I Know That Only Through Jesus I Am Saved

I'm currently 20 but my history with pornography is complicated. It began when I was 11 or 12, I was attending a relative's 21st party and a stripper had been hired to perform, of course all the children were put in a separate room but I sat behind a partition wall where I could watch without it being obvious that I could see. This is the first time I was exposed to sexual images and the first time I was interested in them. Although I had discovered sexual arousal I still did not fully understand how it worked, fortunately the sex education classes at primary school informed me in that regard.  It wasn't until the next year in high school when I first had access to sexually explicit images through the internet (during the time of dial-up), the site I most often frequented was all about women covered in mud (although not strictly pornographic) and I printed out a whole bunch of pictures from this site and left them in my bottom drawer (I still can't believe I was that stupid).

At this time I still hadn't ejaculated yet and I mostly just looked at the pictures out of interest. Of course my parents eventually found the ones in my drawer and warned me about pornography (my parents are christian so it is expected) and my dad mainly told me that he didn't want me to think of women as objects. I still continued to view pornography more stealthily and eventually discovered the "end result" while veiwing some relatively tame bikini-pictures. From then on I would often stay up late and download explicit pictures on Kazza when everyone had gone to bed (it was a family computer). I remember being quite addicted to self-satisfaction during these years and for a while I would do it once a day. However during the summer when Year 9 had just started I stopped for some reason.

But after a while I stumbled across some arousing images of comic book characters on a counter-strike website and I went back to viewing pornography. Although this time was different, first of all I began collecting images but I was also uninterested in anything explicit, most of my collection was erotic fantasy artwork.  That collection has been continued by until today and but for the hentai section, I would say it's largely not pornographic.  

I only really seem to find depictions of sex attractive in an illustrated form and even then I only view pictures that are not extremely explicit, which is rare in the hentai genre, I remember once sorting through and saving about 70mb of 2Gb of hentai images I had downloaded, because my taste is so particular. The problem I have with most hentai is that after a while it simply becomes a jumble of limbs and orifices and it realy dehumanizes (asthetically as well as morally) the women involved. Also it often verges on a medical diagram which just isn't attractive at all. This is the same problem I have with actual pornography, the explicitness seems more gross than anything and the pleasure felt by participants isn't really obvious, whereas because in hentai you have to create narrative of sexual arousal in one image, it is more evident and relies more on facial expression than genital contact.

In general like to view pictures of women who are happy in exposing themselves and I like the accentuation of the curved female form and the artistic merits of the setting, costume and makeup which pornography at large mostly destroys. Because of my particular taste, I don't see women as objects, rather I adore their physical beauty in a context that is natural. This mainly is how I reconcile my desire to view these images with my Christianity.

Everything else in my life is still exactly as it would be, I don't even drink or swear and I still wish to remain a virgin until marriage. I still believe that sex is the ultimate form of intimacy and should not be entered into without genuine love. I have never yet had a girlfriend mainly because I'm very shy and polite but I want nothing more than to hold hands with a girl and I intend to stop viewing my collection the minute I find a partner.

This is because I place love over lust and although my sexual urges are satisfied by the images I view I still feel a yearning to connect emotionally with a woman and I know that having sex with a woman I love will be infinitley more fulfilling then self-satisfaction. I see sex as a shared experience that benefits a loving relationship and I know that the way I satisfy my self now is only a shadow of that. After being satisfied sexually I often feel the strong urge to have someone beside me and I imagine cuddling up to a future wife in bed after-wards and that is the true pleasure of sex.

Also I keep my collection completely private and I find it acceptable to view alone but I still find fault with the increased amount of sexual images in the mainstream media. I sill believe sex is a private matter between two people (I fully accept homosexual relationships).

Mostly however I know that only through Jesus I am saved and that viewing erotic images and self-satisfaction are simply sins like any other, after all Jesus came to heal the sick not the healthy. For all these reasons I draw a line between myself and the majority of people who view pornography, however pretentious that may seem. 

I'm Never Full

I've never had a problem meeting woman or getting sex. I consider myself pretty normal. I've held good jobs, dated lots of women, married, raising a decent child, and I'm genuinely proud of my life w/ the gross exception of the vice of porn. 

Somewhere along the line I, and I believe my generation, grew to include porn as a gateway to sex in our daily lives. I don't think I'm different from most young men, we learned from our male role models that porn is o.k as long as its a secret. Dad's and men kept closets full of porn magazines, VHS, DVD's and now movie files. Our friends with access to their Daddy's smut also reinforced this idea. As long as its in a box, under the bed, in the back of the closet, etc its kinda OK. It's no wonder that the 'closeted' acceptance has created such conflict for society. Long kept secrets have a way of sneaking out. 

Now that porn is so main stream the sentiment that still lingers with it in society, and for individuals is the sensation that it should somehow still have an association of 'dirty little secret' even though its out in the open. Porn is no longer 'secret', is hardly 'little' anymore and the sentence is still out on whether it's 'dirty' or not.

I've got a very healthy appetite for porn. I could "eat' all day if I really wanted to. The thing about it though is I'm never full after the meals and the more I consume the more I want. If that's not classic addiction I don't know what is.

I go through periods of binging and purging, just like a bulimic, hoarding gigs upon gigs of filth and deleting them with the resolve to " be better about the collecting" 

The powerful need for fulfillment is what porn offers and what I have embraced over the years. It offers a sense of accomplishment- found porn, got hard, stroked, ejaculated/climaxed! "Wow that felt so good. So why do I feel so empty? Let's try that again with something nastier this time!"

The truth about porn is that for all the moral issues that surround it in society, it works. It provides release for the frustrated, a forum for the exhibitionist, a catalyst for the inhibited, a sanctuary for the shy, a stage for the theatrical. It embraces our fetishes and makes them acceptable, giving us a right to do or say just about everything. It can be artistic, commercial or amateurish and still offer value. Its a mirror that holds so many facets of humanity up and dares to say, "Judge me as you would judge yourself!" and in that fatal hour of judgement we categorically exclaim…we're not worthy!

The feelings I have after I've jerked off to 'insert fetish here' are more about me wishing I was better as a person then actually feeling bad for what I've done. Thinking that if I was better, stronger, more capable and confident I wouldn't need this temporary fix. Hoping that some how I will arrive at a place in life where I won't need to look outside myself for satisfaction.

The reasons to obsess over porn are just so myriad. It's a rich juxtaposition of scorn for the totally "sickos" who I feel at least I'm not them. Then there's the envy for at "lucky ones" who get to have the things that I want. Except I don't know that I'd want some of those things had I not seen them. 

I'll probably always be a customer at the porn counter. There are just so many things to sample. The important thing for me is to learn how to 'eat right'. Only consume the things that are good for me, nothing to indulgent. To try and stay in the "organic" isle and get the less processed variety, things that focus on self esteem and not so much on gluttony or excess. 

I feel that education would go a long way in dispelling some of the societal taboos that surround sex and porn. That as a people we could do worse than to explore our pornographic tendencies. The hyper-sexualized world we live in is just a bubble. It will burst just like the dot-com and housing bubbles and we'll all return to a more educated and reasoned acceptance of what porn is and what its values are.

It Was My Friend

I currently see myself as an attractive, mid-twenties young man, with a creative job i love with a steady and good income. I have my first novel under my belt, a reasonably individual dress sense, a good sense of humour and i'm pretty confident to boot. I've come to love women and the female sensibility very much, and enjoy going on regular dates and occasionally falling in and out of love, but i've not always been like this.

I was expelled from school at 14 for drug related reasons, and immediately became a very angry young man, i started writing ridiculously right wing manifestos and generally was full of hate and bile toward the world and the way it had treated me for experimenting with soft drugs. I became lonely and introverted and that's where my healthy / unhealthy relationship with porn came in.

I had recently acquired my first modem, 14.4k, and did not need anyone or anything else. My parents were technophobes at the time and didn't know how to operate the computer my dad had bought for word processing, and i basically went to town looking for and easily finding porn.

I delved deeper and deeper and as my connection got faster and faster i became more and more hooked, until i was only looking for the most perverse and often degrading forms of porn i could find. I came to rely on porn, it was my friend, it made me feel good through the actions of others. Although i was still socially quite active, my friends were racking up notches on their bed posts whilst i stood in the side lines getting drunk and never really meeting any girls. I had lost my virginity at 14, and although i did have a string of - very - short term relationships in the mean time, i didn't  have penetrative sex again until i was 21, and i largely put this down to a mix of confidence issues and the growing porn obsession. I feel, looking back on it, porn stopped me understanding what 'real sex' was like, and put the act in a very weird place in my mind, it made it something sex is most definitely not, and almost made me think that it was a terrible, degrading act.

Porn was my solace and nemesis at the same time. I loved it and if affected me from growing sexually. Today, i still revert back to my old friend and still have a large digital collection of all sorts dating back from over the years that i keep saying to myself 'i'll delete it soon' but never do. I came out of my 'porn shell' through the love of a good, sexually active and knowledgeable girlfriend, without which, i feel i'd still hold sex as a strange, difficult entity in my head. I'm so happy that i have come to understand and enjoy sex more than looking at porn, i thought for a long time that i might never get over it, and i feel for the men that never do - i'm sure they're out there.

although now i'm dating and it doesn't matter so much, i think i know and realise that when i do eventually meet a girl i would like to settle down with, my life partner, that they will have to appreciate the fact porn and i are in it for the duration, i don't think i could every fully give it up, it's just something i need every now and again off the back of my youth. I think convincing her that it means nothing other than a quick release, however, might be more difficult than i imagine. life takes funny turns.