My Story By RPVPilot
My first exposure to pornography that I recall was when I was left home to baby-sit my younger brothers. I began snooping around in my parents belongings and came across some hand written sexual stories they had hidden in their closet. That was the beginning. After that, every time I was left to care for my brothers I would snoop around to see if I could find more things-and I did. It seems my dad was always bringing home some book or magazine he had acquired at work.. No matter where he hid them, I found them. I knew that if I did got caught that I would be in trouble; but it wouldn’t be serious trouble. I knew that my parents believed that behaviors like this were just a case of “boys being boys.”
I began dating my first wife when I was in High School. She was the daughter of the school librarian and a very strict single mother of four girls. She had a low self-esteem and very afraid of her mother. I didn’t have much luck in losing my virginity, which was probably good for me, because when we were married it was because we wanted to and not because we had to. But, there were many nights that I would come home after a date and masturbate to the books and magazines that my Dad brought home. He probably didn’t know how much he fueled my fantasy life.
Joining the Navy made things worse. I would go out and buy pornographic books and magazines; and before long, I became known as the “go to” man and king of porn. I felt accepted by my ship mates. The more they complimented my collection the harder I would work to get it. It never occurred to me that the reason they liked me was that they could depend upon me without spending their money.
After being in the Navy for a year I married my high school sweetheart-the same low self-esteem girl that I dated in high school. I was the husband, I was the boss and what I said was the order of the day. But when we went to bed, she took control and quickly learned that saying she had a headache or wasn’t feeling good was enough to get me to leaver her alone. That was alright, I still had my fantasy life to fall back on. If she did let me have some I would let what I was reading at the time influence what kind of sex we had. Thinking back upon it now, I realize that there were times when I did things that she didn’t want to do. At the time, it didn’t matter to me, because it was “all about me” in those days.
After enduring ten years of this kind of treatment, and then me not wanting her to work outside the home, she decided that she had enough and filed for divorce. The divorce was ugly for me because felt like a failure. Divorce wasn’t heard of in my family; yet; it was happening to me.
The court awarded her custody of both kids but after about a year she couldn’t control our son and brought him to me. Here I was a single man with a six year old son. To be honest I didn’t have a clue how I was going to juggle a son and a Navy career. Fortunately I was on shore duty and didn’t have to deal with what I was going to do with him when I had to go to sea. Little did I know that God had put a into motion. The lady next door who was taking care of my sexual needs, believe it or not, was part of God’s plan to take care of my spiritual needs. She convinced me that I needed to get my son into church. But God had additional plans; and before long, I gave myself to Christ and accepted His salvation. Only by the grace of God could I have salvation and a partner to raise my son. That is when He brought me my wife.
Life was good. After one date at Christmastime, and an extended telephone courtship, we were married the following April. Like many other men, I thought that my need of porn would go away after we were remarried, but that was only a pipe dream. There wasn’t much porn to be had other than the occasional Playboy or Penthouse in the rural South. But then shore duty is only a short period in a sailor’s life and we had to move to the East coast for sea duty. Just the opposite was true there, porn was plentiful and I had to go out onboard ship quite a bit and I justified that in order to stay true to my marriage I should begin masturbation once again. But I when I returned home, I couldn’t stop. I felt that I needed to masturbate at every opportunity. Afterwards I would beat myself up thinking “Why am I still doing this? I have a beautiful and loving wife yet here I am masturbating like I am still out at sea.”
Sea duty ended, shore duty began and we moved to the Mid-West; but that still didn’t stop the masturbation. If anything it became more frequent. While on the East Coast we bought our first computer and I was one of the first people in my office to figure out how to get “online”. In those days it meant a 300 baud modem and bulletin boards. But I found the pornography. Then, when AOL came along, I found even more. Porn was plentiful! Somewhere in the middle of all of this my wife asked me to stop bringing home the porn books and magazines, with the excuse that my son might find them. She was worried about the example I was setting. I freely agreed, knowing in the back of my mind that I now had the internet and I could keep my pornography use in secret. I tried to be careful. But no matter how careful you think you are, you always trip up somewhere.
When I got caught I lied. My wife knew that I was lying and said that if I didn’t do something about my problem that our marriage would be over. She let me know that she felt she would have no other choice than to divorce me and kick me out of the home. I knew she was serious and I would have to do something about my porn habit. That was the day I called an associate pastor and he arranged for me and my wife to have a counseling session with the Lead Pastor who told us that no matter what I tried to do that I wasn’t going to be able to quit by myself and that he recommended formal counseling and referred us to a counselor. After several months of counseling sessions the counselor recommended that I start attending a support group for sexual addiction and as they say the rest was a new beginning. It has not been an easy journey, but I know that between the support group and God I stand a chance of overcoming this addiction and finding my true walk with the Lord.
RPVPilot is a member of the Oklahoma City Purity Project where he leads support and mentor groups to help men become free of porn. He’d love to hear from you. Just send an email to purityproject@cox.net and we’ll pass your request along to him.
