Have you ever done something that you knew was out of bounds and thought to yourself, “What the #$%^ am I doing?”

I’m sure most of us, if not all of us, have experienced these moments of self reflection.  

But unfortunately, this type of moral inventory only happens on the backside of personal destruction.  

Whether it be Jerry Falwell Jr, Carl Lentz, Josh Duggar, or Ravi Zacharias… I’m relatively certain at some point all of these men thought to themselves how did I let things get this far?  How on earth did I get to a point where I was somehow OK with what I was doing?  

The sad fact is that while these are extreme cases of sexual misconduct, all these men started out somewhere.  

Realize that few if any men go to bed one night a sexually healthy individual and wake up an adulterer, escort user, or child molester.  

These types of behaviors do not just evolve overnight. 

They begin with something, and that something is often porn.  

Now before you think that I’m saying, “look at porn and you will molest kids” … I’M NOT! 

However, porn can serve as an avenue to more problematic behaviors because it never satisfies.  

No matter what you watch, eventually it grows old and you need more.  You need something new and “improved.”  Maybe that’s just more porn, harder porn, younger or “barely legal” porn, or maybe it’s not even porn but the real deal … escorts, massage parlors, you name it.  

The point is that porn numbs your sensibilities and often leads to engaging in activities you never would have dreamed of before.  

There’s also another major normalizing effect of porn.

Porn, or rather porn addiction, often leads to the acceptance of other unacceptable behaviors.  It may be viewing porn at work; it may be masturbation in public places; it may be lying to your spouse or running up the credit card on porn site subscriptions; whatever the case, those addicted to porn often give themselves permission to do things that just aren’t acceptable, sometimes even deviant.  

It may be the need for a fix, the desire to push the edge, or just a desperate attempt to cover your tracks but a life steeped in porn if usually a life steeped in other problematic behavior.

The reality is that chronic porn use often results in the normalization or the abnormal and acceptance of the unacceptable.  It’s just what porn does.  

But here’s the irony… 

While porn may lead to the normalization of behaviors that shouldn’t be “normal,” it also leads to the abnormalization of behaviors that should not only be normal, but are extremely healthy like intimacy, transparency, and connection.   

Why?

Because the things that lead to health and wellness, are also the antivenom to porn’s toxic effects.

Being “done” with problematic choices is not enough. You also need to pursue and engage in healthy behavior that discourages these choices.

This includes:

– Counseling
– Accountability
– Being part of a supportive community
– Commitment to honesty
– Pursuit of learning and self discovery

So my encouragement to you is two-fold.

First, just because you can’t imagine yourself in a worse place than you are now, doesn’t mean you won’t end up there at some point if you don’t tackle the existing issues you have today.

And…

Second, the way to start your journey back to health and wholeness is by pursuing the very things that porn use and addiction causes you to avoid.

Are you ready to ditch the “new normal” and go after something better? I hope so.

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