I have been a therapist for more than five years and specialize in porn and sex addiction. My experience has told me that pornography is a symptom of lost connection.
Many guys I see cannot point to a single good example of what it looks like to be a man who has good relationships with family, friends, and his community. Thus leaving it up to them to figure out how to navigate life on their own. If there is one thing we know for certain, it is this: Life is hard and Jesus says we will suffer in this life. It’s even harder when you are navigating it all on your own.
Oftentimes, the men I see are involved in accountability groups where they are doing some type of 12-step recovery. But if you ask these men who their closest friends are, you rarely hear that it is someone in their accountability group. Normally, it is a college buddy or someone outside of it, but even they would tell you they have lost connection with that person.
This raises an important question: What if the solution to men’s struggle with pornography is less about accountability and more about recovering male friendships?
The Purpose of Accountability and Friendship
Good accountability groups will help you grow in honesty and follow-through. Honesty is a big deal when it comes to battling pornography. I tell the guys I see all the time that I have never seen someone find victory over pornography who is living a dishonest life toward others.
Follow-through entails taking the next steps needed to grow. Accountability groups hold you accountable for doing both. The problem is that the purpose of accountability groups is to keep you accountable.
The purpose of friendships in Christ is to lovingly care for you and for your good. That entails accountability, but it also means that they want to know you and spend time with you.
Jesus spent tons of time getting to know and care for His disciples. They didn’t just believe He loved them, but that He liked them. He didn’t just get together with them to focus on “all the ways they were blowing it and in need of growth.” He actually enjoyed spending time with them.
Why Friendship is More Powerful than Accountability
Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus laid down his life for His disciples, whom He called friends even though He was Lord. He walked thousands of miles with them, ate with them, and spent downtime with them out of love for them. Do we pursue friendship like Jesus did, or is the sole purpose of male friendships accountability?
Every man wonders if you want to be friends with him after you hear about what he is most ashamed of. No doubt, porn is something men are ashamed of. I have had several men who shared their porn struggle with a group, but no one sought friendship with them afterward due to it being an “accountability group.”
They would have experienced the love of Christ that covers their shame if someone who listened sought friendship with them over the long haul. That might mean coffee or lunch, but it might be more of seeing a movie, working out together, playing golf, biking, or coming over to watch a game, etc. Spending time in those small ways tells them that you are not ashamed of them and that you enjoy them just like Jesus does.
Enjoying them does not mean you talk about the issue every time you get together. If you do that, they have every reason to think that you only care about how they are performing with this issue. Sin seeks to make you self-absorbed because you end up focusing more on your sin instead of on Jesus. Good friendships help you look less at self and focus more on Christ.
The Need to Recover Male Friendships
Friendship is not ashamed of you, much like Jesus wasn’t ashamed of Matthew or Zaccheaus (Matthew 9; Luke 19). Accountability groups can reinforce this shame since, subtly, what matters most is how you are doing with the struggle, how you can grow, and how we can follow up on it. It feels like a manager who exists only to track your numbers.
Are men allowed outlets in our churches, ministries, programs, or home life to seek male friendship, or is the entire focus of male friendships to just be held accountable? Most of us came to know Christ through the friendship of another when we felt lost. I haven’t heard a story of someone coming to Christ through an accountability partner.
Why would we think Christ-centered friendship isn’t as transformative after conversion as it was before conversion?
Influenced by Samuel D. James, “Why Christian Men Need Friendship, Not Just
‘Accountability,’” Digital Liturgies (Substack).
It seems to me this is not an either/or but a both/and. I would rather say Men Need Both Friends and Accountability Partners