by Mike Genung
A little while ago I called an old friend to say hello, and the conversation turned to my involvement in helping the sexually broken. After I shared of my 20 year struggle with sex addiction, my friend said “well, I’m no sex addict, I’m just a casual porn user!”
Today there are many who call themselves “casual porn users”, or CPUs as I call them. They indulge in porn occasionally, maybe just a few times a year so they don’t see a problem with it. After all it’s just pictures and no one else will see; how can anyone get hurt?
In Matthew 5:27 Jesus said: You have heard that it was said ‘You shall not commit adultery’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
From Jesus’ piercing words we know that to lust after other women or men is to commit emotional and spiritual adultery. Having self sex while looking at pictures of naked women is taking this sin of adultery to the next level; it’s adding sexual experience to lust, pouring gas on the fire.
What might your wife say if you approached her and said “honey, this year I’m going to commit adultery just three times. Once this month, again in July and one last time in December. But I won’t touch anyone, I’m just going to masturbate to pictures of other naked women. But it’s just me and pictures and I won’t actually have sex with another person. Ok?”
Obviously your wife would be angry and deeply hurt. Why? Because she knows true love comes from the heart, and you’re taking your love, which you’ve promised is hers alone, and giving it to another.
I know one wife who walked in on her husband while he was masturbating with porn. Seeing her husband having sex with himself, with pornographic magazines spread out on the floor in front of him broke her heart. The trauma this couple went through was little different from what they would have experienced if he was caught with another woman.
Another wife of a man who struggles with sex addiction writes:
“My husband and I have been married for a little over one year. He had a problem with pornography and has now been clean for over two years. To this day I struggle with the pain of this, and I don’t know how to recover. I ask God to take the pain away so that we might be intimate without me remembering what he has done. I have forgiven him but I hurt so much. I will never be that picture, and how do I know he doesn’t expect me to? I am to be loved, and how am I to satisfy a husband who can be satisfied by a picture of some fantasy woman I will never be, a picture of someone who will never be his wife? Men should know that if they have a wife, or plan to get married someday that it really does hurt her. My husband has grieved with me over the pain I have. Believe it or not it affects our sex life, and I can’t keep it from entering my head…every time.”
One of the biggest lies Satan whispers is “a little lust won’t hurt you; go ahead, its just you and pictures. No one will know.” The truth is that “just a little porn” is playing a big part in taking out many marriages. At a 2003 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, two thirds of the 350 divorce lawyers who attended said Internet porn contributed to more than half of the divorce cases they handled. They also said that “pornography had an almost non-existent role in divorce just seven or eight years ago.”
My friend, you may not be a sex addict, but if you’re dabbling in porn you’re committing adultery and hurting your wife. You’re also hollowing out your soul and wasting your character. “Casual porn use” is little different from sexual addiction, and it may be worse. Those who struggle with sex addiction often hit a hard bottom fast, which forces them to get help quicker. I’ve seen Casual Porn Users who’ve taken their sin well into middle age. It doesn’t need to be this way…