Addiction to Pornography, some hints and advice.
Fr Dennis DOLAN, St Mary’s Parish, Port Jervis, Archdiocese of New York.
The information is from the tape series, Breaking Free, by Steve Woods. Steve Woods was an Evangelical Presbyterian Minister, who was asked to challenge Scott Hahn’s ideas of becoming Catholic and, who in turn became a Catholic himself. This is the man who created Saint Joseph Covenant Keepers and Family Life Center International which he runs out of Port Charlotte, Florida. You can get familiar with him and his apostolate by logging on to one of his websites: http://www.familylifecenter.net or http://www.dads.org.
During one of his talks, he began with a startling statement. He said, “If you belong to a parish with 12 or more people, then you belong to a parish where there are husbands and teenage boys with a problem with pornography.” Scary! He said that the problem is so widespread and devastating that it has invaded what parents believed was the strongest and safest bastion: the home-schooling family. He relates,
“The venom of Internet Pornography is slowly killing the spiritual life of millions of Christian fathers. At every Catholic men’s conference I have spoken at over the past four years, I have encountered [dozens and hundreds of] men addicted to Internet pornography. Men from every region of North America, who attend Mass every Sunday, are silently addicted to pornography. Scores of wives have contacted the Family Life Center alarmed about their husband’s addiction to pornography. These wives are fearful about pornography’s corrosive effects upon their husbands, their marriages, and their children.”
These men have approached him personally at conferences he gives, asking for his help. He quotes a recent survey by national survey conducted by Zogby and Focus on the Family that found that “one in four American men seek sexual fulfillment online.” Also, nearly one in five Christians gave the same response. He also reports that, “Pornography is spreading to kids. Almost a third (31%) of children age 10-17 from households with computers say they have seen a pornographic website. The Attorney General’s Commission on Pornography found that 12-to-17-year-old boys are among the highest consumer group of pornography — the sons are following in their father’s footsteps. Millions of Christian men in their 30’s and 40’s started a secret pornography addiction after they found their dad’s Playboy and other porno magazines hidden under a mattress when they were 9, 10, and 11-year old boys. Technologically savvy kids today can easily find computer records of their dad’s visits to porno websites.”
Even though the wives of these men (mothers too) are not only shocked, hurt and repulsed by this behavior, Steve Woods sees them as playing a critical role in helping their husbands (and sons) find healing and corrective measures to spiritual health.
So, Steve enlists wives for sure in the following:
A Word to Wives Whose Husbands Have a Pornography Habit.
Chances are that:
o You will find unmistakable evidence of your husband’s pornography problem long before he realizes that you are aware of it.
o Your husband will deny being involved with pornography
o You will be the one initially seeking help for your husband’s problem. By a ratio of about 4-to-1, it is the wives who initiate contact with the Family Life Center in search of assistance for their husbands.
o You may be blamed for (all or part of) the problem
o Discovering your husband’s addiction may cause you to feel (one or more of the following): betrayed, deceived, angry, inadequate, rejected, shameful, desperate
o You will worry about how your husband’s addiction may affect your children
o You will feel a loss of intimacy in your marriage as pornography drives a wedge between you and your husband
We recommend that you:
o learn all you can about breaking a pornography addiction
o contact a hotline or counselor, to assist you in developing an intervention strategy
o confront your husband’s problem (similar to a drug or alcohol intervention)
o practice “tough love” with your husband. Assist him in overcoming his addiction, but do not enable his addiction by covering up his behavior
o resist any perverted sexual demands from your husband (pornography addicts frequently desire to “act out” the perversions they view)
o resist the false notion that if you make efforts to become “sexier” it will solve your husband’s pornography problem
o maintain a pleasant appearance and warm physical affection for your husband. Sometime wives will attempt to become more attractive in order to compete with the women in the pornographic images, in the vain hope of curing the addiction his way. After such an attempt fails, a wife can feel disgusted and then go to the opposite extreme of neglecting her personal appearance and abandoning physical affection toward her husband. In the midst of this crisis, avoid the extremes. Regarding physical appearance and affection, just follow the prudent pattern that any Christian wife should.
Be careful in accepting addiction recovery advice. An addicted husband is more concerned with a selfish fulfillment of his addiction than with how the addiction is harming those around him. Too frequently, bad advice is given to wives when they are counseled (even by Christian counselors) to deal with a spouse’s addiction by: preserving self, asserting self, and forgetting him by just looking out for self. What is really needed is a dependence upon God (not self) as your source of strength, and a “tough love” approach towards your spouse. You obviously need to take all necessary steps to protect your health and safety, but such prudent protection does not consist of a recovery plan focused on self
o participate in an organization that can help you and your husband to rebuild intimacy and strengthen your marriage (see the links for recommended organizations under “Help for Hurting Marriages” at www.dads.org)
o do not deny the problem and do not delay seeking assistance. Spouses of alcoholics routinely take seven years to reach the place where they will finally acknowledge that their spouses are alcoholics. On the average, it is an additional two years before they seek and obtain assistance; in the meantime, nine years of alcoholism have ravaged family life. Although you might be tempted to ignore your husband’s pornography addiction, don’t. Pornography, like alcoholism, isn’t a problem that gets better with time if left untreated. Involvement with pornography is an escalating habit. After getting informed, take immediate steps to help your husband root out his addiction rather than allow it to deepen and degenerate.
Also, remember this is a spiritual battle. In an article called, Screwtape's Strategies and Pornography, Steve Woods wrote a telling tale how the devils seek to corrupt society with this. The following is just a small excerpt. Maybe it will wake us up to realize that Satan & his angels are really working against their Enemy (God) and are really playing for keeps with souls. Some of them might be in our own families.
“The chief way we attack the family is by neutralizing the protector. Once we neutralize the father, then the children are ours whenever and wherever we want them. And want them we do! Those despicable little ones make my black blood boil. Every time I see one of these wretched children, it reminds me of the Enemy's holiness and love of purity. Our plan is to attack their purity so that they will belong to us for all time. Therefore, we need only to neutralize the guardians of these little monsters—and then we can pollute their miserable souls.”
God’s Peace.