It was on the playground, during recess, when the Playboy bunny made a “visit” to my elementary school. A classmate of mine wanted to show me a picture of a naked lady. I was six years old. Little did I know that moment would forever effect the rest of my life.
That image never left my mind. To this day I can remember that picture, and even the emotions it triggered in my little innocent self. In fact, I always sought ways to recreate those feelings by seeking similar images. My dad never had a “porn stash.” Or at least, I never found it. I did find naked women, however, in the R-rated movies my parents occasionally watched.
As I grew older and began earning my own money, pretty much every day I got paid I immediately went to the adult stores in the surrounding cities of my little rural town. I spent hundreds of dollars, splurging on hours and hours of XXX-rated porn. Then I’d trash my precious VHS porn tapes in fear of ever getting caught by anyone, especially my parents.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: I was a pastor’s kid who grew up in a very religious home.
This fact, of course, was one reason I never shared my secret life of porn addiction with anyone. And as a result of that secret, I felt alone. I felt as if I was the only person experiencing this kind of shame.
Once I was married, I thought I would have a “healthy outlet” for my urges and that I could fulfill my fantasies with my wife. Boy, was I wrong. My wife couldn’t compete with the airbrushed images and edited videos of the women I saw in my porn.
After years of trying to push my porn fantasies on my wife and being met with heavy resistance I “had” to find a way to get my fantasies fulfilled somehow and so decided to pay someone to fulfill my porn fantasies.
This was my lowest point.
After confessing this shameful deed to my wife and to our mentors I was painfully confronted with my own depravity and for the first time actually felt broken over my addiction to porn. This was the turning point.
It was at the beginning of this journey of restoration and purity that I discovered that my porn addiction was actually a symptom of something deeper: isolation.
Porn is usually consumed in isolation (Tweet This!), and so I learned that what I needed was community and accountability. And not just that… I needed to give people full ACCESS to my heart. People knew my victories but nobody knew my vices–this all changed once I became accountable and accessible.
And once accountability and access became a regular part of my life, purity became a very tangible reality. Much more real than porn every could be.
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Richie Cruz shares his story with hundreds of men a year because he wants to see men find freedom. It’s time to share yours.
I Was a Porn Addict and a Pastor’s Kid: My Porn Story by XXXchurch is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.