Porn Is Destroying My Marriage...HELP

Hey, if you're struggling with porn right now, it's ruining your marriage, and you just don't know how to quit, you can't quit, this video is going to be for you because I'm going to explain to you why you're watching porn and it's not a sexual addiction and how to move beyond this. So let's get straight into this video called "Porn is destroying my marriage, please help me." So maybe you've arrived at this point here watching this video with a feeling of desperation, a feeling of shame, the secrecy surrounding it. Now, first thing I want to say is like, you're certainly not alone. You in this. I've worked with literally thousands of men now in marriage crisis, and virtually every single one of them is struggling with porn at some level or another. And quite often it's way down the line, we actually build a relationship, that that porn addiction is actually revealed because it's so embarrassing and so much shame associated with it. So this is not something that you're struggling with alone, and there is a solution to it. So again, You may arrive at this video with feelings of desperation, shame, secrecy, and then of course there's the addiction cycle that we go through, which is we watch the porn, we feel the relief that we get from it, we get the payoff, and then of course the guilt is almost instantaneous afterwards. We promise ourselves that we're going to do better, we're never going to do this again, and then of course a short order period of time after that, we're repeating the process over and over again., and we're just stuck in that cycle. So the internet will tell you that you're, that it's an addiction, that you have a high sex drive, you lack self-control, so on and so forth. There's a lot of things, a lot of diagnoses that will be out there to describe this, but all of these may be true, but a diagnosis doesn't give you a solution. It simply describes what's happening right now. If you're addicted to porn, all the diagnosis that porn addiction gives you is that you're watching lots of porn, right? It doesn't explain why it's happening, and unless you can understand why it's happening, then you're not going to find the solution. Because porn is a formidable enemy. It's worse than every other addiction in my mind because it's so readily available, especially if you have one of these things, right? You've got a phone, you're only ever seconds away from it. It's not like you can separate yourself from it. If it's drugs, alcohol, that kind of stuff. Much easier to put some physical distance between you and the addiction. With porn, it's very, very difficult because it's so readily available, and it's available completely for free in an extreme amount of abundance. So the key understanding is that a diagnosis describes behavior, it doesn't describe the mechanism that drives that behavior. So every behavior serves a purpose, whether it's an addictive behavior, an addiction, or whether it's a any kind of behavior, whether it's rational, irrational, it doesn't matter. The behavior is there to serve a purpose, and we can call that a mechanism. So when you can understand that behavior exists to, to create an outcome, to serve a purpose, then when you can understand what that outcome is, then you can, you can find healthier pathways to get the outcome that you're looking for. So you're not here because you're looking for explanation or a diagnosis of what's going on. You're looking for freedom, right? You're looking for freedom from porn once and for all. So let's see if we can't give you that here today. So let's start out with saying that porn isn't solving a sexual problem. This is not a sexual addiction. You're not a pervert. You're not a sex addict. You're not any of those things. What porn actually solves very, very powerfully and very quickly— and again, this is the danger of this, we can get instant relief because of our Phone. Pornography actually creates two things that you are craving, which is an immediate state change and absolute certainty. So let me put this into perspective. So if at the end of the day you've had a terrible day, you've had a horrible day, and you want to get out of that mood, what is the probability that porn will change that mood? If you've just had a big fight with your wife and you're in a horrible mood, horrible condition, and you want to change that condition, what is the probability that porn will change that condition? Well, the probability is literally 100%. It gives us a guaranteed state change. We can be having the worst day of our life, and within seconds that's completely forgotten, and a complete shift of state has happened through porn. It gives us a 100% guaranteed access to state change. Now, some people go to the gym, right, or some people exercise. These also give us state changes, but not instant, and it's much, much harder work. So the second thing that pornography provides for us that is extremely powerful is absolute certainty. So the guarantee, the chances of a state change coming from porn are 100% with 100% certainty 100% of the time. Certainty is something that we are looking for, that we crave in our life. Very few things provide absolute certainty. Pornography is one of them. And when we couple that with the fact that it's an immediate state change, it's absolutely certain, and you can do it with your phone, it's readily available with a huge amount of variety, and it's free. This is a very, very very powerful thing. So you're not trying to solve a sexual problem here, you're trying to solve a state change problem and a certainty problem. This is what it provides. So no matter how bad you feel, no matter what kind of day or emotion you're experiencing— loneliness, rejection, anxiety, shame, boredom, overwhelm, inadequacy, any of those things— it's going to give you that. It's going to give you— porn is going to guarantee you relief. From all of those things. It's going to give you instant relief. It's going to give you instant escape. It's going to give you instant stimulation. It's enjoyable. It's highly predictable in what it's going to do, and it's going to do all of these things within seconds. It's even more potent than alcohol because alcohol takes a minute or two at least for the state change to kick in. Pornography produces that state change much, much, much faster. So the key understanding here is that porn isn't primarily solving lust or sexual addiction. It's solving emotional regulation. It's creating that emotional stability in the short term that you crave. Unfortunately, it's taking something much more in payment for that. But in the short term, it's not lust. You're not You're not watching porn because you're hornier than a two-peckered billy goat, to be a bit crude about it. You're watching it because it's solving a problem, and that problem is that you need emotional regulation. So certainty and state change in today's age are never more than a few seconds away, and you can carry it in your pocket at all times, which makes this a very powerful, formidable opponent for you. So let's look at let's go a little bit deeper with this and understand what's going on, because understanding is key to transformation, right? So every escape, which porn is— you're escaping reality temporarily— is also a destination. So let's look at alcohol, for example. What does the alcoholic do? Well, he believes that he's escaping his past at the top of that glass. He cracks open a beer or glass of alcohol or whatever And what is he doing? Again, that the alcohol is serving a purpose. Every behavior serves a purpose. Every behavior has an outcome that it's seeking to achieve. And whether it's alcohol or porn, the alcoholic typically is looking to escape some aspect of his past. And at the top of the glass, when he drinks the alcohol, the past disappears for a short period of time. But what the alcoholic fails to see is that his future is waiting for him at the bottom of the glass. Divorce, drunk driving, catastrophe. He's escaping the past at the top, but his future is also at the bottom of that glass as well. He's not just moving away from the past, it's creating his future, and that future is not a positive one. Alcohol does not have good plans for that man. Porn operates in exactly the same way as alcohol. The man engaging in porn, maybe you in the moment feels that he's escaping how he feels. I'm escaping the emotional pressure. I'm taking the edge off. I'm creating certainty. This is a coping mechanism. So when he begins the video, he's escaping his present or his past, but he, like the alcoholic, also fails to see that he is simultaneously choosing the man that he's becoming. His future exists at the end of that video as well, and this is the key to getting off the porn. This is the key to kick in the habit. When you understand that you're not just escaping how you feel and regulating yourself right now, you're also choosing the man you'll be becoming by the end of that video. You'll see the cost is astronomical here. So the key understanding is every escape is also a destination. The escape is not free. You're going somewhere in the escape. You may think that you're escaping your present right now, and that may be true in the moment, but what you are actually doing is you're creating your future. And just like the alcoholic, that future is probably going to involve broken relationships, divorce, health problems, and many other things that we're going to cover as we go through this. The, the price tag that you're going to get, you may not have considered yet. So let's look at appetites. Whether it is alcohol, gambling, porn, it doesn't matter. They all follow the same pattern. Every addiction escalates. It doesn't stay the same. If you're drinking, it doesn't— it requires more alcohol this week than it required last week. It requires more alcohol this time to get the same effect as you had to take to get that effect last time. No, no appetite remains static. It needs more and more and more to satiate. So porn is also the same in porn. Progressively recalibrates stimulation, or the amount of stimulation that you need to get the effect that you are desiring here. So the progression that happens as you progress through your journey with porn is it starts out very simply. It doesn't take very much to stimulate you to start with. Just simply seeing the opposite sex, or whatever it is that you're attracted to naked, a single person, the curiosity is enough to get you stimulated. The novelty is enough to get you stimulated, but it doesn't stop there. It's not enough just to see a woman naked. You then have to see her engaging in sexual acts. The intensity becomes greater and greater and greater. Then simply seeing her engage in normal sexual acts is not enough. It then expands out and the appetite starts to become perverted, or it becomes increasingly extreme. Maybe you need strange behavior to become stimulated now. You start to develop fetish, fetishes. You start to like certain types of porn. Maybe it expands out into not just straight two people sex, one man and woman sex, or whatever. It turns into group sex, and it just escalates and escalates and escalates continuously, while at the same time creating a desensitized, uh, desensitization to reality. So eventually what happens here through that desensitization is reality simply becomes inadequate for you. Ordinary intimacy no longer produces sufficient stimulation, and your wife simply cannot compete with the nervous system the man has trained on at a level of stimulation that simply can't be competed with. In the real world. Both the frequency and the level of stimulation and the extremity of what porn is providing is teaching your nervous system that in order to be stimulated, you need this very extreme stimulation which simply cannot be provided in the real world. And what happens eventually is there comes a point when that stimulation can no longer be met. You, you train your the escalation continues to a point to where the level of stimulation required for you to function sexually is now so extreme that it is literally impossible for you to function sexually with your partner, partner. In other words, in other words, you've made yourself impotent, and the only way you can stimulate yourself at that point is through porn in this ever escalating level of stimulation, till eventually even porn is unable to stimulate you. So the promise in the beginning of giving you this free, abundant, limitless stimulation, basically promising you everything, ultimately results in a man that is utterly incapable of being stimulated in any way, shape, or form. Or in other words, he's made himself impotent. And quite often this can be irreversible depending on how long you've been doing it for. You don't want to let it get to this point. So Key understandings here is that every appetite grows in consumption and extremity. It doesn't stay the same. It's always moving. Porn doesn't simply change what arouses you. It changes what no longer can arouse you. So what is happening here is you're training your nervous system to require a reality that simply cannot be provided. Your wife can't compete with the, the what you're seeing in porn. They're not— it's not real. You're simply— what you're seeing is not real. Nothing in reality can compete with that. And when you've trained your nervous system to require something that is outside of reality, you've created a problem that really cannot be solved at this point. So let's look at some, some identity shifts here. That will help you move away from this behavior. So what's actually going on here is that the screen is protecting you from reality. The screen is sanitizing your behavior and it's disconnecting your behavior from the identity that it's creating. So to put this another way, if you asked yourself the question, if there was no screen, if this had to be done in, in reality, in the real world, if you had to physically attend would you still— would this still be acceptable to you? This is essentially voyeurism, is what this is. If you had to go to a physical location, get your credit card out or some cash, and pay to look in the window or stand outside the door and watch whatever's going on in the room live in a real physical environment, how would you feel about that? Would you still see it the same way, or would your identity not allow that to happen? Many men will say, I would never use a prostitute, but what's— but in reality, that's exactly what they're doing. And this— but the screen is simply sanitizing that behavior. If you had to stand outside somebody's window on a street and look in to their house to get the stimulation, basically become a Peeping Tom, engage in voyeurism in the real world, would the behavior still be acceptable to you? Would your identity allow you to do that, or would you sacrifice the need for stimulation because that behavior simply is not acceptable? But that is exactly what's going on. You are a man who, who's, who's getting off on watching other people have sex. And you can say, well, that's different, Cody Butler. This is consensual. These people are consenting to this. If I was going down the street and looking in people's windows, that wouldn't be consensual. Well, is it consensual? It's well documented that within the porn industry, not all of it, I'm not saying all of it, but a lot of it is not consensual. There's human trafficking involved, there's sex slavery involved, there's coercion and extortion involved, there's blackmail involved, there's, uh, secret hidden cameras where the people involved or the woman involved is not consensual to the situation. To use the argument that this is consensual, Cody Butler, and that is not, is simply not true. It's not an argument that can, can be used. So if you were doing these behaviors in the real world, if you went to a physical location, would you see yourself differently? Would you find it acceptable? And would you allow your identity and your value system to do that? Now, for a lot of men, it's as simple— this is as simple as recognizing that, wow, I'm doing stuff that's completely in violation, and not really realizing the behavior that they're engaging in because of the sanitation of the screen. But the truth of the matter is the screen doesn't change the behavior. You're still engaging in voyeurism. You're still, to some extent, getting stimulated off people that are in a position of non-consensual sex. All the screen does, in fact, is change your perception of the behavior. And I say this not to offend you or upset you or challenge you in, in, in an offensive way. But until you can see that the behavior that you're engaging in is violating your value system, you're simply not going to change it. As long as you see what you're doing through the sanitation of the screen and you're separated from that level of behavior, you're not going to create enough of an identity shift for any kind of real transformation to take place. So let's just say— I've just said it, right? Exploitation does exist. It's documented that it does exist within parts of the pornography industry. I'm not saying it's everywhere, but trafficking, coercion, exploitation abuse. Uh, all of these things do take place within the pornography industry, and all the screen is doing is allowing you to give yourself some moral distance between these activities, right? The reality of the situation remains unchanged. Every time that you decide to engage in pornography, every click onto that video is a vote from you for human trafficking, coercion, sex slavery, exploitation and abuse. You are supporting those industries at that time. The screen— that the string— the screen between you and those behaviors is giving you moral distance, but the reality remains unchanged. You are a man who is supporting these behaviors. So the key understanding here is that the screen is protecting you from having to face reality, but reality hasn't changed. The screen isn't protecting your innocence, it's protecting you from confronting your identity. The screen is not keeping you innocent from engaging in these behaviors or technically supporting these behaviors. It's simply protecting you from having to confront the idea that actually I'm a man that supports these activities. Actually, I'm a man that if anybody else in the real physical world engaged in these, I would support that man being incarcerated. I would support punishment for that man. These are behaviors that even you wouldn't support, and if it required your participation in the real world, you would separate yourself from those behaviors. So again, I don't care very much about what you've done in the past and up until, up until now, and I'm not accusing or making accusations that you have knowingly and willfully supported these things. But now you know, the question is, what are you going to do? I don't care what you've done. I care what's going to happen next. You may not have seen those things in those light, but now you see them in that light. Now the responsibility changes. You're not necessarily responsible for things you didn't understand, but with great knowledge becomes great responsibility. And you're not going to get yourself out of this hole of pornography addiction without accepting some form of responsibility. This is mandatory. So let's talk about what porn is actually teaching you, because every time you watch porn, it's creating your character, it's creating your personality, it is shaping you into something. You are not leaving the video unchanged. So what is porn actually teaching you? Well, it's teaching you that reality simply isn't enough. It's teaching you that your wife isn't enough. There's no way your wife is going to compete with what you're seeing in those videos. —there's no way that reality is going to compete with what you're seeing in those videos. It's teaching you that what you have access to, and the only resources that you have access to, are not enough to make you happy. That's what it's teaching you. It's teaching you that ordinary intimacy, which is the only thing—pornography is not intimacy, it's a counterfeit. You cannot have intimacy with a screen, a website, or video. Intimacy can only happen between you and another person. And what's happening is you're confusing real intimacy for counterfeit intimacy. And it's making real intimacy with another human being impossible. It's teaching you that discomfort should be escaped, that it can be escaped. It's teaching you that relief should be immediate. It's teaching you that instant gratification is a good thing. Is teaching you that gratification should never be delayed, that should never be disciplined, that should never be regulated or rationed. It's teaching you gluttony. So every viewing session that you engage in reinforces your dependency, reinforces an escape mentality that you need to escape from reality. It reinforces slavery to external regulation, and it reinforces your necessity, your need for instant gratification. So the key understanding here is not— is that porn isn't simply changing your behavior. It's not just behavioral modification, although it most certainly is that. It's actually changing the man you are becoming. It's changing your DNA. DNA. It's changing your identity. It's transforming you into something that you were not before you started this habit. It's taking control of you, and it's turning you into something else without your consent. But you know that now. Then you have the option, the choice, the power to stop this should you choose to do this. So the thing to understand is that Every habit trains identity, and your behavior is coming out of identity. The reason I share this with you, and it's very harsh for some people— you're supporting sex slavery, you're supporting abuse, you're supporting human trafficking— because my question to you becomes, are you a man that supports and endorses those behaviors? Because if you're engaging in pornography, you have to accept that that is a core part of your identity. I am a man who condones these behaviors. There's no way around that. Now you understand this. Every viewing session trains your identity on the identity that I am a man who X. So the reason I'm saying this is, is because you have a choice here, and the choice is freedom or slavery. Without knowing what I've just laid out before you, you have no choice. You are a slave. But the door is open. The prison door is open, and you can free— you're free to walk out of it. So a great example of how to look at pornography right now is the movie Pinocchio, where they were taken to Pleasure Island. And on Pleasure Island, every single pleasure available known to man was offered at no apparent cost. And they were in 7 kinds of heaven. The same— this is pornography. You are on Pleasure Island right now. You are Pinocchio on Pleasure Island. Every kind of pleasure. It doesn't matter what your perversion is. It doesn't matter what your sexual appetite is. It doesn't matter what you like to see or what it is that turns you on. Every single kind of pleasure is offered to you at no apparent cost. The website, the porn websites are not free for a reason, for no reason rather. Then after they engaged in the pleasure, the bill became true, became due, and the bill was slavery. They were taken off to the mines, never to return. There was no way back for them. Porn is the same. Porn is your Pleasure Island. So porn makes exactly the same promises to you. Unlimited quantities of pleasure, novelty, fantasy, escape. You can have all of these things in unlimited quantity, and it's the greatest thing ever to start with. But then the destination appears, the cost appears, and the cost is dependency, escalation, isolation, physical impotency, broken intimacy, and ultimately the final destination that it's taking you to is it's taking you off to the mount— to mine, to work forever, to never experience intimacy in a real way again. This is, this is the destination. This is your future unless you choose to change that, to make the choice to change it. So the key understanding here, man, is slavery often promises everything in the beginning but ultimately it will take everything in the end. And I know what you're saying, Cody Butler, well, this is hard. Yes, it is hard, but so is slavery. So let me tell you, freedom always, always comes with a price, as does slavery. You can pay now and you can play later. You can do the hard work now, you can pay now and you can play later, and you can have your freedom back, or you can play now and you can pay later. But either way, if you want to play, you're going to have to pay. There's a price. So the real question here that makes the transformation is not, how do I stop watching porn? How do I get porn out of my life? The real question is, who would I have to become, or who would I have to acknowledge that I have become, to continue watching this? And likewise, who would I have to become to reject it? What is your morality? What is your identity? What do you support in this world? What are you opposed to in this world? In order to become— in order to continue watching it at this point, you have to acknowledge that you're okay with all of the things that we've talked about. In order to get away from porn, You have to reject the identity that is required. You have to be a man that refuses those morals, that refuses those behaviors, that refuses to endorse those activities. So one identity— this is the way out of porn here— is through identity modification. You have to change your identity. You have to. There's no other way out of this. So you've got to choose one of two identities here. One identity chooses immediate gratification, escape, certainty, fantasy, grati— all of these things. And this clearly is the identity that you have chosen to this point, knowingly or unknowingly to you, but nevertheless you have to have embraced that identity to continue in this behavior. The other identity that you now have the option to choose is one of integrity. To operate in reality, personal discipline, character, long-term freedom, short-term sacrifice for long-term gain, a man of honesty, integrity, and character. This is the identity that you have to choose. You have to choose the identity of a man who would not watch porn. And that's not to say that you're never going to fall, you're never going to slip. It's quite likely that you are. But you don't stop there. You pick yourself up, you reject it, and you say, "That's not who I am," and you start again. So the truth here is every decision strengthens one of these two identities. Next time you watch porn, you're strengthening this identity. The next time you reject it, you are strengthening this identity. You are choosing this identity. This is a battle. If you want to win the battle, you have to choose this identity on a more regular basis than, than this identity. You have to choose integrity over gratification. You have to turn— you have to, you have to choose long-term gain for short-term sacrifice in favor of long-term gain. So the key understanding here is that this behavior is revealing your identity. It's revealing who you are right now. And my hope and my prayer for you is that now you can see the identity that is required to engage in porn, you simply will reject it. Every viewing session that you engage in answers the question, who am I becoming? Every time you refuse to engage in that viewing session, it answers the question, who am I becoming? This is not a one-and-done deal. For some of you, it will be. For many of you, this will be an ongoing battle for some time. But you can lose the battle and win the war. It's not about because you went back and you watched porn again means that you're this identity and this— you're this person now. It means that you're at war. And you've chosen an identity of integrity, of character, of wisdom, of growth. So what this is all leading to is that ultimately porn has to be replaced, not removed, because it is, it's providing such a pivotal part of your life. It is, it is filling such a huge need to simply say, Cody Butler, I need to take out, or to ask you and say, remove the certainty from your life, remove, remove the guaranteed state change, remove the certainty. This is not realistic. You have to replace it. That certainty is a requirement. As we've said, all behavior serves a purpose. You're not watching porn for just for the hell of it. You're watching porn because it's serving a reason. You have to identify that reason, which hopefully we've done, and then you have to start to meet the needs that porn is meeting right now in a more healthy way. So porn, it's unlikely that it can simply be removed from your life. It simply must be replaced. By more productive behavior. So what are some, some practical steps here? Well, you can replace escape with courage, fantasy with reality, external regulation with internal regulation, with emotional authority with internal authority. Replace instant gratification with delayed gratification. Replace certainty through pornography through finding your certainty in your character and who you're becoming. Are these things easy? No. But guess what? Easy is not an option for you right now. It's got— you've got some, you've got some tough times ahead of you. But the question is not, are you going to go through difficulty and tough times? You are going through difficulty and tough times. There's no doubt about that. The question is, can you save your marriage? Can you save your life? Can you stay out of slavery? Can you regain your freedom? Can you become a man that you're proud of? Again. What you are going to go through is not in question. It's tough times. Who you are going to come out of those tough times are— is in question. You can come out of a man emancipated and free, or you can come out of the tough times into even tougher times as a slave. The choice is yours. So the goal isn't resisting temptation forever. The goal is becoming a man for who pornography is just simply incompatible with his identity anymore. It's just not something you can do because that's not who you are. That's the solution. So our key understanding here is that freedom isn't achieved by resisting the pornography. The freedom is achieved by becoming a man who no longer requires pornography because he understands himself and he's done the work and he's finding the certainty and the state changes and everything that he needs in his family, in his wife, in himself, in his religion, his spirituality, his personal development, all of these things. So you're faced with a choice today. You may have entered into this video not understanding what's going on, what you've been voting for, what you've been supporting, but now you do. Today you understand why you've been watching porn. What needs it's been meeting within you, the future that it's creating for you, the plans that it has for you, which are slavery, which is slavery, the identity that porn is reinforcing in you and the man that it's turning you into. Now you have a choice. And the choice is freedom or slavery. Now I can't make that choice for you. My prayer for you and my hope for you is that you choose freedom. Choose it for your family. Choose it for your wife. Choose it for your— for your— for yourself, for your children, for your legacy. But you will make one of these two choices. This is not an option for you anymore. If you refuse freedom, then you choose slavery. And if you refuse to reject slavery and fight, then you reject freedom by default. This is a battlefield that you are on now. You have to fight this battle. You have no choice. You are on the battlefield. The enemy is in front of you, and you're engaged. You cannot flee the battle. To flee the battle is a vote for slavery. So the truth is, porn promises you everything in the beginning— integrity, which is what's required of you costs you something. Porn is free, abundant, easy, effortless, instant gratification. Integrity is hard, costly, long-term thinking. But integrity ultimately gives you everything pornography never can. And the title of this video was "Pornography is Destroying My Marriage. Help!" Well, it comes down to a simple choice, a simple question. You have to choose. You have to choose pornography, or you have— or you choose your marriage. You can't have both. You can have your porn, you can have pornography, or you can have your marriage. That's the choice before you. If you choose pornography, you reject your marriage. Go back and watch this video again and again, because I promise you the solutions to the problems are engaged or are in this video. But let's wrap this up. Let's jump, let's get to a conclusion here. So the conclusion is the consequence of continuing with porn must become more painful than the temporary relief porn provides. You get a benefit. There's a goal, there's an outcome for engaging in porn. But until you can understand, until you can see, until you can experience that the pain of porn is greater than the pleasure it provides, nothing's going to change. Character is built every time desire is rejected in favor of truth. I'm going to say that again. Character is built every time your desire and your lust is rejected in favor, favor of the truth, which is quite frankly, you're better than this, you're bigger than this, and you don't need to be subjected to this. Every time you, every time you reject pornography, you choose freedom over slavery. And every time you choose pornography, you choose slavery over freedom. The choice is in your hands today. If you want some help with this, check out some links in the description. I help men in marriage crisis. If you want to learn more about that, check out the links. If you like this, give us a thumbs up, leave a comment, subscribe to the channel, share this. This is, this is a problem virtually every man alive faces today. Please share this so people can see this, help get the message out. God bless you, and I'll see you in the next video.