Christian Counseling - What Drives People Back To Porn Use?

The information in this blog comes from my counseling experience and not research.

It is tragic that many Christians view pornography on the Internet. Its incidence has increased for many reasons, including a growing amount of content that is offered for free, which eliminates credit card use and protects the viewer's anonymity. It is an epidemic, even in Christian circles, even among our leaders.

The timeline from occasional use of porn to addiction is most often short, but is sometimes not discernible because it occurs instantaneously. Some indicators of porn addiction include: a negatively altered user's life, secrets and lies that hide the truth, and a person who weekly (an approximate, not a fixed time) yields to the compulsion to look for sexual excitement.

The factors that attract and drive men and women back to porn use again and again are many. Christians understand one's sin nature pulls people to do things their minds and part of their hearts know is wrong and don't want to do (Romans 7). Some stop their analysis there, make confession and pray they won't succumb again. That formula, though necessary and a part of recovery, by itself is rarely successful. What many fail to deeply understand is that we are also human and there are many psychological drivers of porn use.

My counseling experience has shown me that central to the human side of every person's occasional use or addiction is the need for more and/or different relational connections. Here are three of several emotions that are very frequently attached to relational connection needs--loneliness, anger and anxiety. To better understand their relationship consider porn use as a relational connection via sex. Consider also porn use as a way to reduce the misery of those three feelings, which are almost always connected to people. We are lonely for people. We get angry with people. And we feel anxious about our relationships with others--what they think, feel and might say or do to us. If we don't work these things out directly with others, we leave ourselves vulnerable to unhealthy alternative ways of connecting with others and things (food, shopping) that can become addictive. These alternatives provide only temporary comfort by reducing the strength of negative emotions, like the three mentioned above.

The solution to the psychological side of porn use is to review one's quality and quantity of relationships and compare them to one's desires and fantasies (comparing the real to the ideal). The discrepancy between them should be minimal. Also, turning toward other people, as well as God, to meet underlying, previously mentioned (and other) needs of pornography use is necessary in overcoming the addiction, especially doing so the moment temptation strikes.