Note: This post is part four of a six-part series on desire. It has been adapted from my book, 10 Lies Men Believe about Porn, available now wherever books are sold.
You can find beginning of the series here.
When we hear the word “intimacy,” we often think of it confined within the box of sexuality. Yes, sexual intimacy is one of the greatest pictures of intimacy between two people, but it’s not the full definition. Intimacy is defined more completely as the result of being fully known and fully knowing another. It’s the driving force behind every friendship, relationship, marriage, and community. It’s also the very core of what we were created for:
Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37–40).
We were created to love God and love others fully. Or, to put it another way, our souls deeply desire intimacy with God as well as intimacy with others. However, if this need for intimacy isn’t being met in your life, nothing else will matter to you. To paraphrase what Jesus said in the previous verse, everything hinges on this.
This may sound like lovey-dovey hippie stuff—it’s all about the love man…puff, puff—but this is huge. If you are anything like most men, your need for intimacy is the driving force behind your struggle with pornography. Once you begin to understand the truth behind this need—and how you are using pornography to try to meet it—you will begin to experience what true intimacy feels like, possibly for the first time in your life. And once you experience true intimacy, you will begin to see how empty and damaging the lie of pornography really is.
I deeply desired to be loved during the years of my addiction, but I had believed the lie that I was unlovable. I came to the conclusion that my only option to ever receive love was to lie and pretend to be someone I wasn’t. So, as we saw in the previous chapter, I created a mask—a false self—that I could hide behind and pretend to be worthy of love.
There was one serious flaw with this logic, though. By only allowing people to see my mask, the real me could never receive their love. In fact, the people I desperately wanted to be loved by couldn’t love me, not because of their lack of ability or willingness, but because my mask was deflecting their attempts. I knew deep down that any love from others was being directed toward the fake me and not the real me. By keeping my mask on and not allowing anyone to see my struggles, I never gave anyone the chance to love me in spite of those struggles.
I had convinced myself I had to hide the truth about me from my wife in order to at least appear worthy of her love. This constant hiding and dishonesty caused me to feel as if I needed to walk on eggshells around her at all times. I blamed these feelings on her, though, and believed the reason I didn’t feel love or acceptance from her was because she wasn’t giving me what I needed. I blamed our lack of relational intimacy on her inability to love me correctly, not my inability to receive her love. Of course, I couldn’t see this at the time, so I kept trying to find ways to change her behavior toward me instead of looking at what I needed to change on my end.
This same pattern played out with my relationship with God as well. I hid my sin from God and somehow convinced myself it was making me more acceptable. I put on my “Perfect Steve Mask” and volunteered in church, trying to distract God from my sin through service and self-sacrifice. I completely missed the reality that He simply wanted me to be honest about who I was so He could love the real me.
So there I was, desperate for love and acceptance—desperate to experience true intimacy—but unable to receive what was being offered to me because of the mask I was wearing. Like many men, though, I believed the lie that my loneliness was the result of no one in my life offering love and acceptance to me, so I began to seek to fulfill these needs elsewhere.
Seeking to Meet Your Need for Intimacy through Pornography
The lure of porn is more about being desired than satisfying your own sexual desires. The rush you get from porn is the same rush you get during that first kiss. We can call it butterflies, infatuation, whatever—but it all comes down to the wonderful experience of knowing you are desired. If you don’t believe me, ask yourself what thoughts went through your head after a first kiss. Chances are, it was something more along the lines of I can’t believe she kissed me! rather than I can’t believe I finally got to kiss her! Maybe I’m different here, but I doubt it.
Porn gives you that same feeling of being desired, but instead of sensing that the desire is for your mask, you believe the desire is truly meant for you. These women on the screen are fully aware of your pornography addiction (after all, you’re looking at them, right?), and yet they still want to be with you. So, in a twisted way, it almost feels like they are the only ones who are loving the real you. The most sinister part of this is that you will begin to crave the affection of pornography more than the affection of real people because this deception appears to be meeting your need for intimacy better than any other relationship.
This is the lie Satan wants you to believe—that pornography will never judge you, condemn you, or push you to be a better person. It will never ask you to shave or shower before being accepted romantically. You can come in from a weeklong camping trip, covered in dirt and smelling like a moose, and the women of porn will still desire you just as you are. It doesn’t even matter what you are hiding—porn still wants you. It offers you all the benefits of a romantic relationship without the risk of being discovered as a fraud. Better yet, the women of porn couldn’t care less if you are a fraud. It doesn’t even matter to them. This apparent unconditional acceptance makes it incredibly tempting for men—especially broken, hidden, shame-filled men—to run to the arms of pornography rather than the arms of their spouse or their Creator.
But when you seek intimacy through pornography, it actually produces a very opposite effect in your life. More than likely, every time you turn to porn, you will experience shame, which will feed your feelings of insecurity, not measuring up, and wanting to hide the truth about you. This causes you to add one more memory to your list of reasons you believe no one will love you, which encourages you to tighten the strap on your mask a few more notches. The counterfeit intimacy of pornography becomes an industrial epoxy, gluing your mask—the very thing keeping you from experiencing true intimacy—to your soul even tighter. This is how pornography addiction becomes a cycle that feeds itself.
So how do you stop the downward spiral of pornography addiction and the damage it causes in your life? The answer is simple, but it’s not easy. It may very well be the hardest thing you have ever done. The only thing that can stop this cycle is to overcome the shame that is driving it. And the only way to overcome shame is to allow yourself to be fully known, and then realize you are fully loved and accepted in spite of your imperfections.
But to experience this, you must take off your mask and let the real you be known. There is no other way. Don’t lose heart, though. This will be one of the most significant and meaningful journeys of your life.
The Path to True Intimacy
I shared in the previous chapter how I never experienced unconditional love or acceptance until I was honest about my struggles with a group of trusted men. It was the first time I felt loved for who I truly was. These men actually loved the real me. I slowly began to believe that God loved and accepted the real me in the same way as well. I started to recognize that I didn’t need to hide my sin from God. This understanding allowed me to finally believe that it might be possible to live my life without wearing a mask—to let the real me be known.
I love the way Nate Larkin explains how he came to see this reality in his own life:
I always felt bad that I wasn’t a better person. I even created this false self, this “Saint Nate” that I tried to make breathe on its own. I felt bad that “Saint Nate” could only live at church. Now I know that Jesus never loved “Saint Nate” because He didn’t make “Saint Nate.” He made me. Jesus loves me! He wants a relationship with me! And that’s the only real relationship there is.
Did you catch that? Jesus loves you! Not your mask. He loves the real you! If you haven’t been experiencing His love in your life, it’s not because He isn’t offering it to you. It’s probably because you’ve been pulling an Adam and trying to hide from Him in the bushes. You’ve let your mask become a wall that blocks the real you from receiving the love of Christ. Your mask can’t receive His love because your mask isn’t real. Jesus is waiting for you to be honest with Him about your true self. Cry out to Him. Tell Him who you really are. He already knows the truth anyway. Unload your heart before God—sin and all. Claim it. Confess it. Own it. You will find that He’s been there all along, waiting for you to let Him love you in spite of all of it.
The most incredible feeling of acceptance is realizing that the Creator of the universe loves you, even at your worst. God knew you would be right where you are in this moment—pornography and all—and He still chose to send His Son to die for you. Jesus knew you would be here as well, and He still went through with it. When you begin to understand this, any feeling you have of being unlovable or unacceptable will begin to melt away. Once you experience His love and acceptance, your heart will come alive. Your deep need for intimacy will finally be satisfied.
Continue on to Part Five: A Word to Married Men
