Recognizing Triggers and Traps, Pt. 3: The Tempting Situation

By Biz Gainey

As I write this post on preparing for and resisting The Tempting Situation, I am sitting in a Starbucks drinking my customary Grande Bold Coffee, black.

Here is what I can tell you based on this one morning in Starbucks: For those of us who are trying to live a porn-free life, or who are trying to maintain a porn-free life, temptations abound, and they are everywhere.

We will, at some point, be tempted or face a Tempting Situation, in which our desires to click on a porn link or website will be tugged and cajoled – many times more than once a day. 

Often, more than once an hour.

Yes.  If you’ve battled the soul-wrenching beast of porn addiction, you know exactly what I’m talking about!

Facing temptations, or the Tempting Situation, is a reality with which we must all come to grips.

The irony of writing this post – about resisting the Tempting Situation – in a Starbucks, is that I am going to suggest we consider a picture from an ancient writer, Homer, to help us prepare for and resist temptation.  The work to which I am referring is found in Books 12 – 14 of his Epic, The Odyssey.

Tempting Situations and the Long Journey Home

By way of summation, Odysseus and his crew are on their voyage home, after the Trojan Wars.  During this lengthy journey home, he and his shipmates sail past the Isle of Sirens (thus the irony, as Starbucks’ logo is based on a Siren), where the famed daughters of the gods await, singing their silky songs of seduction. 

The Sirens’ objective is to tempt the crew to take a detour and investigate the beautiful shores of the island they inhabit.  The Sirens make promises they cannot – and have no intention to – fulfill.   They promise Odysseus and his crew passion, pleasure, and gratification, knowing they will deliver distortion, destruction, and, ultimately, death. 

The crew, in other words, faces a Tempting Situation that’s filled with power and persuasion but will end in distortion and destruction.  The Isle of Sirens’ power is found only in its persuasion, not in its intention or ability to deliver what’s promised. 

Consider this gripping stanza and the stark reality of how the sultry sounds of the Sirens would lead to death and death alone:

Their song is death, and makes destruction please.

Unblest the man, whom music wins to stay

Nigh the cursed shore and listen to the lay.

No more that wretch shall view the joys of life

His blooming offspring, or his beauteous wife![i]

The line that grabs my heart, “No more that wretch shall view the joys of life,” describes how terribly wrecked life becomes when one gives in to the Tempting Situation.  I have been there on more than one occasion.  You know, that place where we experience the wretchedness of giving into porn’s sultry song. 

In all likelihood, you’ve been there as well.  Indeed, to give in to the Tempting Situation the Isle of Sirens poses, is to give the temptation power over our life.  It’s a power that leaves us awash on a shore of guilt and shame.

When we give in to temptation, we experience detachment and disengagement from those people who love is the most and in those places where our life finds the most meaning!  No more do we enjoy the wonders of life found in our spouse, children, extended community, and vocation. 

The porn industry has taken a page or two from Greek mythology, offering the hope of satisfaction while delivering the reality of suffocation.

The sights and sounds of the Tempting Situation are often enticing.  Of course, if they weren’t enticing, there would be no need to prepare or resist.  So, how do we prepare for and resist the many Tempting Situations that we face on a daily basis?

After all, Sirens abound in today’s porn-saturated world. 

Consider the following ways I battle the ongoing reality of temptation in today’s Isle-of-Sirens society:

A Few Ways to Prepare for and Resist the Tempting Situation

1.       Be Prepared!  Accept the reality that the Tempting Situation is going to present itself.  I don’t care how many days, weeks, months, or years you’ve been porn-free, you will still be tempted.  There is nothing wrong with being tempted; it’s how you respond in the Tempting Situation that determines the immediate outcomes.  It’s important that you develop a list of Triggers and Traps that are specific to you and your own struggle (this series can help). 

2.       Be Intentionally Preventative!  Take preventative steps so that you can resist when you face the Tempting Situation!  Odysseus and his crew prepared for the Tempting Situation the Isle would present by taking steps – ahead of time – to resist the tempting Island.  The crew plugged their ears and covered their eyes.  Odysseus himself was tied to the mast to prevent him from giving in to the sultry sounds of the Sirens’ tempting song.

3.       Build a Team!  Find a community of people whom you can trust and upon whom you can rely when the Tempting Situation occurs.  Porn’s Tempting Situations exploit isolation and fatigue.  Ongoing participation in and with a community of others who struggle in this way will play a crucial role in your ability to resist when the Sirens sound their song!!

4.       Behold True Beauty.  While this is last on the list, it’s the most important.  A vision of beauty around the joy of being home is life-giving and provides power when faced with the Tempting Situation.  In other words, our desire to be with the ones we love and those who love us – fully engaged – is the place where our resistance begins!  The only way I’ve been able to resist the tempting trinkets of porn’s lust-filled, soul-sapping world, is by beholding the true and life-giving beauty already present in my life!  Odysseus holds fast because he has a vision of being at home.  He has beheld the beauty of his loving wife and longs to be captivated by the beauty he beholds.  The Tempting Situation presented by porn, conversely, pounds the love out of us and strips us of the beauty we desperately long to behold!

Odysseus was compelled to ‘stay the course’ because his true love – his beauty beheld – awaited his return.

I will spend my next post exploring the joy and necessity of Beholding True Beauty when I conclude this series on Triggers and Traps (previous posts can be found here).

As I sip my last sip of morning joe, I do so from a cup that reminds me there are Sirens all around and, as such, I must be prepared and ready to resist the Tempting Situation.  I am also encouraged by the reality that the Siren song, though a reality in our world, loses its power of persuasion as I lean into and live out the suggestions above! 

What has become a reality for me is also possible for you!

It is our hope, at Men Against Porn, that you are beginning to believe freedom is possible.  If so, then you are on your way! 

Be encouraged.  Reflect on and implement just one step above and try to take it one moment at a time!

Check out the Memes and Partners section of the Men Against Porn website for resources and ministries that will provide tools and encouragement as you continue on your journey into freedom!

If you find our resources helpful to you and those you love, we ask that you share our work with your friends, neighbors and communities!

Together we can experience a porn-free life and help usher in the end of porn addiction in our lifetime!

[i] Homer; Pope, Alexander (2012-05-16). The Odyssey (p. 208).  . Kindle Edition.

She Needs to Throw Rocks

By Eddie Capparucci, MA, LPC

One of the most tragic aspects of a sexual addiction is the emotional pain our insensitive and self-absorbed actions cause to our innocent partner. They are the unfortunate ones who get tangled in our web of deceit and are made to pay a large price for our destructive behavior.

It breaks my heart the first time a couple sits across from me in a counseling session and I listen to the wife or girlfriend describe her anguish and frustration in trying to understand why the man she thought loved her with all his heart could crush her world through his wicked infidelity. I see in their eyes their internal struggle to contemplate how they will ever be able to recover from the betrayal and learn to trust and love again. What makes it more heartbreaking is when they start to question what they could have done differently to prevent him from acting out.

It has been noted the timeframe for healing from betrayal can be anywhere from 12 to 24 months. That length of time is required in order for the offended partner to process the pain, while grieving the loss of how she viewed the relationship.

During this time of recovery, the offender can expect to encounter a wide range of emotions being exhibited by his partner including sadness, doubt, confusion, disgust, and anger.

Particularly anger. In fact, I tell my clients who have abused sex to understand their partner has a barrel of rocks and “she will be launching them in your direction for quite some time to come.”

One of the worst things a man could do is try to shut down their partner in the grieving process. I remember one wife who told me her husband said she had one weekend to get answers to any questions she had and after that he would no longer discuss the matter. All this man was doing was once again demonstrating his own selfishness and putting his desire to move on ahead of her need to heal.

Gentlemen, the long-term rock throwing you will be experiencing is better known as consequences. For those men who sincerely feel a sense of remorse and want to restore their relationship, they will need to stand tall and allow the rocks to fly providing their partners with the release they need to mend.

Believe me, your wife or girlfriend would rather be in a different position than rock throwing but you put her there. If you shut her down and prohibit her from grieving, you are doing nothing more than simply extending her agony. And if you are successful in shutting her down don’t think for a moment that you have escaped her wrath. Most likely, her anger will come out in passive aggressive ways, or later down the road, she will be a hurling boulders at you and neither of you will have any idea of why they exist. As the grieving process continues and she begins to sense you are safe, you will see the size of the rocks become smaller.

We failed the first time when we hurt our partners by abusing sex and betraying them. We cannot fail them during their need for healing.

Be a man. Take the rocks thrown your way.

You Can Live a Porn-Free Life!

By Biz Gainey

I have been on a journey out of porn – into my truest self – for the past 20 years.  The past 10 – 15 years have been years of tremendous freedom from porn and victory over the struggle with porn – a struggle which entrapped me between the ages of 9 – 11 (nearly 35 years ago). 

Given my history of addiction and journey into freedom, I thought I would write an article birthed from my own experience, exploring two things:

• What porn causes.
• What you can do to be free.

What Porn Causes

Statistics reveal an increasing portion of women and a majority of men struggle with or are addicted to pornography. In other words, if you are in a Starbucks right now, there are people around you caught up in this disastrous world of desire distorted!  

Checking out in the 10-item-only aisle? Yep. 

In the church?  Yep (may even be the person preaching to you). 

At your place of work?  You Betcha! 

These realities remain hidden because porn is a ‘silent enemy,’ which causes us to live in fear and isolation (if you are caught up in porn, then you know this is true).   Fear and Isolation – the two-headed demon of distorted desire – lead us deeper into the distorted desires from which we long to be released.   It’s as if we become zombie-like – lifelessly and uncontrollably staggering along.  We simply never get enough.  There are some outcomes of this distortion that affect every level of our existence!

One of the first distortions is that porn diminishes personhood.  As someone made in the image of God, this is paramount to all of us. The more we view porn the less human we become and the less able are we to view others as fully human.  Indeed, people become objects or tools to be used toward our own selfish ends.  Secondly, porn diminishes desire.  The more we consume the fantasy world of porn, the less we hunger for the fully human world in which we live.

Thirdly, porn diminishes vision and thereby destroys hope. This is important.  If you are viewing porn, then you are losing your sight.  Such myopia will only keep you staggering in a state of hopeless panic, unaware of the natural and sacred beauty all around you.  It is, alas, a journey to your own death.  It is often a painful and agonizing death by degrees. 

On a cultural level, porn diminishes civility and creates a culture of violence and rape.  If porn distorts personhood and diminishes desire, then the demise of hope is a natural outcome.   Ultimately, when hooked to porn, we become like islands of shame and guilt, isolated from any and all hope.

What You Can Do to Be Free!

There are, however, some things you can do to live free!  Let me pass on the things that I have found most helpful in my own journey.

1.      Confess this addiction to a trusted friend.

2.      Connect to meaningful community.

You must confess your addiction to your loved one(s).  Confession is not an apology.  Apologies are over-rated.   In our culture – where we say ‘sorry’ for everything and take responsibility for nothing – apologies are even cancerous.  If you are married, you may find it difficult to confess this to your spouse.  I understand.  I’ve been there.  You may well need to seek out a trusted friend or addiction/recovery group and verbalize your initial confession in that sacred space.  I would encourage you to enlist the help of the person(s) to whom you first confess and bring a full confession to your closest loved ones as soon as you are able.

Community is crucial in the recovery process.    If porn thrives in the soil of isolation, it is starved in the richness of community.  Find a local group of men or begin one of your own.  Once you begin to walk out of this addiction you will likely find others attempting a walk of their own.  Join together with them and lock arms as you travel this road.  Men Against Porn is assembling resources to help aid you in this journey.  I would encourage you to check out our resource page on this website!

The freedom journey is life-long.  If you confess your inability to ‘go it alone,’ and take steps to travel with others, you will find that you are well on your way to being free of porn for good!