If you’re wondering how to stop looking at porn, the first thing you need to do is stop the bleeding. The majority of porn nowadays is viewed online, so you have to get an online filter and/or monitoring software for all of your online devices. I recommend Covenant Eyes (use promo code BEYOND to get 30 days free) as it gives an affordable monthly price and can go on unlimited devices (iPhone, iPad, tablets, Android, laptops, desktops, etc.) at no extra charge. You can also use it on all of your family’s devices with different settings for different users. Covenant Eyes will scan for inappropriate images and include them in an accountability email in a blurred out way. It also has a blocking option.
Accountable2You scans for keywords and will send accountability emails regarding any inappropriate keywords used on your online devices. For a free 30-day trial, visit a2u.app/beyond
Filters and/or monitoring software will not eliminate your porn problem on their own, but they are essential if you want a chance. And honestly, there are no good excuses to not have Covenant Eyes and/or Accountable2You software on your online devices.
Getting online purity software is going to take a way a lot of the immediate temptation, which will help a lot. But there’s always off-line porn like magazines, TV and movies, as well as the fact that porn is simply a manifestation of a bigger lust problem. I did a post a little while back on Reasons To Stop Looking at Porn, And How to Do It. I encourage you to check it out but for now, I want to give two things you need to do to fully overcome porn and lust:
- Relearn who women (or men) are and how to view them – Women are not objects, they are people. They are a who, not a what. How does one relearn this? Stopping the constant flow of images (see Covenant Eyes above) is the starting place, but your brain has already been warped for years to think this way. This warping has taught you that women’s only value is in their body parts–that she actually is her body parts. Women are not their body parts though; women are people. It’s really that simple. Women are daughters and mothers and wives. Train yourself that you aren’t to take in the intimacy of a woman’s body parts without also taking in the intimacy of every other component of who she is, which is what marriage is for. When you lust over a woman’s body parts, you are dehumanizing her because you are removing everything that actually makes her human. My hope (for all of our sakes!) is that most of us don’t actually want to dehumanize others. Even if a woman is putting herself out there to be dehumanized and seems like she wants that, don’t reenforce the lie she is believing about herself.
- Learn who you are and that sex will never fill up your need for validation – Disarm the idea that sex and women will satisfy your needs for validation and insecurity. Part of the warping of our brains that draws us to lust and porn is the illusion that a woman’s body parts and her perceived acceptance of us are like mystical superhero powers capable of satisfying our deep inner need to feel valued. Trying to find this need in anything other than God is called idolatry. Your marriage can be an idol, your porn can be an idol, your girlfriend can be an idol, your one night stands can be idols, your fantasies can be idols. Disarming this power is like the difference between seeing the Wizard of Oz from the front of the curtain versus going behind the curtain and seeing he’s just an ordinary man like the rest of us.
In the first point, seeing women as human helps you to view them with dignity, realizing lust degrades them. The more you meditate on this truth, the more repelled by lust you should feel. In the second point, seeing women as human disarms the perceived power they have over you. Your eyes long for certain body parts not because of the actual beauty of that body part (like the beauty of a sunset or the stars), but because of the power you are falsely attributing to that body part. The feelings of approval, value, and acceptance you get from getting that woman as a notch on your belt or genuinely being received by her in a relationship are both equal imposters. Both are temporary and surface level. Both take something good that is meant to serve a specific role in a marriage, and they stretch that good thing out of its context, asking it to do way more than it was ever designed to do, leaving it so thin that it eventually collapses in on itself.
So stop looking for something in a place where you know it doesn’t exist.
This will also allow you to have realistic expectations within your marriage, but that is a whole other conversation.
He is:
Author of Beyond the Battle: A man's guide to his identity in Christ in an oversexualized world
Host of the The Flip Side Podcast
Join an online men's small group led by Noah and team at BeyondTheBattle.net
I had some observations. Some of us, unfortunately, are too computer savvy for any filter to help. We know too many ways around them. We either exercise stolid self-control, empowered by the Holy Spirit, or else. I do take the point that filters are one more safeguard and that is a good thing. There is something to be said for not making access easier than it already is. I wish it is of use to myself.
As I’ve written elsewhere, only facing up to the profound harm that indulging in porn causes has made any difference in my hardened heart. I was liberated from porn by this inescapable truth: porn and all it represents is part of the machinery that makes the sex trafficking of innocent women and girls possible. To participate in porn is to participate, through an easily traceable chain of casualty, to the rape for profit industry. I cannot stomach being a part of that.
To anyone reading this: make no mistake, your endorsement, participation in, or heaven forbid, monetary patronage of porn is directly contributing to the violent enslavement of women and girls around the world. You look at porn: you are part of the problem.
I’m way too verbose at this hour of the night. Maybe I’ll edit this post after some sleep.
I think that all sounds good Brian. Definitely is correct. And also to point out that even non-monetary porn viewing is still funding the sex trafficking industry because every download or click you make provides more advertising dollars to those producing the porn you’re viewing. The advertising dollars always follow the clicks.
One other thing on your first observation about filters and about how you were able to stop viewing porn (which is great to hear, praise the Lord)… I think it’s a good reminder that we are wired differently and there’s more than one way out of porn. One method will work well for one person whereas another method will work better for another. So the more methods and resources put out there, the better. Thanks for sharing Brian.
I notice Noah that you say women are not sexual objects. I think there is conundrum here. Yes, women are sexual objects, by definition. But that is not all they are and this is where we go terribly, tragically wrong as men. Yes, we were meant to desire women sexually: that is how God made us and it is a legitimate desire in and of itself. The Song of Solomon is the graphic depiction of the legitimate expression of sexual desire. How we handle that desire is where we more often than not go wrong. Indulging lust for anyone other than a spouse is sinful. Thoughts?
I definitely agree that we are meant to desire women sexually, but that sexual desire is still a holistic desire. It’s the desire of a human with a soul. Whereas I understand “objectify” as to take the soul or the humanity away from a person. So when a woman is raped, she is objectified to the most extreme case. She is only seen literally as an object, like someone would eat a hamburger and throw away the wrapper. So while lust isn’t the same as rape, the mindset of objectifying is along the same lines: not taking into account all that makes a woman a human, but only seeing her as body parts for us to consume.
To clarify what you were saying, I think all you need to say is that men are sexually attracted to women, but that’s very different than saying women are sexual objects. Does that make sense?
Agreed. And to be honest, I was about to delete the whole comment before I saw that you had responded. I don’t think it was getting the point across (and updates I made to it don’t seem to have shown up for some strange reason).