5 Ways Porn Ruins Your Life & Your Relationships
How does porn hurt your life and your relationships?
Porn is never private or harmless. It wounds your wife, who is left feeling rejected and forced to compete with digitally enhanced fantasy. It reaches your children and grandchildren. Gary and Joy Lundberg compare it to poison that makes the heart stop feeling. Matt Fradd, author of The Porn Myth, says it promised freedom and delivered slavery, promised intimacy and delivered isolation. The damage never stops with you.
Many people tend to believe that watching porn is harmless entertainment. Often they will cite that it is a personal choice and does not affect anyone else. Sadly, that self-deceiving lie has resulted in many lives, including the user’s wife and children, being negatively impacted in many ways.
Matt Fradd, the author of The Porn Myth, explains,
“Porn promised us freedom, we became enslaved; it promised us intimacy, we found only isolation; it promised us excitement, we ended up bored; it promised us ‘adult entertainment’ and we became increasingly juvenile.”
Gary and Joy Lundberg, the authors of Love That Lasts, said, “No one in his right mind would ever purposefully eat daily doses of arsenic. It’s poison. When consumed, it eventually causes the heart to stop beating, and the brain dies. Pornography has a similar effect. While it may not cause your heart to stop beating, it will, without a doubt, cause your heart to stop feeling. It creates a deadness in the brain. Porn is poison.”
Five Ways Porn Will Damage Your Life
1. Porn Will Ruin Your Relationship And Wound Your Wife
Pornography creates a fantasy world filled with unrealistically attractive women fulfilling the viewer’s every sexual desire. It is impossible for your wife to compete with such digitally-enhanced physical perfection and perverted sexual performance.
As a result, your wife may develop feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. Suddenly, she’s faced with the truth that the man she fell in love with and has stayed faithful to has turned his attention and sexual feelings to an image on a computer screen. It’s likely that she’ll feel rejected as her husband chooses lust over love.
Related Article: How Viewing Porn Is Wounding Your Wife & Hurting Your Family
According to author Nate Larkin, “Love gives; lust takes. Love sees a person; lust sees a body. Love is about you; lust is about me and my own gratification. Love seeks…knows…respects. Lust couldn’t care less.”
Andrew David Naselli, an assistant theology professor at Bethlehem College and Seminary in Minneapolis, puts it bluntly.
“If you indulge in pornography, then you are not loving your wife. You are breaking your promise to be lovingly loyal to her. You are betraying her. You are committing adultery against her. And you are making her compete with the database of racy images you have lusted after. Indulging in pornography can ruin your marriage.”
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2. It Will Affect Your Children And Grandchildren
Don’t be deceived. Children and grandchildren can also suffer from your porn usage. Though you may think that they are too young to understand, kids are actually very attuned to any disharmony within the family. Besides that, they will also miss the time and attention that you should otherwise be devoting to them.
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“It may be accidental,” noted the Lundbergs. “They may overhear a conversation or run into sites, videos or magazines when you are not at home. They may see you viewing pornography when you’re not aware. Sin can be hidden just so long. When children see that parents view pornography, they believe such behavior is OK. Then we have yet another generation headed for heartbreak.”
“It’s very difficult to teach your kids with the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ method,” said author and speaker Jen Ferguson. “Actions always speak louder than words. No matter how hard you try to keep your porn use a secret from your kids, there is a reasonable chance they will find it or find out…They need more than superficial commands that tell them ‘just don’t do it’…Kids are good at sniffing out inauthenticity.”
Related Article: 4 Ways Porn Is Hurting Our Children
3. You May Lose Your Job
The damaging effects of your porn usage are not limited to your family relationships. As you struggle with the increasing temptation to seek out pornography while on company time, your job may start to suffer. Because of this, money problems could arise which will further add to the emotional and physical stress that you may be feeling at home.
And you’re only deceiving yourself if you believe that porn is not a workplace problem. As Crown Financial Ministries’ CEO Chuck Bentley shares,
“Many porn addicts face the additional financial worry that they might lose their jobs: with the shocking figure that 70 percent of porn viewing occurs during normal business hours, it is clear that this is an addiction that cannot be left at the office door, and that many individuals are risking their career and their financial security to get their next fix…According to the Family Research Council, almost half of porn addicts will lose their job as a result of choosing to view pornography in the workplace.”
Jen Patterson noted, “If your employer finds that you’re using company time to look at porn, they can fire you because you are effectively stealing from them. Stealing time, productivity, WiFi bandwidth. Even if you don’t get caught, most likely, you’re not going to give your best work when you’re mind is continually desiring porn.”
Related Article: How To Get Over Porn & Find Lasting Freedom
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4. Porn May Affect Your Ability To Lead
If you are a leader in your church or hope to become one, your porn usage may hinder your effectiveness. Leaders should be honest and open, two areas where porn users seldom set an example.
Patrick Mabilog wrote for Christianity Today that,
“We have seen stories of pastors, church leaders and spiritual mentors having to step down from their posts because of problems that boil down to sexual immorality. Porn does not just hurt the individual but even people around them. Many ministries have suffered as a result of pornography taking charge of the hearts and minds of men and women in church work.”
John Piper, the founder of Desiring God, asked, “How can you lead people if you can’t see God for who he really is and are constantly defiling your soul?”
Because of the infiltration, exposure, and availability of porn, young people now struggle with porn and lust at alarming rates. Consequently, these men and women are resisting leadership roles.
Related Article: Record Number Of Americans Think Porn Is ‘Morally Acceptable’
Piper said, “One of the major forces preventing young people from obeying the call of God into vocational Christian service is defeat in the area of lust.”
5. It Will Affect Your Relationship With God
Most tragically, using porn will affect you spiritually. Right now, it may be hard for you to believe that God could ever love and forgive you for all the damage you have caused in the lives of you and your family. Not only will He will forgive you, but He will be the one you can lean into and depend on as you pursue sobriety.
According to Proven Men, “Since Christ calls you to be pure and holy (1 Peter 1:16), every secret sin will distract from your spiritual life. This is why a pornography addiction makes it difficult to pray to God, study His word, or experience true fellowship with other believers (or have relationships at all). We can’t live in the light if we are practicing that kind of darkness.”
Scott Kedersha, the Director of Marriage Ministry at Watermark Community Church in Dallas, said, “When we make light of and indulge in pornography, we make light of the death of Jesus Christ…Pornography is sin. Watching pornography is sin. The starting point for overcoming an addiction to pornography is hating porn and loving God.”
Justin Davis, a co-founder of RefineUs Ministries, wrote,
“Here is what I believe with all of my heart: If you struggle with pornography, God isn’t disappointed in you; He is fighting for you. He died and conquered sin and death so you can have victory in this area of your life”.
Davis added, “The secret sin you keep only has power as it remains a secret. The Light will always overcome darkness. The difficult decision we face is to allow that Light into the darkest, most embarrassing parts of our heart. God can’t heal the parts of our heart we refuse to bring into the Light. But when we do, we can be healed.”
There Is Hope
Thankfully you do not have to try and figure out how to turn your life around on your own. Once you’re ready to break through the denial structures in your life, there are programs that can help you find healing and freedom.
One such program is the Conquer Series, which has helped millions of men around the world begin their journey to a life free from porn. This resource contains powerful testimonies, solid Biblical teaching, military reenactments, and insightful scientific information.
It’s not enough to simply watch, though. You will need to implement what you are learning in your daily life. An interactive study guide and online journal will help keep you focused, while providing practical activities that will help you find freedom.
The Interactive Study Guide is a powerful tool to help you live out each class daily
If you want to maximize the results, break out of your comfort zone and join a group. This is a battle that cannot be won in isolation, and having godly men walking alongside you is crucial if you want victory.
Bryan S. of South Florida wrote,
“I am 100% clean of porn, sexual addiction and lust in general. God rescued and redeemed me in November of 2017 but not until I had utterly destroyed my wife and our life. He miraculously turned me around and she saw what He has genuinely done, and then He turned her heart. We now live the BEST LIFE we have had in ALL my life and the 19 years we’ve been married.”
Related Article: What Happens to a Family When a Parent Struggles With Porn?
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Experience the freedom that Bryan found. Get started at SoulRefiner.com!
Writing at the intersection of faith and neuroscience to help men and women break destructive cycles and walk in lasting freedom.
More articles by Jeremy Wiles →Frequently Asked Questions
How does porn affect my wife?
It asks her to compete with a fantasy. Porn builds a world of unrealistically attractive women fulfilling every desire, and no wife can match digitally enhanced perfection and staged performance. She is left with insecurity and low self esteem, and with the knowledge that the man who vowed faithfulness has turned his sexual attention to a screen. What she feels is rejection, because lust got chosen over love.
Can my kids be affected by my porn use even if they never see it?
Yes. Children are remarkably attuned to disharmony in a home, and they feel tension long before they can name it. They also lose the time and attention you should be giving them. Beyond that, secrecy has a shelf life. They may overhear a conversation, find the material, or see you viewing it, and when children see a parent use porn they conclude the behavior is acceptable.
Can you get fired for watching porn at work?
Yes. An estimated seventy percent of porn viewing happens during normal business hours, which makes it impossible to call this a habit that stays at home. According to the Family Research Council, almost half of porn addicts will lose their job over viewing it in the workplace. Employers can treat it as theft of time, productivity and bandwidth, and even undetected, your work quality suffers.
Does porn disqualify me from church leadership?
It certainly undermines it. Leaders are called to be honest and open, and porn use trains a man in the opposite direction. Pastors, church leaders and mentors have stepped down over sexual immorality, and entire ministries have suffered for it. Defeat in the area of lust is one of the major forces keeping young people from answering a call into vocational Christian service at all.
How does porn affect my relationship with God?
Every secret sin pulls against your spiritual life, which is why porn makes prayer, study and honest fellowship feel so difficult. You cannot live in the light while practicing that kind of darkness. Here is the hope, though: God is not disappointed in you, He is fighting for you. The secret only holds power while it stays secret, and He cannot heal the part of your heart you refuse to bring into the light.
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