This month, our theme is “Evolution”, mainly, how someone’s pornography exposure evolved into an addiction or a struggle. Today, I am telling Austin’s story—a seventeen-year-old boy (whose name has been changed) whose first exposure to pornography was because of his father.
Austin’s Story
I always looked up to my dad and wanted his approval. He was what they call a “man’s man” – he was strong, a little rough around the edges, but he was a successful businessman, and he could fix things easily. We would go hunting and fishing together, and those were some of my best memories. Sometimes, though, in our outings with his friends they would talk about things that left me confused. They would talk about other women, women that they weren’t married to. And at one point, someone referred to what I later realized must have been a strip club. And when I started to think about it, there were nights when he would stay out late and come home smelling like smoke and alcohol, and those must have been some of the nights he would go to strip clubs.
When I was around thirteen or fourteen, my dad gave me a Playboy magazine. He told me I needed to learn about how to be a man. That was the extent of our sex talk, but I started to notice a lot. I found a larger stash of pornography in my dad’s study. I also found receipts from strip clubs in his truck and even discovered texts and photos on his phone from other women. Online, if I looked at the history, I could see a huge amount of pornography that my dad had been visiting.
I can’t say I didn’t like it too, I did, but I felt conflicted. How did mom feel about the strip clubs? Did all men look at pornography? How did my mom feel about the porn? I started noticing that my dad wasn’t as kind to my mom as I thought he was when I was young. When I was sixteen, I asked my mom point blank whether what he was doing was hard on her, and she just started crying.
On one hand, it seemed as though my dad was telling me that pornography was part of being a man, but on the other hand, it seemed as though the pornography and other behavior was hurting my mom, and I knew it had changed him. I admired my dad and I resented him all at the same time.
I’m still struggling with what to do with it all. I look at porn, but I’m not sure I want to, and yet I’m not sure I know how to stop. I definitely look at girls in a very sexual way, and I use them for sex. I think I want a real relationship someday, but most of my friends and I connect with girls first sexually. I want to be a man that my dad respects, but sometimes I don’t know whether I respect him or not.