So, yeah, porn is some diminishing return. Oh, and parents, this one isn’t kid friendly. You probably want to either not read this or be ready to talk to your kids about it once you & they are done. Back to what I was saying–the first magazine or video rocks your world and then at least with me, starts to piss me off. Her & him, on the screen, will never get near me. All the things I love about women will never happen. She’s onscreen with him so although it’s just a job, she’s still got him for the length of the shoot. She’s clearly taken. Which . . . since I have no shot, WTF?!
The other reason, though, is that it is a menage a trois. It’s a three-way relationship. There is person 1, of whatever gender identity, person 2, also of some . . . y’know . . . I’m hetero, so we are going to talk about women. I’m so not interested in trying to make this fit your [genderidentitychoiceofpartner]. You can stop here and not read the post. I’m not mad. Crazy, maybe, but not mad. Gone? No? Ok. As I was saying . . . It’s a three-way. It’s him, her and the porn. Some of him is devoted to the porn and thus, not devoted to her. So, if he does love her, why is that part of him partitioned off from her? Why can’t she have that part of him? I don’t like to share. If I’m with someone I expect them to be devoted to me. It’s not a possessive thing. I possess little, least of all a woman. It all belongs to God. It’s not about possession or ownership or turf. It’s about my idea of love including a self sacrificing surrender to God first and my partner second.
Exodus 20:3, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Porn gets in the middle of that. It becomes a demi-god in the life of the person who is into it. God has to share the person as well as the partner, possibly me, has to share some of his or her time, intimacy, devotion, energy, horniness, & spirit. It defies the rule that we shalt not have no other gods before Yahweh.
A hunger for sex is God given. It is there for a purpose like our hunger for food is there for a purpose. Like our hunger for food it is endless. We can’t make it go away no matter how many orgasms, how much horizontal bopping, how much self-stimulation we do. Yet, if we learn discipline, if we learn to live with the hunger, to give in to it as God would have us do, we can be blessed in ways we’ll never get as long as we obsess over a video of a woman getting naked and getting off. We are to hunger relationship because God made us to be this way. We are not made to be alone. He doesn’t want us to starve. He also doesn’t want us to be gluttons or overly lustful. He wants us to figure out what we like to eat, who we like to be with, and eat our fill and fulfill our need for relationships with the right people and under submission to Him.
Porn drains life from our natural hunger for relationship. It turns it perverse and becomes a festering wound in our soul that won’t heal without God. Porn also keeps the glass half-full in a bad way. We can’t be filled by God, by our partner all the way because in that glass is something else–pornography. To be filled by God we have to be empty. We have to be hungry. It makes us miserable, yes. But the misery, the emptiness, the loneliness, leaves room where God can be and where our partner can be. We can be filled on a more healthy way by removing this from our lives.
Last thing. At the core of this is the trouble that false idols cause. You could edit this post to talk about alcohol, drugs, gluttony, lust or whatever hurt, habit or hangup is between you and God. The point would stand. Whatever it is, it has a piece of you that God doesn’t have and that’s a problem. There is a god before God in the hurt, habit or hangup which leaches off some of your love and devotion. Whatever it is, it has you and that piece of you is unavailable to your partner, also a problem.
The story repeats enough to be a trope. In the beginning, it’s great, it feels good, it seems like it makes your life better, then the slow bleed begins and you find yourself stuck, unable to stop the behavior that is now killing you. Then the negative consequences escalate until you either start recovery, die or end up in prison. You have been double-tapped by a minion. Boom.