by Anonymous
Thirty plus years ago I was seven years old when I found a huge pile of pornographic magazines at our family home in the UK. They were stacked in a fireplace behind an old welsh dresser. I was assisting my mother in cleaning out the old dresser that was no longer wanted in our house. When we found them there was no discussion, no normalizing of the situation, but ignorance and a quiet ‘they’re your father’s magazines’. Submissive really, and yet something in me was fascinated. I was hooked and wanted to see and read more. The challenge was getting back to the magazines in secret! How is it possible that at the age of seven I knew that I could get something from them? It wasn’t that it was sexual at that stage: a fascination it could be dubbed. However, there is something much more sinister here looking back… there was already an inbuilt program wanting to be refuelled for this lifetime. And it started so early.
And so it continued, I would read and look and formulate and contemplate all manner of things. I remember this need then to have sex as soon as I could. To fulfill all of those desires that other men had fulfilled with sexy full breasted women. Interestingly, whenever I saw women in public places displayed in such a way, e.g. in the Sun Newspaper that my father would buy every day, the page three made me cringe. There was a lot here to be with, there was a secret growing inside that only I could know about. So externally there was a different card played. Sneaky, huh?! And yet this feeling was so strong that this was all wrong and yet I could not get myself out of the way. It felt overpowering.
Growing up then, the magazines disappeared over time and I felt more normal about girls. Teenage years brought up more tangible wants and needs and these were never going to be filled by the girls at school. Note that this could not be true, but I had had my every thought and ideal about women and what they would bring me and how I would make love to them so well. I had no idea of the consequences of what my early years’ exposure to this material would bring. This distortion of a whole gender would affect me deeply.
I knew women through images and stories made from men’s minds and so those mental images, pictures, stories of sexual conquest would start to surface, very subtly, disrupting and colouring the relationships I had with young women throughout school.
My first real sexual experience at the age of sixteen was with a girl whom I stayed in a relationship with for three years. Interestingly, I allowed the girl to dictate the pace of the sexual relationship, again a theme here, like being mothered along. It felt great to be wanted and there the nail was hit. It was the need to be wanted that led to the way my relationships formed. In observation, the sexual part of the relationship disintegrated for me very quickly – there was a time in the relationship that it became ‘pedestrian’, boring and underwhelming. It did not live up to the images I had formed in my head from the many images and stories I had read and viewed. The physical could not keep up with the mental stories I had been playing out. So what then was dictating my love life, which was never enough it seemed? It was not love of the person or indeed the person at all, but other energies that had me by the balls (pun necessary).
It exposed over time this dependence on mental pictures, thoughts and constructs on women; what sex was, lovemaking, relationships, how did women look, did I like that? Why not? She looks nice? Categorizing their ‘do-ability’ with other men, living in the pack that literally was only judging a woman by how much she would give out or give up. Would she live up to what we had all seen on a porn screen or in a porn magazine?!
This whole perspective on life felt dreadful, yet at the time was accepted and lived by all I knew. Regular contact with people in my line of work was so prevalent that even female customers were judged and given priority depending on attractiveness, how they looked, the attention that was potentially there, to have fun with, to control. Who they truly were was not considered!
It was all about what they were; a body, and a potential sexual conquest. Connections built on imagery and one-train thoughts, not from a loving space but a headspace corrupted with stuff I carried around with me day in and day out from a very young age.
The understanding that a man could just ‘be’ a man with a woman based on truth did not exist in my world. The connection to love at that time had been completely severed, or so it seemed.
Marriage came, and yet my life was still running a lie. When I needed to deal with something I chose alcohol and/or drugs, and was still falling back on porn to bolster an image I had of a man, that he could do whatever he wanted as he was the king.
This out of control way of life just kept rolling on, and yes it was dramatic and crazy, but not in a good way. Sadly, I recall saying that I would keep ‘going out and living this way throughout my life’, perpetuating the lie that living this way was free and easy and no-one could tell me what to do or how to behave. The key was that notion – thinking that I was thinking – when in fact I was not and had no idea what was making me, or propelling me through constant misery with a little ‘high’ scattered here and there, like crumbs to satisfy and keep the ‘dream’ alive.
Right through my marriage I was using pornography: sporadically yes, but it was there as a ’go to’ relief and problem solver. There was a recent article written that describes how this must feel for a woman in this situation (The Harm of Pornography). It is to a tee an exact copy of what went on. I recall the pressure that comes with bringing this energy into a relationship and imposing this onto the other person. How they must feel to be manipulated into using such imagery on the basis that it will make the partner happier, easier to be with, and all the stories – ‘not really my thing, but harmless enough’. At one point my wife explored it with me; however, this was short lived and not a great point in our lives.
So what was the motivation to continue? It had gotten so out of control that at one point it was not about gratification at all but about getting relief from the world, my days, the constant and endless pushing through and not coping. Not enjoying getting up and working, not loving being at home in my marriage, not handling the abuse I perpetually put myself through. I just needed out of all of it, and could not find another way.
It took a lot to one day say ‘I am never going to drink coffee again’. It started with that claim, and then started to slowly grow. Next it was alcohol and drugs. This took a while but it happened because I committed to it. Then, as if I had opened the door just ever so slightly, the light darted out. It was shining as brightly as it could through all the stuff I had layered on top of it, and I knew that it could all be so different. That light gave me the access to a couple of healing practitioners who really started to help me heal myself, to show me that there was a loving way of simply being in my body, in my life with all of these thoughts that essentially were not me. ‘Incidentally’, pornography was one of the last things to go. It was as if it had become so normal that I did not consider it an issue, and yet with my closest friends I could not admit the extent of the problem that underlined my every move.
It isn’t that pornography is bad per se, it is that it gave me the images and ‘fantasies’ I then expected, no, I demanded of the opposite sex to live up to, to fulfill as if it was their duty to do so.
I remember sitting in front of my healing practitioner at the time and just crying and sobbing, because when I named that pornography had been with me since age 7 I could feel the hold over me and how much I had let it control me, no different to addictive, illicit drugs. I was frightened that this had been exposed.
And yet it wanted to own me, control me as a man, what a man looked like, thought like, talked like. How that man was in relationships with women, with men, with children, with my family. Everything was tainted and nothing really me at all. I was constantly worrying about what others thought of me because this part of my life was not right on any level. Yet at the same time I could be the great friend, or the steadfast, achieving employee. Ticking all the boxes in a world full of boxes.
With this honesty came an opportunity to accept that what I really wanted all of that time that I was using pornography was the intimate knowing that I am enough. That I am a loving being that has the great capacity to love and be loved. That the love I have for myself needs to be felt and valued, honoured and cherished by me first… and then taken out into the world so that others get a glimpse of the love that they are.
My marriage at the time ended not because of pornography, or alcohol or drugs, the arguments, the disagreements or the marital abuse that I let myself be under for ten plus years. No, the marriage ended because I started to clean out all of that which I no longer wanted in my life and the other person could not accept that this could be true or possible, and that life could not be like this – actually loving and truly tender. They struggled with the fact that it is absolutely possible to turn everything around with a choice.
There has been much support in this growth over the past years by Universal Medicine. The workshops and healing courses presented by Serge Benhayon and Universal medicine have allowed me to feel absolutely how loving we all are as a human race and how glorious it is to feel the possibility of everyone accepting that love. The work on self continues in a loving exposé of that which is not love, gently and without perfection or judgment. It’s not that Serge Benhayon tells anyone what to do – that he certainly does not. It is a case of fact that the whole basis of the teachings Serge presents are there to support your innermost truths. It is like the inner-wrestling is over and the need for vices to justify our hidden turmoil no longer has its un-admitted control over you.
So what is it that leads a person to be born into a house where there is already a use of pornography as a foundation? Where there is loveless-ness already present? Could it be possible that the person had used sexual imagery, abuse and control through sex before, and was potentially picking up where they left off?
I can’t help but acknowledge that there have been many unloving ways to feel and learn from in this lifetime, made up of so many different lives, that this has helped me to break a momentum that was not allowing harmony in me and therefore the potential of harmony out there in the world. Not a huge jump, just one person accepting that change is possible, when there are so many who do not. But that’s the point; we all have to start with one small step, and sometimes that’s hard when all we have done is walk the other way many, many times over.
The advent of smartphone technology and computers, internet and seemingly instant access to the world, has given rise to the rife and despicable invasion upon all ages of pornography and images that depict sex in its most base forms. There is no illusion here that the world is under moral attack.
A recent article in the UK via the Independent newspaper highlighted this issue and the groundswell of this industry to such proportions that it appears that the world is being bombarded with such material in order to ‘normalize’ it. Effectively, the amount of pornographic material constantly washing over the world has for some time started to stick. And how is the fabric of our society coping?
How is it possible that internet pornography can be so common that the average age of a child when they see their first pornographic image is eleven? Some as young as eight are exposed! Did you know that the Internet, that tool we so heavily regard as part of our lives, is used 25% of the time to trawl for porn. And according to statistics 30,000 people are looking at porn at any given second.
Pornography has been around for a long time in various forms, so what is the fascination with this subject matter, and why now is there seemingly an explosion throughout all age groups for its use? What is happening in people’s lives that we need to view the sexual acts of strangers in order to feel something, even if that thing we feel is a different stimulated state of being, an arousal of a base nature?
Is it possible that over time and with the access to technology that ‘real human behaviour’ is now available for us all to feel, see and reel from. The fact that we have access to this stuff now is no different from times before, although seemingly more accessible because of TV, phones, DVDs etc. Has human behavior shifted, or are we seeing the truth more clearly?
Is it possible that the truth of the situation has become more ’ballsy’ (pun intended), ‘out there’ and ‘in your face’, because over time we have saturated ourselves with a need for our ‘individual’ rights to cover up our ills?
Is the issue that we fix an ill already in place that has not been identified? The ill that hides the true state of the human being and one that needs constant quelling through behaviours that in their conception are anti-social, yet if you get enough people championing them, their unacceptability is eventually eroded and they become weaved throughout the very fabric of society. Accepted, not by all and yet accepted all the same.
Is it possible that throughout the ages we have chosen, as a collective, to distort this societal fabric? The lack of responsibility from one generation to the next has over time compounded and essentially created a new foundation for this subverted and ‘monster like stuff’ to have its place, however low down the chain it may appear to be. The masses allow it. Does this not then speak more about us not dealing with our inner turmoils than it does about being liberal on sex? Yes, I am all for freedom of expression when making love, sex is deeply beneficial for us when it is making love, but that freedom to sexually express ought to come with the true honoring of the partner involved. They are not our source of ‘relief’ and neither are they our source of justifying our needs, whatever they are for each of us.
And, whether it be ‘porn’, drugs, alcohol or sexual slavery etc, is it possible that if this occurs in our world, are we not missing the actual point that over time this compounding state of human degradation is actually a reflection of all of our individual choices, day in day out and moment by moment? Have we all truly chosen what we felt to be true, or have we contributed by not speaking up, not having our say, not saying NO?
Related Reading
PORN – An Addiction Worth Talking About
Pornography: The Impact on Women
The Truth about Serge Benhayon 
It’s a vital conversation, reading this again I can see the very real need for articles like this to be available on a broad scale, as it’s heartfelt, real, and covers the way it rolls out over childhood and adult life and how the healing happens. It was so obvious reading today that when something is present that’s truly harmful, like the behaviour of porn addiction, then we have rejected something that would instead be very real and healing, such as sharing the fullness of our being in an intimate and transparent way. A fellow commenter below, nails it with this quote – “With porn like all other addictions it can control you as think you are getting the intimacy / stimulation without the having to be open, transparent, truly intimate or challenged by another in the flesh so to speak.”
With porn and soft-porn becoming so normalised, as is the sexualisation of children, we have to ask what’s going on at a deeper level in society that is allowing this, what part of our true nature is being rejected so that we have created a demand for sexual energy to enter every part of life and be considered a normal foundation? When we have pole dancing classes for girls (children, not just teens) and clothing at the local well known chain store that can dress your daughter (under the age of 10 years) like a sexual object we can see how deeply embedded and normalised porn and sexualisation has become. Instead of the delicate and deep beauty and love we can share in relationships we are reducing ourselves to a physical exchange with sex as the primary currency, and attraction and stimulation of each other from bodies that meet an image. We have let go of the depth and breadth of our inner qualities and the values we can bring to human relationships for the lowest common denominator. And it’s not ’empowered’ to sell out to sex this way, in fact we have disempowered ourselves deeply at a being level.
That fasincation and curiousity to start is a dangerously slipperly slope. Where I currently stand on the subject is understanding that it cannot be within a loving relationship with another. As you mentioned that energy controls the man to think he is in control of women or even vice versa. There is no love in control.
When humanity as a group turns something thoroughly indecent into a normal no one questions it.
This blog highlights how porn is not without its consequences, even if we are looking at it secretly behind closed doors.
“I just needed out of all of it” – this really sums it all up, and in seeking ‘out’ we choose numbing, distraction, escape, withdrawal – and instead of ‘out’ we are getting ourselves even more deeply trapped.
A great example of how even as children we innately know when something does not feel right, but how our curiosity and fascination can take over and before we know it we can become hooked on something that leads us down a wayward path of destruction and disregard. But as you say, its clearly a choice that we can make to either stay on that path or return to what we know is true, and once that decision is made to stay with the truth of what we feel inside, then there is nothing to question.
Nailed it Elizabeth – we are offered opportunity after opportunity over and over again so that we may learn to bring the amazing love that lives within us and express it over and over again.
We are so much more than just a body for sexual relief – and gender is here not the focus. All men and women can potentially be handled as objects when there is a disconnection from our essence. The pain of disconnection from the essence can be so strong, that when the pornography or the degradation of another comes up as an option or a choice, it is simply a relief from not feeling the pain of disconnection OR indeed it can act as a distraction from this pain. Connect, and you cannot handle another as an object, Connect, and you cannot handle yourself as an object, Connect and you get to feel the love that you already are and know you are ready to be held in that same way. However, before connection we need to realise the disconnection we are in, and give permission for the connection to our essence. These all feel like words until such time that we recall the connection we had from an earlier age.
Amazing blog expressed with such honesty that it opens up the flood gates for everyone around. Thank you Anon for this intimate sharing about a taboo topic – the topic not being pornography, but rather an intimate understanding of how this has affected you in its miriad of ways in your relationships.
Very strong statement and an in depth honest appraisal Anonymous. It has certainly made me ponder where I have been involved. . . The same as Anonymous has exposed you want to keep this as a secret. I was not into it much but it was so common around me. When I feel this the first thing I do is not want to be honest that I did partake in it. I did porn to relieve and distract myself from feeling and being intimate with my sexiness not understanding that my feminine moves are natural as a man and fully sexy in my body. This is certainly a lot to write about, the bombardment of these images.. and I agree with how overpowering these images are .. “And yet this feeling was so strong that this was all wrong and yet I could not get myself out of the way. It felt overpowering.” HOWEVER it’s so true we do have a constant choice that is honouring of You and all in every moment “They struggled with the fact that it is absolutely possible to turn everything around with a choice.”
The creation of an inner ring and an outer one , where the inner one (secret) has the upper hand in terms of its power to mobilize us, is a true killer. Not only create separation from others, but also from/within ourselves.
Isn’t it interesting how we can feel a lack of intimacy, and seek to have this, but what is offered – like with porn – is not intimate building at all but is just a momentary form of relief from not feeling intimate or having intimacy in our days. Wouldn’t it be far more logical to stop and see what is happening and seek to change what relationships we have got and to bring more intimacy there?
I have so much respect for your honesty here, what I find fascinating is that porn changed the way you saw women and what you expected of them. Imagine how rife porn is and how many men are equally effected by the same misconception. It seems to me that things like porn or alcohol are not as innocent as we like to make out and that they could actually deeply effect not only all our relationships but our fundamental perception of the world.
I remember at about the same age being at a friend’s house and coming across her father’s collection of porn magazines in an old dresser in his office, which I might add he kept under lock and key. My friend had caught a glimpse of these in her office and hatched a plan when I was visiting to investigate. We snuck the key off her father’s keychain when he wasn’t looking and waited for him to leave. We then snuck in and began to immerse ourselves, as young girls, into a world of images that scream at you to deny your own sacred femaleness and perform instead to the dictates of a society that has been led astray from the divine preciousness we each in essence are. It was a life changing moment but not in a good way. It is only now as a 42 year old woman and mother to two young girls that I am beginning to reconnect with this sacredness and listen to this inner voice instead of the external voice that seeks to shape us into all that we are not.
The moment we make love about anything less than the love we know it is and can be then we are accepting less. We are essentially saying I am ok with a lesser version of love and then we get it caught up in the mix with sex and physical attraction and relief which have nothing to do with love. I know for myself the moment I come back to the love that I am nothing outside of this love is any greater, sure it is amazing to share this with a partner intimately but it can be done at any and every moment in the day not just the bedroom. But because we do not live this level of love we then get tantalised by things like porn as we override what we know and we then can easily get a desire and a sense of wanting relief from the tension of not living the love we are.
Since reading this yesterday, I have a strong sense of how we are changed as children when we come across pornographic magazines, and how this can affect us as women and men and how we see ourselves. It could result in disconnection to our own body parts and the relationship we have with them. When I was ten years old, I had access to a medical book all about the human body. Couples having sex were drawn in this book but what I remember most was how compelled I was to look at the pictures when my parents were out, and this in itself came with a thrill of being found out. There was always a sense of hiding, not getting caught and a guilty feeling. Not a good start in life.
Our society is so saturated with pornographic images, is it any wonder that young men and young women get the idea that this is what you do and this is how you behave. In reality, being with someone else does not live up to the images we are fed and run with. As a result, we avoid a true connection based on love.
It was great to name the sneakiness, the addictiveness and the shame that surrounds pornography use. With this melting pot, along with all the pictures it feeds us about how intimate relationships should be, we are doomed to be unfulfilled and live way less than the love that we are in relationship.
A great blog Thanks Anon.
With porn like all other addictions it can control you as think you are getting the intimacy /stimulation without the having to be open,transparent, truly intimate or challenged by another in the flesh so to speak.
On a energetic level with so many lost or contracted fellow brothers missing true connection with themselves/others and the porn stars also the same, but wanting approval/recognition, also maybe victims of abuse or perpetuators of sexual abuse. There is a cycle repeating itself with a huge chain of supply and demand that is circulating waiting for more and; more players to join the game so to speak.
To top it off human greed – control and manipulation of others through human trafficking – (modern day slavery), and the drug industry make it a very seedy but profitable business for many of the people at the top. But lets think more about the root cause – with out the demand there wouldn’t need to be such a big supply.
We often think that something no longer affects us because it was so long ago but that is not the case, and porn is a great example of one of those energy configurations in the body which can own us. We may see it as a harmless thing that we do or something that we keep secret, but it is designed to stop us from truly connecting with others because it colours our perceptions of ourselves and others. This blog clearly spells out how the thinking can be distorted by the energy porn comes with and is a hundred miles away from a truly loving connection.
Thank you anonymous for this deeply revealing and honest blog, raising many questions that need to be asked about this taboo subject. Decency and respect begin where porn ends. We need to understand our deeper motivations, feelings of deep emptiness and lack of intimacy within our lives for a start.
The King just aims at doing what he wants. But what he wants cannot get and try to control to get it and when does not get it he gets out of control. A crazy lifestyle fed by images.
There’s so much you offer here in this very honest offering, Anonymous. Thank you. What strikes me is the fact that we can all feel the off-ness even though we have normalized and accepted much ill in our life, but in addressing ‘issues’ we want to fix them but we don’t really want to admit that we have played a part in that and look at the root causes.
We cannot clean up the mess (pun intended) if we are not prepared to see or admit to the mess in full. Thank you Anonymous for your honest blog and the questions you have raised for us all as we are all part of society and hence all have a responsibility in this, whether we do porn or not.
Basic decency and respect are the cornerstones of our society but on every level porn breaches those values at the expense of our quality of relationships with ourselves and others
Thank you for exposing the insidious harm that is inflicted by pornography.
This blog really blows your socks off, in showing how over time, lives in fact we’ve normalised behaviours which have led us to this point now, a highly sexualised world where porn and it’s imagery are going mainstream and we are all a part of this creeping extreme; by not saying no we have in affect said yes to what we now have. Ouch.
We don’t know what the effect of ubiquitous pornography has had on society. What I find is that many writers assume that their audience has had contact with pornography and is familiar with it.
A very honest blog Anonymous, it explains how many are caught up in pornography and accept it as normal behaviour when deep down we know that it is an unhealthy aspect of any relationship and is very harmful, boys are watching pornography and think that that is what women want, a time to stop and really educate people about the truth of pornography.
A very honest and eye-opening account of how damaging images can be to our lives and relationships. No one can live up to our images, we can’t even live up to our own images because they are not real, they are not true and they have been given to us by forces that do not equal the enormity and purity of energy that is found within our hearts.
What an honest and raw blog about such a big issue. Thank you anonymous for talking so frankly about your experiences. I never got into porn myself but I remember as a child and a teenager also being bombarded with many images and stories about women, sex and relationships so much so that by the time I was an adult I had a very distorted view about all of it which took time, commitment and healing to unravel. It is a great point that we need to really examine what messages we are allowing to be the normal with our boys and men in society.
Pornography be that page 3, magazines, videos, even the way women’s bodies are used in advertising and music videos has a lot to answer for. It leads to and embeds the objectification of women deep into a man’s psyche and once the image is in there it takes a long time to reconfigure that, assuming that it ever does. It spreads so much poison through so many lives and the worst thing – its seen as completely normal.
The more we share how detrimental such pornographic material is to us as a race of people and say no to watching it or participating in these acts, the more changes for the better we will see in future generations. What you share here Anonymous is quite shocking but needs to be spoken about and healed for the human race to bring equality, and true love back into our lives . We should expect no less than love and respect.
Because of the way that porn has been so readily accepted by most, addressing the reason why it is sought never really surfaces as we can just brush it off as, nothing to worry about when in fact it is a huge problem that if we are affected, take into our relationships, perhaps without the partners knowing.
Thank you for your expose on what it has been like having porn in your life from such an early age. I experienced something similar, not quite age 7, but was exposed to pornographic magazines around 9 or 10, this did shape how I view myself as a young girl and teenager. I was always comparing myself, disliked my body and didn’t ever feel good enough. This has since changed, but didn’t until much later in life, thank you for sharing all that you have.
It is mentioned in this article that to be born into a house with pornography as a base, is it possible one had lived with a false sexual imagery before. If so, and I believe this is very possible, I am in humble appreciation for a man who has been able to see, feel and let go of pornography and live life with the love now expressed in this article.
This is a brilliant article, deeply exposing and transparent, and in the depth of its honesty it offers a healing to men and women alike, and to the relationships we have with each other. For we are laced are we not, with the ripple effects of a pornographic industry that have been generating for a long time now, the wanton images of women, the body parts to savour after, and how men and women are to be wth each other like potential conquests, waiting to be ‘game over.’…. This is the world we have created longing for something, anything, to substitute the intimacy we deeply crave – an intimacy that can only come from within us first and then shared honestly and transparently with another.
Pornography denigrates us into purely fleshy animal beings. It also completely takes the love out of making love and it puts pressure and expectations on the way we should be with our partners rather than the natural tender loving beings we are. Respect should be 1st and foremost not purely about getting ourselves off on each other – that’s reduces who we are and feels horrible especially compared to what love making can truly be.
No is the only true and loving response.
Huge appreciation that you started to take those small steps, and continued, to heal this insidious addiction, ‘we all have to start with one small step, and sometimes that’s hard when all we have done is walk the other way many, many times over.’
This blog is a much needed topic to talk about, so people understand the harm, devastation and addictive nature of porn. Thank you for sharing so honestly.
This is such a sobering read. Thank you for sharing with us because it is incredibly rare to have this level of honesty around the impact of porn in our lives.
It is both genders playing ball with an energy that seeks to undermine the true power that is innate in both men and women. The whole porn industry is a case of supply and demand. If we weren’t living in disconnection to ourselves and with each other, we would not be craving the pseudo form of intimacy that such images offer and thus playing ball with such a destructive force that influences and manipulates humans to reduce their expression to one that is purely animalistic and whose main agenda is stop both women and men expressing their true nature – their sensitivity, delicateness and true power – the truth of who we are.
A very exposing and completely transparent look at the harm of pornography that reveals the real issue here and that is that we crave intimacy yet we refuse to show another who we truly are and instead hide behind self-imposed ‘walls’ as we masquerade a lesser and more socially acceptable part of ourselves, lest our love be rejected. We need to learn to not be so invested in love – we are love – as is everyone else. And while not all are actively expressing this love but instead championing a version of love that is more about need than true connection, deep down it is what we are and therefore we cannot seek to own it in any way shape or form as a way of protecting ourselves from being hurt. True love never hurts – it is our withholding of its expression that wounds us to the core.
thank you for this super super honest account of the deeply insidious and harmful effects that porn had on your life and your relationships – multiply this by several million and we would have a deeply troubled world – which we do.. in the modern day we still have sexual slavery, trafficking, and abuse of both men and women and even children. We still have control and domination and objectification. What if we could restore true intimacy, connection, respect and true equalness – how would the world be different,… and it starts with the honesty of all, such as you have shared here. thank you again.
I know I have been party to porn – the allowing of myself to view myself as an object- ! As a teen I tried to live up to an image. As a woman I have done the same and am only now seeing the amazing qualities that being a woman brings that I’ve tried to stifle through playing ball with the ‘am I attractive?’ It’s not the cliche of letting oneself go but the opposite. Of valuing myself and reflecting this to the world. Yes, there is a lot more there but it’s starting with me being open to the fact that I am way more than enough, and living this beautiful divinity that I am always. In this way porn makes no sense. The moral degradation that we are seeing in society that needs to be said no more to is done then, not with pious rhetoric but living the qualities we are as men and women naturally.
One of the things I can really relate to in this blog is the denial of who I am innately as a man in favour of the images, beliefs, expectations etc of what a ‘real man’ is. I reflect on how easily I sold out to these pictures rather than trusted what I felt and knew within – and this is something I am having to work hard to heal today. I can recall my confusion as a young man, confronted with stories of sexual ‘conquests’ told by friends that did not feel loving at all – but rather than question their motivation, I doubted myself and questioned myself as a man. This blog makes a key point about the importance of love as the foundation of relationships. This is something that does not leave me feeling confused – but something to which my heart willingly opens.
This is an incredibly honest blog, that is so needed in our times. There was so much on offer in terms of exposing what many men are own by and how this effects lives. You bring healing and tenderness that lives within every man, if loving choices are made.
There are many different views of porn from men in my experience, some men like to stay quiet, a little embarrassed about viewing it, while at the other end of the scale there is the bravado of watching porn, the guy in your football team who would share the videos and talk it up. What is hopefully going to become more common is for men to speak up and share it is harming, share experiences like this one, and that society is lesser for porn having a place and how much better it is for relationships if we are honest about why we really use it.
This is an incredibly, amazing story. To let go completely of behaviours that are so deeply entrenched perhaps from many lifetimes is always deeply inspiring. Pornography goes on behind closed doors and will carry on unless we change our ways but what I find deeply disturbing which Anonymous touches on is the denial of something we all know is deeply harming; that the exterior we can give out is nothing but trying to throw dust in people’s eyes of the truth of what is really going on. Thank you Anonymous for sharing.
Hugely honest Anonymous. Thank you for being so open and real and reminding us it’s ok to seek support when we’re dealing with something no matter how huge or embarrassing it is, because the chances are there are millions of people just like us that are dealing with the same thing and don’t know how to help themselves.
It’s amazing to feel the complete absence of the energy of pornography in what you have written. What I mean is that from someone who has been dominated and driven by it, you have made the choice to no longer allow this and in doing so, it has completely gone from your body. It has no hold over you whatsoever – like it was never there. And in this you are then able to write powerfully and from the authority of your own experience, without an ounce of the energy of pornography. Awesome and inspiring work.
To truly break the hold of seeing a woman as a sexual object, is a powerful thing for a man to do. It takes time, much dedication and a true willingness to confront and let go the distortions and needs that would have us ruled by any such images in the slightest. Women can also hold such images – and as far as I’m aware, are rising rapidly in numbers of ‘users’ of porn on the net…
What you’ve thus shared here Anonymous is mightily significant for all – men and women alike – that we actually seek back the place in us that knows such distortions and want for gratification are not true, and return to honouring the precious nature of who we all truly are.
That young children can so readily access porn today is an indictment upon our societies and what we’ve permitted to be. And so each step taken by every one of us in truly removing that which distorts and does not respect another in full, is to be claimed in full and deeply celebrated. In essence, we must return to the preciousness within ourselves, letting go all of that which has clouded and guarded it.
A very powerful article, exposing our collective responsibility in the normalisation of porn and its rampant use – particularly seen today across the internet. Thank-you for the depth of your honesty here Anonymous. I agree totally, and have said this since my teens, that pornography grossly distorts our relationships with each other, and our view of the the other sex (I actually used to pretty much ‘lecture’ the guys at school when they got onto one of their dad’s porn videos at parties, etc., standing in front of the TV screen and calling it all to account… yep).
Thing is, as you’ve shared, we need to go deeper as to WHY it is so rampant, and has become as insidiously dark as it has done… We are craving true connection and intimacy with ourselves and each other, and are a world lost in seeking stimulation in order to distract from the truth of what we are actually missing, and missing desperately in our lives – i.e. real and lived Love.
Thank you for this very powerful and much needed blog. Extremely transparent and deeply exposing. I understand that we are all affected by the energy behind porn that currently exists in our society, and we are potentially contributing to it in ways we may never consider possible. For example, when we choose to hold back our sacredness as women and our tenderness as men we are potentially contributing to this awful energy of porn, could it be that if it is affecting one person then in actual fact it also affects everyone. I also understand that it is our craving for intimacy that often leads to unloving choices and addictions (porn is one of many forms of addictions we have created). There is so much you have covered in this blog that invites us to start talking about what is really going on and how things affect us in life and everyone around us.
“there was already an inbuilt program wanting to be refuelled for this lifetime” It is true that we carry the imprints of all our unresolved issues lifetimes after lifetime until we get it sorted, it is amazing if we are honest how we can feel when we have carried something from the past for it to be released with such force that it almost feels like you have no control over it. It is only through our connection to the essence of who we are and living it through all our movements that we can let go of all our distractions and once again be the love that we truly are.
You’re raw honesty is deeply refreshing and appreciated. I love that you exposed how disconnected you were from being able to see women as anything but objects for your desire after visually consuming porn since young… severing you ability to connect to them as anything more, let alone who they were. How stunning that the light darted out when you opened the door allowing you to have the awarenesses you now do and can share for others to learn from…. Especially that they too can turn everything around with a choice.
I have found it really interesting to read this from a male point of view, from someone who has been addicted to porn and is able to explain why. It is only by looking at this honestly that we can hope to support young people who are addicted themselves, or even just discovering it.
‘over time this compounding state of human degradation is actually a reflection of all of our individual choices, day in day out and moment by moment.. A massive reality-check of what we need to eventually come to, one by one all of us in order to turn the sorry state of our world around.
One of the most sinister parts of pornography is that unlike drugs and alcohol that can be more obvious to those around you, pornography is not and what it does is sets up the person looking at it as being bad, naughty, wrong and that it needs to be kept a secret. It’s something that is kept hidden in relationships and hush hushed in families, but the poison of it infiltrates, as you have so honestly shared, every relationship and view you have of the opposite sex and how you see yourself as a man and as a woman. I know since first seeing a pornographic magazine when in primary school that it did and has affected the relationship I’ve had with myself as a woman and in the relationships I’ve had with men in my life. My perception of being sexy and what that means was completely back to front. Thank you anonymous for exposing pornography and how it plays out in our lives in great detail.
“because over time we have saturated ourselves with a need for our ‘individual’ rights to cover up our ills?”
The truth in this lies at the core of every choice we make without consideration of all others. In today’s world it is this mind set that brings the deepest hurts, not just to another, but fundamentally to ourselves.
Nowadays pornography circulates non stop through smartphones between groups of men. What is interesting is that it does not matter whether they are single or married, whether they have children or not. It just circulates. It is ‘normal’. It is part of a way of relating between men, a shared code if you will, that apparently brings something into their lives. In truth, pornography works as a fake glue to support the creation of an us that also supports lives lived in a way that require permanent relief.
“…yet if you get enough people championing them, their unacceptability is eventually eroded and they become weaved throughout the very fabric of society. Accepted, not by all and yet accepted all the same.”
This is an important point you are making here, it is so easy to become blind to what is really going on when we are swamped with images every day it becomes normalised and we stop registering the evil that is going on.
A big step to take Anonymous to expose porn addiction and set yourself free. And as you say it is just one person making this step and it seems small in the face of what is going on in society, but each step has a ripple effect that is felt by all and will change the world ever so slightly.
Thank you for writing this very honest and hugely important blog as the increase in the use of pornography by the younger and younger generation is growing at an alarming rate.
I keep coming back to this article on pornography, thank you for your honesty and clarity. What struck me today is the level to which we have objectified each other and that is true for both men and women. We look at another in terms of their function, whether they are someone who serves us in a supermarket or another whom we regard solely as a sexual object, there to give us what is lacking in our own life. Only thing is, it doesn’t really work and any satisfaction is very short-term and no more than mere and momentary satisfaction. There is and can be no fulfilment and this is where the addiction enters the equation.
Porn is often referred to in humorous ways and yet there seems nothing fun about it at all, from my own experience I never enjoyed porn, it would offer relief in some measure though not for long, but it never felt good to subject myself to the images and I am sure it was not fun for those on the screen or page. And if its not fun, and I can actually feel it is dense and heavy, not light and playful, then what is the harm of porn? It is worth exploring and acknowledging as the access to porn among our children is distorting their world and their ability to form wholesome relationships. And aren’t relationships the cornerstone of our world, how we as a humanity successfully interact.
Thank you for the honesty that pours forth from this article; I could feel the dark place that you were in for so long and then eventually the gradual transformation into a place of inner connection and light, and the shedding of what was not true in your life. I am sure by sharing what you have you will be shining a light for others into this shadow world, offering them the opportunity to make the changes in their lives that you have chosen to make in yours. When we share from our lived experience it offers others the reflection to truly examine what is going on their lives, and from there the choice to make a change is theirs, and theirs alone.
In the future people will be more open to the fact that any porn in any amount is extremely harming, unfortunalty at this present time most of society still sees it as some kind of entertainment yet this is far from the truth. The impact porn has on us all is deeply detrimental,our society is far less safe place because of it.
I love you have gone full circle with this anonymous and have come out free of addiction and more solid rounded person because of it. Thank you for sharing.
Seven is such a young age to have seen pornographic magazines, which as you say could also be seen in daily newspapers bought. This highlights our responsibility we have for others as parents, publishers, teachers etc. It also shows that when we are silent about something, like your mother was with you when you both found the magazines how this allows an underlying insidious energy to come in, where if it was expressed and talked about it could have been a completely different story. And as you have shared here porn is so insidious in distorting how we see others, even work colleagues! ‘Regular contact with people in my line of work was so prevalent that even female customers were judged and given priority depending on attractiveness, how they looked, the attention that was potentially there, to have fun with, to control. Who they truly were was not considered! It was all about what they were; a body, and a potential sexual conquest’ It enables us to degrade each other, is not a reality and distorts and affects our ability to have true relationships and connect with people in an honest and honouring way. I recently seen and been aware of many articles from medical professionals in the UK that they are seeing far more men and younger men with erectile dysfunction because of porn. These men are unable to have a normal sexual relationship with their partners. Maybe this physical health condition is needed for us to understand how harming porn can be. I know pornography is also used out of curiosity or wanting to find out more about sex and sexual orientation but it completely lacks true intimacy and if used as you shared to know that we are ‘enough’ is never going to work. I definietly feel as you have shared that porn is used instead of looking at or dealing with inner turmoils and it is SUCH an abusive industry. We are so much more than what we are currently living, we are more than our physical body but are in a physical body to claim our truth to return back to where we are from. When we look at this in truth and are able to see the far bigger and grander picture we will understand how things like porn have been used to take us away from ourselves and ultimately the truth of who we are. Until such time the effects of porn and the industry itself constantly needs to be discussed, addressed and the abusiveness of it called out.
“Yes, I am all for freedom of expression when making love, sex is deeply beneficial for us when it is making love, but that freedom to sexually express ought to come with the true honoring of the partner involved.” I am in awe of this blog Anonymous and the sentence above says so much. Truly honouring ourselves and our partners feels like the most natural thing in the world. The use of pornography is not honouring of anybody and I have always known it has no place in a loving relationship and yet I sold out on this because I felt it was impossible to find a partner that did not do porn. I now have much greater understanding for those that use pornography and although I no longer judge the choice to use pornography I now know I would rather be single forever than have an intimate relationship with a man that uses porn.
Those who are involved in pornography feel they consume it while in truth they are consumed by it. It is the other way around.
A distorted world indeed where we think nothing of using each other for the relief of our pent up emotions and unresolved hurts.
Pornography has become so normal and accessible in our society today, it is shocking when we consider the ill side effects on our relationships with each other as we all crave intimacy and connection. This can only start to change when we choose to bring more awareness to our own quality within and build that relationship with ourselves first, embracing the fragility and tenderness in our bodies that will allow us to truly connect with another.
It is through our own commitment to connect deeply with our bodies and let go of the different ways we have been managing life and getting relief from that we can ultimately start to take responsibility and build a new foundation that supports us to build more intimacy and self-connection to the tenderness and delicacy within us all.
I would love your blog to be read the whole world round, pornography is so harmful yet as a society we have yet to acknowledge this. We see the out play of porn with the increased number of sexual assaults and rapes.
Very appreciative of the honest sharing on porn, the act has to be exposed for what it is
Having had my own experiences with pornography sometime back one would and could say that this has been left behind. The interesting thing is that the energy of pornography still runs through me, as it does everyone for it is part of what we have all chosen. The same can be said of murder, rape, stealing, violence, drug use etc. This means that there is a clear and definite choice being made not to choose this particular ‘flavour of life’. And this is the important part we have a choice, in each and every moment.
The very word ‘pornography’ feels harmful. And as is so clearly shown here it gets in the way of an intimate and loving relationship in making love with a partner.
Thank you for sharing your life and your learning with us. I found it telling that letting go of coffee came before letting go porn. Just goes to show what a strong hold it has on people.
Pornography has an energy that remains with the person who uses it. There is a sleaziness about them and they are not able to have a deep and fulfilling relationship with me. I feel like I am objectified. I don’t feel safe and harm will come of it. This iteration/knowing happens in a split second. It is known at any age by all.
Pornography devalues us as human beings. It puts the body and sex above all else giving absolutely zero respect to the women and men involved. It paints a deeply unrealistic picture which is unattainable. It leads to comparison and unsureness when people then actually come to having sex as they try to live up to what they have seen on tv rather than actually deeply connecting to your partner and allowing the love between you both to flow.
Pornography is such a massive disrespect to women, why would we ever allow our partners to bring that energy and that disrespect into our relationships? Surely nothing is worth being valued that little.
The principles of any addiction be that drugs, porn, whatever, is based on and fed by a miserable vicious circle of emptiness that keeps you separated from the true connection you deeply desire with both yourself and others and its all about getting a fix to give you the sensation of a high that lifts you artificially from that same misery. But this is all an illusion as the high of any artificial lift must always come down and when this happens you are pinged like a rubber band back to the reality of that same emptiness or even beyond once that high is gone. The truth is you cannot ever satisfy an insatiable craving that originates from an emptiness.
Pornography is an abusive behaviour. The fact is that abusive behaviour impacts All not just the user. This is where we all need to get to. There is no private experience. The people in then pictures are real. They are affected. The relationships we form are affected. It goes on. Porn is not a private experience it affects the All.
Anonymous this is a brilliant blog that totally exposes the rot of pornography and leaves the reader with no doubt that ‘there is no illusion here that the world is under moral attack’. The fact is pornography is very harmful and has a knock on effect to all our relationships by how it invades and forms a shadow on our society, a shadow that needs to be responsibly cleared and healed by us all saying no to what is not true.
“Did you know that the Internet, that tool we so heavily regard as part of our lives, is used 25% of the time to trawl for porn.”. This almost made me want to jump off the internet. That is an incredibly high percentage. It is becoming more and more prevalent in today’s society and we need more conversations like yours to be had about the insidious evil affects of the porn industry. Amazing work you have done to bring the self-care and self-love to a point that you can then let go of the abusive behaviours.
It is amazing quite how many images porn can give you about what sex or making love should or could look like. It is mainly all unrealistic and only adds to our insecurities about ourselves. What if we do not measure up (in all ways) to what we see? What will our partner think? What if we don’t last for hours on end? all these is what takes away the naturalness we would otherwise have around making love.
My experience of porn was that it was very addictive, the sheer volume of content on the internet makes for a fascination, that the next image is going to satiate some deep held need, and I could feel how it was difficult to draw away from once opened and the browsing started. Yet there was always relief and shame when I did shut it down. It definitely has an unexplained energy, or you could say force, behind it and I wonder if a grown man finds it hard to stop then how is it for those young boys who are exposed to it from a young age. This is a form of abuse we are allowing in society, and it is harming the relationships we build, with our self in terms of our own regard, and also how men view women and the expectations of what an intimate relationship actually entails.
It is deeply disturbing how porn is so assessable. One day in the future we all look back as a humanity and it will be clear as day how insidious, destructive and deeply harming all forms of porn are.
An incredible blog. Stunning. The whole world needs to read it. What strikes me is that for you to get your first fix of pornography from which the “addiction” was then born, you had to stumble across some magazines behind a fireplace. But now, with the technology and internet, those images (and way, way, way worse) are readily available to every single person on the planet. You have so eloquently described the massive and devastating effect that pornography has had on your life. In 2016, how many young people are starting down that same path? Action must be taken.
You have initiated a much needed discussion here and can speak with the authority of one who knows. This is where the demise of porn will have to come from, people like you who have experienced the debilitating and devastating effects porn does have on all who use it and who come to the understanding that it is not the way to true intimacy and love.
In today’s modern day world we are constantly ‘Ticking all boxes in a world full of boxes’…. But what is interesting is that the actual quality of those ticks being made in is never questioned. How can the likes of accepting porn of which is largely based on the degradation and shame of another as a normal part of your everyday life not have a ripple effect on all that you do and thus compromise the quality and integrity of each and every other tick that you make. So despite people living the illusion and thinking that their little secrets and can stay hidden in the background and behind closed doors as externally all their boxes are being ticked, undeniably the quality of all of our collectively ticks shadows our every other move every day.
I appreciate your honesty and candour – pornography does need to be talked about and your article is setting the right tone here.
Brilliant and honest account of the insidius harms of porn in our lives, and the way we are owned by it only unitl we choose to reconnect to our innate qualities of tenderness and love that we are and accept that as who we are. Thank you!
I wasn’t exposed to any porn in my home growing up. I remember seeing a film and some magazines as a teenager and I didn’t like the way it felt in my body, it seemed so bizarre and false. In my twenties I was considered conservative and a bit boring because I wasn’t interested in porn and this was becoming a part of many of my friends’ social life and relationships.
A tremendous insight into the impact of porn on a developing boy and how it shaped you as a man. Also an amazing peek into the minds of men who use porn and what’s truly going on in there.
Such a terrific exposé on the harm of pornography! I speak with many people whose partners (mainly male) are addicted to pornography as they struggle with its impacts yet feel as if they are odd for being uncomfortable about it being part of their intimate relationship. It has been normalised to such a degree that they feel coerced into accepting it. I was once at a workshop on this subject and the presenter spoke about the alarming ways that people are hooked into harder and harder forms of pornography on the internet. He actually said that he was no longer going to research the subject because he found it so disturbing personally and could feel that he was slowly becoming addicted himself so knew that he had to call a halt immediately. What an insidious evil yet it’s seen as harmless.
We all crave intimacy and mostly crave it because we were not taught from young ages to go within, that we are everything already. Pornography is a way that we don’t have to truly feel our lack of intimacy we have with ourselves first, then we try to get it from somewhere else, and never ever going to get it from a magazine or on the internet.
Thank-you anonymous for your honesty. I had never considered pornography in the same category as other drugs, just another form of addiction. This blog as given me an understanding of why people can become hooked on porn. I agree it is time the harmful effects that pornography has on society was exposed.
This is a very rich blog which shows the actual harm that porn does to the person who is using it. As the author says it is no different than using alcohol or drugs to avoid feeling what is there to be felt. The porn industry is out of control so it is great to have articles like this that say it as it is rather than gloss over something that is very harming for all concerned.
Thank you Anonymous for the depth and honesty of this blog which has given me a greater insight into the truly insidious nature of porn and how much it owns people. The inspiring thing is that by making different choices you are healing from lifetimes of damaging images.
It seems this blog has left no mouldy cover unturned. Porn is a subject that should be talked about more often, as every person in the world would know someone who is directly or indirectly affected by porn in one way or another.
This personal experience gives massive insight into how this can affect someone’s mental health for nearly a lifetime, until they choose otherwise.
Discussion is needed; why do so many go to porn?
There is something very disturbing when one looks at pornography, being an avid (addicted) internet user in my teens porn was very frequently stumbled upon. I write stumbled because there appears to be the accepted ‘rule’ that porn can be found in every single subject on the internet bar none. Has the need for craving of that true intimacy risen hence the explosion of access to such hooking in and disturbing material? It seems sad to consider that such a need would drive a person to be so desperate as to seek porn regardless of the harms it creates all for a moment of relief. Yet it also highlights how important it is to bring that true intimacy into the world which doesn’t need to involve physical acts but simply connecting to a person.
The advent now of all things technological and mobile means that porn, imagery and the written word streams into everyone’s pockets. The fix is rather easier to satisfy in this day and age – what does this say about our ways? That we need to distract ourselves further from the calling of our souls to be who we truly are.
Thank you Anonymous for this honest and insightful blog – it has always escaped me why the need for porn especially when you have a partner that you are making love with – your article has answered a lot of questions. Thank you for sharing your healing experience of going right back to the 7 year old and clearing all of that ill momentum from you, that must have been so freeing and expansive – well done!
Thank you Anonymous, this is a very healing article to read. Pornography is not harmless, it never has been, pornography has a fierce grip on us dictating our relationships and undermining our ability for intimacy and connection.
It is clear from reading this honest account of your experience of pornography, that children being exposed to such images would distort their ability to see another as the same as them, and then go onto having destructive relationships.
Your blog Anonymous provided me with a very much needed understanding of pornography; I really felt the devastation and great harm it can cause.
I very much appreciate you telling your story and expressing the wisdom you gained throughout your transformation.
‘It had gotten so out of control that at one point it was not about gratification at all but about getting relief from the world, my days, the constant and endless pushing through and not coping’. Pornography is the same as any addiction – an escape from the reality and responsibility of the world where many are feeling that they are not coping or keeping up with. A world where you can create fantasies completely divorced from reality and create an image of yourself that pretends you are someone you are not and that the people around you are someone they are not. All this comes with the illusion that this is a better version of you and is a very abusive way to live. Thank you for your honesty with what you have shared anonymous.
Further, if the imagery we create in our minds about what we want and expect in life and our relationships comes from a corrupt place such as the source that pornography does, then the foundations of these relationships are not based on truth but rather an image or fantasy created in our mind that no one can ever live up to in the real world. This is the corruption of living with the perpetual illusion of our imagination.
Pornography is a pretty horrendous reflection of the choices we have made as a society to overlook abuse, and make unloving choices. When we look at it like this, we can see the importance of making each next choice as loving as possible. This might be in the way we wash our hair, or write a document that many hundreds of people will see. Every interaction and moment has the possibility to carry all the Love of the Universe, we just need to choose it. When we start to make these choices – the need and call for things like pornography just is not there.
Yes Amelia we all have a responsibility to make loving choices in every area and create a reflection to others that makes pornography less appealing.
Well said Amelia, ‘Every interaction and moment has the possibility to carry all the Love of the Universe, we just need to choose it.’ what an awesome reminder and responsibility we have to bring this with us to everyone.
What really stood out for me within this blog is what caused your marriage to end. It is very interesting that we somehow cannot believe that it is possible for things to change, and that it is possible to live with love. Making a different choice can and does change everything as your blog clearly shows. It is possible to see through any behaviour that we do and do something about it.
Thank you, Anonymous. You raise so many important questions here – even though they are not ‘questions’ really, but they are more of revelation that call for a stop moment. I feel the magnitude of not calling out what is not true. Not saying ‘no’ to something, not expressing in full, continuously, as we did, has brought us the world we live in now.
Your willingness to be so honest has resulted in an amazing revelation of the reasons behind and the true harm of pornography. Your final words on the fact that we are all responsible for allowing such a thing to be ‘normal’ and ‘accepted’, is a bitter pill to swallow, but so true.
That is what strikes me too in this article is how through honesty what is behind the need of pornography and its hold over people is uncovered.
Pornography still permeates a society that is so desperate for connection in any form. The most base form is the objectifying of another in order to get some relief or have a pseudo intimate moment with yourself. Crazy really when you peel back the hurts, issues and protections we are all clamouring to be who we truly are with everyone else being who they truly are. And yet to avoid this we build vast walls of distractions that damage us further and keep us divided and bereft of the love we all want and truly come from.
Porn is deeply harmful in relationships, it contorts so much and leaves little room for true interaction between two people. It is allowed infidelity… I’m not sure why though. I know I would feel quite upset and cheated on.
I’m so glad that you have written such an in depth account of how this has affected you and how it then affects all of us. It enables me to really understand and appreciate the effect of pornography which I have never deeply considered before. Having never been under the hold of it directly myself, I do however feel that it has come through men that I have been with and it has contributed to a desire for sex – a physically pleasing and exciting experience – rather than being in true connection and celebration with my partner by making love; which means feeling why I was seeking all of this in disconnection from me.
I find it amazing that you have identified a momentum of abuse and control through sex over many lives. That makes a lot of sense and makes me ponder on what that means for Women also, in terms of what they have allowed, giving up their power or conversely using it to feel powerful and going into a façade of hardness and protection.
Thank you to the author for this brilliantly exposing article. Raising the all imperative questions, are we feeling for ourselves what is true, or are we dismissing this most fundamental choice of our well-being.
This article exposes the deeper and true harm and hold of pornography over us once we go there. It brings to light that there is energy at play that can lead us down the path of addiction and having to keep ‘upping the stakes’ to get what we are looking for from it, much like drugs or alcohol.The impact of these choices and the affects of pornography, not just on the one using it but, on all those they interact with and beyond is not as yet understood by the majority. Thank you for sharing openly and honestly on a subject that needs to be heard about more.
This is a truly amazing article. Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your understanding of pornography on a community level.
“Has human behavior shifted, or are we seeing the truth more clearly?” This is a really poignant question.
In your journey of accepting you are enough, honouring and cherishing you, accepting your innate love, you were able to free yourself of bonds that held you so tightly for so long… and bring that same acceptance, honour and love to those around you. You have shown us here an antidote to humanity’s ill symptoms – not just in pornography, but to the lovelessness and degradation we are living in as a society. We are all responsible for this mess and in changing our own mess, we can start to change the mess around us.
How true, Annie, that by choosing a deeper relationship with ourselves that accepts, knows we are enough, honours and cherishes, it releases the love that is innate and drops the protection we all live in. Things then begin to change in those around us, without trying, by the magic of God. The tenderness we allow for ourselves raises our awareness of others and what is really going on. This is the true change that is possible for humanity.
Thank-you Anonymous, your honest reflection of the impacts of pornography on your own life allows you a powerful insight into how this is shaping society today. Equally your understanding & description of energy, exposes another deeper level of harm that we ALL need to recognise and act on.
Anonymous, I feel that your mother’s ‘unnatural’ attitude to the magazines probably added to piquing your interest. I remember as a kid it was the ‘secret, dirty, not allowed’ feeling that made one want to look and try to understand why. And what unfolded for you later certainly has the features of an addiction…. my view of pornography has undergone a tweak – it’s a drug and it’s designed to get you hooked. And the fact that so many people keep ‘trawling for porn’ confirms it – it smacks of the never-satisfied, got-to-have more characteristics of addiction. Like addiction, the stimulation becomes less effective and the dose has to go up in order to get an effect ie ‘feel something’, which might also be why the world is increasingly and exponentially overflowing with porn. How good is it that we are speaking up and saying NO at last!
What a power packed article. It’s quite shocking to feel the ideals and beliefs we take on – be it from pornography, societal expectations, what we see in the media… and how very harmful this can become. If we do not use our bodies as a marker of truth and really feel why we are engaging in behaviours then it becomes a downward spiral, as you experienced, taking on more and more harmful behaviours to cover up how we’re truly feeling.
Pornography is certainly being normalised as you rightly point out and ‘normal’ happens when we can’t be bothered to speak up and declare how we truly feel but give up, give in and march to the tune of ‘normal’.
What a fine article this is. The personal account woven throughout makes it very real and very tangible, but it does not back away from delivering a smoking hot conclusion about society at large and the way we are failing to deal with porn.
It is so interesting that it (porn) is simply everywhere. The greater accessibility really is bringing to the surface what used to be a secret indulgence. But the point I feel the writer has made is that rather than use this as an impetus for examination and change we are settling into a dulled acceptance, characterised by a “just the way it is” approach. We let it go, ignoring the terrible harm and the wreckage of our societies moral compass.
One thing I have been very aware of in recent times, and it is relative to the porn problem, is that when we stand up to call out a societal ill, we get pegged as though we are in opposition and fighting for another untruth. What I mean by this is that if we say pornography is a massive problem the depths of which we have barely grasped, the message is misunderstood/misinterpreted/bastardised as being anti-sex and “wowserish”. Not so. And it is so important to observe this in any discussion about porn, because this is not an argument against sexual expression. If we get waylaid it turns into a fight about porn vs anti-sex.
There is no fight. Just a call for decency, respect, and for our children to be raised in such a way that their sexual expression is theirs in full, not fed to them by pornographers who want another generation of addicts to be hooked on their damaging wares.
Thank you anonymous for bringing to light such a dark topic, which in this day and age is becoming the norm.
Thank you anonymous for sharing so honestly your experience, and giving us an insight into this world that in times gone by was hidden away but is now becoming so much a part of what is considered normal life.
Thank you anonymous for sharing your insight into the porn industry. Your comment ‘……that the world is being bombarded with such material in order to ‘normalize’ it’ – is very powerful and I can see this playing out in many areas but particularly with our younger generation. We have all played a part in that we have not all stood up and said ‘NO’. Many of us have just wanted the problem to ‘go away’. Your sharing will support others affected directly by the ‘Porn’ industry, individually and in their relationships. It all comes back to the connection we have to ourselves, to seeing the amazingness that we are, the love that we are and living that. A Great Blog
What an honest and deeply healing article for both women and men to read. Thank you for writing this. I love how you don’t demonise sex – but you question loveless sex and porn ideals.
It is so true Anonymous that the tendency is to say that pornography is a normal part of our society, as is the use of alcohol and drugs to nam a few in bringing relief to individuals for living the stressful lives in our nowadays societies.
But this will not say that it is normal and that we must not look for the true reason why we need this ways to distract us from who we truly are, sensitive loving beings. These ways of living distract us from our true pain of living lives that are so far from who we in truth are. Instead we need to start looking to those pains and become honest about them in order to truly heal. This will free us from the endless merry go round we otherwise keep in motion, not only fro ourselves but for all of humanity.
What a huge issue, and well tackled by you Anonymous. It feels very important to not bury our heads in the sand around the harm of pornography, particularly as it is now being viewed by young children more and more with virtually no controls on the internet. There have been a couple of articles in the news here recently about the rise in availability of internet porn for our young people and children being caught up in sexting as well. Even music video’s these days have a massive element of porn in them that seems to be accepted by people, thinking “thats just the way it is”. It can be changed. We don’t have to just accept anything that doesn’t feel right. Thank you for your openness.
The facts of pornography and any or all all ideals and beliefs, are that, ” The physical can’t keep up with the mental stories” we play constantly in our heads. The head becomes dominating and domineering, imposing its demands on others to fulfil its own selfish desires without regard for any other: from pornography to romance – the same mechanism is at work and none of it is truly relating with another.
Great point coleen24. I had never thought of pornography and romance as being related.. But through my own experience with romance I can see that, like porn, it can stem from a real emptiness. From this emptiness the mind gets filled with blissful needs and desires which can be all about ‘self’… so in this way the same mechanism, as you say can be at work, rather than it coming from a true foundation.
‘Did you know that the Internet, that tool we so heavily regard as part of our lives, is used 25% of the time to trawl for porn. And according to statistics 30,000 people are looking at porn at any given second.’ These statistics are shocking as they are but I question whether that is the true extent of it or whether the traffic and usage is even higher.
Anonymous, this is an incredibly powerful blog which highlights the subtle ill effect of pornography as it consumes in no different way to a drug.
Thank you for this honest and open sharing of your experience with pornography. What stood out for me is that you felt you were not yourself in having these thoughts. It is deeply healing to feel that behaviours and pictures we might take on for what ever reason are not who we are. Like your said: “With this honesty came an opportunity to accept that what I really wanted all of that time that I was using pornography was the intimate knowing that I am enough. That I am a loving being that has the great capacity to love and be loved.” We all are inside this loving being who have a great capacity to love and be loved.
This a powerful to read and to notice how insidious pornography is and what is does to relationships between men and women.
There is a lot revealed in this sharing and will require another read I feel. In some ways pornography is more easy to hide than some of the other addictions and so we are not really as aware as a society about just how widespread and potentially damaging it is for individuals, families and society. The statistics presented here are astounding and your personal story highlights how exposure to pornography can occur at such a young age.
Dear Anon, this is an awesome article on pornography ,giving us the reader an diverse understanding of the energies at play here and its addictive nature . Also how it keeps us -humanity separated from the potential of true love and connection with another by its explicit images and language. I also loved how you have made peace, acceptance and understanding of your connection the bigger picture in this life in relation to you being born into a house where porn was there, and then breaking the illusion by making choices to heal and not harm .
Thank you for bringing a deeper understanding to this subject, in a world where over sexualisation is found everywhere and the harm of porn is not recognised blogs like this help us to see through the fog to what is really going on.
Thank you Anonymous for writing such a detailed, personal expose on pornography. It really struck me how deeply damaging this addiction is – tainting every relationship and interaction – made all the more insidious by the fact that it is now so prevalent that it is seen as not that big a deal, it’s been normalised.
I agree, Hannah: the fact of pornography becoming normalised, and those not into it being seen as prudes -especaily teens – is very disturbing. Honest accounts like this one bring the real facts of damage done by porn to the fore.
Thank you Anonymous for explaining how pornography impacts on people, even those who have nothing to do with it. The way men view women through the lense of pornography is terribly distorted and disregards the sacredness of women and their own.
Thank you for writing this blog, it’s such a big subject to talk about and pornography is a huge addiction throughout society that this needs to be talked about! I like how you have explained that it was not you that was choosing it, as if you felt ‘something else’ inside of you choosing it and you were powerless or sold out to it. This may just be what is happening to so many, and until the truth is spoken change cannot happen, while this epidemic has such a strong hold over a huge amount of people.
Thank you for such a deeply insightful article into a world that sadly distorts our view and poisons the foundation of our relationships, and yet is accepted as part of ‘normal’ society, silently and detrimentally impacting us all.
Thank you for what I feel is an extraordinarily well written article with such clear insight. You know, I have been pondering the impact of porn in my life. As a young girl I too stumbled on porn and I feel that it has in some way managed to get its hooks into me, even though I haven’t really used it as an adult. I feel that porn, coupled with a distinct lack of consideration as to what the difference between having sex and making love is, led me into the world of sex. And as a mother, I have a lot of concern about what young people are embarking on, when their knowledge of physical intimacy is fueled by music videos and porn.
Thanks Anon, for bringing light into the topic of porn and how it is affecting our society to such a degree that we cannot longer deny the effects it is having specially on our younger generation of men and women. This is a great reflection of relationships and how much true love and intimacy is lacking in them.
The world of mental fantasies (porn or otherwise) is a killer. It is a way of saying to yourself, there is a world out there you can access with your mind that is the best source of pleasure (actually relief of tension). Walking that path, you lose it big time. It seems that one is in control because you happen to choose the fantasy but in reality it is a world that owns you from the word go. You cannot do it without it. And reality does not look like it. So, it is either about surrendering to what the real world has to offer or keep going.
Great point, emfeldman: we choose either to succumb to the mental fantasy and its reality or to get real and commit fully to living in this world, honouring our bodies, not abusing them.
“So, it is either about surrendering to what the real world has to offer or keep going.”
Gold emfeldman.
What a powerful article that exposes so much about the way we live and at times choose to live a lie rather than expose the uncomfortable truth. Some really great points, that could indeed be explored further.
Thank you S for your very honest and personal blog. Even though it is personal you are addressing a topic that so very many can relate to. The statistics you are offering are staggering if one truly stops and thinks about them. We are nowadays becoming slowly aware of the deep damage pornographic images and sexualisation is causing in our girls and boys but we have not yet dared to address the huge problem it truly is for all ages. You describe the damage in yourself as a boy and a man, and in your partner and your relationship. With you I dare to say their are millions in the same situation, some more severe then others, some thinking it is only every now and then and harmless but let’s face it…it never ever is harmless as it covers up what is truly going on inside us and our relationships and makes us stray further and further of the truly loving, tender and delicate beings that we are.
Thank you for this great insight of your experience and understanding of pornography. I wish the whole world would read this- so exposing and I like the fact you are asking the reader to ponder. Definitely re-read this…
I agree with you Steffi Henn that the whole world needs to read this. It is time for the subject of pornography to be brought into the open so that all can get a real perspective on the harm that it actually causes.
Thank you for such an honest insight into the impact of pornography on your life.
“It isn’t that pornography is bad per se, it is that it gave me the images and ‘fantasies’ I then expected, no, I demanded of the opposite sex to live up to, to fulfill as if it was their duty to do so.” This is the game that both men and women play ball with at the expense of themselves and their relationships. I also think we go into thinking that everyone is having great and amazing sex and regular multiple orgasms or kinky sex when it is so subjective. We create fantasies and comparison which takes us so far away from the tenderness and simplicity and consideration of each other which is actually what makes a relationship work.
Pornography has an impact so much in our society and relationships, being exposed to porn in many ways from magazines to movies, during teenage years and things of a more explicit nature when I entered my 20’s. All having a distorting impact on how I viewed myself at very early ages and into my adult life. It is something that I have totally divorced myself from now a days and feel the difference in my body from not having been exposed to this any longer.
A truly needed and important writing on a taboo topic, pornography, that’s becoming the so-called normal. Your insights from early childhood were amazing, I agree as young boys growing up there is any energy waiting, lurking in the shadows for us, an invitation to porn or sex. But only if we have sold out to the tender, lovely connected child we were. Which all did, because we didn’t feel met in that tenderness as boys.
The ease with which children have access to pornography through modern technology is quite frightening. As you said, you were affected by some magazines, and I had a similar fairly tame exposure to pornography growing up, yet it had an effect on me for sure, so what effect does this full-on exposure create? I feel we are already seeing the outcomes of this in rape, sexual assault, teens pressurised into sex, normalising explicit sexual acts and suicide. As a society we have chosen to put on the blinkers and pretend it isn’t happening, but this problem won’t go away by itself.
Amazing in-depth portrayal of the life-long ill-effects porn can and does have especially from such early inception. It has deepened my understanding and awareness of the effects soft porn on TV had on me from a similarly young age. Through the 70’s Australian viewers had access to some pretty provocative television programs. For those familiar with Australian TV in the 70’s, programs may seem relatively tame in comparison to what we have access to these days but nevertheless it’s clear to me now how they effected on me as a young boy. I recall the feeling I experienced in my body at that tender age which was not dissimilar to that when exposed to porn magazines as a teenager and then more explicit porn as an adult. There was a common thread in all of it and that common thread was the feeling or energy it can evoke. That energy of sexualized imagery and porn is the cause of it’s addictive nature. It creeps into your mind and body and seduces you into wanting more, no different to a drug… That is until you awaken to the sexual distortions it creates and become liberated from its insidious life-force sucking nature.
A very revealing and insightful article. I can now feel when I have been on the other end of pornography, when I have been imposed upon by it. I didn’t realise this until reading this blog. Thank you for such an honest and open.
“The physical could not keep up with the mental stories I had been playing out” really struck a chord with me. I have observed that the entertainment industry continually ups the ante on the intensity of the spectacles it provides so that the spectators get their paid for pause from the everyday and their relief from what is not true and loving in this world. Only thing is, it doesn’t change anything because just like porn, when the show is over everything else is still the same.
What an honest sharing, thank you. It just shows how big of an issue this is and something really stayed with me and that is that you could not talk about this with your closest friends. I guess this not only accounts for you but for many people out there. I mean, how often do we talk about porn with each other? This reflects back the lack of intimacy there is in today’s world, not only among couples but also among friendships, relatives, etc.
Your blog contains so much and it is so true when you state how distorted the world is regarding the amount of porn being circulated and viewed.
I am going to have to read this article again. It just feels full of many truths and digs deep into a subject that most of us have some experience with. You have obviously had a real commitment to get to the bottom of the issues surrounding porn and taken it further into the broader societal landscape. Thanks for sharing and challenging us all to say ‘no’
“…..there is something much more sinister here looking back… there was already an inbuilt program wanting to be refuelled for this lifetime.” This insight is very profound Anonymous, I have always felt that reincarnation is a reality and what you have shared here really confirms what I have felt. It certainly puts a different perspective on the flood of pornography that subtly and not so subtly present in just about every form of media there is. So many children are now exposed to and engaging with pornography at such a young age and it is incredibly sad and confronting but also interesting to consider the whole picture. What kind of society are we building to come back to?
Thank you Anonymous for exposing the harm done to society by the relentless use of pornography. Even when not actively looking for it, I can see its insidious presence in our lives. It is enough to see some of the advertisements for jeans or perfume, or music videos, to realise that collectively we have allowed this to happen.
What has been presented here is worthy of further research – a study on how pornography impacts us – our lives, our relationships with others and ourselves.
“It felt great to be wanted“, I can so well relate to this and to having very, very limited views and plans of how I wanted my partner to behave.
It is so stunning to feel how incredibly limiting and at times abusive this has been – and so beautiful to have made the choice to live a very different live now :o)
Anonymous, what a powerful and important insight into the world of pornography you have offered here – something that truly needs to be opened up for discussion. Are most people really aware of the enormous harm this industry does to us as individuals and as a society in general?
My feeling Eva is that the answer to that question is no, even though deep down I would doubt anyone is truly comfortable with pornography. But are people really aware that any leaning whatsoever to pornography will have an impact on their relationships, an impact on their children? That the energy of pornography doesn’t just stay behind the screen or magazine? Perhaps it is because becoming aware would bring up much discomfort at first and then a strong need for self-responsibility there is not the willingness to become more aware of how harmful this is.
I love the way this has been written there is no judgement or blame just an honest account of how pornography has affected their life, and what drives people to keep watching. Thank you Anonymous your in-depth and personal account that will help many to understand why they feel they need to have porn in their lives and the destructive influences that are at play. The internet is responsible for taking porn from the back streets and into our homes, the normalisation of it is affecting the young generation and how they perceive sexual relationships.
I have experienced porn, and bought into a totally unrealistic view of women that destroyed my ability to have a truly loving relationship. And yes its everywhere, sometimes not so obvious but still denigrating to women. Even when I go to pay for fuel its hard not to notice the fleshy magazines.
A little titillation brings you no true happiness. There is no substitute for a true loving relationship.
How relevant this blog is today, with the release of the movie ‘Fifty shades of Grey’, a movie disguised as a romance but in effect nothing more than a pornographic film that glamourises violence and sado-masochism. This movie will only further warp and twist young minds in what is thought of as normal.
This is a powerful blog Anonymous. It expresses the truth of pornography and the ill affects is has on us individually, its impact on each other as men and women and as a society at large. It has filtered into all facets of human life and clouds our ability to relate not only to ourselves from a place of love and true intimacy but with all others.
Yes, thank-you anonymous for exposing a topic that is very much in need of exposing. I was introduced to porn by a friend of mine and her husband who had invited my then husband and I over for a meal. We were asked by the husband of my friend if we wanted to watch some porn. I felt embarrassed but I wanted to fit in so just went along with it. At the time, I was so, Oh my God, their doing that, kind of reaction that I didn’t know that I had actually allowed that energy into me and so that’s where I started to get interested, more from a fantasizing point of view, imagining myself in certain scenarios with men, not actually while having sex, but at other times which would set me up to want sex. When I feel into that energy, the need for relief or intimacy is so strong, it takes you over and you just want to go with it, and you convince yourself that it’s totally normal.
I now know since choosing to address my need for intimacy and self love as being the reason for my wanting outside stimulation, as a way to fill a deep need at the time,
that it is extremely invasive and dishonouring for yourself and your unsuspecting partner.
It is not normal, it is not love and it is not what a truly loving and tender body would say yes to.
This is an amazing blog, a powerful expose on how damaging pornography is and how it takes such a strong hold and control over us. Its prevalence and indeed rise in our day and age is symptomatic of a longing to be truly met in an intimacy that can only come from true love — from self-love and then love for others. As a humanity we’ve stepped so far away from this truly loving way of being and therefore we seek the ‘next best thing’, something that we will emulate what we long for, and pornography can be that enticing problem fixer. But it takes us further and further away from the love we truly seek, and the underlying issue of not feeling loveable is further compounded by the feelings of shame and guilt that come with porn.
The way out of all this, is through the beautiful loving honesty that you share with in this blog, unstrapping all these notions and ideas of what it is to be a ‘man’, strong and in control without feelings. Letting ourselves be vulnerable, allowing ourselves to feel how much we do miss the tender love we come from, is a sure step to returning back home to this love that we naturally are.
After 12 months as a customer I eventually cancelled my membership at the local gym because I got sick of being confronted by music video porn every morning (usually the same music on the same loop – like a hamster on a wheel), 5am, 6am, 7pm, any time of day, women portrayed like cattle and men like cave men. The noise from the music on the TVs and speakers thumped horribly from every corner of the room. I found it offensive.
The whole point of the gym is to get connected with your body and work it out. I couldn’t even hear myself think!. My suggestions and feedback to management fell on deaf ears – it seemed that I was the odd ball asking to have the music turned down.
There is a global epidemic in loss of common sense. Our societal ‘norms’ have been severely eroded. This is the real global climate change that needs to happen.
Serge Benhayon is addressing crisis by supporting people to return to a natural way of living, one that is very honouring of our bodies, deeply nurturing and connected to our soul and encompassing a genuine respect for all people.
Opposition to Serge has clearly come from those who continue to defend their reckless, loveless, disrespectful, unscrupulous, dishonourable, uncaring, unconscious, abusive, un-humantiarian ways of living as what this man offers in so very needed in our world today.
I really appreciate the way this blog gives such an honest insight into why many men use pornography, I can see just how damaging pornography is for men and for relationships in general. Thank you for having the courage and commitment to share your story Anonymous.
This is an amazing exposé about pornography and its impacts on men in particular. Very revealing! How it holds you in its grip.
What a great healing for everyone that takes the time to read this, displaying the importance to express about how there is nothing ‘liberal’ about pornography – it is harmful to women, to men, and their relationships.
Thank you for this article, The increased availability of porn is at odd with controls of alcohol (alco -pop legislation) and cigarettes (Plain packaging). I too found my fathers explicit collection at the age of about 14 and it shaped some less than loving and aware practices in relationships with others and distorted the connection to myself. Feeling that energy expressed in this article is real, it is such a pervasive ‘blokey’ culture.
For my father it is difficult for me to understand why this was OK except that it was. I can only imagine my mother tolerated this and how challenging must that have been when it was felt?
The first group I experienced with Serge Benhayon mentioned porn and from that point healing and true connection commenced.
It is a massive industry (just like alcohol and cigarettes and similar political clout – show me a politician who does not drink!)
The exploitation of all people (children, women and men) engaged in this industry is a deep harming social and energetic ill. In many ways no different to the addictions of Alcohol and cigarettes. However the controls on the internet are basically absent.
Thank you for this blog it is significant that stories are shared and the discussion continue.
This article leaves me feeling as if I couldn’t breath anymore – Yes, we miss saying NO to abuse. In a former relationship I asked my partner not to use pornography, because wherever he was, I could feel the harm immediately in my body. Then I thought, I was being too harsh on him, because in the gay scene I have seen it as so “normal“ to use porn. I asked him not to watch porn in the house. Until such time that I allowed it in the house, as well as I didn’t want to lose him. Not understanding then, that I had lost myself a long time before, when I compromised my own vulnerability.
A great article. So much to reflect on as you make many valuable points. I am particularly stuck be how much has been revealed to you about long held patterns of ‘living’ once you were prepared to question and dig deeper. I am also struck by your questions asking us (society) to consider if the current availability of access to porn, regardless of age, is actually revealing to us (men and women) a deeply entrenched ill way of being that we have been conveniently trying to ignore or distract ourselves away from.
Pornography is yet another one of those normalised actions, much like alcohol.
We do not stop to completely inspect it and expose it for what it is – an absolute exploitation of the purity and innocence of the love we are. Porn is a further step away from sex, and both porn and sex are far from making love. Even ‘just sex’ is normalised in our world – normalised and glorified.
Thank you for your brave and open sharing of your experience.
What an amazing article. It’s amazing to see the change in how you view the subject of porn and even women as you connect more to yourself over time, and incredibly inspiring. Porn has been horrifically normalised in recent years and the impacts on young men and women and all of us is incredible, however what I love in what you present here is that it’s possible to expose how harming pornography is to young minds and to expectations and relationships, and even our ability to live well in society.
Thank you for sharing, and here’s hoping many more people can see the harm being perpetrated for themselves as soon as possible.
Reading this article, I recognised what is described in me. I went through a similar process myself, experiencing sex and porn as a strong force that divides sex from love. It was like a self perpetuating thing going through the mind – it’s a force that controls and the influence was deeper then I would like to admit. It is important to communicate about this and how it actually works in us as individuals, and in society.
Thank for writing this article so clear and open.
Its shocking for the men to have such high expectations of their partners based from what they have seen of complete loveless situations as seen in pornography. So making love is never the foundation, only an empty image driving the desire for another.
No connection ever for your partner could be achieved as you are not first seeing them for the beauty they are only the false image presented from the pornography of what they could be.
Yes I would agree that the abundance of porn is not a liberalisation of sex as much as it is an inability or unwillingness to look at what is going on for us. What can we expect of relationships down the line where young boys are accessing graphic pornography at will. The author wrote of how much he was influenced by a magazines at age 7, what lies in store for those boys and their future relationships who are seeing real life graphic sex on their phones and computers and becoming addicted to porn.
Thank you for this super honest account of the false beliefs and ideals perpetuated by pornography, the insidiousness of it and how this impacts us in different ways, for both men and women.
This article and its honesty gives us all a clear indication on how affected society is with the likes of porn, we as a society have made these actions become normal by not addressing the core reason for why people choose porn, and with publicly available surveys we can see how important it is that we do start to address why so many fall into such behaviours:
A survey for a prominent television programme on sex education found 60% of 14 to 17 year old adolescents agreed that “pornography might give boys or girls false ideas about sex”, and three in 10 said they learn about sex from porn.
Another survey of 18-24 year old men found: 60% men (18-24) say porn has harmful effects; a quarter of all men in the survey said they were worried about the amount of porn they were looking at, while almost as many said they were concerned about the type of images they were viewing; 1 in 5 men worry that porn is influencing their behaviour.
Commendations have sometimes supported porn, such as claims that “the sexually explicit content in lads’ mags offer a ‘very positive source of advice and reassurance for many young people” despite “at times reinforcing sexist attitudes”. A worry indeed.
I found this to be a very honest account of the relationship you had formed with porn and how it was controlling you. It just goes to show to what extent these images and stories can change the way a person is within their relationships with others.
The sad thing is the amount of people in the world who subscribe to using porn and keep the demand for the industry alive.
Thank you for a profound and honest blog. It got me really pondering the issue of choice and I loved what you wrote about “the fact that it is absolutely possible to turn everything around with a choice.” As you said what is happening concerning the rise of porn use is a reflection of the individual choices made to do so, so yes great to question where this is coming from and why?
Great point here in this blog about using vices to cover up the inner turmoil or to relieve the tension. So often we know the vices don’t feel right and we try to quit them but without dealing with the inner turmoil and so often trade one vice for another or just keep going back to them.
Thank you for broaching the subject that everyone knows about, but will not openly discuss. In 2013 there were 2.125 billion people on the earth and over 1/3 had access to the internet. Pornography is now the elephant in the room that no one see’s or wishes to talk about.
Thank you for such an honest and real account of what goes on in the homes of millions of households around the world. As Jonathan has said above, this article would be a great support for many especially when porn is considered so normal and not an issue.
Women have been saying for years that they have at some stage felt sexually controlled or have felt like an object. To have a man speak up too in saying it’s not acceptable is inspiring. Thank you.
I learnt a lot too with this article. 25% of the time on the internet is used to trawl porn ! I guess it becomes an addiction showing the emptyness they feel, the lack and/or craving for intimacy and the lack of self esteem. Thank you Anonymous for exposing porn and explaining your journey out of it.
Fantastic article. The power of choice ran out loud and clear, no matter where we’ve been and the question around responsibility; how we as human beings, through a continual building from one generation to the next have created an environment where porn is normalised and flourished. Thank you, I’d never truly considered my part in it, how not being and expressing love with myself and others allows the opposite to flourish.
Thank-you, anon for sharing this. When you expressed your disappointment
that relationships never seemed to live up to the promise in the pornography
it says something about the sheer power of fantasy and the result when one becomes addicted to it or enslaved by it.
Wow indeed. This article is awesome. Thank you for sharing this.
Dear Anonymous
This article is so powerful and profound that I agree with Jonathan Stewart that it deserves to be published.
This article is presenting facts, I have learnt so much and now have a deeper understanding about Pornography and the world of porn and what is underneath this addiction.
I am amazed that 25% of the time the internet is used to trawl porn and you saying that it comes from the person who has deeply dis-connected from who they truly are makes sense. They then look for intimacy through images whilst the internet has made this even more accessible, because it can be done without anyone knowing.
People like you writing first hand through your own lived experience is the first step to change and I for one commend you for writing about a subject many would never want to admit, let alone discuss.
Thank you for the honesty of your sharing. Pornography has become all pervasive in our society. Your exposure of the distortion that pornography creates has opened up a much needed conversation. We have gotten to the stage where abuse, disrespect and dishonouring is normal and this has become the foundation for so many relationships. How can we accept this as ‘normal’ when it is so far from the love that we are. I know I have turned a blind eye by not speaking up for fear of rocking the boat. I have chosen to see the world with blinkers. Filtering out what I don’t want to see. Your article has deepened my realisation of the responsibility we all hold and that we always have the choice to say no. Thank you.
Brilliant article. Being in College means that I can first hand observe the powerful effects that pornography has on the younger generation, and how, as you said, the age of which kids are being exposed to it is getting younger and younger. The way that boys treat girls at my school is atrocious – always seeing them as objects to play with, thinking that we will bow down and do whatever they please whenever they desire.
But it is not just the boys’ attitude that have changed, girls also create fantasies of ‘ideal men’, whereby they take the lead and boss the girl around in the relationship, which when you think about it, is not romantic in any sense, but because of what they have seen in movies or pornography they think that as girls they are designed to please the boy, and to be at their beck and call 24/7.
Revisiting this article I again go wow. This is so powerful, it deserves to be published far more widely – it has so many different valid points: how pornography is an addiction, its destructive de-humanising nature, the level pornography has reached in society, it being a result of our collective actions, the beauty of true love making, to mention a few. One particular one that strikes me is, “The physical could not keep up with the mental stories I had been playing out”. Thank you anonymous.
What a deeply open conversation you have started in writing this blog. I recently had a conversation with a porn user, who told me that there is no connection when having sex, and that they often ACT like porn stars. What I observed was that there was not an awareness of wanting to connect, and a realisation that as a user of porn, this person was now suffering the consequences of an industry that they have supported since childhood – much as you have described. It is as you describe the collective irresponsibility that has led to where we are today in a world gone mad… but as you describe also the way back is to deal with our hurts and take responsibility for our choices and move forward to love.
My daughter recently brought to my attention how the effects of pornography on young boys at her school is normalising absolutely unacceptable behaviour in how the boys relate to girls… they are treated as objects, and their understanding of what makes up a relationship is defined by what they see as ‘normal’ on porn sites. The worst thing is that the boys are as much victims of this pandemic as anyone. This blog maps out what is there ahead of them (although evidence suggests it is getting worse with it being so much more available) and the damage it will cause our society unless we are able to offer them an alternative…
Dear anonymous, thank you for speaking up about this. I remember my first encounter with pornography was with my brothers friends as they watched a video while they’re parents were out. There was at least ten very young boys all making it seem so normal, like they were just watching cartoons or something. It made me feel incredibly uncomfortable and yet it was etched in my head for so many years. I let this impression suggest that it was normal and okay, even though my feelings said everything to the opposite. Adam speaks about a need for a blog about pornography for men, but in truth this blog should not be limited to one gender, for it effects us all, men and women alike, each with our own version, each with our own story.
I remember going to a party where they were showing a pornographic film projected onto a wall. We were in our late teens, one of my friends shouted out from the back of the crowded room, “Where’s the love?” This somehow stayed etched in my memory because at the time I felt it was a brave act, she voiced what I felt and probably others in the room who weren’t saying anything for fear of appearing uncool. The images felt so empty to me and almost ridiculous but at the same time had a transfixing quality. That call of “where’s the love?” somehow broke the spell in the room.
I love the blog! It makes me realise that if I don’t want to own up and look at this than I will never be able to be truly initimate with myself and thus not with any man or woman. I feel a huge resistance to go there, because I feel that there is a tendency to keep blaming myself and others (women) to avoid feeling what is underneath. I’ve got the feeling that your blog is the start of a big healing process for me in regards to return to an Truly intimate relationship with myself. I am Amazing, but to hold that I feel that deep honesty is needed. Thank you – I feel, on behalf of society!
Thank you for writing this honest and amazing article. I can feel from the comments so far how deeply both men and women have been affected by pornography which as you say, has been with us through many ages. As Adrienne writes so beautifully in her comment above, this is not just about porn, it is about how lost we have become because we miss who we truly are so much. I have come to know it as an absolute truth from inside me that every man and woman – and this includes the toughest and the ‘nastiest’ – deep within them they are in truth tender, beautiful, gentle and loving. But this is not what we see outside, in our societies. We see men and women hardened, trying to get by and get on and they’ve forgotten that inside them is their true beauty and power. We miss who we truly are, and we crave relief from feeling how much we miss ourselves, something, anything, to take away the pain. Enter pornography…
I can feel how porn shaped my own attitudes about what I had to be to be a partner, how I had to ‘perform’ in order to please my partner, and how this separated me from the love I could feel towards him. Pornography and its pervasive use is an indication of how far we have strayed from the true beautiful beings we naturally are and how much love and true intimacy we can share with each other.
Thank you, anonymous. So well said and can relate so much to the impact that porn had on my attitude to women in my past.
This is a huge article and one that I could feel deeply. The impact of those images and expectations that I allowed into my head and how they effect how I connect and relate to women. The turning point for me was just looking at their eyes, and feeling the emptiness made stimulation impossible…
Amazing and power-full article, thank you for sharing.
Thank you soo much for sharing with honesty how pornography and life has been for you. It is truly inspiring. It brings up past choices for me, to clearly see quite how damaging they were whilst at the time seemingly so minor.
Well said my friend. I couldn’t have expressed that any better. I can relate perfectly. Very truthful and honest, loved it.
Whoa! Thanks for writing this blog! The level of honesty is great and I feel there is a lot here that a lot of people may find challenging to read at first because it exposes so much but at the same time what you write is an inspiration.
Wow anonymous, I knew porn was insidious in the manner it crept into our society and weaved its way through people, but I had no idea to the extent it could control,damage and form individuals. As a mother of a teenage son and daughter I realise how common it is to do porn from a very young age. My son faces a barrage of statements daily because he does not want to partake in an activity that most of his classmates do. It is common place for girls to be watching porn, the teenagers watch it together on the school bus as if it is an every day movie, girls and boys.
I was saddened to read your post and realise just how harm-full porn is, I appreciate your honesty in sharing how porn has effected you, it has given me much insight into why I have always felt so sad and repulsed to see porn images. Yes I agree it is an issue that we as a society have let fester and grow over generations, which has formed itself into the degradation we now witness it to be.
I have always been aware that our young boys and girls are harmed through the viewing of porn, but I say a huge THANK YOU for bringing to light just how damaging porn is.
Exactly. Porn is extremely damaging, and today it has been so normalised – everyone it seems is doing it. So sad that such young children are being exposed to it, but with such a lack of intimacy often between people I guess it’s hardly surprising. We have yet to see the full results of porn exposure from such a young age.
Wow. Your article kept unfolding and exposing pornography with great responsibility, honesty and dedication to truly discussing what is at play when it comes to pornography – thank you.
I was around the same age of 7 when I was first exposed to pornography. It was at my Dad’s book and magazine warehouse. Sometimes he’d go in to work on the weekends and I’d go along…I wanted to be around my Dad and this was one way of being with him. He worked and I explored all the stock piles. I came across a photo book of a couple stripping and having sex that set up for me (picked up where I left off) the idea that women were there to sexually entertain men and that men were there to sexually dominate women…because, as you say, the were the King.
It was with great sadness that I realised how my view of men and women in this light was reignited by viewing those images. A great lie. The washing of the world in pornography is a symptom of our global deficit of self love. It marks how far we have gone from the deeply, richly, loving, tender and delicate beings we are…and one by one are returning to as we heal the emptiness that drifts us so far away from home.
Beautifully expressed Adrienne, our global deficit of self love, yes so true and porn is also a cry out for the true intimacy as a result that we lack.
Wow, thank you for speaking the truth so succinctly. There is a lot you cover in this blog but I particularly noted the comment:
“Is the issue that we fix an ill already in place that has not been identified? The ill that hides the true state of the human being and one that needs constant quelling through behaviours that in their conception are anti-social, yet if you get enough people championing them, their unacceptability is eventually eroded and they become weaved throughout the very fabric of society. Accepted, not by all and yet accepted all the same.”
This brings to mind the epidemic of tattoos. I am astounded every single day by how common tattoos are and how so much more full on and intense the designs and inks used are. 30 years ago tattoos were the domain of bikies, kids in rough gangs and definitely considered anti-social. It then became trendy for the 20 somethings to do, now I see women in their 50’s going out and getting tattoos. It’s amazing that it is now acceptable to come to work in a very conservative environment bearing your tattoos right down the side of your arm or up you legs and no one bats an eye lid!
Thank you anonymous for having the courage to start up the conversation on this topic. I have been considering writing a blog on porn for some time, and this has inspired me to get it going. Nearly all men that I know have been affected by pornography at some point in their life, but it is a topic that bears too much shame to talk about properly – shame that we have been part of it, shame that we have contributed to the abuse of women in this way. Yet the fact is that you are right when you say it is something that controls us. It is a drug, a form of addiction, and one that is more common than we care to admit.
It is time that we were able to openly talk about the effects of porn on men and women alike, because men too need to be able to talk openly about what is going on here if there is to be true healing, as we are just as affected, it affects our ability to experience true love and intimacy with women (and other men) in ways that we don’t even realise.
As you pointed out, it taints our perception of what is real and what is not, but that is only the beginning. In the end, it owns us, it affects our dreams, our ability to see women in truth, and our own ability to connect as men to our own feminine essence (which actually exists underneath the hard exterior that so many men think is them).
This article revealed for me two things. One just how destructive pornography is and how the ‘need’ to have it, use it and look at it can be so powerfully strong. The second thing was that how simple it can be to make a different choice, a loving choice, even when the opportunity to let love in may be very small. You were given a glimpse of love in others through the practitioners you found and Universal Medicine, and thus had a glimpse of seeing that love in yourself. How amazing that in that moment you chose to be more love and thus more moments came where love was chosen. Choices changed over time with a glimpse of love and some ‘balls’ (pun intended). An awesome piece of writing that provides great insight into the insidious workings of pornography, thank you.