The Truth About Porn Our Teens Need to Hear (from a Mom Who Used to Like Porn a Lot)

I need to be honest, I was reluctant to share my story publicly. Reluctant because women don’t struggle with porn, right?

The internet was not accessible for me when I was a teenager. It hadn’t yet infiltrated every aspect of our daily lives. I had no access to, nor any real knowledge of pornography, so it was not a part my formative years.

I developed a porn curiosity when Jordan and I were a few years into our marriage.

We’d stopped going to church, our relationship with God was practically non-existent, and the circle of friends we were keeping saw porn as no big deal—just something ‘everyone’ does.

I decided to introduce pornography into our marriage. Jordan and I were solid, our sex life active, it could only add to the passion, what was the harm?

Not What I Expected

Porn was not what I had expected. I knew it would be graphic, but this was beyond graphic.

This sex wasn’t just sex. Porn sex was different. The bodies were “perfect,” the positions, acrobatic. No one had a single hair follicle visible anywhere on their perfect bodies. And visible their bodies were. Microscopically so. Nothing left to the imagination.

There was no kissing, no intimacy, no love, just animalistic, self-gratifying acts of sex.

And yet, I took the bait… I was hooked.

Related: 4 Ways Porn Kills Great Sex in Marriage

My Life With Porn

Jordan would beg me to come to bed, asking if it could be: “just us tonight,” instead of us and whatever random couple had piqued my interest on screen.

But I couldn’t stop. I didn’t want to stop.

I sat glued to a computer screen, searching, waiting for the perfect body, the perfect couple, the perfect image—an image I could never find. I found myself looking at women on the street, wondering what they were like in the bedroom.

It was disgusting. I was violating them with my mind—and no, I’m not sexually attracted to women. The images I’d been viewing had warped my thinking, been seared into my memory.

Life After Porn

I no longer struggle with porn addiction or a desire to view it. I no longer have pornographic images haunting my mind. My God is the God of freedom, for those who truly desire it.

I still have to make the choice not to let my mind wander. I still have to choose not to click on internet articles, links or videos that may contain questionable material. I still have to make a choice to disengage from sexually explicit conversations. I still have to make a choice to view each and every person I encounter; male or female, as God sees them. To honor and value them as fellow human beings, created in His image.

Educate Kids About Porn

A friend of mine recently told me of a blog she’d come across written by a young man, imploring women to show self-respect by removing all hair from their pubic and genital region. He wrote that pubic hair is “disgusting,” and he was physically incapable of maintaining an erection, if a girl had any hair “down there.”

This, is the world our kids are living in. This is why we need open, and I specify, age-appropriate dialogue with our kids.

Our daughters do not need to grow up believing that there is something wrong with their body because it does what it was designed to do, believing that they are worthless, unattractive, and disgusting unless they remove all their body hair. They do not need to grow up believing that they have to perform all manner of sexual acts in order to deserve and receive love. Our girls need to know that someone who would seek to bully, pester, or coerce them into doing anything they are uncomfortable with, does not truly love them, and does not need to be indulged.

Our sons do not need to have their thinking warped by loveless, lust-filled images of sex-ploits. Images that are edited and produced to create and fulfill a need that can never be satisfied by just one viewing. They do not need to have unrealistic expectations of women, relationships, sex, and all sexual acts. Our sons need not suffer sexual dysfunction because the images that are on repeat in their mind, have formed a new and flawed perception of “normal.”

Related: Is Porn Use Causing Erectile Dysfunction in Teens and Young Men?

We need to tell our kids not to avoid porn just because it’s wrong, but why it is so wrong. We need to explain exactly how it devalues both sexes, and damages soul and spirit. If I, as an adult woman over the age of 25, whose brain had finished developing, could have had my thinking rewired by viewing pornography, how much more susceptible are our adolescent kids to damage from pornographic material?

We need to educate our children about exactly what it is that the porn industry is feeding into: sex slavery, human trafficking, child exploitation. I literally had no idea that this industry was fueling a hellish existence for so many young women, men too. I wonder, had I known back then what I know now, would porn have been any kind of turn on at all?

We shouldn’t educate our children in order to guilt them, but rather to equip them, to empower them to make choices that benefit not only themselves, but others also.

We need to teach our kids not that sex is dirty or wrong, but that it is quite the opposite. Sex was created to be a beautiful expression of love, fulfilled within the safety, sanctity, stability, mutual respect and equality of marriage.

Related: The Essential Reason Porn Is Wrong

Our Kids Are Worth Far More

Marriage is really hard. It’s not all white picket fences and fields of flowers. Sometimes it’s just tumbleweeds and barbed wire, but to have the privileged of becoming one flesh with someone who totally gets you and is committed to you during the hard times is a gift that should not be undervalued by images of lust, undervalued by a world that trades in old for new, and is hell-bent on instant gratification.

We need to tell our kids that we understand and remember what it is like to have raging hormones, to tell them we understand what it is like to be sexually curious.

We need to show our kids that we support them. We need to suggest mentors or trusted adults that they can talk openly with and journey with.

We need to teach our kids that God not only created sex, but the whole biological system responsible for switching on sexual desire.

We need to teach them that our God is an approachable God, that He is more than happy to provide a way to deal with whatever struggles we face in life, including sexual struggle.

And above all that, we need to believe that of our God ourselves! We need to experience that of Him!

I am the mother of a teenage son. We can protect and shelter him all we like, but eventually he will discover the world, as he is supposed to. He will grow and mature, and set his own boundaries and parameters.

We will tell him where we’ve failed. We will tell him the outcomes of our failure and where we wish we’d taken different paths.

But most of all, we will emphasize God’s grace. Grace for failure. Grace for poor decisions. Grace for outright rebellion. Grace for a journey, and not just a quick fix. Grace for forgiveness. Grace for redemption. Grace for transformation.