Porn, masturbation, and dating

[DENNYINMI]

…But does one really need to quit masturbating?Does masturbation qualify as being one among the many items found within the category of sin? The Old Testament speaks of unclean bed, whereas the New Test speaks of ‘sin in thought’ however then we need to identify what sins fall within the category. Answer=ALL sins fall in the thought category.

Hi Joan, yes your insight was more so than mine…I reread and I believe as you do, but it did not come out as such…Thank you…very very much!!! Denny:thumbsup:

 

[Always_For_Him]

Hi, mr1234,
I don’t know all the right answers to all of your questions. I do believe that if you have done a thorough examination of conscience, and are truly repentent, GO TO CONFESSION!!! Go EVERY week!!! Pray fervently that God help you change your heart in this matter. Go to an Adoration in your area. It is a beautiful feeling to pray in front of the monstrance. Find a pornography therapist to help you figure out the root (if you don’t know already.) They can also help you begin to put things in place to better deal with your emotions and change your habits. Since we are sexual beings, this is hard to change. EWTN has a show called Pure Love, (I think) by Jason Evert and his wife. They council teens/young adults on the virtues of chastity and pureness. It is AMAZING to realize God’s purpose for us here. Don’t feel ashamed, you just really haven’t ever learned the true meaning/reason for this and God’s design for it. Please read these next words and take them as I mean them and with an open heart. Face your fears head on!!! Don’t let them rule you anymore. You can move past this. This is preventing you from being the man you can be. This is your cross to bear, so bear it for Jesus. Be thankful for the strength you will gain as God helps you, and you work hard to over come this. You are no less worthy of love and happiness than anyone else. You just have to work down your own path to earn it. We all do. You are God’s child, so make sure you work hard at changing your heart, stomping the devil out of your life so you can live a more full life with God as your pilot. We all need to do this, but you need to focus on this right now. Don’t tell her yet. You don’t owe her that, yet. Don’t replace addiction with another one either. Learn to walk the narrow path for the just and RIGHT reasons, not because you have to or just because it is a sin, but because you are centered in Christ and want to honor Him. Learn the beautiful reasons God created this for us, let that wash over you. It is beautiful.

 

[mr1234]

Here’s an update:

The relationship ultimately failed. Was porn the cause? Likely, in some capacity. But to me the biggest issue was a complete lack of compatibility. Personalities and senses of humor clashed and ultimately it didn’t go anywhere.

As for the porn and masturbation, it hasn’t gotten better. I attended my first SA meeting a few days ago, and I’m hoping that works. The desire to date is stronger than usual but I don’t feel I can legitimately date with my addiction the way it is, so the loneliness is also strong and stinging (doesn’t help when most of my friends are already married or engaged).

Needless to say I feel really distraught at how much longer I won’t be able to date, given how badly I want to. I know I need to abstain for my well-being.

 

[Chesterton18]

Stop the porn and masturbation if you care for her. That can be your motivation. Don’t consider marriage until you have been free from you addiction for an extended period of time(say a year or more). Make it clear to her that purity is very important to you. Don’t watch movies with nudity, don’t watch immoral tv (most of it is), don’t listen to immoral music (again most of it is). At some point you can tell her you think it is important to do these things to maintain purity.

Go to confession every week, whether you fall or not. Go to daily mass when you can (make time). Go to adoration. Say the rosary daily. Do these things with the motivation of improving your worthiness for this girl and it can be done.

Have you tried using programs like K9 Web Protection to make it much harder for you to give into temptation? I struggle with this sin myself and I’ve found that, when I’m faithfully praying, attending Mass, reading the Bible, etc, I don’t want to look at porn. I mean, I want to, but the almost fever-like trance of the porn-user isn’t there. So something like K9 Web Protection- which makes it much harder to look at porn- is an effective deterrent. You can get around it, but you’ll likely come to your senses before you try; again, as long as you’re doing the other important stuff.

But yeah, I absolutely get where you’re coming from. Porn is immensely distorting. I question anyone who claims to be in a healthy relationship while under the continual influence of porn. So it’s not a bad idea to wait until you’ve achieved a little distance from the addiction. Only you can decide what that distance is. For me, after a week of not looking at porn, I’m fine; after two weeks I’m antsy; after 3 weeks I’m feverish; and after a month or so I start regaining sanity. You’re particularly vulnerable after that last stage because you’ll suspect you’ve beaten it and you’ll likely lower your guard. Porn’s bad but surely I can admire this model on TV? Here’s my somewhat guarded advice: when you reach that last stage; when sanity returns; when you feel like you’ve finally come out from a well: date. Or try to. Lust is a perversion of love. For those who are not called to chastity, lust is going to be harder, long term, to control, without the sanctifying presence of love. That’s why Paul says that such people ought to get married. You shouldn’t be in a relationship which your lust will overpower and distort; but when the lust is on the back-burner, you should seek to more properly orient your desires. And that usually means dating.

 

[ATeutonicKnight]

I struggled with masturbation for three years, and even pornography. In July it will have been a full year of not having masturbated once or having looked at pornography. I did this in the “height” of my “sexual urges” (Nearly fifteen). If I can do it, you can certainly do it. It is definitely difficult and I can assure you that unless you are visited by an Angel and told this will not be so, you will fail again and again, and unfortunately a few more times after that. A Priest once told me in Confession that pornography and masturbation addictions/habits can be just as and sometimes harder to break than drug addictions, and unfortunately, those that struggle with masturbation do not get any “air time”, it seems, while those that struggle with pornography get all the sympathy. People that struggle with masturbation are looked down upon, they are made fun of, but they are rarely helped. If you need advice message me and I will gladly try to give you my tricks of the trade. If I can recommend anything right now it would be to try and pray an hour a day if possible, and if not, half an hour. That’s a Rosary and a few extra prayers on the side, not a really big deal.

As for whether or not you should date this girl, you certainly could. Everyone needs the inspiration to stop, and sometimes hell simply isn’t enough. You need something you want more than anything. For me, this was the Priesthood. I fell in love with the Priesthood and I was bound and determined to stop masturbating. I crushed my addiction/habit (I don’t like calling it a habit since that implies it does not have the characteristics of an addiction, but a sexual addiction generally means you literally have no self-control, and this is not the case) in a mere five months when I finally had something to strive for. I think if you turn out to really love this girl she can be your determination to quit. Being married means carrying your cross and dying to yourself for your wife. Starting out by denying yourself of your urges for the woman you love is a noble thing any woman would be thoroughly impressed by. This is not meant to impress the woman you love, of course, but it is something women would find noble.

 

[The_Bucket]

As for the porn and masturbation, it hasn’t gotten better. I attended my first SA meeting a few days ago, and I’m hoping that works. The desire to date is stronger than usual but I don’t feel I can legitimately date with my addiction the way it is, so the loneliness is also strong and stinging (doesn’t help when most of my friends are already married or engaged).

Needless to say I feel really distraught at how much longer I won’t be able to date, given how badly I want to. I know I need to abstain for my well-being.

Throw our your computer if that is causing you to sin. Cut the cable cord and watch only over the air television. Take Christ’s advice about cutting off what is bringing you to sin (within reason of course). Rip out as many triggers as possible from your life so as to make your new life as simple as possible.

Then get rid of this “need” to date. Perhaps easy for me to say because I am a married man, but clinging too much to a desire that is not simply to know and do what God wants will only make you anxious and we all know where that goes. Take a couple of weeks to simplify your life down to your work/school obligations, your prayer life and your community. Make a structure for your day that starts with a quick prayer and ends with an examination of conscience and more prayer. Schedule out a few minutes here or there in the rest of your day to remind yourself of God’s presence and thank Him for the day.

You can’t fill up your life with distractions to avoid this addiction. You can only turn it over to God and ask Him to cut the head off the snake. Then you have to make it as easy as possible on yourself in terms of temptation. Will you be able over time to use neutral things like computers or cable television or what have you in your home? I don’t know. Maybe. Don’t think about that now. Think about what you can do today to make it easier to avoid temptation and reorient your life towards God and other people. Then tomorrow think about the exact same thing.

One day at a time leads up to your entire life.

In a short time or a long time you’ll find that “need” to date to be replaced with a more calm desire to share your love of God and other people with someone. Your anxiety will hopefully melt away. You could have a genuine anxiety disorder but that’s a medical question.

Aside from the above mission, I’d say go get a copy of Peace of Soul by Fulton Sheen and an Imitation of Christ if you don’t have them. Read them. Don’t obsess over them. Just read them a few pages a day, reflect on them and pray. Find the right balance in your life between prayer, service and plain ol’ fun with your community and friends. Reorienting your life away from this anxiety and this addiction is a heck of a lot easier than worrying every second about falling.

 

[ATeutonicKnight]

I would recommend reading this article: chastity.com/chastity-qa/pornography-etc/masturbation/i-have-formed-real- I would read it when I was falling to sin frequently, and it always seemed to help.

 

[hwriggles4]

Here are some good resources for men:

1. The Way of The King’s Men by Mark Houck. You can find it at thekingsmen.us
2. Breaking Free. It is a pamphlet from Steve Wood. You can find it at familylifecenter.net
3. Check out anything by Matt Fradd. He is part of the Catholic Answers speaker’s bureau. He overcame his struggle, and I consider him to be a young guy too.
4. Shelley Lubben also has some good insights as well.

 

[francisca]

My story: I started masturbating at age 7, never having been told the ins and outs of sex by my parents, neither of whom had a healthy view towards sex. They divorced shortly after when I was 8 and the divorce dragged on for another 4 years. I started using porn when I was 12 and, probably due to the porn, really tried my hardest to seek out real sex with women…but only got as far as a few instances of oral sex when I was 15 and that was it.

Starting in high school I started having a conversion back to Catholicism after many years of not really practicing as I should have, but the masturbation and porn continued. While I subconsciously knew it was bad I never truly grasped the gravity of this sin until college.

During this time the masturbation, almost always accompanied by porn, continued at a rate of once every two weeks but that dropped to about once every week. I would masturbate to porn anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours depending on how I “controlled” my climax.

About a year and a half ago I managed to stay away from porn for a whole month, although I still struggled with the masturbation (and once the month was over I fell back into the old pattern). Then earlier this year I managed to maintain complete abstinence from either activity for a whole month before falling again. And until recently I was able to attain two months of purity before falling again, once a few days ago and again just last night/this morning (and presumption was definitely involved).

I narrowed my triggers down to both anxiety and, when in the “right mood”, just not caring. I recently saw a psychiatrist who believes I have anxiety which manifests itself in depression, etc. and recommended therapy rather than anxiety meds. I guess this makes sense given what I’ve seen about the nature of this issue. It also helps explain the long history I’ve had with low self esteem, bouts of self hatred, and a lack of confidence (exacerbated by years of emotional abuse at the hands of schoolmates and a family member).

During this entire time I spent time discerning my vocation and trying (very, very unsuccessfully) to date. I discerned marriage and developed a strong desire for marriage and fatherhood that never existed before. But because of my strange personality and sense of humor most women would NEVER consider dating me because they don’t understand me.

Until recently…that was when I started becoming romantically involved with a girl I’ve known for several months now. Not only do I like her, but she likes me back (very rare for me) and likes my sense of humor. Given the rarity of this type of occurrence I’ve come to see this girl as an absolute blessing. In fact my two month period of sobriety started right as we started getting more serious and it provided me with a reason to try harder to maintain purity.

The issue is that my bad habits remain. And now I’m facing a variety of issues:

1. Can I even legitimately go to Confession today given my presumption and habit of constantly having to go? I have had priests tell me that I’m at risk (or already am) abusing the Sacrament.
2. Should I even bother dating? I believe not dating this girl would be the biggest mistake I could possibly make because of how huge a blessing she is. But at the same time I don’t know if dating is wise (although this line of thought is motivated more by the depression I’m facing more than anything else…when I’m not depressed I realize this is foolish thinking).
3. Am I, as someone who struggles with purity, unfit for marriage, especially given my history?

This is tough for me, as I have a variety of issues I have to juggle at once. I’m hoping you can be of help to me.

First, I would like to address your 3rd question:

St. Paul in 1Corinthians 7 address the topic of “God’s calling and sexual purity”. To summarize what he said in this chapter of his epistle : It is good for a man not to have sex, but marriage keep a person with sexual passion from sin.

Your priest said you are at risk at abusing the sacrament. This is because the church teaching of sexual purity is not about being pure for a while until the next confession. Sexual purity according to the church teaching is manifested in marriage, being faithful and commited to your wife for a life time, or abstain from sex and commit oneself to God’s work (celibate) so long he can remain so. Those who celibate to commit himself to God, and those who married-- they are good (sexually pure) in the sight of God.

Thus my answer to your 2nd and 3rd question: Yes you need to date and one day you shall marry the woman whom you love and remain faithful with.

About your masturbating while watching porn (your 1st question):

Masturbating is one thing, watching porn is another. I want you to address both starting with the latter. Throw away all porn materials, prevent yourself from any possible access (you may ask your parents or somebody you trust to help you with your computer), prevent yourself to go near a condition that create opportunities (you may move your computer to the living room, no longer your bedroom).

Porn is extremely harmful. Porn can cause one to have low esteem toward human dignity, his own self esteem and the way he esteem others. The effect of it can cause depression, feel inferior/ insecure, dull conscience, become sinical toward life, even unable to love/ unfaithful toward spouse, causes young people confusion about sexuality & sexual identity due to exposure to unhealthy and unatural sexual information, aggressive behavior, violent way of thinking and behavior toward opposite gender. Porn is adulterous according to Jesus (Mattew 5:28).

Read the bible. Choose easy reading first such as stories about David, Daniel, Ruth and also the gospels. Read it like you read a story book. One or two stories (chapters) a day or more. If you do not understand it doesn’t matter, just keep on reading it.

Listen to praise and worship songs. Praise the Lord daily, even when you fail, do not stop worship him and give him all the glory and honor and thanksgiving. Pray for your freedom from the porn slavery unto a beautiful free life of the son of God.

May the Lord bless you and keep you always.
.