Friends, the following is from a conversation I had with a mom that has been struggling with escapism.
Everyday we face something that we don’t want to do. Before I had my kids, it was some aspect of my job: the administrative tasks, following up with people that I didn’t want to talk to… data entry… it all made me cringe. I would eat chocolate or cheese, or really anything that I could get my hands on to escape for a moment from my professional responsibilities.
Once I got married and started working a more flexible job, I switched out my food addictions for a new habit of using TV dramas and movies to postpone doing chores like cleaning the house or folding laundry. Since having children, the work, house chores and childcare work has seemed to explode, and some days, I just don’t want to do any of it. Rather than praying, calling a friend, or talking to my husband about my struggles, I started reading entertainment news, which then led to looking at celebrity pictures, which soon led into browsing erotic content online. Self-stimulation and pornography became a new form of escape.
As a result, I became much more selfish. I cared less about my part-time job, and more about numbing myself form the anxiety of all that I had to do. I looked forward to my children’s naptime, when I could have “me time”, which became porn time. I cared less about connecting sexually with my husband, and I started caring more about connecting with myself sexually. I stopped thinking about him when we were making love, and, instead, I brought up the images that I had wallowed in that day to distract myself and help myself climax. I struggled with some shame, but mostly, I just stopped feeling and became less productive, less loving and less selfless. I was becoming a selfish mother and wife, and my sex life with my husband was suffering as a result.
Rather than enhancing our sex life and making me feel more joyful and fulfilled, porn made me feel numb. It didn’t teach me new, helpful sex techniques, it taught me how to hide my day’s activities. It taught me how to use my day as I saw fit, and then cram my job as mother, wife and professional into a crammed hour or two of sub-par, half-hearted activity. Recently, I started to seek out help for my behaviors. I’ve joined an accountability group, and we’ve blocked the TV channels that would spark a struggle. We’ve also started using X3watch on our computers, so my husband and my accountability partner are notified whenever either of us strays to a site that could be troublesome. If you haven’t struggled before with pornography, then you may not realize just how poisonous is can be. I wish someone had told me sooner that it was going to deprive me of so much of my life.
If porn, fantasy or any sex addiction is stealing time and joy from your life, I hope you will check out our resources for men and women and consider joining one of our workshops to help begin the healing process today.