The following post is from a conversation I had last year from a father struggling with pornography addiction.
I want to be a good father. Mine certainly wasn’t. My father was an alcoholic. There were moments of light. We had a few good weekends. Even a perfect day at a ballpark. He wasn’t drinking that day. He patted me on the back. He asked me real questions about school. We laughed together. He told me about life and shared stories of when his father took him to the ballpark. He bought me a jersey and we played catch after the game.
Unfortunately, as I got older, the good days became few and far between. When he was home, he hardly spoke to me. Instead, he would retreat into his study to drink or sleep. More often than not, he would stay out drinking at the local bar. Sometimes he became loud and verbally abusive when he drank. When I was a teenager, he came in one night and broke our stairway bannister. In his drunken rage, he blamed my mother and grabbed the broken part of the bannister and went after her. I stepped in to block the beatings. I had a broken jaw and several broken ribs before it was all over.
Once I became a father, I swore that I would be better than my dad. Alcohol wouldn’t rule my life. And it hasn’t. But pornography has. When I was a teenager, pornography became my escape. I drowned out the bruises and the emotional pain associated with my alcoholic parent with as much pornography as I could get my hands on. I always thought it was a phase, but, for me, it was something I never grew out of. Instead, pornography has dominated my life, in much of the same way that alcohol dominated my father’s life.
I’ve found that pornography has stolen time, memories and life away from my children. My dad used to retreat to the study to drink. I retreat to my office to feed my own addiction. My father would waste his nights at the local bar, and I wasted mine at the strip club. My father was physically and verbally abusive to my wife. I’ve been incredibly emotionally abusive to my wife. I’ve withheld love form her and spent my time, love and sexual energy on millions of other women.
Some people say that pornography is just harmless fun, but pornography has caused my wife and my children pain and loss. Pornography has made me a bad father. I never wanted to me like my father, but, because of pornography, in many ways I am.
If you or someone you love is struggling with an addiction to pornography, I hope you will take a look at our resources for women and for men, and consider guiding them to one of our X3pure groups.