Yes, women struggle with pornography, too.
It was my seventh grade year. I was headed to public school for the first time since kindergarten. I had been home schooled and lived a very sheltered life, so you can imagine the stark difference between my world and that of my peers. I quickly discovered how things went. You wear the right clothes; you get the hottest guys. You get the hottest guys; you get the title of “Popular," even though it’s going to cost you.
I had never had the "Sex Talk," so when I was exposed to porn for the first time that year, I suddenly became intrigued with what I saw. Porn gave me the unrealistic illusion of what sex was all about. For years this twisted my perception of what sex is supposed to be like. What started off as an addiction to what I had seen on the screen, eventually led to an addiction of sex itself. My teenage years were filled with promiscuity as I aimlessly tried to feed my addiction.
I ended up getting pregnant at 17 years old and I settled down with an amazing guy who is now my husband. He decided that even though I was three months pregnant with a child that was not biologically his, I was still worth loving, but that’s for another article. I quickly jumped into marriage with him because we both thought it would end our sex addiction. After all, we proclaimed to be Christians, so we needed to legalize it in God's eyes and then all of our problems would end, right? Wrong. If you read my article on The 5 Myths About Marriage, you will know that we quickly found out that marriage isn’t a fix-all. The addictions and wounds that we both carried pre-marriage were the same ones we carried post marriage.
Even though I was a married woman, I still was addicted to porn. I tried to make it sound less abrasive by telling close friends that it was just a struggle with lust. After all, everything I had ever heard about this addiction was that it was only for men. The shame and guilt I carried from it was overwhelming. I spiraled into an ugly depression. No one could give me answers on how to fix it because I was never strong enough to fully admit I was facing it. It got so bad that I didn’t want to be married anymore because I couldn’t find satisfaction. I began looking for ways to divorce my husband. I hated what this ugly addiction turned me into, yet, I was always looking for another high.
One sleepless night, my husband and I both found ourselves tired of the double life we were living, so with every ounce of strength we had, we admitted to everything. We laid it all out. It was ugly. We basically said, “This is what I’ve done, this is what I’m struggling with, can you love me through it?” This was the first step. Things got a little easier after realizing what we were dealing with, but the addiction was still there. Even though we began holding each other accountable, and setting boundaries for our marriage, we still didn’t have a remedy for the core issue.
That was until we encountered the authentic love of Jesus Christ. I truly felt God’s love for the first time on Feb. 14, 2016, and it changed my life. I was transformed from the inside out by His love and mercy. I surrendered my life fully to Christ that day and I have been set free from porn and its shame and lies ever since then. God's love washed me and my marriage clean and now both my husband and I have an incredible testimony of the redemptive power of God in a human life.
