My life today is radically different to what it was ten years ago when porn first became a serious problem for me. However just as a disclaimer, this isn’t the story of someone who used to watch porn, and then suddenly stopped forever. There’s not a clear-cut before and after here, because whilst the bulk of recovery is behind me and I haven’t compulsively used pornography in many years, I have experienced lapses on occasion. Healing is never linear, it’s a rich journey of discovery and sometimes those discoveries come through mistakes. So, while I can’t say this is my life completely after porn, I can tell you this is my life after pornography addiction. The following are just six ways my life has changed, and I hope they instill a sense of genuine hope in you for the future.
I’m married to an amazing man
Dealing with my porn problem gave me the courage, wisdom and emotional stability to begin dating again at age twenty-five after a few disastrous experiences of romance in my teen years. Lukas and I had been close friends for seven years before we started dating, so he was the perfect choice. Evidently, he thought so too, as within a year from our first date, we were married. We’ve been together for four years now and I have no doubt that God ordained our love story from the start.
Let me just clarify though, marriage isn’t a guarantee if you recover from pornography addiction. It isn’t for anybody, no matter their life story. Marriage isn’t a mystical reward that God gives you for being ‘good’ enough, and I don’t believe he withholds good gifts like a boyfriend or husband as punishment for being ‘bad’. This is just how my story played out, and I can see in hindsight that I didn’t have the emotional capacity or ability to be vulnerable enough to partake in a healthy relationship in the midst of my struggle with pornography. It wasn’t just the porn, there was trauma to be dealt with too but all in all, it wasn’t a great time to find love, and I didn’t. God knew when I was ready, I think this is the measure He works off, rather than rewarding or punishing our behaviour.
Marriage isn't a mystical reward that God gives you for being ‘good’ enough, and I don’t believe he withholds good gifts like a boyfriend or husband as punishment for being ‘bad Click To TweetMy physical health has improved
In 2013, I was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia (F.M), a mysterious pain syndrome that is barely understood. There is no treatment or cure, and various theories on it’s cause. This diagnosis came in the midst of my struggle with pornography.
A few years later, my Doctor added Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (M.E) (often known as chronic fatigue syndrome) to the list. It has a similar mystery surrounding it’s cause and cure. My medical history now included these two serious conditions alongside anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) which weren’t managed at this time.
During this period of my life, I frequently had coughs, colds and infections on top of crushing fatigue and random pains. I didn’t have a lot of hope for the future, either. I was referred to pain and fatigue clinics to learn how to deal with potentially life-long symptoms and had strict routines surrounding rest, food and vitamins.
Feeling constantly sick and living in fear of my pornography habit being discovered quickly threw me into isolation. I often refused to attend events and gatherings, including church, because mentally and physically, I was overwhelmed.
Some people believe F.M/M.E can be triggered by trauma. There’s not enough research to claim this as the sole cause of these syndromes, but I really do believe this is true for me. I feel like my childhood and adolescent stress, PTSD, an accident that left my car squished between a rental car and a truck and the relentless ongoing stress of pornography addiction and shame led to my body physically caving in. After so many years on high alert, my body needed to enforce rest. It crashed. My body was a little rundown car that had been chugging along on empty for too long. I do believe our bodies carry our trauma; we hold stressful memories in our bones.
I feel certain of this, because today I am strong. I can lift heavy weights, I can do High Intensity Interval Training and walk whenever I want. I get sick less often, I have good health. I no longer sleep up to fourteen hours a day and live with my brain lost in fog. I can drive my car with little to no back pain, and I feel good. There are times where I’m probably more fatigued than the average person, and I still have to be mindful of my health but in general, I feel normal and healthy.
As with recovery, this certainly didn’t happen overnight, but looking back I can see that my physical health made leaps in line with my mental health. I can see that I was able to increase my exercise and reduce my sleep in the months following major breakthroughs in therapy and life. The more freedom I gained from pornography, the better my body felt. As I worked through the underlaying issues that made me susceptible to compulsion and escapism and engaged with God, community and my own hopes and dreams, I felt energy and strength pooling up inside of me. I felt a sense of purpose that drove me forward. It was both an emotional and physical renewal I experienced.
Our bodies carry our trauma; we hold stressful memories in our bones. Click To TweetAlong with a care-plan monitored by my doctor, good nutrition, graded exercise and anti-depressants, dealing with my emotional baggage healed me. The last two years have been particularly wonderful. My health feels the best it’s been in over six years, and I know in the last two years I’ve really healed some wounds that were hanging on. I think writing Restored had a lot to do with that.
This might not ever be your experience of physical and emotional healing, some people unfortunately live with ill health their whole lives, and I am not saying that quitting porn can heal your body (or that using it will cause ill-health) but this is my life after porn. I do hope it can be yours too.
I have more friends and better-quality relationships
Addiction is isolating. You’d rather be inside with the door locked, logging into your favourite porn site than using precious energy to socialise (i.e hide your secret). People become the enemy, they become a thing of fear. What if they found out? What if they judged you? Rejected you? What if they turned around and called you a freak, confirming your every suspicion about yourself? All of this fear and confusion is exhausting, and it feels easier to avoid community.
As an anxious introvert with a porn problem to hide, this was me. I avoided any social activity I could and found myself totally walled in emotionally. Even when I was present, I was emotionally vacant and avoidant. Vulnerability and intimacy felt bewildering and impossible to me, for those things would surely reveal my deepest, darkest secret. I longed for intimacy and community but it was just too frightening.
Eventually confessing my struggle to one friend led to me slowly opening up, like a winter rose finally blooming. It gave me courage, and I continued to be honest with those around me, healing in the process.
Sharing my story and being honest about my struggles taught me a lot about genuine intimacy, and where it can be found. Not in porn, but in the arms of loved ones. Over time, I grew more courageous in sharing my story, and this opened up more space for others to do the same.
Because of this vulnerability, today I know deep and lasting friendships. I have more friends than I did back then, and our connection is more than just passing, I have lifelong friends. Ones who know all the gritty details and stick around. Honest friends, wonderful women and men who I talk to, share with and spend time with, feeling at ease rather than anxious.
I am confident in my worth
I have never been a confident person. My memories from early childhood are anxious ones. I was never one to raise my hand in class, or even ask to use the bathroom if I needed to. I always felt awkward, and this followed me into adulthood. Pornography did not help with this crushing shyness one little bit. It made everything worse, because I had even more shame to deal with, I felt even more like an outsider, a freak. My motto became ‘the less attention I draw to myself, the better’. Fear and strategic social avoidance drained any confidence I may have had in me, and made me feel totally worthless.
Today my favourite item of clothing is a black T-shirt with the words ‘SO WORTH LOVING’ printed boldly on the front (buy one here). And I believe it. Overcoming pornography emboldened me to own my strength, courage and innate value. Going through therapy, reconnecting with myself, community and God and achieving so many recovery goals over the last few years has proven to my inner critic that I am worthwhile. I am so worth loving! This is a complete reversal of my old core belief that ‘I am basically a bad, unworthy person’ and it has given me a boost of confidence I’ve never really known. I feel confident in my worth, and just confident in general. I feel empowered to speak up, take up space and fight for what is right. I’m more confident wearing bright colours instead of just black or grey and I’m not afraid to speak in public.
Sometimes I falter and feel awkward, I’m still that anxious introvert at heart! But this doesn’t identify me, and my confidence outweighs my anxiety.
I experience fewer sex dreams and triggers
The further you get away from pornography and fantasy, the less frequent your triggers will become. As memories fade, sex dreams and favourite fantasies will quieten and drop off. They will probably never totally go away, and that’s normal. But they won’t be haunting your every thought and dream anymore. There are things I have forgotten and memories that have faded that once shone brightly in my mind. Many of these triggers and memories have passed away now, ten years after it all began. Of course, I still have sex dreams, and fantasies and triggers still pop in to visit, just as anyone else may experience, but they’re not as frequent as they once were and I know how to show them the door most days. They’re giving me space. And I am thankful.
I’m hoping to have a baby and start a family
Hope. I think that’s the biggest gift that recovery can give you. When you’re stuck in addiction, everything feels hopeless. It is a void, sucking the life out of everything that once gave you joy. It feels near impossible to consider the future in a positive light, today is dark and it feels as if every day after will be the same. How could it not? Addiction is darkness.
When I was stuck in compulsive pornography use, absolutely drained of worth, living in fear and bleeding out from childhood wounds and more recent trauma that threatened to destroy me, the idea of a happy future wasn’t even a possibility to me. I would be alone, I decided. I could never birth and nurture children and start something new and beautiful. I was too broken, my experience of family and community too splintered. I couldn’t risk screwing it up.
As I slowly healed and worked through my wounds in therapy, shimmers of light appeared. Hope crept in, I opened myself to the possibility of some kind of future and love. Yet, children remained a thing of fear. How would I parent without a healthy blueprint from my own upbringing? Could I risk making the same mistakes I felt my parents had? How could I avoid the unavoidable, in morphing into the Mother I resented?
These fears weighed on me, even into my marriage. I told you it wasn’t a sudden movement from porn to life after porn! However, with the support of my husband, wisdom and care from friends and mentors both with and without children and experiencing the pure love that a baby brings into the world in my precious nieces, I have healed this part of me. Well, perhaps I should say God has healed this part of me. Instead of fear, I feel empowered. Rather than dread, I feel excitement to start a new family and parent out of gentle love and respect. I am ready to make generational change in this family.
This is life after porn.
Do you want your own story of life after porn? If you’re not sure where to start and want a handy guide, check out Restored: A Woman’s Guide to Overcoming Pornography. This is my road-map for struggling women, a practical, down-to-earth recovery guide that caters to the unique needs of women. It’s everything that worked for me and has gotten me to where I am today.