On Pornography addiction

[Ailina]

Very Important Question:

If a husband is not doing anything to change this habit, is this is justifiable reason to divorce him? IF he is just revelling in this sin, what should a good Catholic wife do in this case? If she has tried everything? To no avail. If he is still seeking out porn, and infidelity, what, just what/how should a Catholic wife proceed? EVEN considering counseling of course HAS been sought many times? Please help me.

It depends if you can live a married life, knowing that he will never stop. If you check my history here at CA, and go back to my very first post, you will see that I had similar questions. My ex had very distorted views of sexuality and marriage, which were poisonous to our relationship and to the family unit, and he behaved in ways that put us all at risk. I finally told him he had to choose: his family or his extra-marital sex. He could not have both if our marriage was to survive. He made a a choice incompatible with marriage, and so our marriage ended. I was distraught because I loved the man too, but he was like someone from another planet and could not see reason.

I sought an annulment, and the Tribunal, with the aid of a psychiatrist, determined that my ex-husband had narcissistic traits and was unable to comprehend the meaning and value of a sacramental Catholic marriage.

 

[curl]

It depends if you can live a married life, knowing that he will never stop. If you check my history here at CA, and go back to my very first post, you will see that I had similar questions. My ex had very distorted views of sexuality and marriage, which were poisonous to our relationship and to the family unit, and he behaved in ways that put us all at risk. I finally told him he had to choose: his family or his extra-marital sex. He could not have both if our marriage was to survive. He made a a choice incompatible with marriage, and so our marriage ended. I was distraught because I loved the man too, but he was like someone from another planet and could not see reason.

I sought an annulment, and the Tribunal, with the aid of a psychiatrist, determined that my ex-husband had narcissistic traits and was unable to comprehend the meaning and value of a sacramental Catholic marriage.

Dear Ailina,

Thank you very much for posting such a clear and thoughtful response to Corinne3!

(Since I saw her post last night, I’ve been very sad and wishing I could have contributed something, but my experience is in the realm of how to fight impurity, not how to deal with a spouse who won’t do so.) (Note to Corrine3: It sounds unlikely and something you shouldn’t hold out any hope for, but in case your husband happens to change his mind and decides he wants advice and help on how to heal, my sig has a link to our community of men who are winning the battle against impurity.)

Praying for us all,

• curl

 

[ContegoFides]

Very Important Question:

If a husband is not doing anything to change this habit, is this is justifiable reason to divorce him? IF he is just revelling in this sin, what should a good Catholic wife do in this case? If she has tried everything? To no avail. If he is still seeking out porn, and infidelity, what, just what/how should a Catholic wife proceed? EVEN considering counseling of course HAS been sought many times? Please help me.

You face an extremely difficult situation. Before I write down my suggestions, I commend the Catechism to you:

2382 The Lord Jesus insisted on the original intention of the Creator who willed that marriage be indissoluble.173 He abrogates the accommodations that had slipped into the old Law.174

Between the baptized, "a ratified and consummated marriage cannot be dissolved by any human power or for any reason other than death."175

2383 The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law.176

If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense.

2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign. Contracting a new union, even if it is recognized by civil law, adds to the gravity of the rupture: the remarried spouse is then in a situation of public and permanent adultery:

If a husband, separated from his wife, approaches another woman, he is an adulterer because he makes that woman commit adultery, and the woman who lives with him is an adulteress, because she has drawn another's husband to herself.177

2385 Divorce is immoral also because it introduces disorder into the family and into society. This disorder brings grave harm to the deserted spouse, to children traumatized by the separation of their parents and often torn between them, and because of its contagious effect which makes it truly a plague on society.

Thus, divorce is an extremely grave undertaking. Even in situations like yours where he is committing grievous sins against you and causing enormous harm to your family and to his own soul, that might not be enough to justify divorce. Remember, this is not just about what you and he want, but following the Truth of God, for which we will all be held accountable when we die. Sometimes we are called to suffer with Jesus on the Cross, and that suffering can be really, really bad.

I strongly urge you to see an orthodox priest and discuss your problems with him. It may very well be that to protect yourself and your family separation and even divorce may be justified; then again, it may not. There will be no easy answers and no easy way out.

I’m not just preaching here, I’ve been there. Before my reversion, I suffered the infidelity of my ex wife to a homosexual relationship. We divorced and later received an annulment.

The divorce was horrible, even though we both at first promised to make it amicable. It solved none of my problems. Instead, I went down a path of deep darkness. Yeah, I went to Church on Sundays, but I was dead inside. Frankly, I didn’t have the spiritual strength to endure the trauma of divorce, and it wasn’t until I was facing it again in my second (current) marriage that I reverted. I now live with an anti-Catholic, unbaptized wife who has severe anger issues and who wants to cut my family off from me and my children. I am strongly tempted to divorce her at times, but I will not. Instead, I try to daily shoulder my cross and pray for her on the hope that she will convert and find the love of God. I take inspiration from Elisabeth Lesuer, whom others have commended to you. It might be that my sacrifice will mitigate a smidgen of my time in purgatory, and hopefully win her soul for Christ.

So, my bottom line is this: Your suffering, while real and horrible, might not be solved by divorce; divorce might make it worse. However, divorce may be necessary for the protection of yourself or your family. Prayer and discernment with a priest will answer that question.

I commend you to a deeper prayer life, daily mass, daily rosaries, daily adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. If you ask Jesus to send you His Holy Spirit to aid and counsel you in this difficult time, He will.

God Bless,

 

[FollowTeresa2]

Why do you t hink the American Psychiatric Association doesn’t include sex addictions in their manual? They include gambling and food as far as I know. Internet may be “new”, but sex certainly isn’t.

Right, and maybe the first step is to stop thinking of yourself as an addict. If you are telling yourself you’re an addict, have no control, can’t stop etc. wouldn’t you be less likely to succeed?

The APA doesn’t consider homosexuality as a mental disturbance anymore either - they removed it from the manual, so IMHO they seriously lack credibility.

Sometimes it helps to know the nature of what one is dealing with in working on defeating it - agreed it should not be used as excuse but to know the “enemy” to overcome it.
There is a brain/chemical component to it. Also flyingfish are you male or female. From what i have read males process and react to images like porn quite differently than women - their brains are wired differently -
as most women are aware (hehehehe!)

 

[FollowTeresa2]

I didn’t know where else to put this thread. This seemed like the best place.

Anyway, this is something I’ve been dealing with for almost 10 years. I want to know how to break this addiction already.

Try this link to find some resources for help available on defeating this.
You are in my prayers. May God give you graces to be healed of this.

dads.org/strugglewithporn.asp

 

[MtnDwellar]

Porn can be addictive. Anything that feels good can be addictive. It is not a matter of how often or how much. An addiction only depends upon the obsession that is created in the mind which makes it impossible for the addict to control his actions.

Much great advice has been offered. Sex Addicts anonymous will be able to help you. The first step is to admit that you are not in control. What others posted about not labeling yourself as an addict is not helpful. Call a spade a spade. Once you understand that you are not in control, you can then surrender. Surrender is key. Once you surrender turn your problem over to God. He can and will help you.

Remember that it gets easier to stop your addiction as time passes. Porn like all other addictions will be hardest to stop in the beginning. Know that you alone cannot stop. You and God can. God is the main player, but a group like Sex Addicts Anonymous will also help. You may be able to find a group such as Celebrate Recovery which practices the twelve steps of AA in relation to any addiction.

 

[Bob4BVM]

Porn can be addictive. Anything that feels good can be addictive. It is not a matter of how often or how much. An addiction only depends upon the obsession that is created in the mind which makes it impossible for the addict to control his actions.

Much great advice has been offered. Sex Addicts anonymous will be able to help you. The first step is to admit that you are not in control. What others posted about not labeling yourself as an addict is not helpful. Call a spade a spade. Once you understand that you are not in control, you can then surrender. Surrender is key. Once you surrender turn your problem over to God. He can and will help you.

Remember that it gets easier to stop your addiction as time passes. Porn like all other addictions will be hardest to stop in the beginning. Know that you alone cannot stop. You and God can. God is the main player, but a group like Sex Addicts Anonymous will also help. You may be able to find a group such as Celebrate Recovery which practices the twelve steps of AA in relation to any addiction.

This guy is right, listen to him !
Then forget the psychoanalysis and all that, like he says here, SURRENDER IT TO GOD.
When you do that, like I said earlier, you are in for a shock Pal.
Exactly what to do ? Like I said :
-Without fail, pray a Rosary every day, asking Our Lady for her prayers and help.
-Commit yourself to the prayer, you have to show God that this is your choice, to make the change.
-Know that He IS THERE, He DOES HEAR, but He is not kicking any doors down, you have to show Him that you want him to come in.
The free will He gives you to do this is because of the love he has for you-so He won’t force you to change against your will.
–Say the rosarys, let Jesus & His Mom take it from there, they’ll let you know what else you need to do.
-Pray, then listen !

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++
“God has assigned as a duty to every man, the dignity of every woman.” Pope John Paul II​

“For Christ established his Church, not as a museum for saints, but as a hospital for sinners.” CCC

 

[ManOnFire]

The brain craves pleasure. The more you feed it, the more it wants. It can be fed by sex, drugs, food, gambling, materialism, etc. or holiness.

My 2 cents: start weaning yourself by denying yourself “the happy ending.” The less pleasureful it is, the less you’ll crave it, and the more you can control it. Pat yourself on the back for progress. It will be positive reinforcement. Remember, Love is ultimately all about what’s in the heart and soul, not the physical pleasure.

If one chooses a life of selfish indulgence of the basic instincts, one will walk around like a person with a teaspoon and a sugar bowl: dipping the teaspoon into the sugar bowl frequently, taking a sweet lick that doesn’t last, constantly searching for the next temporary high via sex, drugs, materialism, extreme vanity, gambling, food, pursuit of trying to invent something artificially different for the few seconds of shallow amusement it provides, to no long term satisfaction. Once the temporary high wears off, the search for the next high continues indefinitely.

If one chooses to give one’s life to the Church’s way of sacrificial, true love for spouse and kids, one can experience the True love that makes one’s heart sing and will rock you to the depths of your bones. Deep, romantic, sacrificial, True Love via God’s Covenant for man and woman is The Way, The Truth, and The Life that BOTH of you will eventually need to commit to if you desire long term success.

EVERYONE needs to make a choice of which of the 2 lifestyles to PRIMARILY pursue. There’s no other way. Pop culture is a giant wedge that will force passionate people to decide, one path or the other. The Soul can be free and made clean again through Reconciliation. Forgive self and each other. We are only human. Forget the past. This is the chance for a new beginning. That’s what I love most about the Catholic Church: the Soul can be free and clean and new if you forgive and are forgiven. True Love is always possible for anyone with a clean soul, regardless of the past. If being influenced by pop culture causes sin, then it is our duty to minimize it’s influence on our lives by DECREASING our exposure to it.

Imagine if you actually really nailed 25 of the hottest women that you could possibly conjure up, every which way imaginable. Then what would you do next? What can you do for an encore? Nothing. You would have scratched that itch. You’d be bored in knowing that you can’t top yourself with that current set of values and priorities. There’s no future in it. THAT’S when you look to the depth of the Church for Soul food and the Way to Live! You came to the right place.

 

[Corinne3]

Dear Man on Fire:

You are so wise~ i really appreciate your posts.

 

[Lycorth]

Coming from a hardcore porn addict (thankfully, it seems that I can think of myself as a former addict these days ), I can sympathize. It’s a seriously hard thing to let go of. Our minds are conditioned to enjoy it via indulgence in it for long times.

For me, a number of things helped. First of all, I needed time; it did not happen overnight. It should have, but human nature is what it is. I had to be patient and understand I couldn’t break porn addiction in a single go and just focus on slowly tapering off and whittling away the kinds of porn I watched or read. I got rid of and avoided the most hardcore stuff first and gradually worked my way down to written porn and non-pornographic but still sexually-titillating imagery. In earlier years, I had tried to break porn addiction but failed; I failed when I tried to do it all at once, then when temptation got the best of me, I backslid completely because I had failed at working an immediate solution to a problem that was beyond immediate correction. Slow and steady wins the race, and only by gradually working my problem down did I finally respond fully to God’s grace in my life to be able to truly fight back against lust.

Part of it was and is perspective. Since my reconversion, I have learned how to look at women as creations of God and in that sense, daughters of the Lord (regardless of their actual spiritual condition). I could not look at porn stars the same way again; even the most profligate porn “actress” I saw as someone who was created by God in the beginning of her life and intended for a life of holiness and nobility, not degrading whoredom. Given that, I found it increasingly difficult to look at porn stars again for the sake of gratifying my lusts at the time, and this attitude transferred to real-life women or even to pictures of women that were not pornographic in the least. Learning how to admire and adopt an essentially chivalrous approach towards looking at and regarding women was and is essential in coming to break a porn addiction; that shift in perspective is important.

Naturally, prayer was and is just as essential. I could do nothing without God’s help and still cannot maintain this without going to the forms of prayer that I love most. The rosary and Mass I have found so very helpful, especially when I pray not just to be freed of sinful lusts but when I pray for that aforementioned perspective change to occur in me. Sacrificing time to God in prayer never goes ignored, and even taking time to stop when being tempted by lust and say even a short prayer (such as the Memorarae, a favorite of mine) can defuse a potentially sinful situation.

And of course, ridding myself of the near occasions of temptation was also essential. Cleaning out my computer of porn, deleting bookmarks, sabotaging password-protected sites of which I was a member (by changing passwords I knew to gibberish passwords that I could not ever remember for the life of me, effectively preventing future access) - all of it was important. Not just in removing near occasions of sin, but in the getting rid of porn I was taking action to unite with my prayer and perspective changes. Action is essential for humans; God made us to respect deeds and place no faith in mere words or empty promises, and taking action to rid myself of porn were like exercises that helped me gain perspective and break the alluring nature of it.

As a traditionalist, I revere the past. Past attitudes about decency, morality, and sexuality I esteem highly as I do the vast bulk of all traditional moral opinions of Western civilization. As part of my anti-porn efforts, I remind myself of what traditional attitudes were in regards to sexuality and what the attitudes of our forebears might have been towards the pornography I have engaged in. Knowing that they would have been aghast at the stuff and would have devalued any person who engaged in such filth helped me to develop a sort of “role model” in those speculations about our forebears and traditional attitudes. God wrought a fine civilization through our ancestors because they submitted to His morality; aspiring towards that is the best thing we can do in these benighted ages.

I hope this helps! God bless and good luck in your efforts!

 

[ContegoFides]

Lycorth, as a fellow former porn addict, I say that was a beautiful post.

 

[Lycorth]

Lycorth, as a fellow former porn addict, I say that was a beautiful post.

I thank you for those kind words. I’ve struggled with pornography for the vast bulk of my life, not even knowing it was mortally sinful until my late teens or perhaps early 20s, when I took my faith seriously enough to study and actually learn about on my own. By then, lust in general was a deeply-entrenched problem in my life and was not going to be rooted out easily. Especially with my de-conversion period of three years when I abandoned Catholic morality altogether any feeble progress I had made before then was gone.

I consider it no less than a personal proof of divine intervention in my life that I am able to now, after all that time, avoid porn and lust on a consistent, regular basis. I still trip up, but very rarely and each time that I do, I cannot remember the last time I did.

I only hope and pray that all my blathering on can help at least one soul either break the porn addiction or help encourage one person’s new life of freedom from lust

 

[ContegoFides]

I thank you for those kind words. I’ve struggled with pornography for the vast bulk of my life, not even knowing it was mortally sinful until my late teens or perhaps early 20s, when I took my faith seriously enough to study and actually learn about on my own. By then, lust in general was a deeply-entrenched problem in my life and was not going to be rooted out easily. Especially with my de-conversion period of three years when I abandoned Catholic morality altogether any feeble progress I had made before then was gone.

I consider it no less than a personal proof of divine intervention in my life that I am able to now, after all that time, avoid porn and lust on a consistent, regular basis. I still trip up, but very rarely and each time that I do, I cannot remember the last time I did.

I only hope and pray that all my blathering on can help at least one soul either break the porn addiction or help encourage one person’s new life of freedom from lust

This is exactly my experience and feelings - though it took me longer to come to Jesus. You’ve found a kindred spirit.

 

[Lycorth]

This is exactly my experience and feelings - though it took me longer to come to Jesus. You’ve found a kindred spirit.

Likewise. Again, I’m too glad to be helpful with all my dirty laundry.

 

[crazydyl]

I had the same problem from the ages of 12 to 22 as my dad did/does it and I did not believe that God was real and which religion was real.

If you do not stop this habit then you will go to hell. Think of all of the pain that you will suffer just because you wanted to enjoy a little more pleasure…

It is extremely hard to enter heaven for us people growing up in the developed world but it is up to you what you want. Masturbation and hell or celabacy and heaven.

God created you so should be truly happy for this and totally respect His laws and the way He wants you to be. If you do not respect that and are too materialistic then you know where you are going.

My advice for you to become a better person is to say the rosary, go to church, confession as much as you can and give up everything material to you that you do not need. I can do it after about 7,000 masturbations in 10 years, but can you?

Hell is calling if you do not get yourself in gear… :tsktsk:

 

[crazydyl]

Stopping masturbation will help you to become pure and that will help you to have better relationships with people and your girlfriend. You will see your girlfriend as more than just her physical form. Your life will become a lot better if you give it up, but most importantly you need to stop doing it to not go to hell, unless you would rather sin at the expense of eternity? I know which one I choose!

Material things are irrelevant and you need to realise this.

When I gave masturbation up I found it fine. Sure it is hard for the first 6 days, but if you manage to get past that then you will find it easy Get past the 6 day hurdle my son!