Guest post: To the woman struggling with pornography; I see you.
Thanks to author Alice Taylor for this guest post. Please, if this is something that affects you, reach out and gain hope and help from the resources she lists below.
To the woman struggling with pornography, I see you.
I see you at church, school drop-offs, in the grocery store and at your office at work. I see you at university, Bible College, on the mission-field or fighting for our country in the defence force. I see your brown, pale, black, freckled or wrinkled skin. I know you’re trying to hide, but I see you.
All of you.
Women who struggle with sex are not a tiny minority. They are many.
I see the dark bags under your eyes from another late-night porn binge, and an even later night of laying awake worried about who you’re becoming. Your whole body aches with shame, exhaustion envelopes your body, mind and soul.
In church, I see you stare resolutely ahead during the sermon on pornography, avoiding eye contact at all cost. I see your damp palms and well-practiced poker face. I see the shame that destroys you as the pastor says again ‘We know men struggle with pornography. This one’s for them’.
When you recoil further into the darkness, when you inevitably end up medicating the pain of shame by using the very thing that causes it- I see you.
Every casual joke about sex puts you on edge. You worry if anyone had access to your phone or laptop what they would find, and what they would think of you. It’s easier to keep people away, you decide. At an arm’s length- sometimes by cancelling plans, often it comes out through anger. You push those you love away to protect yourself.
This only makes everything so much heavier. The loneliness begins to suffocate, frustration bubbles and burns and everything seems dark. Turning this around feels impossible. The only escape is the screen. It draws you in, entices your senses and spits you back out when it’s done with you. Yet you keep going back for that momentary escape from the dark. For that fleeting fantasy of connection and love.
It feels like you can’t stop.
I see you.
My eyes see the habitual struggles and pains of other women so clearly now. This is because I was once where you are, my vision and wisdom foggy with desire and shame. I was a pornography addict, bumping my way through existence, unable to see what was happening to my life and relationships.
I was first exposed to pornography when I was twelve years old.
The year was 2004 and the soundtrack to the decade was the scream and buzz of dial-up internet. Painstakingly slow internet didn’t protect me from finding image after image of nude bodies in revealing positions though. I was fascinated. I was excited and aroused. My conservative upbringing had left me lacking in the sex education department- I had very little understanding of sex, and even less so of the dangers of pornography. After the initial discovery, I returned again and again. It became my hobby- what I looked forward to after school and when my parents weren’t home.
A series of traumatic events turned me into a full-blown addict; I was bullied relentlessly in high school, even witnessing a number of physical attacks which left me with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I lost myself. This made it particularly easy to fall into an emotionally abusive relationship at age eighteen. This boy pressured me into having sex, despite knowing I wanted to wait until marriage. It wasn’t good. He humiliated and berated me, told me my body wasn’t right and made sure I knew my sexual skills were sub-par. Not enough. I didn’t perform like the women in his porn did, and he didn’t like that.
This is why I returned to the familiarity of pornography once we broke up. I wanted to learn what good sex was supposed to be like. What were women supposed to do? To act like? Say? How did they dress? It was an education…but more than that, it was a desperate search for the intimacy which was lacking in my life since childhood and only exacerbated by bullying and this awful relationship. I sought a fantasy where I could imagine I was loved, worthy to be made love to, I was desired, cherished and touched. That’s why I became dependant on pornography- not because of sex, but because I had an intimacy disorder. I was seeking intimacy but only found destruction and shame. And what was worse- is that every resource I sought out for porn addiction told me that porn was a men’s issue. Everything was drowning in masculine pronouns. Any mention of a woman was a wife of a male addict. Everyone I spoke to said that porn was a male issue- women just didn’t have this problem. I was well and truly trapped. Do you feel the same way?
My friend, I have good news. You don’t have to stay trapped! There is genuine hope for healing. My determined Google searches led me to a handful of incredible resources written by women, for women struggling with pornography. These include Beggar’s Daughter, Dirty Girls Ministries, No Stones: Women Redeemed from Sexual Addiction, A L.I.F.E Guide for Women and Naked in Public: A Memoir of Recovery from Sex Addiction and Other Temporary Insanities. These resources helped me work on healing inner pain and address my problematic behaviours. I believe they can help you, too. I recently added my own resource to this sacred collection, Restored: A Woman’s Guide to Overcoming Pornography . I wrote this practical guide because I know just how important it is to know you’re not alone, and to have a resource that specifically caters to the unique needs of women.
So, to the woman struggling with pornography- I see you. I know you. I was you. And I know that you can find freedom from shame and compulsion, just like I have.
Alice Taylor is a passionate advocate for women struggling with pornography. She is a professional writer and speaker, graduate of the Australian College of Theology, certified REAL Love Recovery Coach and founder of The Grace Spot. She is the author of Restored: A Woman's Guide to Overcoming Pornography. Alice lives in Sydney, Australia with her husband Lukas. Find out more about Alice and The Grace Spot at thegracespot.com