This honest two-part post is by an anonymous blogger:
“Guard you eyes”, my mother said. Seemed simple enough. How hard can it be, right? Or, so I thought until I stumbled across an advertisement featuring young woman with a nude upper body. I wasn’t looking through a pornographic magazine. It was some mundane publication that my parents had left in the bathroom. I was living in Europe at the time and the censorship laws there are much more lenient than in the United States, so an occasional sexually charged advertisement wasn’t entirely uncommon. I believe I was about seven years old at the time – a very young age to be exposed to porn. Of course, then there were several “friends” along the way who were eager to show me their porn collections, or that of their father's, or uncle's. I was quite taken by these images, though I didn’t fully understand sex. And why should I at that age?
I guess every tragedy has to start somehow, and mine started the day I randomly flipped through that magazine. Looking back, I suppose far worse things could have happened as a result of my poor choices. At the dawn of the internet, while I was still living with my parents, the fear of my parents finding out what I had could have been looking at on the computer kept from seeking out porn online. Fortunately, I wasn’t savvy enough to cover my tracks for quite some time. But, there were still those lenient censorship laws. I spent many a late night waiting for an erotic film to be shown. If nothing was broadcast to my liking I inevitably settled for the phone sex advertisements. I never called, but the girls were pretty - most of the time.
Unfortunately, this was the part of my life that I kept well hidden for many years. Apparently my parents were oblivious. I suppose it wouldn’t be entirely fair to blame them. They were raising a boy in a foreign culture and in a world in which parents weren’t very well educated in regards to the dangers of the internet. But, either way, the damage was done. Most people knew me as an introverted Christian kid from America. In many respects I appeared to be a good Christian boy to most folks. In high school I was very outspoken about my Christian beliefs, especially in the ethics classes I took, which provided plenty of opportunities for discussions about morality. Some of the guys called me the “Jesus Freak”. It wasn’t meant to be a compliment.
What is even more significant than the fact that my parents were oblivious to the secret part of myself that I kept tucked away, was that I was totally ignorant to the fact that I was setting myself up for a world of hurt. I had my first girlfriend when I was sixteen. We were both decent Christian kids, so we agreed that sex before marriage wasn’t an option. But, then there was the first kiss, the first French kiss, the first time making out. Soon enough I wasn’t particular interested in talking with her, I just wanted to experience the high I experienced from making out with her. And so the emotional intimacy quickly died, she lost interest, broke up with me, and that was that. I was devastated. I had been holding on to the idealistic notion that the first girl I dated would be the girl I married. As I reflect on that experience, I’m glad that she broke the relationship off. If she hadn’t I would have almost certainly pushed for intercourse eventually, regardless of how often I reassured myself that we wouldn’t cross that line. It was quite obvious that I had very little self-control.
Skip forward about 3 years. I now had my first great depression behind me. I had experienced severe emotional pain much of which was tied to being rejected and consequently feeling inadequate and insecure. There was much more to it than that, but that was a significant portion of my first emotional breakdown. I was now living with my parents in the United States. For some time I thought pornography was just a relic from my past. Unfortunately, that wasn‘t at all the case. As hard as I tried I eventually came back to it. After the fact I almost always said that it had been the last time. I even prayed that it would be. But, part of me still had my fingers crossed when I prayed that.
Then I met my future wife. I was honest with her about my past. At the time I thought it was in the past. She loved me anyway. Little did each of us know how much I would test her love. Physically we were both virgins when we got married, but mentally, and emotionally I was anything but pure. When we finally did get married, lo and behold, sex didn’t turn out to be like it was in the movies. As it turned out sex could sometimes be awkward, and take a lot of work and communication. My wife didn’t always know exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, and neither was she always eager to give it to me. But, the women in the pictures and videos were. They say that anything worth having requires hard work to achieve. As it turns out the same thing is true of sexual intimacy. Sure, pornography always provided me with a quick and easy escape from my emotional pain, but afterwards it just irritated the gaping, festering wound in my heart.
Tomorrow, we will see the second part of this very personal story.
BE HOLY.
BE A MAN
“Guard you eyes”, my mother said. Seemed simple enough. How hard can it be, right? Or, so I thought until I stumbled across an advertisement featuring young woman with a nude upper body. I wasn’t looking through a pornographic magazine. It was some mundane publication that my parents had left in the bathroom. I was living in Europe at the time and the censorship laws there are much more lenient than in the United States, so an occasional sexually charged advertisement wasn’t entirely uncommon. I believe I was about seven years old at the time – a very young age to be exposed to porn. Of course, then there were several “friends” along the way who were eager to show me their porn collections, or that of their father's, or uncle's. I was quite taken by these images, though I didn’t fully understand sex. And why should I at that age?
I guess every tragedy has to start somehow, and mine started the day I randomly flipped through that magazine. Looking back, I suppose far worse things could have happened as a result of my poor choices. At the dawn of the internet, while I was still living with my parents, the fear of my parents finding out what I had could have been looking at on the computer kept from seeking out porn online. Fortunately, I wasn’t savvy enough to cover my tracks for quite some time. But, there were still those lenient censorship laws. I spent many a late night waiting for an erotic film to be shown. If nothing was broadcast to my liking I inevitably settled for the phone sex advertisements. I never called, but the girls were pretty - most of the time.
Unfortunately, this was the part of my life that I kept well hidden for many years. Apparently my parents were oblivious. I suppose it wouldn’t be entirely fair to blame them. They were raising a boy in a foreign culture and in a world in which parents weren’t very well educated in regards to the dangers of the internet. But, either way, the damage was done. Most people knew me as an introverted Christian kid from America. In many respects I appeared to be a good Christian boy to most folks. In high school I was very outspoken about my Christian beliefs, especially in the ethics classes I took, which provided plenty of opportunities for discussions about morality. Some of the guys called me the “Jesus Freak”. It wasn’t meant to be a compliment.
What is even more significant than the fact that my parents were oblivious to the secret part of myself that I kept tucked away, was that I was totally ignorant to the fact that I was setting myself up for a world of hurt. I had my first girlfriend when I was sixteen. We were both decent Christian kids, so we agreed that sex before marriage wasn’t an option. But, then there was the first kiss, the first French kiss, the first time making out. Soon enough I wasn’t particular interested in talking with her, I just wanted to experience the high I experienced from making out with her. And so the emotional intimacy quickly died, she lost interest, broke up with me, and that was that. I was devastated. I had been holding on to the idealistic notion that the first girl I dated would be the girl I married. As I reflect on that experience, I’m glad that she broke the relationship off. If she hadn’t I would have almost certainly pushed for intercourse eventually, regardless of how often I reassured myself that we wouldn’t cross that line. It was quite obvious that I had very little self-control.
Skip forward about 3 years. I now had my first great depression behind me. I had experienced severe emotional pain much of which was tied to being rejected and consequently feeling inadequate and insecure. There was much more to it than that, but that was a significant portion of my first emotional breakdown. I was now living with my parents in the United States. For some time I thought pornography was just a relic from my past. Unfortunately, that wasn‘t at all the case. As hard as I tried I eventually came back to it. After the fact I almost always said that it had been the last time. I even prayed that it would be. But, part of me still had my fingers crossed when I prayed that.
Then I met my future wife. I was honest with her about my past. At the time I thought it was in the past. She loved me anyway. Little did each of us know how much I would test her love. Physically we were both virgins when we got married, but mentally, and emotionally I was anything but pure. When we finally did get married, lo and behold, sex didn’t turn out to be like it was in the movies. As it turned out sex could sometimes be awkward, and take a lot of work and communication. My wife didn’t always know exactly what I wanted, when I wanted it, and neither was she always eager to give it to me. But, the women in the pictures and videos were. They say that anything worth having requires hard work to achieve. As it turns out the same thing is true of sexual intimacy. Sure, pornography always provided me with a quick and easy escape from my emotional pain, but afterwards it just irritated the gaping, festering wound in my heart.
Tomorrow, we will see the second part of this very personal story.
BE HOLY.
BE A MAN
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