How do you want to be remembered?
It’s probably not a question men often ponder. But we should. In fact, it’s perhaps one of the most critical issues we should address. Why? Because whether we like it or not, we are role models. People are watching us. And when they’re watching, they are observing how we:
- Respond to conflict
- Treat others
- Approach our work and responsibilities
- Act in moments when integrity counts most
- Honor our wives
Whether we realize it or not, people are watching. These include our spouse, children, co-workers, friends, and neighbors. And what they’re observing is the establishing of our legacy – the way people will remember us.
But there is cancer that is destroying the legacies of many men in our world today. It’s called pornography.
“It’s difficult to look at him the same way since finding out about his pornography addiction,” said Mark, a 24-year-old whose father confessed after his 33-year addiction was discovered. “It’s not that I don’t love him anymore, but my image of the man who always did the right thing has been tainted by the pain he caused my mother.”
Whether your spouse and children are aware of your pornography use, you are cheating them. The image they hold of you is nothing more than a façade. Each day, thousands of men are caught engaging in the selfish pleasure of pornography, which results in the breaking of their wives’ and children’s hearts. It is a betrayal that destroys marriages and robs children of their innocence.
“My husband left his pornography unattended, and our 12-year-old son stumbled across it,” says one mother. “My son then started to act out what he saw with his 9-year-old sister. My husband’s filthy habit forever damaged both of my children. Bringing pornography into our home destroyed all of our lives, and I’m not sure I can ever forgive him.”
As men, we can do many things our loved ones respect and admire. But all those deeds are undermined when we allow ourselves to succumb to the darkness of pornography. Failing to get control of our lust can ruin everything we worked hard to achieve while leaving the ones we love seeing us through tainted lenses.
“People in our community look up to him, and he is a Deacon in our church,” remarks Suzanne, who continues to struggle with feelings of betrayal after discovering her husband’s long-time pornography use. “But the image he portrays is phony. He’s not the man they think he is. When I hear someone praise him, I cringe. Yet, he keeps up the charade, which leads me to continue to lose whatever respect I still have for him.”
As men, we must challenge ourselves to uncover the insights behind our use of pornography. You don’t engage because of a pang of uncontrollable sexual hunger. Instead, pornography is a tool to distract yourself from emotional distress. And in many cases, you may not be conscious of the emotional pain.
In his book, Unwanted, Jay Stringer sums up the rationale for pornography is a wonderful word picture. “How did I get there? One way of thinking about unwanted sexual behavior is to see it as the convergence of two rivers; your past and the difficulties you face in the present.”
To become a man of integrity, we need to understand better our emotional hurts and how they occurred. That takes serious self-reflection and courage. It’s not an easy process, but it is gratifying and fruitful. There is no doubt pornography serves as an excellent tool to help men escape painful feelings. But it’s also a damaging tool that kills legacies.
How do you want to be remembered?
Part One
I struggled with porn addiction for years before I realized that certain moments, thoughts, people, or places were triggers that ignited my desire and drove my decision-making process. I know them now, and I have to be ready for them.
A couple of trigger and traps are:
- Seasons of life that are particularly demanding and/or taxing.
- Transitions in life such as a new place of work or a new move.
- Moments or days after I have expended a large amount of emotional energy on a task or project.
Any of the moments described above are potential triggers and traps that can trick me into believing porn is a necessary escape.
I am not sure what your triggers and traps are, but I know you have them.
So, I am going present four areas of potential triggers and traps in the hope that reading them will awaken you to and keep you aware of your own.
In my own journey, awareness of these triggers and traps has provided firm footing on which to stand and has enabled me to live a robust and wonderfully healthy post-porn addiction life!
Triggers and Traps
- The Trying Season. The American Psychological Association reports that nearly 70% of us believe stress has an impact on our physical well-being.[i] I wonder if we realize the impact of stress on our mental and emotional health? While stress is the norm for many, highly stressful seasons of life are the experience of every one of us.
Consider two dominant areas of life experience:
- Relational. This is life with friends or family, pending life stage and development.
- Work/Education. This is the area of life that likely occupies most of your time. For those in a career, it means a job. For those who are students it means school work, life and all the activities that come with being a student in your typical academic setting.
In both areas, relationships and work, formation and deformation are happening all the time. For example: when you work hard and receive a promotion or pay raise, you experience formation. Your energies are rewarded and recognized by your colleagues, which gives you a sense of pride and accomplishment. The experience of pride and accomplishment help form our sense of personhood, plac’dness, and purpose in our world. In moments like these, ones of value, esteem and recognition, something sacred is at work. It’s as if places in us – often places we aren’t even aware exist – are being shaped and formed.
In such moments, we experience joy and fulfillment. While this is a beautiful moment that brings hope, it is also accompanied by subtle but certain stressors. Intuitively, we begin to entertain thoughts like these:
Wow, what is this going to do for my career in the long run? More success, more money, more stuff, more hours at work?
What’s my spouse going to think about this? Does this mean I have to put in that pool he has been nagging me to put in these past two years?
How will this impact my relationship with my colleagues?
Yes.
Even in moments of joy and celebration, stress begins to build. Most of the stress is, of course, self-inflicted, but that’s not the point.
The point is that stress begins to build during moments we would not expect it to build.
If we don’t awaken to this reality, it will grow over time and become the dominate narrative from which we live.
Soon, we are in the midst of a Trying Season and we aren’t quite sure how we even got there.
As stress builds anxiety increases.
As anxiety increases, frustration takes hold.
As frustration takes hold, conflict – both internal and external – grows.
As conflict grows, stress becomes the norm.
When stress becomes the norm, we sense a growing need to escape reality and relieve all the tension. The Trying Season then falls prey to porn’s opportunistic pull and we act out.
We click that web page that offers total satisfaction with very little investment.
We hunt, really scour, the World Wide Web. Hoping to find that caring companion who will, for just a small amount of our hard-earned money, ease away the pain, if only for a while.
We stroll into that massage parlor that everyone knows offers more than back rubs and seek to receive a solace our stressed out lives fail to provide.
You get the picture.
Porn’s power is weaponized in the midst of Trying Seasons and stressful realities.
In our next post, I will share a host of ways I’ve learned to combat the weaponization of porn and to decrease its power in my life!
Biz Gainey
Men Against Porn
[i] http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2012/impact.aspx
