Today, Brandon and Tonia discussed how years of porn use impacted his dating relationships and how it eventually escalated into a sexual relationship with one of his girlfriends.

It’s important to understand this: porn use escalates. It changes you neurochemically— you become hardwired to respond to the variety of images on the screen, not to the person you pledged yourself to in marriage. It also changes how you think.

Back in the early 1980s, long before porn was easily accessible online, researchers conducted a study of 80 male and 80 female college students. One group, the Massive Exposure group, was shown less than five hours of non-violent pornographic films over a six-week period. The Intermediate Exposure group was shown half pornographic and half non-pornographic films, and the No Exposure group was shown only non-pornographic films. Overwhelmingly, the researchers learned that the more porn participants watched, the less satisfied they were with their partner’s physical appearance, affection, and sexual performance, and the more likely they were to devalue marriage, the idea of having children, and the importance of faithfulness.

They found other, more subtle effects as well. Participants were asked if they support women’s rights. For men, support dropped from 71% in the No Exposure group to 26% in the Massive Exposure group. Even among women, support dropped from 82% in the No Exposure group to 52% in the Massive Exposure group. When participants were asked if they thought minors should be protected from pornography, 84% of the No Exposure group said yes… but only 37% of the Massive Exposure group agreed.

(You can read more about this study in our free ebook, Your Brain on Porn, download here: https://bit.ly/3bnbNqm )

Wives, it’s important for you to understand this escalation. It is very common for wives to think that if they were somehow more attractive or sexual, their husbands wouldn’t watch porn. That’s simply not true. He has hardwired himself to be turned on by porn and variety. Rewiring is possible, but it will take time.

Husbands, a great way to begin that rewiring is to start living a life of accountability. Find a trusted friend to journey with you and help you to get further and further from porn. The further away from porn you get, the more your brain will heal. Take the leap and give Covenant Eyes a chance by clicking here: https://rb.gy/gb9zkn

To Discuss

Today we want you to discuss how porn use has impacted your thinking and possibly even how it escalated in your life. Now, we understand this is very sensitive! Depending on the scale of escalation, it may be best to hold off and save details for a guided therapeutic disclosure with a counselor, where both of you will be supported. For today, we encourage focusing on bigger picture patterns, but you let the wife determine how much she wants to know, and if things get too heated (even if you haven’t technically hit that boundary), stop, take a break, and seek external help.

1) Read over the stats from the study in the 1980s again. How much have you observed those at play in your own life?

2) How have you seen porn use escalate in your own life?

3) Read Romans 1:18-32. In it, Paul describes the pattern of escalation on a cultural scale. Have you seen God “giving you over to your own desires”?

Romans 1:18-32

For God’s wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, that is, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what he has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became worthless, and their senseless hearts were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man, birds, four-footed animals, and reptiles.

Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.

For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.

And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind so that they do what is not right. They are filled with all unrighteousness, evil, greed, and wickedness. They are full of envy, murder, quarrels, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, arrogant, proud, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful. Although they know God’s just sentence—that those who practice such things deserve to die—they not only do them, but even applaud others who practice them.