Pornography isn’t a big deal. It’s fun and easy! Porn has helped my husband and me enjoy sex more. Unfortunately, people hear and believe lies like these every day, but the problem with pornography is that it takes us down a dangerous road.
Before you take your first step or your next step down this road, let’s discuss.
Why do people desire pornography?
In the US, porn sites receive more website traffic than Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Pinterest, and LinkedIn combined. In 2019, Pornhub shared its annual statistics, which showed almost 80,000 visitors a minute.
Porn is popular. There’s no denying it.
We are a broken people living in a broken world and deep down we all have the capacity to break the rules, to rebel and do something we know is wrong. In the moment, porn can be compelling enough to get us to do it.
Porn is also visually stimulating and offers a simple way to rev our engines without much effort. But God made us for so much more. When we settle for the shallowness of pornography, we get used to a lot of “payoff” with no investment—always getting without ever giving. But since real relationships aren’t like that, we begin to be dissatisfied with our spouses.
How can pornography affect my marriage?
Porn has a way of appearing harmless. In fact, only 55% of adults believe porn is wrong. However, researcher Patrick Fagan, Ph.D., calls porn the “quiet family killer.” His study found that 56% of divorces had one partner with an obsessive interest in porn.
With over 40% of marriages in the US ending in divorce and more than half related to pornography, it’s time to acknowledge there may be a problem with pornography.
The consequences far outweigh the benefits.
Getting turned on by another man or woman is not what God intended for intimacy. The images pornography provides are detrimental to our marriages. Because interacting with a spouse doesn’t produce as much dopamine as using pornography does, our brains won’t allow us to feel anymore what we once could feel while engaging in physical intimacy in our marriages.
Porn convinces us we need something more or someone else to experience sexual fulfillment. The more we turn to porn, the less we will turn to and be satisfied by our spouses, indirectly implying our spouses are not enough.
Why should I avoid a problem with pornography?
Porn is affecting our day-to-day happiness in the tiniest ways we might not notice. For example, pornography slowly starts to manipulate our self-image. In a survey published in 2022, 78% of participants who reported watching pornography in the last 24 hours said they were unhappy with their physical appearance.
This stat is even more striking when we see how it decreases the further away from porn we go. The number of people dissatisfied with their physical appearance drops to 58% when they haven’t watched porn for over 24 hours. It plummets to just 44% for those who have never watched pornography. While porn may feel good or helpful in the moment, it ultimately leads to decreased levels of happiness.
Just a little bit of pornography can’t be that bad, right? Wrong!
Researchers have found that pornography is highly addictive, because it has the power to manipulate dopamine and other chemicals in our brain. In fact, habitual viewing can soon lead to cravings similar to what a drug addict experiences.
And, like illegal drugs, the more we use porn, the more we’ll need it to become aroused. This may be one of the reasons data from the National Library of Medicine has called pornography use in the United States a “porndemic.”
Stand your ground and insist on a healthier, more abundant and satisfying life filled with happiness and freedom from problems with pornography.
What role has pornography played in your life?
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