Speaker 1: 0:01

Welcome to the Husband Material podcast, where we help Christian men outgrow porn. Why? So you can change your brain, heal your heart and save your relationship. My name is Drew Boa and I'm here to show you how let's go. Today, you are going to hear my list of the top 10 books I would recommend for anyone who is pursuing freedom from porn. This list does not include workbooks, like the workbook I wrote in 2017, redeemed Sexuality. It's a great resource. You might not have even known that it exists, but we are limiting this to books.

Speaker 1: 0:44

Before I moved into my current office one year ago, I used to record these episodes, with two big bookshelves behind me full of hundreds of books all about freedom from porn and healing, and some of you guys would ask me Drew, do you have a list of all those books? I would really love to see that list. Well, here's my top 10 list of the very best books I've ever read on this topic. It was hard to narrow it down to 10, because there are actually so many resources. I wish so many of these books existed when I started this journey 15 years ago, and I'm not going to rank them from number 10 all the way up to number one. Instead, I'm going to share them in alphabetical order, because each of these books is fantastic in a beautiful way. They all fit together into one bigger picture that I hope will introduce you to at least one book you haven't read yet, because any of these would be a great choice.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Let's start at the top of the alphabet with Altogether you Experiencing Personal and Spiritual Transformation with Internal Family Systems Therapy, written by Jenna Reimersma, who is amazing. I first heard about IFS from Jenna in pastoral sex addiction professional training and it is by far one of the most powerful approaches to outgrowing porn I have ever experienced. I have received IFS counseling. I also use IFS a lot in the work that I do. It's fantastic. Jenna comes at it from a Christ-centered perspective, as a licensed professional counselor, as a certified sex addiction therapist herself and as a sexually betrayed partner who has lived through the wreckage and the rebuilding of her own marriage. Jenna lives and breathes IFS. She's one of those people who, when you meet her, you're like wow, you have been with Jesus. Please influence me, please. I hope I can get more of what you have, because kindness and compassion just overflows out of her and it overflows throughout the whole book. There are some other great IFS books. Another Christ-centered one you should be aware of is Boundaries for your Soul by Alison Cook and Kim Miller, which has more theological precision. But the limitation of this book is that it doesn't actually talk about sexuality, whereas Jenna addresses sexual addiction, betrayal, any kind of unwanted behavior, very directly in. Altogether, you and I've taken clients through it. Would highly recommend it.

Speaker 1: 3:21

The second book I want to tell you about is Going Deeper how the Inner Child Impacts your Sexual Addiction. The Road to Recovery Goes Through your Childhood. By Eddie Caparucci, who interviewed me on this show last week. This book introduces the inner child model for treating porn and sex addiction, which has influenced me a ton. In fact, when I first saw that someone had written a book about how the inner child impacts sex addiction, I was really disappointed because I wanted to be the first person to write that book. But Eddie has laid a foundation for me and for so many other people to understand the inner child. In fact, eddie has identified 12 different types of inner child that we can experience as adults and it's all really helpful. Eddie's book has been a game changer for so many men to realize what's going on underneath the surface, of why I think, feel and act the way I do. If you want to grow in self-awareness, get a copy of Going Deeper. You might also be interested in Eddie's newest book, going Deeper for Betrayed Partners as well.

Speaker 1: 4:32

And speaking of betrayed partners, the third resource I want to recommend is Intimate Deception Healing the Wounds of Sexual Betrayal, by Dr Sherry Keffer. Wow, when I read this book, my eyes were opened in so many ways. We all need to understand not just how to outgrow porn for ourselves as individuals, but also how our significant others are impacted Girlfriends, fiancés, wives, partners, including male sexually betrayed partners. All of us would benefit from reading this book to understand how porn, deception, hiding and lying impacts the people we love. And what really surprised me while reading Intimate Deception is how much I learned about myself. Sherry is an expert in understanding and explaining trauma, which is not just important for partners. It's important for those of us who are wanting freedom from porn too, because trauma is often at the source of what we struggle with. Sherry writes about trauma-induced shame, beliefs and the neuroscience of addiction and healing. All of that can be so helpful. So I would highly recommend Intimate Deception and another book by a female author, no Stones Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction by Marnie Free.

Speaker 1: 5:57

When I first read the subtitle of this book Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction I thought it would be an anthology, a collection of stories of women who have found freedom, and my first impression was wrong. So, just like when I was reading Intimate Deception, I started reading no Stones, thinking this is going to help me understand women better, not realizing that no Stones would deeply impact me. Wow, marnie Free goes right to the heart of childhood experiences. She talks about sexual fantasies. She talks about healing the inner child. I mean, I did not expect to see myself in these pages, but I did.

Speaker 1: 6:35

When she talks about the root of porn and sex addiction in unhealthy families and then the way that that affects us as adults and the role of fantasy and how to build healthy relationships and all these different aspects of healing had me writing pages and pages of notes about every chapter. There's so much great stuff in here about disclosure and rebuilding trust and I really think no Stones is the most underrated book on this list. I think Marnie was ahead of her time. I was so honored to learn from her in the Pastoral Sex Addiction Professional Program and I would recommend no Stones not just to women, but to men, and speaking of books written for men, there's a new book that you may have heard of called Outgrow Porn Find Lasting Freedom Without Fighting an Exhausting Battle A Man's Guide to Healing that I just wrote and published, and I'm very, very excited about it.

Speaker 1: 7:36

Here are some things about Outgrow Porn that I think sets it apart from other books on this topic. First, it is full of practical tools. In 10 chapters you have 14 tools that make every insight actionable. So, even though it's not a workbook and there is an Outgrow Porn workbook available on my website if you want to apply what you're learning this book makes it really, really easy, with step-by-step instructions on how to understand your sexual fantasies, process, childhood experiences, how to respond to sexual thoughts and feelings when they come up. So outgrow porn has tons of tools for implementation, as well as tons of stories for inspiration. There are 25 real life stories and testimonials of men who have used the tools in outgrow porn and found healing and freedom and redemption as a result. Of course, that's an ongoing process, but 25 different stories to give you imagination for what it actually looks like to get free that's rare. I actually had over 50 different men submit stories and we were only able to use 25. But, man, they really enhance your reading experience and I think it gives people a lot of hope. Another unique thing about Outgrow Porn is that it comes with a free online course with videos, pdf worksheets and one or two podcast episodes for each chapter to help guide you through the process step by step, which is not included with any other book on this list or any other book about outgrowing porn that I'm aware of.

Speaker 1: 9:13

All the books I've recommended so far have approached the issue of unwanted sexual behavior from a Christian perspective, with a lot of clinical insights and neuroscience. One book that does a wonderful job of approaching these issues, with special attention to scripture and looking at it through the lens of the Bible, is Setting Us Free An Unexpected Journey of Grace by Nick Stumbo. Setting Us Free is the best book I have read on this topic. That goes through specific stories of the Bible and applies them to these issues of porn and sex addiction, balancing biblical wisdom with clinical insight, just as you would expect from Pure Desire and from Ted Roberts, who really influenced Nick and wrote the foreword for that book. So for anyone who wants to read a book with a more biblical flavor. I would recommend Setting Us Free by Nick Stumbo, and for anyone who wants to get a positive vision for male sexuality, I would highly recommend the Sex Talk you Never Got. Recommend the Sex Talk you Never Got Reclaiming the Heart of Masculine Sexuality by Sam Joelman.

Speaker 1: 10:21

This is a rare book because it goes to the heart of what sex and sexuality is supposed to be, what we want to aim for, what we want to pursue. Sam goes into joy and connection, awe and play and the ways that those things can be sabotaged by sexual abuse and addiction and porn. And for so many of us this has been a crucial piece of the puzzle because we didn't get enough sexual formation and discipleship when we were boys. And Sam doesn't go into the technicalities or techniques of sex so much as the heart of it. He's very poetic, his writing is powerful and he will give you a vision of the way things are supposed to be, which we absolutely need on this journey of outgrowing porn, because it's not just about what we are getting free from, it's about what we're getting free for. Sam is a licensed professional counselor and so is the author of the ninth book.

Speaker 1: 11:18

I want to recommend Surfing for God, discovering the Divine Desire Beneath Sexual Struggle by Michael John Cusick. This book was groundbreaking in approaching the issue of porn holistically, both in terms of neuroscience, psychology, spirituality, community. It's all here in Surfing for God and even the subtitle of this book speaks so powerfully to me Discovering the divine desire beneath sexual struggle. That has been a pivotal part of the Outgrow Porn approach Discovering your desires and Michael really pioneered that conversation and has done incredible work since then. I've never met anyone more vulnerable, insightful, loving and overflowing with the grace of God than Michael. So I would recommend his book and even more than that, I would recommend his ministry Restoring the Soul. I got to go to their weekend intensive in February and it blew me away. So I would highly recommend Michael, restoring the Soul and Surfing for God.

Speaker 1: 12:26

And last but certainly not least, this top 10 list finishes with Unwanted how Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way to Healing, by Jay Stringer, and if you're watching the video right now, you can see how dirty and yellow my copy of Unwanted is because I have loved it so much. There's a reason why Unwanted is the best-selling book in this genre because it is so powerful. Some of the things that I loved the most about Unwanted were the categories it gave me for understanding my childhood experiences, how those experiences really shaped my sexual development, as well as being able to start analyzing my specific sexual fantasies and the stories that they were trying to tell me. There are so many great quotes in Unwanted. I'm going to choose one that captures the beauty of this healing adventure of outgrowing porn.

Speaker 1: 13:21

Jay writes it is my conviction that the God of the universe is neither surprised by nor ashamed of the sexual behavior we participate in. Instead, he understands it to be the very stage through which the work of redemption will be played out in our lives. Present sin is the doorway to the wider work of the gospel to bring healing to the wounds of the past and comfort, even power, to the difficulties of the present. Therefore, the sooner we assume a posture of curiosity for our sexual brokenness, the more we will prepare our hearts for the redemptive work ahead. And that's what keeps me coming back to this work. That's why I'm so passionate about this. That's why this ministry exists, because it's so much bigger than just sexual behavior. It's about redemption. It is a doorway to what God is doing in our lives, and there is nothing more exciting and meaningful to me than that.

Speaker 1: 14:24

Okay, somehow I mixed up the numbering and only included nine books. So book number 10 is Wired for Intimacy how Porn Hijacks the male brain by William Struthers. This book catapulted me into so much self-awareness and being able to understand what's happening in my brain and have a Christ-centered perspective on that. When I was in college I read this book and it truly was life-changing. Even just that title, saying Wired for Intimacy, showed me that underneath my sexual thoughts and feelings there was this deeper desire for intimacy and I was created for connection with God and with others. And as I started to really experience that, porn lost a lot of its power. So this is another wonderful book, and there are so many more that are not on this list.

Speaker 1: 15:22

I hope you'll choose at least one of these books to put on your list of what to read next. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for entertaining the possibility that maybe there are some books out there that you haven't read that could take you even further into freedom, healing and redemption. I'm going to put the list of these top 10 books in the show notes for this episode. I realize this list is incomplete. It's just scratching the surface of the amazing resources out there about sexuality, addiction, trauma, transformation and I wonder what books would you add to the list? Let me know in the Husband Material community and always remember you are God's beloved son and you, he is well pleased.