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How Pornography has Affected my Marriage: Newlywed Edition
How does pornography affect a woman’s marriage, when she’s the one with the problem? That’s not a question many ask and even fewer know how to answer. When we talk about porn’s effect on marriages, ninety percent of the time we’re addressing a husband’s use that devastates the wife. We talk about adultery and betrayal trauma. But what about when it’s the woman? And what if the addiction is over? These are questions I had when I was engaged. Getting married as a former addict felt a little bit like buying one of those abandoned storage units, not knowing what was inside. I had never been married before. I had…
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7 Things I’ve Learned Breaking (and Living) Free From Porn
I confessed my struggle with pornography in late 2004. I had struggled for 5 years after being exposed at age 13. My “hobby” use quickly spiraled into what I would consider an addiction (though experts argue if that’s even a real thing. I say yes.) By the time I was 17 and away at college, I was viewing pornography on a school computer with my roommate asleep less than 10 feet behind me, within view of our behemoth 2003 desktop. I was sleeping through my morning Chemistry class and sex chatting with men and women online, from my dorm room, at a Christian college. Eventually I sent nude photos of…
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Don’t Carry Shame With You: Hope for Future Relationships
Shame. For years, it’s been part of this conversation surrounding porn use. Shame is perhaps the greatest influencer of and weapon within the realm of sexuality. We shame men who struggle with porn. We shamefully say women don’t. We shame sexual assault victims. We shame the sexually confused. We shame the kids who ask too many questions. Let me say this yet again, But what do you do when it feels like shame is a part of you? Part of your identity. Woven throughout your story like some coffee stain from that one time you tried to read in the coffee shop. It soaks every page, crinkles it, stains it,…
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Porn Addiction, Sexual Trauma, and Why I’m in Counseling
If you follow me on Instagram, you know I’ve recently started attending counseling. This is different from the premarital counseling my fiance and I are going through together. This is huge for me for so many reasons. I can’t say that I’ve ever really cared for counselors. Recently, I was interviewed by a room full of counselors and psychologists and it made me feel like a lab rat. I listened as they talked about me, assessing different parts of my story, comparing me to “textbook cases” of this and that. It was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had as a speaker and I almost quit speaking because of…
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A Message for the Tattooed Non-Virgin: You Belong
I was unbelievably close to entitling this post “God Doesn’t Actually Care About Your Virginity” but figured that wouldn’t go over well with those who don’t read past the title. Maybe you’ve seen the post that recently went viral in Christian circles. A post about how men prefer women who are virgins, debt-free, and who don’t have tattoos. Needless to say, it lit up the corner of the blogosphere that deals with female sexuality among Christians. We might not be a big corner, but we do exist and we don’t take kindly to the sound of wolves slinking (do wolves slink?) into our camp. No, I’m not calling her a…
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Guest Post: Finding Accountability When You’re A Woman Struggling with SSA
“I know you say to tell a woman about your porn problem, but what do you do if you’re attracted to women?” That question, in some form, kept popping up in my inbox recently. I had just finished writing about accountability. One of the keys I always stress for women trying to find help is that it is often better for them to tell a woman. There are a few reasons for this, one of which is, if a man offers to help a woman with her porn problem, he runs the risk of becoming something I call “emotional pornography.” I write about that here. Which is all fine, well…
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Temptation, Dating, and Building Boundaries That Work
When I was growing up, there were a lot of rules governing how I, as a woman, should interact with members of the opposite sex. It was a joke in our circles to always have a “Bible between” as if an extra six inches of space somehow made you forget the person sitting next to you was attractive. As an adult, I found myself attending a church formerly pastored by Joshua Harris, author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. It was there I was introduced to the awkward side hug, which was a step up from my Baptist upbringing that said, “Thou shalt not touch a man” but still a step…
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The Questions We Need to Be Asking About Female Porn Addiction
It never fails, when I share I get a lot of questions. If the group is co-ed or over 40, the number one question is almost always “Why?” Keep in mind, it’s not typically a sympathetic and sincere “why.” It’s more along the lines of a disgusted, “Ugh! Why?” The way it is asked implies, “What is wrong with these women?” as if the one asking the question has forgotten I am one of those women. At first I tried to answer the question and actually explain. But when someone is asking a “why” of disgust and disbelief, you can explain all you would like and you aren’t going to…
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The Boy from the Bus: How I Found Healing
Over two decades ago, I sat on a school bus next to a boy from my Christian elementary school. It was the first time I came face-to-face with the thought that men only wanted me for my body and I had no rights to it. It would take years for me to realize the impact his actions had on my mind, on my heart. I never wanted to see him again. Then, one day, I went looking for him. Sometimes healing takes you back into places you would rather not go. This past Fall, I spent a week at a writer’s intensive with Mary DeMuth. She has a heartbreaking story…