hide your relationship with it. You're not lying to Other. Not really. You're simply not telling Other everything. There's nothing wrong with that. Other wouldn't understand that you need Porn to keep you going, so Other doesn't need to know. Knowing would only make Other feel bad. Best to keep Porn to yourself.

Porn doesn't understand why you start to get upset with it. You used to love Porn. What's not to love? Porn makes you feel good. If it didn't, why would you keep going back to it?

Porn doesn't believe that there is a distinction between pleasure and happiness. If it brings one it brings the other, right?

Porn sees you getting down on yourself. It tells you that it will make everything better. All you need is Porn.

Other gets upset when they discover Porn, so Porn offers to make Other happy too if they'd like. Other rejects Porn's kind offer.

Porn doesn't know why you tell Other that you've broken up with it when you haven't. Porn still sees you all the time. Your relationship with it is stronger than ever!

But Porn notices that you don't seem happy to see it anymore, but Porn doesn't see why. Porn hasn't changed, but you treat it differently now.

Porn sees you become hateful towards it, yourself, and Other. Porn continues trying to make you happy, but it only seems to make things worse somehow.

Other seems different too. Other seems quieter, afraid. Porn doesn't know why. Other should be happy with all that Porn has taught you! Other should be happy that Porn has taken care of you for so long.

Porn watches Other leave, saying that they won't come back this time. Other seems to feel that they've been neglected and that your expectations of them are too impossibly high. Such a silly thought considering that Porn measures up, so clearly the standard isn't unreachable.

Porn welcomes you back into a monogamous relationship with it. In the end, Porn really does like it to be just you and it better anyway.

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Well, I'm not totally sure where that came from, but I do know that this is something that I've been wanting to write about for a while.

Ever since I started my blog, I've received a multitude of messages from women that I know and love that have had their lives destroyed by pornography. Women who have suffered abuse at the hands of boyfriends, fiances, and husbands that stemmed from pornography addiction. Women who were hurt for loving men who no longer understood what love is really all about.

A few of these women have gone through, or are going through, divorce because of their husband's intimate relationship with porn. And in each case, the man has lied their way into the marriage. They hid their addiction from the women that they were supposed to love more than anyone (or anything) else. But the truth always came out eventually, and with the truth came a wave of pain for the wife.

The pain of betrayal. Of realizing that she had been lied to over, and over, and over again. The pain of self-consciousness. Of wondering why she wasn't good enough; why her husband needed porn. And, finally, the pain of realization. Of realizing that she doesn't actually know the man that she married.

In each case, the wife tried to work through things with her husband, but he continued to lie and the mental, emotional, and- at times -physical abuse thrived as the husband tried to keep both his wife and his addiction.

Eventually, these women were able to muster up the strength to leave, but by then they had suffered an immense amount of damage. Pornography had killed their perceptions of love and trust, had killed their self-esteem, and had killed much of who they are as individuals.

I've previously written a bit about how pornography effects the significant other of the addict, but I want to make it clear that it isn't only the love and trust of others that pornography kills. It is also the love and trust of oneself.

Just as I know women who have been caught in the crossfire of love and porn, I also know both men and women who know the pain of being the addict themselves.

I've watched people that I love come to hate themselves because they can't seem to gain control over their addiction. I've seen them beat themselves up over and over again for losing to porn once again.

Some have told me of steps that they've taken to try to overcome their pornography addiction. But they've also told me how those steps often seem unfruitful. They've told me that they'd like to believe that they just won't look at porn ever again, but they know that they will. And they hate themselves for that. They can't trust their own minds and hormones.

Pornography consumes people in such a way that escape seems near-impossible. Some give up fighting and eventually resign themselves to a life of addiction.

Porn kills the ability to trust oneself, which, in turn, kills one's self-esteem, which kills one's love for oneself.

When we talk about porn killing, it's important to remember that the addicts themselves are targets just as much as, if not more than, those who are abused by addicts. Because addicts aren't porn.

They're people.

They're people that have been even more deeply effected by pornography than I have as the victim of a porn addict. They are people who have often lost themselves completely as pornography slowly but surely consumed them.

And I'm not saying that people who are addicted to porn aren't responsible for hurting those around them. I'm not excusing their actions because "porn made them do it." But I'm afraid that we are all too often guilty of focusing so much on how second-hand porn hurts us, that we neglect looking at what first-hand porn does to the actual addict.

As a survivor of abuse that stemmed from sexual addiction, I can honestly say that the second-hand effects of that addiction have hurt me in ways that I didn't know were possible. But I know that I'll recover from it over time. The recovery of the one who is addicted, though, requires a much harsher recovery process.

It's like the story of the frog in the pot. The frog was boiled not because it was scalded immediately, but because it acclimated to the ever-rising temperature until it was too late.

Sometimes we fall in love with someone that is sitting in a boiling pot (addiction) that we cannot see. As we get closer and closer to them, we get burned.

Even if we manage to jump away fairly quickly, those burns will take time to heal and will inhibit our regular functioning for a time. However, only a few layers of skin will need to be sloughed off and replaced before the effects start to wear off. It will take time, and some scars will often be left behind, but overall, the healing process is fairly straightforward.

Yet for the person who has been slowly boiled by pornography over time, the injuries sink down to the core. Recovery is absolutely possible, but being boiled has made them numb, which means that the more they recover, the more the burning sensation reappears. This makes re-submerging in the pot seem like a better alternative at times. Better numb than in pain.

They have been in the pot for so long that they've acclimated to it. They no longer know how to function outside of it.

It all happened so gradually. Each interaction with porn added only a degree or two to the stove top.

I don't know if any of this is making any sense at all whatsoever.

The point is, porn hurts EVERYONE that it touches. No one escapes the devastating effects of pornography addiction. Porn kills the addict's love, trust, and self-esteem; which essentially kills the addict as a person. Porn also kills the love, trust, and self-esteem of anyone that loves the addict; which also kills that person.

I know that I am certainly not the same person now that I was before pornography did a number on my life. I know that the women that have reached out to me are not the same people that they were before either. I also know that those who struggle with pornography addiction are also changed by porn.

On the one hand, a victim of addiction- who never would have hurt a fly previously -has the good in them tainted by the drug of pornography, turning them into someone that they no longer recognize. On the other hand, a victim of an addict is subjected to unrealistic standards, which slowly strips away all of their feelings of self-worth. It kills them as individuals and turns them into objects of pleasure instead.

Even if they eventually leave, they are left feeling like dregs of who they were before. They have to cope with newfound anxiety and depression. They don't feel like they are themselves any longer. Porn has killed them just as surely as it killed whoever their loved one was before they became addicted.

I know a couple of the (ex)-spouses of these women. They are men who seemed completely wonderful, just like my ex did. These were the last men that you would ever expect to have such a dark secret hidden away. It is incredible to me that such lovable men can be so enormously deceiving. I will never understand how one person can seem to have such two starkly different sides inside of them. How a person can hide an all-consuming entity like pornography until someone dates them, or gets engaged to them, or marries them. But it seems that just about every single one has mastered deception. Pornography taught them well.

And that is utterly terrifying.

I was talking to a friend about all of this a while ago and he confided in me that he is addicted to pornography. He made an interesting observation. He said that it must be almost more reassuring for me to know that someone is currently struggling with addiction than to have someone tell me that they aren't, because then at least I know for sure. And he honestly hit that one right on the head.

With all of the people that have reached out to me about their experiences with pornography, it really is difficult for me not to wonder if all of the seemingly fabulous guys around me are harboring an abusive addict inside. It kills me to realize that so many of the seemingly happy couples that I see on my news feed are actually fighting the excruciating battle between love and abuse.

It almost is more reassuring for me to have someone tell me that they are currently struggling than to have someone tell me that they used to, but aren't now. Or that they never have at all. Because I've heard that one before and it was a flat out lie. It wasn't a used to. It wasn't a not at all. It was a currently. And that particular addiction's flame was fanned to the point of felony.

Porn has done it's best to kill my ability to trust others enough to let myself love them. However, I am doing my best to nurse myself back to health. I refuse to let porn kill my love, my trust, and the way that I see myself.

I choose to fight it instead.

And luckily, I'm not alone in this fight.

Porn wants you to keep everything between you and it. Love wants you to let others in.

Porn kills.

Love heals.


Ps- For more about porn, read this blog post that I wrote over the summer. And for more about fighting porn, go here.