Welcome And The Freedom Goal

SPEAKER_00 0:36

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 a breakup letter written to pornography. Why? Because porn is more than a habit. It's actually even more than an addiction. Porn is an attachment. As I wrote in my book, Outgrow Porn, porn is probably the longest standing sexual partner you've ever had. Porn may be the most secure attachment you've ever had. That's why outgrowing porn feels less like a battle and more like a complicated breakup. Writing a breakup letter can be a powerful step toward the freedom you desire. It's not a promise that you'll never ever go back to porn, motivated by fear and shame. It's a statement that you don't need porn. Its purpose in your life is over, and you are free to go. Now that is empowering. I realize this letter might be really difficult for some of you to hear because it goes into detail about the negative consequences that porn has had in this man's life. One of my favorite parts is how he describes how he gave his power to porn and what happens when he takes his power back and uses it to process his emotions, to connect with the people he loves, and to be present to God and to himself. It's a beautiful story. And the breakup letter I'm about to read to you is the most powerful one I've ever read. Here's the story behind it. A few months ago, a member of the Husband Material community offered to fly out to Colorado Springs where I live to meet up with me. He wanted to celebrate the progress he has made toward lasting freedom from porn, and to include me in that because I've played a role in his healing process. He did not want to do this online. He insisted on meeting in person, so I was curious. The day after he arrived, early in the morning while it was still dark, we hiked up one of my favorite trails to an overlook. We sat down, watched the sunrise, and he read me the letter I'm about to read to you. His breakup letter to pornography. Dear porn, honestly, I've never quite addressed you so directly and frankly. Also, it's taken quite a lot of work on my part to acknowledge how you've played an important role in my life. I could never truly acknowledge that before now because I shouldn't be associating with you at all based on my church's teachings and how I was raised. So I would just sit there telling myself to not hang out with you because that's what I'm supposed to do, but I've been lost on how to do that. Deep down, I've had a hole in my life that you have filled for the past 10 plus years. I'd always tell myself that I was over you, and I didn't want you to fill that void, but my survival and pleasure-seeking brain really wanted you to fill it. I've been living in survival mode for a long time. Now it is time that I fill that hole with something different. You arrived in my life occasionally when I was young. I had a fascination with you when I was a teenager. It wasn't until I was an adult, married with a beautiful boy and another on the way, when you landed your hook, as I was attempting to better understand my body and how to improve sexual intimacy with my wife. My adrenaline ran high as I thought while viewing content, I'm an adult now who's had sex. This can't be as bad as if I'm watching with the intention of improving my and my wife's pleasure. What I found was so novel and enticing to me that I found myself coming back to it again and again, slowly growing in frequency. I eventually found myself viewing not with the intention to improve relations with my wife, but rather as an easy and available source to soothe my own emotions and simply for my own pleasure. I knew but didn't want to believe that I was caught up with you, and simply wished I wasn't. I was raised to be a good boy. I was praised and paraded for being a good boy by my parents. I followed the rules, participated in every service project, earned my Eagle Scout at a young age, served a mission for my church, navigated school with good grades, and killed it at work. I knew what people expected from me, and I exceeded their expectations. I grew very attached to what others thought of me. I was also taught to always consider what others thought of my actions. So, in most instances, I cared more about the thoughts and feelings of others over my own, even at times to the point of allowing them to define my value. When I realized you became a problem in my life and I couldn't shake you, that shook me. My belief that I was a good boy was fiercely challenged. It was challenged as I voluntarily disclosed our interactions with my wife and various church leaders, then dealing with the resulting fallout. It was challenged as I semi-secretly went to recovery meetings and was pressured to define myself as a sex addict. It was challenged when I harshly corrected a young colleague on her work product, which resulted in many injured work relationships and delayed promotions. It was challenged when my church responsibilities were changed or even taken away. It was challenged when I felt like a stranger in my own home, spending more nights on the couch than in my own bed. It was challenged when my wife was hurt, angry at me, or worse, not talking to me at all. All of these challenges were born from my affiliation with you. Our interactions made me tired, irritated, guilty, shameful, impatient, stuck, desperate, and helpless. The person who I was once proud to be, the good boy, was slipping away. Because of the purity culture I was raised in, it was difficult to fully acknowledge the reality of our interactions, that I have impurity in me. I didn't want to believe it, and I tried to will it you away. I was never thoroughly taught what to do. Once I was tied up with you, and what I was doing wasn't working. I tried to work more, serve more, do more than before because perhaps I wasn't doing enough. I wanted so badly to rid myself of our relationship and the stigma in which I felt others viewed me. After much self-reflection, prayer, discussions with trained professionals, and my own work, I have learned to stop resisting you. Because in that resistance, I gave away my power. Now, I choose to have compassion on myself for giving up my power to you and to thank you for the role you played in my life. I sought you out when times were difficult, when I felt frustrated, sad, alone, belittled, scared, worried, afraid of being too small, afraid of not being enough, afraid of being seen when I wanted to hide, afraid of others knowing a side of me that I was ashamed of. You gave me a moment in time when I could forget those negative feelings. You attempted to protect me in the best way you knew how, and my body and mind believed in you. I also sought you out when times were good, to celebrate wins of many kinds, such as starting my own business, getting new clients, getting raises, resolving complex problems, connecting with my family, reconnecting with my wife, celebrating my boy's achievements. Heck, even a win in the form of making progress in my recovery work. You gave me a sexual experience that I couldn't have achieved on my own. I can see that you've done this in an attempt to lift me up when I was down and to simply give me a good time, despite all that you have done for me. I've decided to part ways with you. Even though all the times you tried to protect me or celebrate life's wins with me, your effects were temporary and fleeting. The aftermath of our interactions left me feeling more alone, more isolated, more less than, more unwanted, more dirty, and most of all, more ashamed of myself every single time. Your ability to soothe my emotions in the moment works very well, and I still crave its effects. However, as soon as we're done, you abandon me, you leave me to fend for myself. Oftentimes the after-effects feel even worse than before we hung out. Those additional feelings left me only wanting more and more of your presence. Even knowing you couldn't truly give me what I was seeking, your call was always too great, too alluring, too persuasive. I've had to bear a great personal burden in our interactions. I felt for the longest time that I was living a double life. The one that I showed to the world, that there was no real impurity in me, and the one where I had to secretly work on my recovery. If I could just kick you out of my life, then no one else would ever have to know we were ever involved, and my good boy could be preserved because I couldn't bear this secret continuing to get out. I don't walk around telling people my personal life, but I have never had a reason before to hold such a big secret inside that was tearing me and my personal relationships apart so ferociously. And I couldn't just talk with anyone about it. Simple questions like, how was your weekend? turned into painful white lies. I stuffed my big emotions to just keep moving forward. I suffered in silence and thought I had to figure this out on my own because I got into this on my own. I even started to sneak video games late into the night to buffer or soothe my pain. My family would catch me at times and I'd show all the guilty signals with such a huge focus of my own sneaking around, hiding my act outs and relationship struggles, I started to lose my identity. Who am I? The good boy I was holding on to required so much work to preserve and just started to feel like an artificial facade. Am I this good boy who makes good choices, or am I a dirty, rotten man who is destroying his life because he can't control his passions? There was no harmony between the two paths. Our interactions put me in a total identity crisis. I continued to compromise my values to spend time with you, which left me unsteady and lacking confidence in life. No matter how many times I swore to myself I wouldn't come back to you, I continued to return. I was losing hope I'd ever separate from you. So many nights spent feeling hopeless, like I was constantly wading through sludge of a swamp that was slowly consuming me. Sometimes I was moving in the swamp with a sense of direction, other times just aimlessly walking in circles. I second guessed my ability to achieve at all because I wasn't able to disconnect from you. I still got up the next day, every day, persevering, and have achieved great things during this period of our interactions, all while being inhibited by my swamp. I can't help but wonder, what is my potential outside of this swamp? The cost of our interactions was not only borne by me, but also by those closest to me, and that cost has been significant. My children have had to navigate an unspoken tension in our household, a tension between both me and my wife, and an inner self-tension between me and the good boy. My boys had a father who loved them and was short-tempered and prone to yell when they disobeyed. As time went on, I missed out on potentially beautiful moments with my kids because I was unable to be fully present with them, to laugh with them for being silly, to be with them when they needed my love, or just to sit with them when they were struggling. The one person on earth who has had to pay the greatest cost of my actions is my dear wife. When my affiliation with you began, she felt an unspoken tension between me and her and blamed herself for it. She tried to do more, be more supportive of me, be more attractive, be more available, but the tension remained and left her confused. Once I disclosed our interactions, the source of the tension was now known, but begged more questions, deeper questions. I'm not my wife, and I can't claim to know her thoughts or to even remotely understand how much our affiliation tore her up. But one question I do know she asked herself is, why porn over me? That and so many other questions pushed her into a realm of pain and sadness for a decision that I made. I betrayed her for you. That betrayal pushed her to her own therapy to sort through her own gut-wrenching questions and feelings to find a sense of meaning and direction in a world that no longer made sense. I witnessed the pain in her eyes as she cried, the anger in her tone when she grieved, and the numbness in her countenance toward me when she simply had enough. Perhaps you do, or perhaps you don't intend such a dramatic aftermath and pervasive degradation of my life, but for me and my family, that is what has happened. This is because you aren't real. We can never have a healthy relationship together. I've been pursuing you as though you are real. Your ability to numb negative emotions is unmatched. But since you don't exist, that powerful ability dissipates as soon as you leave, allowing the same emotions to return with a vengeance. Your intentions are hollow and fall short of what I need, and I will be looking somewhere else to address my needs. The energy that I used to give you will now be used to get to know myself better, to feel my emotions, where I feel them in my body, what they look like, what they are doing, what I'm supposed to do with them. This is so difficult for me after so many years of stuffing my emotions, but I've seen the fruit of it. It's hard in the moment, but it improves my quality of life and interactions with others because understanding my feelings gives me more control and allows me to be more intentional about how I think, feel, and most importantly, respond to life's situations. I am getting better acquainted with a companion who has done so much for me. His name is God. Following him has proven challenging, yet I find lasting joy in my interactions with him. Sometimes I'm left with powerful experiences of healing and growth that I'm proud to share with others. In contrast, I've never had an experience like that with you. At times, when I speak to someone about our experiences together, I'm filled with varying levels of shame, embarrassment, and regret. There is nothing we have done together that I'm proud of or wish to shout from the mountaintops that we've experienced. In spite of all the pain you have caused over the years, my one last gratitude I have for you is the journey I've traveled toward healing and connection with others that has turned into one of the greatest blessings in my life. I've taken time to dig deep into my past, allowing God to heal wounds I knew existed but I didn't know could be healed, and healed wounds I didn't even know existed. I've formed relationships with amazing people who cheer on my winds, hold space for me when I hurt, hear me when I cry, actually lift me when I'm down and inspire me to bear more than I thought was possible. The good boy who I held on to for many years and thought to be lost has been reborn. The only person I now allow to define that boy's value and worth is God, and God is good. Because of this journey, I have become curious, compassionate, confident, and powerful. My new power brings harmony in my life. I accept the whole package of my past, including the truths, the lies, the wins, the losses, the achievements, and the failures. I'm at peace with who I have been and strive to pave a new path forward out of the swamp in which I've been residing, with my renewed perspective of myself and who I can become. My power will be used to be a better father to my boys, raising them to be principled and not striving to fit them into my own or others' preconceived molds. Through the lessons learned in my struggles, I'll raise them with more patience, love, and insight. My power will also bring a stronger presence to my wife, as I'm no longer performing for my value in her or anyone else's eyes. She will be able to rely on me to handle big moments, difficult conversations, and challenging decisions. With my new power, I'm able to further deepen my connection with myself, my wife, my children, family, friends, and my God. I can be more present with them and with myself. I can make more space for them because my heart is not preoccupied with fighting a self-worthiness battle. I continue to reassess what is and isn't working in my separation from you. I reach out to people who provide me with helpful feedback and encourage me to process in a healthy way, because I know if I can operate from a centered and grounded state, not from a short-term pleasure-seeking or numbing out state, then I am able to consciously choose God, family, and my own betterment, not you. I don't love you. I have never loved you. I excuse you from my life. A beloved son of God. Thank you so much to the man who wrote this letter. If it resonated with you, consider writing your own Dear Porn breakup letter and share it in the Husband Material community, which you can join at husbandmaterial.com. Always remember, you are God's beloved son, and you he is well pleased.