Tuesday 1 February 2011

Porn

So, this is an issue I've considered writing on for some time. It's the big thing I get asked about all the time. From the Wimbledon girls and guys all the way to the Big Brother casting guys, everyone wanted to know more about the Christian opinion on pornography and masturbation. Well I can't speak for all Christians, but this is my view point.

First off, I write this from a point of relative failure. I still watch porn from time to time, and I still masturbate from time to time. This ain't something I've stopped yet, but why I write this is not to do with the whether or not I've managed to cut it out, it's the attitude change. My aspiration is to never look at porn again, but we don't always quite live up to our aspirations.

So, I've been watching porn since about 12, so that's 10 years now, there's not a lot else I've been doing for that long to be honest! Now porn never really seemed like an issue as a kid, if anything it was exciting, looking at all these ridiculously over curvy ladies. It was a release, and as a teenager who had no female friends and attended an all boys school, porn was my only contact with girls. It wasn't until after I became a Christian I realised it was a problem. At first I thought nothing of it, but my girlfriend at the time brought it up with me, as it was hurting her for me to be idolising these other women. To her it was effectively cheating, I'll be honest I didn't see it like this at first; I thought she was over-reacting, but over time I've come to realise she is more than right. It took another girl sharing her struggles with pornography for me to first confess this as a problem. This annoyed me as I was going through a stage where I thought I was 'a sorted Christian (by the way, there is no such thing)' and so this brought me right back to where I belong, saved by grace no works.

So after a long battle with this issue, I've come to realise it's a lot more common that Christians make out and a lot more serious than non-Christians see it to be. Now the biggest reason I want to stop watching porn and masturbating is out of respect for my future wife. I know God's going to give me a lovely girl, who I'll marry and share sex the way God intended it to be, and I'm very much looking forward to that. But also, on our wedding night, when we stand in front of each other and look at our naked bodies (for hopefully) the first time, I want that body to be the pinnacle of female beauty for me. I don't want to look at her and wish she had bigger boobs like the girl I watched in some porn the other night. I don't want to wish she was more sexually experimental like the girls in pornography. I don't want her to be compared to any other woman; I want her to be uniquely special.

Like the Rihanna song recently, the more I've come to know girls, the more I have experienced their deep longing to be made to feel 'like the only girl in the world.' Even my most independent, together girl mates still have this longing. I've also seen the best and worst of this, I've seen women who have been ruined by disappointing men not satisfying this desire, and I've also seen women deeply honoured by men providing them with exactly this. I want my wife to feel like the only girl in the world to me, to feel like the only girl I find beautiful. I want her to know that she is the only girl I get to see naked, she is the only girl that can satisfy my lustful desires, and with porn she can never feel like this. Most girls nowadays have got used to the fact their boyfriends watch porn, and just brush it off or dismiss it, thinking it doesn't affect them. Sadly it will. If you know your boyfriend/husband is constantly watching images and videos of girls with better bums/boobs/faces than you, or watching girls that are better and more sexually experienced than you, it will fuel insecurity, and in turn leave you more and more worried about how you look, rather than what should be happening, someone loving you so much for exactly how you look that you never need to worry.

I credit any man who has managed to do away with porn, and has set about on the mission of making one girl feel like she is the only girl in the world to him, I credit any man who tells his girlfriend/wife everyday how beautiful she is even though he knows most of the time she doesn't believe him.

Please contact me if you’re struggling with this issue, want practical advice, or you would like to know more about my perspective on pornography, thanks for reading,

Davey