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[Interview] Porn use, addiction, and recovery.

dr-henryThe day I met Dr. Ryan Henry, only days remained between summer 2009 and the start of my first semester as a grad student at the University of South Florida. I would study rehabilitation and mental health counseling and Dr. Henry — a licensed marriage and family therapist — would be my advisor.

As it turned out, he’d also be a mentor, among my favorite professors, and a model for the kind of therapists classmates and I hoped we would become. At his practice, he is a therapist to couples, and specializes in working with couples whose relationships are affected by infidelity, pornography, and other “emotional injuries.” I’m grateful he took the time today to talk with me about pornography:

AS: How do you define pornography?

RH: That depends on who you are. The lowest level definition: it’s anything that sexually arouses you. And that opens up a lot more things than just internet pornography. So as a professional, I don’t try to define it for (clients). I talk to them in a way that lets them define it for themselves and for the relationship.

AS: How do you define porn addiction?

RH: I basically look at it like any other addiction. If it’s interfering with (a person’s) functioning in life, they’ve tried to stop and they can’t, if it’s had a negative impact on their relationships and they’re still not willing or able to give it up, those factors lead me to the idea of addiction. But I don’t really work from an addiction model. I work from an escape model. Pornography is used as an escape from past trauma and current negative emotion. Although I agree there is an addictive component to it, it’s a way to escape life and that’s what really needs to be addressed.

AS: How pervasively do people use porn as an escape?

RH: If we’re using that term, pretty much everybody! It’s like video games. If we’re talking about real addiction, not able to stop, interfering, constantly being on their mind, it’s a smaller population. But it doesn’t have to reach an addiction to be a problem.

AS: How likely is it that a person who uses porn for the first time will become addicted to it?

RH: That is a difficult question to answer. There are a lot of factors that go into someone getting hooked on pornography after one use. If they accidentally are exposed to pornography and quickly shut it down, the likelihood is extremely low that they will become addicted. However, if that first use is intense and tied to a sexual experience, it has a higher likelihood of trapping the individual in the addiction cycle. So I do believe it is possible to become addicted after one experience with pornography, just like after one drink certain people become addicted, but I do not have a sense of how often that is the case.

AS: How often do you work with clients who are addicted to porn?

RH: All my clients are couples. In that sense, only 20 percent of couples come in for that specific reason. And that’s probably even high (compared with the norm), because I specialize in that. When I worked with individuals, it was more like 50 percent of my clients. Most of them weren’t in committed relationships; some were. Young married to mid-life (is the range) I see presenting with this, (ages) 26 to maybe 40.

AS: Based on what you’ve seen in clients, what impact does porn addiction have on a person’s relationships?

RH: The obvious ones are that if you’re putting your sexual drive into pornography, it’s taking away from the sexual attachment to your partner. But it also kind of distorts reality – pornography distorts intimacy, the ideal woman, what sex should look like and be like for a couple. And so there’s a lot of misconceptions that occur and then the relationship gets compared to the misinformation and a lot of times dissatisfaction with the relationship results, because then you’re asking why don’t you do it this way, or look this way, or why aren’t you always wanting sex? When reality is compared against it, it falls short. That’s the nature (of) comparing reality to non-reality.

AS: And the less obvious impacts?

RH: If you’re continually escaping into porn and you’re not dealing with the trauma or negative emotion you’re escaping from, it begins to impact your mood. A lot of times I see aggression or anger coming out. (Additionally,) the investment in pornography takes away from your investment in your real relationship. We have a 100 percent ability to be attached. If we give 80 percent of that attachment to pornography, that only leaves 20 percent to invest in real relationships. The (other) person in the relationship is going to feel that, and they’re not going to be satisfied with that detachment.

AS: What impact does porn addiction have on a person’s health?

RH: When we’re talking about real addiction, it consumes the person. So they don’t take care of themselves in any other way. Just like an alcoholic — they’re consumed by drinking. I’ve had clients say they’ve stayed up all night watching pornography and they’ve had to go to work the next day. Then work goes so badly they want to check out again when they get home, so they stay up all night. The other thing is it survives or breeds on secrecy and so there’s an emotional impact of holding secrets. It’s a burden that weighs on you. This only applies to people when using pornography doesn’t align with their value systems. In order to continue to use, they have to lie to themselves and the people around them and that has an emotional and a spiritual impact.

AS: If somebody’s use of pornography isn’t an addiction, can it still negatively impact his or her life? In what ways?

RH: Yeah – it can impact the relationship. There are some relationships that agree it’s ok to view pornography individually, some only together. (In) other relationships, it’s not ok at all. Depending on the relationship rules, it can have a negative impact, whether it’s once a year or daily. It doesn’t have to be an addiction to cause problems.

AS: Is prevention of porn addiction possible?

RH: It’s possible to stop an addiction from occurring, but it’s not possible not to ever be exposed to (pornography). The goal, if you come across it in your life, is that you have a way of handling it that keeps you from going further into it.

AS: Is recovery from porn addiction possible?

RH: Yes.

AS: What routes can a person take toward recovery from porn addiction?

RH: You have to address it at all the different levels. There’s the habitual part, where it just becomes a habit. There’s the emotional piece: you have to deal with trauma, find a new way to cope with negative emotions, and really get down to what’s the need you’re trying to meet with the pornography. It might be power, or intimacy. Pornography does a great job of mimicking intimacy. You have to get down to what’s really driving this (addiction) for this person and address that need. If you don’t address that need, it’s just going to come out in a other way that’s destructive, even if you get rid of the pornography. There’s also the biological component. When you use pornography, certain chemicals are released into your body that your body then starts to crave. You have to find ways to release them that are healthy, like exercise.

AS: What role – if any – does forgiving oneself play in recovery from porn addiction?

RH: You definitely have to address the forgiveness and shame piece. It’s ok to have these drives. That’s part of being human, and for a lot of men, that’s part of being male. A lot of people fight that, resist it, and it becomes bigger as they try to do that. Think of it as a wave washing over you: You see an attractive woman and it produces this sexual drive in you. Acknowledge it: there’s an attractive woman, I feel aroused, and I’m just going to let it wash over me. If you put up a dam, you’re all of a sudden going to feel the full force of that wave. If you let it wash over you, you can go about your day. It’s basically removing the shame of it, (saying) “that’s normal response to have in that situation, and now I’m going to move on.”

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To learn more about Dr. Ryan Henry, LMFT, visit his website.

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Thoughts on Mark Ruffalo’s open letter regarding abortion.

Last weekend, at an abortion rights rally outside a clinic in Jackson, Mississippi, somebody read an open letter aloud, written by actor Mark Ruffalo. Ruffalo, who is the Hulk in The Avengers, is for the right to choose abortion, which – according to the letter – is what his mother did. Below are excerpts of the letter (in italics), plus my commentary:

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What happened to my mother was a relic of an America that was not free nor equal nor very kind. My mother’s illegal abortion marked a time in America that we have worked long and hard to leave behind. It was a time when women were seen as second rate citizens who were not smart enough, nor responsible enough, nor capable enough to make decisions about their lives. 

Women (and men) are created able to be smart, responsible, and capable enough to make good decisions. I agree with what Ruffalo implies: a woman in whose womb there is a baby can (and should) make a responsible choice. What I haven’t heard from Ruffalo yet, or much at all in this conversation, is an important reminder: Couples capable of making good decisions after conception can make good decisions before conception, too. So why don’t they? Probably because pro-choice people and pro-life people define “good decisions” differently. Because we live in a culture that still thinks we can have our cake and eat it, too. Because contraception.

It was a time that deserved to be left behind, and leave it behind we did, or so it seemed. We made abortion and a woman’s ability to be her own master a Right. That Right was codified into law. That law was the law of the land for decades. My own mother fought to make herself more than a possession; she lived her life as a mother who chose when she would have children, and a wife who could earn a living if she so chose. I want my daughters to enjoy that same choice. I don’t want to turn back the hands of time to when women shuttled across state lines in the thick of night to resolve an unwanted pregnancy, in a cheap hotel room just south of the state line. Where a transaction of $600 cash becomes the worth of a young woman’s life. 

I admire Ruffalo’s compassion for people who are in the toughest imaginable spots. I get how he hopes his daughters have a choice. But I am not as interested in whether it is legal to choose. (If abortion were outlawed entirely, it would be a Band-Aid anyway, for a wound way bigger than that.) If I have kids, my hope is not that they can choose. My hope is that they don’t have to make that choice. That they will choose chastity. That pregnancy, before or after a marriage, is regarded as a miracle instead of as a disease.

There was no mistake us making Abortion legal and available on demand. That was what we call progress. Just like it was no mistake that we abolished institutional racism in this country around the same time. The easy thing to do is lay low, but then are we who we say we are? Do we actually stand for anything, if what we do stand for is under attack and we say nothing? There is nothing to be ashamed of here except to allow a radical and recessive group of people to bully and intimidate our mothers and sisters and daughters for exercising their right of choice. 

Bullying or intimidating people who have had or are considering abortions is egregious. It’s unloving and Jesus wouldn’t do it. So stop it. To this I would add it is also egregious to bully people who have made another choice: not to have sex. It is also egregious to intimidate them. To tell them they are virgins because “I can’t tell if you’re a man or a woman,” to encourage them to compromise because “no guy will wait that long to have sex.” (And yes, people have said both to me.)

I invite you to find your voice and let it be known that you stand for abortion rights and the dignity of a woman to be the master of her own life and body. I invite you to search your soul and ask yourself if you actually stand for what you say you stand for. 

Our bodies are temples. Dwelling places of God. We have been given a human nature, which – according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church – “has not been totally corrupted.” It is only wounded. Which means we indeed can learn self-mastery, in chastity, which – far more than any movement I have encountered – promotes the dignity of all human life.

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Click here to read Ruffalo’s letter in full.

Click here to read 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, ’cause it’s relevant.

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Calling the case for early marriage into question: Part 2 of 2.

In a post last week, I called the case for early marriage into question. One proponent of early marriage – Mark Regnerus – proposed in a 2009 Christianity Today column that early marriage is ideal because marriage is formative. I agree that marriage is formative, but I do not believe we postpone formation by postponing marriage.

Because marriage might mature us is not the sole reason proponents of marrying young encourage it. Another reason is sex.

“Many (young adults) plan to marry in their mid-20s. Yet waiting for sex until then feels far too long to most of them,” Regnerus wrote. “…when people wait until their mid-to-late 20s to marry, it is unreasonable to expect them to refrain from sex. It’s battling our Creator’s reproductive designs.”

Unreasonable? I beg to differ. Here’s why:

None of us are spared God’s “reproductive designs,” but not all of us are going to get married. Whether we marry isn’t always within our control, but what we can control is ourselves. To push a person toward early marriage in order to avoid experiencing the sexual urge outside it is to tell a person dominion over our urges isn’t worth it or possible (and for a person who believes it’s impossible, it will be). A person who says it creates and perpetuates, then, the very reason he or she says we ought to marry early.

And that, I think, is unreasonable.

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Click here to read part 1 of this post.

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Thoughts on chastity, sex, and self-mastery.

I stumbled recently upon a tweet or a post in which its writer opined on self-mastery.

I don’t remember who it was or exactly what he or she said (I read a lot of things.). I do remember disagreeing. I suspect, then, that the tweet or post in some way decried the quest for self-mastery as bad. Which wouldn’t surprise me. The culture that surrounds us isn’t conducive to it. The culture that surrounds us ultimately says “be governed by your drives” (for sex, for instance).

We are taught to let our drives decide what we’ll do (want sex, get sex) instead of acknowledging our drives as there, and as God-given, but using other guides, like love and critical thought, to decide why and when to act on them.

Regarding drives, chastity says “govern them.” Chastity says use self-mastery to do it. Self-mastery requires discipline, but to get better at discipline isn’t the point. The point is to get better at love.
Self-mastery is self-dominion. It’s possession of self. It’s being the boss of your drives. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it is “ordered to the gift of self.”Love, for single people and priests and nuns and married or celibate people, regardless of sexual orientation or experience or lack thereof, is a gift of self. When we love, we give ourselves in different ways to different people.

This is why, when love is the goal, self-mastery is important.

We can’t give away what we don’t own.

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Is monogamy unnatural?

ID-100157105According to a column Friday on CNN.com, to honor each other as man and wife for the rest of our lives is probably impossible.

“Strict sexual fidelity is a lofty but perhaps fundamentally doomed aspiration,” wrote Meghan Laslocky, the column’s writer and author of The Little Book of Heartbreak: Love Gone Wrong Through the Ages.

According to Laslocky, humans have to tolerate the “impulse to experience sexual variety” for longer now than ever, because people are living longer now than before.

“A person is theoretically expected to have one sexual partner for about 50 years,” she wrote. “This seems like a lot to expect of any human being — even the most honorable, ethical and moral.” It’s a lot to expect, she said, because humans are animals and animals aren’t often monogamous.

“Face it,” the column’s headline reads. “Monogamy is unnatural.”

Then infidelity is “only human,” to use words the average American adult might use. But I have good news for Laslocky:

Infidelity is not “only human.” Fidelity is.

Humans are embodied spirits, created in God’s image, given enough daily grace to resist temptation. “Original sin,” according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “caused ‘a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted; it is wounded… and inclined to sin – an inclination to evil that is called concupiscence.”

Concupiscence is definitely in “the impulse to experience sexual variety.” It is what pulls a married man or woman toward sex with somebody other than his or her spouse. According to Theology of the Body (TOB), “It is as if the ‘man of concupiscence’ …had simply ceased… to remain above the world of living beings or ‘animalia.'” We have to learn, according to TOB, “‘to be the authentic master(s) of (our) own innermost impulses…'”

It is animal to act thoughtlessly on impulse, and human to use faith and reason to control it. It is animal to be unfaithful, and human to keep our vows.

This doesn’t mean we are animals because we sin. It doesn’t mean we are animals at all. It doesn’t make us less-than, but proves we are greater-than, that we don’t sin because we’re human but because for a moment, we forgot we are human. It means that because we are human, we aren’t bound by sin, but invited to be freed from it, that we don’t have to keep doing the things we sometimes think we can’t not do.

If we are the animals Laslocky says we are, it isn’t because of biology, but because we’re rejecting grace. And if “sexual fidelity is a lofty but perhaps fundamentally doomed aspiration,” it isn’t because we are animals, but because we believe we are.

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Click here to read Laslocky’s column in full.

Relevant quote: “If redeemed man still sins, this is not due to an imperfection of Christ’s redemptive act, but to man’s will not to avail himself of the grace which flows from that act. God’s command is of course proportioned to man’s capabilities; but to the capabilities of the man to whom the Holy Spirit has been given” (Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor).