#41: 3 Significant Ways Pornography Addiction Impacts Our Intimate Relationships

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

And welcome to the Love Shack, a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and eavesdrop on juicy conversations and attempt to uncover the mysteries that nobody talks about, but absolutely influences our relationships. So if by chance you are struggling in your relationship, just starting out in a new relationship, or are single and know you gotta do better next time, like, there's some things I gotta get figured out. This show has been purposely created for you. I'm Stacey Bartley, and I'm here with my lover and co host, Tom. Together for the past decade, we have been loving on people from around the world with the sole purpose of helping us love more and fear less, essentially create what we say. Love for a lifetime or love that.

Tingles your toes and a shout out to wherever you are listening to us. Just a quick reminder, we're live every Thursday at 1pm on our awesome sister station, or actually station up in Seattle. I'm not sure what. What would be the brother, but Anyway, we're in KKNW 11:50am up in Seattle. This is Tom, your DJ. Now, we've got Eric Ryder at the helm. He makes us look good, sound good, and all that kind of stuff, but. And then it's uploaded to wherever you would find a podcast. Bottom line is, though, you are gifting us with your most precious resource, which is time. We have an incredible episode. I know I say that every week, but we really do. This week. I'm not going to spoil it. I'm not going to say anything. Don't worry.

Well, I will. We are going to have a conversation about pornography and how it impacts our intimate relationships. I know firsthand about pornography. I had a relationship of 13 years, a marriage of 13 years, where it not only went from porn, but it went to prostitution as well. For those of you who are on my list and who know my personal story, I'll just give a brief thing right now. After 13 years of marriage, I was basically taken up to the Canyon. And my husband wanted to come clean. He wanted to tell me the truth about his addiction, about what he was doing. And I remember his reassuring words were, stays, don't worry. The prostitutes that I'm having sex with, there's no emotional connection there. It's just about the act of having sex. And I remember my brain trying to wrap my head around, what did that mean? What did that mean for my life? Had the whole thing been a lie, a sham? How could I have missed this? What is going on? What's the next steps. And so I am so grateful is more of the word grateful for Josh coming on and helping us explore and understand what porn addiction is. If you are by chance struggling with it, as someone that I love and continue to love, the father of my children still struggles with. If you are by chance someone who, like me, was betrayed by this conversation of porn addiction, that we can give you some things to understand about it, some things that you can implement into your own life and some resources that you can turn to right now. Because we actually have someone who has overcome the porn addiction conversation and is here to share his story of triumph. And the cool thing about Josh's story is that he was able to keep his family intact. So can't wait to hear what super tips he has for us. Along with sharing his journey, we'll uncover some very empowering things that you can implement into your life and relationships right now. So after this short break, we're going to welcome him to the show.

Take a breath. We'll be right back.

Here's what one of Stacy Bartley's clients says about working with her.

Working with Stacy has been been life changing in a very magical way. I wanted to work with Stacy when I left a long term marriage because I didn't want to repeat any of my relational, how would you say, unhealthiness. I'm so amazed how she has taken her experience and wrapped it into her own program. A program that is designed specially for you. For anyone that moves forward with her. She's unique, she's profound, she's magical. She has a love for others that is unmatched and it would be a gift to yourself to work with Stacy.

To book your 30, 45 minute or 60 minute session with Stacy, go to stacybartly.com checkup hello, I'm Nathan Mum.

Join me in Microday as we host a weekly technology show that talks about technology for the everyday common person. We are a live radio program that airs Saturday from 4 to 5pm on YouTube, Facebook and Twitch. If you go to facebook.comtechtimeradio, youTube.comtechtimeradio or Twitch tvtechtimeradio, you can catch us live Saturdays from 4 to 5pm you can find us at all podcast services online from Apple to Google and everything in between.

Are you ready for something real, raw, upfront and honest? This is then tune in each Wednesday at 2pm right here for Love from the Hip. I am spiritual hypnotherapist, master esthetician and the host Sakura Sutter. This show is unlike anything you have ever heard and was created to help others to help themselves. Hear me. Follow up with guests I have hypnotized and see how it has improved their lives. I will also spotlight amazing people from around the world, Their skin tips, live readings and answers to life's burning questions. Join us each Wednesday at 2pm.

Love Shack Live. Excited that you are with us. We have a very, very powerful conversation this afternoon. If you're live and if you listen to us again, thank you so much.

We are diving into the conversation on pornography and the impact that it has on our intimate relationships. And we're going to actually invite our guest on. He is Joshua Shea and he's a pornography addiction expert and as well as a certified betrayal trauma coach. But that's not what makes him amazing. What makes him amazing is he's one of the few people on the planet that have actually experienced pornography addiction and is here to tell us his story and how it is he overcame it and kept his family intact at the same time, which is profound. Isn't it incredible that we can think of someone being on the canyon or the chasm that we're trying to figure out how to navigate, and they can stand on the other side and say, hey, it's going to be okay. Do it like this. This is what I did. It's going to be ok. You can do it. You can make it. And I can tell you there are some wonderful, profound things about that as we are struggling sometimes in the trough of, oh, my gosh, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't know how to do this. I don't know where to go. Is this going to be okay? Do I just need to leave? Do I just need to blow up my life? And if I'm trying to struggle with an addiction and I am afraid of all of these things about where it's going to take me and what's going to happen to my life. Having somebody who's navigated and traversed that journey, that can tell us the super tips and the ways to go about it and what it took, right, is such a gift. So as I welcome Josh to the show, I just really want to acknowledge him as I've already done behind the scenes. But again, from sincerely, the bottom of my heart, this would have made a profound difference in my own life a decade or two ago if I'd understood or had somebody to talk to that really understood the journey. And so this is an incredible gift that I don'. Want you to miss that you gotta hear this conversation if by chance you're struggling or you have those conversations of the betrayal trauma that come from being the partner of maybe somebody who's struggling with a pornography addiction. So, Josh, thank you so much for this gift of your time and your story. We welcome you to the show. Let's get started. Because I have got so many questions that I want to dive deep into with you, so let's not waste a minute, shall we? Okay.

Yes, absolutely.

The first thing on the place that I want to start is let's define what pornography is. Because I know for myself, before I kind of dove into the topic, it was just like, okay, it's that stuff that you see that's kind of really out there and crazy. And, you know, I don't do that. That's not something that impacts my life, so. So give us a description of what pornography is.

Well, I think you're half right. I think we can all agree what a certain aspect of pornography is. It's, you know, naked people having sex. It is any type of written or visual or oral aid that is used to stimulate someone sexually. It usually comes with the letter X behind it. You know, you go to a store in the seedy side of town to. To buy the stuff involved, that we know what porn is in that way. But porn I also believe in. One of the more important things to recognize is how many, you know, shades of gray we have in this world. And very quick story is when I. I grew up, or I grew up, I watched my daughter grow up and get these Victoria's Secret catalogs in the mail every week. My wife has got Victoria's Secret catalogs in the mail every week. Now, when I was a porn, I can tell you that women in lingerie did nothing for me. Absolutely nothing. So it was just junk mail on the end table. It was just piling up. I didn't like those magazines or didn't like those catalogs because they were a mess. When I got to rehab, I met a gentleman who talked about pornography and talked about how not only did he not like that hardcore porn stuff, just, you know, softcore, or even. Even just naked people didn't do it for him. What did he love? He loved Victoria's Secret catalogs. And what that really. That really taught me in that moment is that I think just as much as we tend to think about pornography as, you know, something that's depicting sex, we have to keep in mind that it also has to do with our interpretations of sex. And what does sex mean to us, and what is it that does tickle those parts of our brain that maybe we don't want to admit. And for him, it was lingerie. For me, it's never been lingerie. So is Victoria's Secret porn for me? No. Is Victoria's Secret porn for him? Probably.

I love that you brought that up because it is very unique to each of us as individuals. Right. And what works for one person may not work for another. And the thing that I really want to point out is when we have a tough time with anything, we're going to talk about lots of addictions. And by the way, if I could, I just want to. I want to say this. I think it's important for us to say this. In this episode, we are going to be talking about a pornography addiction. However, addiction is not who you are. It's what you do behaviorally when you're emotionally pressed and your back is against the wall. It's my coping skill when I don't know what else to do or this is the thing that I know to do in order to help me feel a little bit better. So I want us to check our judgment at the door because it's going to really help us explore the conversation better. If we get stuck in judgment, we can't enhance our understanding and we can't enjoy the conversation. Shall I say, learn from the conversation. Enjoying might be a struggle. It's okay. But take a breath and check your judgment and realize that an addiction is not who we are. We are so much more than an addiction. It's behaviorally where I turn when I don't know what else to do. And I really want to make that an important statement.

Yeah.

And I would just add, addiction is something that Stacy and I are very, very familiar with because we've experienced it in our relationships. But there's a wonderful. Joe Polish is a person I have great respect for and is a huge place in the genius recovery world. And he reminds us often we can't punish the pain out of anyone. Right. So rather than seek first to understand, I would say demonstrate behaviorally that you understand.

So on that note, Josh, please take a few minutes. And I know your share, your story is vast and wide, but give us the highlights of your story so that people can understand where you're coming from and why it is. You're the perfect person for us to talk about this very, very critically important topic.

Well, you know, I am actually very textbook when it comes to being a pornography addict or former addict. I am a little over seven years clean, but I am textbook in that I had unresolved trauma that was based on abuse when I was young. And when it comes to pornography addicts, sex addicts, kind of the godfather of research in this area, Dr. Patrick Carnes, his groundbreaking study on this, which is 20, 25 years old now, I mean it is, it is even older than Internet porn is. And what he found was that just over 70% of men who utilize pornography have a history of physical abuse in their background as a child. Just over 80% have a history of sexual abuse in their background as a child. And over 90% have a history of emotional or mental trauma that's unresolved in their background. So more than nine out of 10 porn addicts are like you mentioned before, when it comes to being a behavior. They are using pornography as a coping mechanism to deal with this trauma of the abuse that they haven't worked through. Now myself, this was at the hands of a babysitter between, oh, ages 2 and 6, 3 and 7, right around there, both sexual and mental and emotional. And when I was, I, I got out of that house when I was 7 or 8 years old, but, you know, carried scars. When I was 12 years old, I was shown hardcore pornography for the first time by a cousin who had a couple magazines. I can't tell you what was in the magazines, I can't tell you what the names of the magazines were. I don't remember. But what I do remember very distinctly was this warm feeling coming over me, was this, you know, just sense of relief, sense of I have found something here that is going to make me feel better. And you know, I can't even remember what this 12 year old kid I was, you know, truly needed to escape from or even knew if he knew what he needed to escape from. But pornography hit me like nothing else I'd ever seen before. And we talk about people developing an addiction. I think it took me about 30 seconds to develop my addiction. I was hooked the moment I saw it. And I had this exact same thing happen two years later when I was at a wedding and I got drunk for the first time. Suddenly I understood why people drank. I was a better version of myself. I was funnier, smarter, better dancer, you know, every, everything was better about me. And I understood why people drank. I got that warm feeling. I felt safe. And it was exactly the same feeling I had with the pornography two years earlier. And basically from that point forward, whether I was in high school, college, early in my career, you know, later on, whether I had girlfriends or nobody or was married or had kids, it didn't matter, because alcohol and pornography, especially pornography, were the two things that I could always count on to have in my life to make me feel better, moving forward. And eventually, you know, it all came to a head in 2013. The business that I was running was falling apart. It was, you know, causing me to have all weird flashbacks to that babysitter's house. And what I've learned since is that what I was feeling was fear. I was feeling a fear like I hadn't felt since I was at that babysitter's house. I was terrified at that house. And this was the first time I'd been that terrified again because I was a magazine publisher, and I wondered, what if this magazine goes down, which I thought might happen, what happens to my employees? What happens to the advertisers?

What.

What happens to the subscribers who had prepaid? And if I don't have the. The magazines to give them, what happens next? And I kind of started to fade and. And go down very hard, very fast. And I made a stupid, stupid decision in early 2013, which was really the crux of all this. And this was when I made the decision to pull myself off of medication for bipolar disorder that I'd been taking for 20 years. My bipolar disorder has always tended to run on the manic side. So I kind of romanticize the mania. And I told myself, well, you know, if I pull myself off of these pills, I'll tap into my manic side. That will help me think outside the box, be creative. I'll need less sleep at night so I can keep working on fixing things. And unfortunately, what happened was that within two or three weeks of the medicine getting out of my system, I started to, you know, drink three, four times, what I usually did different times of the day. I made sure every afternoon meeting was a happy hour meeting instead of, you know, just drinking beer when I got home. All I drank at home was tequila, and I was drinking more of it, especially after everybody went to bed with my pornography. I had always been steadfast, probably about five times a week, maybe a little bit more after everybody goes to bed. I was now looking before I went to work. I might look on my phone in the car at some point during the day, and I was certainly online late at night after everybody went to bed and I even started to go into chat rooms. I wasn't just looking passively. My addiction escalated to the point that I needed interaction with somebody else. And eventually, you know, it's. It's. It's the old. My employees tried to Confront me. And I wouldn't really hear it. But then in March of 2014, it kind of all fell apart. You know, lots of, lots of stuff all came to a head. I was such a mess that I finally said I would go to rehab because I was looking at a lot of consequences, including my parents not having me in their life, my wife and my kids not having me in their life. I went to alcohol rehab in Palm Springs, California. Thought I would be there about, you know, four weeks, 28 days, just like you see in the movies. And after about a week there, all of a sudden it was like, oh my goodness, I'm exactly the alcoholic they're talking about. I thought I'd do the old fake it till you make it, get your certificate, make everybody proud. And it, you know, surprised me that it all clicked. And Instead of spending four weeks there, I spent 10 weeks there. And in the last three, four weeks I was there, my caseworker recognized that I clearly had issues around pornography. I had issues around attitudes towards sexuality, you know, my feelings towards sexuality. And he asked me to meet with a person he knew off campus who ended up being a certified sex addiction therapist. And this was the first time I'd ever talked to an expert in this area. And he made me realize very quickly that number one porn addiction is absolutely real and it can happen to anybody. You know, I, I'm proof of that. I was married, owned my own company, two kids, you know, nice house. I, I, I'm not the 78 year old guy flashing people in the park. I'm not the 19 year old guy in his mom's basement who never kissed a girl in real life. You know, I'm a very normal guy, I think, who ended up with this. And I learned that it was about, you know, a lot of it was about what happened at that babysitter's house and my coping mechanisms and survival skills after that. And then because I was a writer, I was a journalist for many, many years before I started that magazine. And there was not much out there aside from academic text. I decided to write my first book, which was really just about my journey. And what shocked me was that after that, and this was back in 2016, 17, after that first book came out, I expected some addicts to contact me, but I wasn't planning on doing much else in this area. That was when I got a deluge of wives and girlfriends and partners and even I, I got a couple of gay men contacting me about their, their partners who were into pornography. That shocked because I Had never, you know, before my first rehab, I thought my alcoholism was the reason and the problem with the porn. I thought it was just a symptom of it. I didn't realize that it was a different addiction and it predated my alcoholism, and in the end, I can now say was absolutely worse. And now when, you know, I recognize that it was a second addiction. I learned about betrayal trauma after talking to a couple of these women and recognized, oh, my goodness, my wife went through this. Not horribly, some. Some don't have it too bad, but she went through this. And as much as there's nothing for people like me out there who are addicts or recovering porn addicts, there's really nothing for the wives, the girlfriends, the partners, the family. How do you deal with, you know, an addiction that not only has it challenged the addict's life, but it challenges your relationship with the addict, it challenges your belief in the addict. It challenges what you thought you believed in. It challenges your morals. It challenges, you know, all kinds of things that, like you said, we can't judge or we shouldn't judge, and that you wouldn't judge if all of a sudden you found out, oh, well, you know, John Doe here is an alcoholic, or John Doe is a gambling addiction. It's like, oh, those are problems. You know, we can talk about what happened. When you are a porn addict, you tend to carry around this little cloud of pervert, and you know, what's wrong with you? Which is funny, because statistics say that these are Pre pandemic. Under 50 years old, 80% of men look at pornography once a month. Under 50 years old, 60% of women look at pornography at least months, once a month. So the.

The.

The normal thing or the average thing is to actually look at porn these days. So, you know, despite the fact that, you know, there's that pervert thing about me, I try to get out there, and I realized that I was never supposed to be a magazine publisher or a journalist or that I was supposed to be out there, or I'm supposed to now be out there talking about my story with porn addiction, talking about what happens to the partners, and trying to help anybody in this general area who needs it, because I've done the research, I've had the experience, you know, I've got it covered from all sides.

I love that. There's a saying from Jeff Goins that says, when your past makes sense, in your future, you have found your destiny.

Yep.

And I love that because, you know, me too. The reason why I do relationship stuff because My past relationships have been such a disaster. It's been such a rodeo for me. And so getting to this place where I know the pitfalls and the ups and downs of what it'll take from. From you and what it will take out of you as we make up stories about who we are. And I think that's the betrayal trauma when we're dealing with pornography. Right? There's something that I want to point out here. In our own quest to understand our human sexuality, I think one of the greatest pitfalls that we find ourselves in, especially as women, is that we have a really difficult time talking about it. We have a really difficult time understanding it and knowing who it is we are as a sexual being. We have a difficult time talking about it. We have a difficult time understanding it, and we really don't know what's okay and what's appropriate and what isn't. Which, as we have just discovered, if porn can be all things and many different things to lots of different people, well, then so can who I am as an asexual being be lots of different things, right? And I need to discover what that is. And that is something that nobody can give me. Nobody has a prescription for that I must discover and understand for myself. And so I think a lot of women, including myself, coming from this purist, very religious slant of, right, trying to understand pornography, when it happened in my marriage and in my life, when I thought I was, you know, on my way to creating eternal life and heaven only to find man, okay, I didn't know this was part of the deal. I didn't understand myself or sexuality or what was okay and what wasn't. And so I was very easily manipulated into. Well, you just don't understand because he had a lot more life experience than I did. I was very naive in regards to this. And I also had a really difficult time accepting myself sexually. Like, is it okay to go there? Is it okay to enjoy it? And who am I in my body, right? And I think those are all the things that contribute to women of porn addicts that make them think that this must be my fault. It's because I'm not good in the bedroom. It's because I'm not comfortable in my body because I have self doubts about that myself, right? And so is it me? Did I not do it right? Do I need to get a little more risque? You know, is it the way I look? Do I need to buy more lingerie? Is it the way I smell? Is it. Is it because I'm kind of A prude. And I'm uncomfortable and I'm struggling with my own internal fears and insecurities with this. Is that what happened? And I think that's why we take it on personally as a woman because we are so uncomfortable in our bodies typically and we are so unfamiliar with sex, sexuality and that personality of who I am there that it's really easy for me to go, oh God, it's my fault. It's so my fault.

And I can tell you when I am coaching women with betrayal trauma, usually it's just a matter of the pornography was the last straw or that broke the camel's back. There is a lifetime of sexual trauma or sexual awkwardness or uncomfortability. What I, you know, when I go, and I haven't done it lately because of the pandemic, but when I used to go to colleges or libraries and give presentations, I always stress that I was not anti pornography and I'm not anti pornography. Pornography is legal. Obviously some of the prat falls with things like trafficking and, and the negatives that can come up with it are huge as an industry. But it's not illegal and I'm not going to bang my head against a wall trying to outlaw it because it would never work. We saw it didn't work 100 years ago with alcohol and that's man made. We're certainly not going to be able to police sexual activity. So that's a waste of time. So instead what I believe is that we, it's not that we need to be an anti pornography society, we need to be a pro healthy sexuality society. For some, for some people that may mean pornography is okay, and for some individuals that may mean pornography is okay, but it's not okay in the greater scope of your relationship. The irony is, is that you take one person and you take another person, you know, let's say man and woman in this case we'll say, and you put them together to try to be, you know, one team, one couple and you want them to interact sexuality, it's like bringing two people's taste together for different types of food. I love Italian, I love Mexican, I love Chinese, I love French. You know, you have these different experiences, you have these different likes and dislikes. And ultimately it's almost the more conservative person of the couple who dictates what the healthy sexuality will be. And the person who was a little more out there or a little bit more willing to be wild, they may have to bring it back a notch. Because if you're going to have healthy sexuality Within a relationship. It's not the same as healthy sexuality as an individual and trying to force, you know, it's okay to request, it's okay to ask, it's okay to suggest. It's not okay to demand that somebody try something they're not comfortable with.

Yeah. And that we get better at this just like we do anything else. Little by little by little by little. You might think that this is, like, really stretching me. And in some cases it is. But if we just stretch a little bit. Right. A little bit. A little bit. We can usually find as a couple a place to meet in the middle where I'm okay come going to, and you're okay going to. But it's a practice. It's something that happens naturally over time. But I do want to get into the conversation of it's not a woman's inability or not the fact that she's beautiful or that not. Not the fact that she's maybe struggling with her own sexuality, which is a wonderful conversation for a couple to explore. Right. And dive into. But that's not the reason for the porn addiction. So help us understand that distinction between what is a healthy, like maybe absorption of porn versus not healthy, so that we can, as just, you know, lay listeners, know where the distinction or where that line is. Yeah.

First, addiction is. Addiction is. Addiction is a addiction. Whether it's gambling or food or heroin or sex or porn, it's all taking place in the brain. I always have to tell people, porn addiction doesn't take place between the legs. It takes place in the brain. Food addiction doesn't take place in the stomach. It takes place in. In the brain. Addiction is a brain disease. And we know science and every. We know it's a disease these days. We're not going to argue that it changes brain chemistry. And the brain chemistry is with the reward sense sensors. Why do people use drugs? It feels good. Or their body tells them that they need it. Why do people gamble? Well, it feels good or their body tells them that they need it. When you get an addiction, it's. Your body is screaming at you that you need something, even if you know there might be negative consequences, even if it's affecting your life negatively, Even if you make promises to yourself that you will behave differently, but you can't. You know, addiction is really about continuing with what you understand is a bad choice or a bad behavior, regardless of the circumstances, and a giant sense of feeling out of control with it. Now, ironically, one of the things that I often tell women, or I should say this first There's a certain section of women who, with betrayal trauma, want me to talk to their husband about their pornography addiction. And when I sit and talk to the man, it takes me about 10 minutes to determine he's not a porn addict. She just hates pornography. And he doesn't care that she hates pornography. That's. And that's. That's a different issue. That's about being a bad communicating couple or a bad boyfriend or husband or. Or whatever the problem is. It's not addiction. And it's ironic that I. I actually tell the partners of addicts that you may. If you can look at this intellectually for a moment, you may be in a better position than some. Than a partner of someone who isn't a porn addict. Because most of the time, you immediately go to, I'm not pretty enough, my sex is not good enough, I'm getting too old, and he doesn't like me anymore, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. When the reality is that's not why addicts are looking. I can tell you on my own, you know, it was not about sex. If I wanted sex with my wife, I could get it. But here's the thing. You have to realize, when your sex life drops because of the addiction, no addicts want to have sex. Talk to a heroin addict, talk to a gambling addict. Talk to any addict about how much sex they have or want to have. Studies across the board prove that people's sex drive drops during addiction. When I'm sitting there looking at porn, it's not about me getting off. It's not, you know, even though that's part of it, it's not me. It's not about me, you know, having a sexy experience. It's about me quieting the storm that's in my head now. If. If I'm not an addict and I'm looking at porn and I choose not to have sex with my wife or get intimate with her, well, then maybe there's a problem in the marriage. Maybe there is a problem with our sex life. And that's a whole. Like I said, that's a whole other set of issues. But if your partner is an addiction, it truly has nothing to do with you. I was an addict at 12 years old. I didn't meet my wife until I was 26. By that point, I absolutely knew how to hide it from anybody. If you can hide it from my religious mom, you can hide it from anybody. And my wife wasn't looking for it, certainly. And with my alcoholism, that was so obvious, you can just blame everything on that, or she could rationalize that because everybody knew I had that problem. You can't hide that as easily as you can hide porn addiction. And ultimately, it came down to. It came down to recognizing I needed to have that change in my life. I needed. It wasn't about me staying up late to look at naked ladies. It was about me staying up late because my life felt like it was out of control. And that was one of the only things that could calm me down. If it was gambling, I would have been at a casino. If it was cocaine, I would have been, you know, at a bad part of town buying it. For me, it happened to be pornography, probably because of my experience when I was a kid. But it was never about the sex. It was never about the naked people. It was never about the orgasm. It was about quieting that storm that was in my head. And unfortunately for the partner, they are just an innocent bystander. And they, you know, instead of thinking, oh, my God, I'm married to the world's biggest lying pervert, you know, oh, my God. A lot of times it's really, oh, my God, I'm married to someone who has successfully hidden this illness from me for so long. That's really almost how it should be viewed. Because this, like I said it, you become very mentally ill when you have an addiction. And when it reaches rock bottom areas, you know, you don't understand consequences, you don't understand, you don't care about the law. The only thing that drives you is that little inner voice saying, if you don't get your addiction, if you don't satisfy it, you're going to die.

So how do we step in to have a conversation? Let's say somebody out there who's listening knows or says not, maybe even knows, but is suspicious that maybe there's some things that are going awry in their relationship. How would you suggest that they step into a conversation with their partner about this?

Or I would even say this. Let me interrupt. What would you. My. My younger brother is a mental health advocate, and one of the most powerful things he's always reminds us is, you know, what would he like? What would be powerful for him to hear when he's going through where he's feeling like he's not worth anything, not what's wrong with you? What happened? You know, so, Josh, what. What would be powerful for you to hear from your partner, your wife, your husband, your spouse, you know, in this kind of situation rather than, you know, you piece of. You know what? I found your charges on Our credit card.

And I'd say instead of being suspicious, try to be curious. It's a little bit healthier. And what I would say is first, before you say anything, number one, have them understand that they are in a very safe place. You're not going to get anything out of anybody if they don't feel safe. And then number two, as you have this conversation, I don't care what your personal feelings about pornography are. You have to just put them off to the side. You have to, you know, it, it doesn't matter what he looked at. Like you said, we are not the addiction. We're not the addiction. You are not the pornography that you look at. We, we have, those of us who are addicts understand you have your, your addiction like it does with alcohol, beer to wine to hard stuff, or like it does with gambling. With increasing bets, using pornography, you escalate. And that might include the extreme nature of the pornography. You might get into some unorthodox pornography, some out there genres. You know, just because you watched a couple old people wear diapers and have tater tots thrown at their heads doesn't mean you actually ever want to do that. It just means you found one of those crazy wormholes on the Internet that caters to a very specific type. But the thing is, that may be what you need that day. That may be the final piece that scratches that itch in your brain that gives you the little dopamine, the squirted dopamine that you're looking for so much. So we are, we are not the porn that we look at. Go into it with this attitude. If you find on your partner's computer, oh my God, he's looking at gay porn, that does not mean he's gay at all. That means he's curious or that that did it that day. You know, having a Japanese or Chinese woman on his computer does not mean he has an Asian fetish. You know, you cannot determine anything about somebody's sexuality or anything about their character based on the pornography that they look at. So understand that going into it and when you are talking to them, understand you're probably not going to be successful the first time. You should let it be known that if you have, you know, if, if he knows you're a staunch anti pornography person, you're not going to be able to have any conversation with him. You're going to have to find somebody who can have the conversation. If you've never expressed a real distaste in porn or you've never or you like it or whatever it is, that's fine. You can, in that case, say, hey, I think that your pornography use maybe moving into a slightly troubled area. I heard an interview or I was reading a little bit about pornography addiction, and you may just want to look into it because you may be using a little bit too much. And, you know, I worry about you, and if there's anything you need from me, just let me know and leave it at that. Leave it at that. The first time, you're just planting a seed, because anybody who has experience with this, it doesn't matter what the addiction is. Nobody the first time they're called an addiction says, oh, yeah, I am.

Right, exactly.

If they're. If they're a real addict, they. They will not say that they are.

Yeah, absolutely.

They may not even recognize it yet.

I want to ask you, what was your road to recovery? I can't believe we're almost out of time, but we're going to have to have you come back, Josh. That's just the only answer. But. But here's the thing. What was your road to recovery? So that we can have that conversation as we. As we wrap up the conversation here.

Surprisingly, to me, it became a lot about helping others, which was not my old personality. Number one was intense rehab. I spent 10 weeks in California in 2014, and I actually spent another seven weeks in Texas in 2015 at a sex and porn rehab, despite the fact I hadn't looked at porn in over a year. That was a great place to focus on the sexuality side of things and focus. And they were great focusing on the trauma side of things as well. So I had some very intense treatment early on. I know not everybody has the resources for that. The first thing I would suggest that anybody does is get a sponsor or find somebody else who's been through it, get a coach. Just get somebody who knows what. Where you are, who can talk to you objectively and honestly about it. Again, without the shame, without any of that. When I talk to men for the first time as new clients who are porn addicts, it is like a weight comes off their shoulders when they truly recognize. I don't care what they looked at, and I'm not gonna make them feel bad for what they looked at. You know, it's. It's. It's amazing to them, or when I say the names of a couple websites, that they think they're the only one in the world who knows about them and, oh, you know, you know my story. It's like, yes, I was just like you. No matter What? The addiction. Find somebody who was just like you, who's been successful, because they can help you out.

And if I may, what were some of the questions that you and your wife had during this time you were going through rehab? How did you keep that piece intact?

A lot of it. Because she works in the medical field, she understands addiction better than a lot of people. That's why I think the. The betrayal trauma might have been reduced a little with her. But we talked about what my life would have to look like when I got home. Would I have to do 12 step meetings? Would I. What would my diet look like? What would my. How would my routines change? You know, I. I left my. I. I left. I was fired from my job before I went to my first rehab. And, you know, how was I going to make money? What was my. What was my new life gonna look like? And that was really a lot of it, because I knew I was putting this life behind me. I knew I needed to not start over, but, you know, have. Have a hard reset, and a lot of things had to change. That was what a lot of the conversations were about. And then as I started to get deeper, I talked about, you know, my youth with her. I talked about how I became the way I did. You know, to me, that's the most important thing in recovery. Even more than figuring out how to control my triggers was learning how I became the person I did. And whether I'm talking to a woman who's dealing with betrayal trauma or a man or woman who's dealing with porn addiction. It all comes down to just figuring out, how did you get this way? Where were. Where were the problems? What was. What was your doing? What was somebody else's doing? What was Mother Nature's doing? Let's figure out what it was and then how we move forward now that we have that information.

I love that. And, you know, I love that you and your wife were able to kind of look at what life would look like as you moved forward and not continuously rehashing the problems or the past or the pain. I think it's really important for us to understand we can't punish the pain out of people. We can't insist, inspire them to change and to grow and to. To restart when they're feeling less than all of the time. In fact, that's going to drive the addiction. I think that's important to say. So it's. It's the looking forward, it's the affirming that we can get through this, that we can do this. And what is that going to look like? And how do we strategize that? And how do we create a new place to begin again and again and again and again as you uncover and understand the past. Right. And what to do with it now going forward, and.

And that's what's so important. And it's also important really to, you know, respect the other person. She's so proud of what I've done, but she's not read any of my three books. She's not listened to a single podcast I've done. I think that that's a place for her that, you know, she doesn't want to go back there. She doesn't want to be reminded of that. We got through this, but she's put it behind her. That's how she's working it. That's how she's working with it. She did see a therapist and all that, but now we are 78 years later. I'm very active in this. She supports me. But she doesn't go on podcasts. She doesn't read my books. She's put it behind her, and I respect that. You know, it's an individual journey for everybody, and it's just figure it out a little bit at a time.

Oh, I love that, Josh. So I think a great place to encourage our listeners to begin is to get your book. It's called He's a Porn Addict. What do we do now? And we're going to give a couple of copies away right now, and you can call in at 425-373-5527. We're going to give two away to the first two callers that call in live. Again, that number is 425-373-5527. That is a great place to begin. And, Josh, as we wrap up this conversation, I just want to ask you, is there any last thoughts that you have that you would want to give to our listeners at this moment?

Number one, I'd say don't be afraid to call in for the book because we know you're calling for a friend, not for you.

Well said, well said.

And the other thing I say is just keep in mind, anybody can be a porn addict. Anybody. I have met people from 16 years old to 80 years old. Men, women, white, black, Chinese, Asian, doesn't matter. Smart, stupid, rich, poor. Anybody can be a porn addict. There is no stereotypical porn addict, so don't ever make that mistake. And number two, if you think you have an issue, get help. The issue is only going to get worse before it Gets better or. And some people actually switch addictions. Some people move somewhere else. If you have an addictive piece to you, whether it's porn or anything else, get some help, because it takes over your life. And if you can. If you can have a few less years of addiction than I did it, I can only imagine how wonderful that will be. I'm thrilled that I'm clean now. And I just want everybody who is an addict to know. I know you don't think you can survive without your pills or your medicine or your video games or your sex or whatever it is you can survive. And not only that, you will thrive. You will do better. You will recognize what life can truly offer. You just have to do that one thing, and that's ask for help. And it's. It's the hardest thing in the world to do. But once you do it, it opens up doors that you didn't even know were there. It's. It's like wizard of Oz, where it goes from black and white to color.

Oh, that's so great. Thank you, Josh, so much for being with us. We'll definitely have you come back and we'll continue the conversation. We've got, like, manipulation and the Coolidge effect and objectification.

I mean, that's why I wrote three books.

Have a beautiful day. Thanks again so much.

Thank you so much. It was great to talk to you.

You too. So I know that's a lot. And we decided to take our time for a break to just continue the conversation with Josh because that was so helpful and enlightening.

I mean, we're not going to take a break.

We're not gonna.

We're not gonna take a break. We're gonna continue on. Yeah. Thank you, Josh. We're gonna have Josh back because there is a lot, a lot, a lot.

To unpack and learn and discover and hear.

And I just.

Better place to do it than with somebody who's actually.

Well. And I just love what Josh said, that, you know, what he's oftentimes able to. To have a man look into his eyes and, like, the weight of the world has come off of his shoulders or her shoulders. And, you know, Stacy and I, we constantly remind people that in our experience and our teaching, mentoring, the thing that must be present for any kind of a healing is permission and safety, you know, and this is a huge place that brings up a lot for a lot of us. And so that's why Stacy encourages to. Let's just check our judgment at the door, at least for this moment in time. And again, rather than seek to understand, is behave like we understand. And in my experience, that would be with permission and safety.

And I know it's hard when you feel like you've been violated, you've been betrayed or lied to or gaslighted or. I mean, all the myriad of things that have gone on. When somebody is in the throes of addiction, it hurts, it's hard, it's painful. But I want you to also know that if we can just pause for a moment and we can get curious about what happened. Right. Not. Not why did you do this, but what happened to you, what's driving this? The emotional drivers always make sense when we find the time and the permission and the safety to uncover them. Just like Josh said. Gosh, you know, it was the most empowering thing to understand why I was the way I was. And that's really what we're seeking. We stop covering it up, and we understand who we are and what brought us to this moment. And it changes everything. So may we all give that gift not only to ourselves, but to the people that we love the most. We can't beat them up. We can't create enough pain and critical criticism and belittling enough to change them, to inspire them, to motivate them, to seek the help that they need. But we can say, hey, I don't understand. I don't get it. Right. But I want to understand it. Help me understand, and I'm here with you.

And. And lastly, I'll just, you know, remind. The reminder that Josh gave us is this addiction, like all addictions, they don't. It doesn't matter where we come socially, economically. It doesn't. It's across the spectrum of humans. Okay? So again, it can be from everyone, from the person that is very, very young to the very most established business person out there. Again, it is. It's everybody and every human in between.

Yeah. And we all have places where we hurt.

Right?

So remember that.

So take a breath. Yeah, take a breath.

Okay, so I usually we take a break and we come back and talk about fun, but we're just gonna do a hard, like, left turn. I want you to know, as a human being, you can do that. Like, you can be in the throes of a very deep, deep. Right. Emotional conversation. And you can go, okay, it's time to take a hard left. It's important for us to understand we can do that. Our follow the fun moment is an experience that Tom and I had last Sunday where we decided we were going to go to the lake. I insisted that we go for a swim. We'd done some yard work. It was hot. I wanted to get in the water, feel the water on my skin. I wanted to take our paddle boards out and just mess around. And when we got to our favorite hole, which is about 10 minutes from our house, it was full.

The lot was full, had a sign up parking lot.

And we went, oh man, I guess we're going to go home and do nothing. And I says, hey, how about if we go to another lake? And all of a sudden what emerged was this too much conversation. It was too far, it was too late, it was too hot, it's too much, it's too something. And so for follow the fun this week, I want you to think about all the places in your life where you might find yourself or catch yourself saying that it's too expensive, it's too far, it's too much, too much. People don't, you know, to something. And I want you to say no on the other side of tote. I don't want you to say no. I want to say yes. Like yes. So we went, we, we decided it was too far. We had the conversation was too far, it's too hot, it was too late, can't happen. And I said, we're just gonna go, let's just see what happens. Is it really two, all those things.

So t o o that's an important distinction. T o o so too so. And guess what? About halfway to what Mr. And Mrs. Google said on our navigation, we found a sign or we found we saw a sign that said the same lake we were going to, that was right to the right. And we said, well, let's. Stacy said, well, let's take that sign. I mean let's check it out. We can always turn around and continue on with the Google again.

It's going to be a disaster. It's going to be the wrong way. Google says this, you know, no, let's just, let's just find out.

Then we got there at about half of the time that we thought it was two and it was just a lovely experience. We got wet, we found a parking place right a few steps away from the lake and we set up our chairs in the water and it was just lovely and it was too delightful.

So I tell you what, if you find yourself saying it's to something, fill in the blank. I want you to catch yourself this week and I want you to do it anyway and then see what happens on the other side of two. I'm going to share with you that there's a lot of life, there's a lot of experiences and there's a lot of joy that happens on the other side of too much, too too expensive, too hot, too many people, too far, etc. So I want to challenge you to overcome that and just say yes instead of no. It's going to change your life. The reminder is, hey, are you stuck because there's nothing to be done or are you stuck because you won't try anything new? And this I think fits that perfectly. So get over two and live some life on the other side of that. So, okay, we have some spread love. It's going to be quick. But this person that we're going to highlight here on the Spread Some Love moment, he's going to be on our show next week. So we're going to invite you to come on back and enjoy the moments that we're going to create with Christian. And Christian has this super tip for us today.

Hi, my name is Christian de la Huerta and I'm a personal transformation coach. I'm a breathwork practitioner, I'm a TEDx speaker and I'm delighted to and grateful to Tracy to have been invited to be on Love Shack Live in a couple of months. Short message today about relationship. I've been doing retreats on different themes, one of them being conscious relationships for the last 30 years. And one of the premises of my retreat work, it's paraphrasing the Course in Miracles. It says something like it's not our job to look for love, but to look within ourselves for the obstacles to love. So how are we sabotaging our relationships? How are we blocking love sometimes even from the get go? By attracting the wrong people. By falling for people who are not available, who are not a match, who live on the opposite side of the country or the world even, who are already with somebody else or who maybe they're just not there. So why do we do the things we do? Why do we create those patterns of self sabotage and those behaviors that don't serve us? That's kind of the one of the themes of my work and one of the messages of my work is that doing this kind of work is heroic. It's nothing short of heroic to be willing to look inside and to ask ourselves why we do the things we do and why we get stuck in these patterns of relationship that sometimes feel like we're in the same boring play or the same boring movie just with a different actor. So it's really worthwhile work to be willing to go within and to ask ourselves the hard questions and to face our inner demons. Because the reward for all that is freedom and the possibility to choose and to have the kind of relationships that we really long to have and the kind of lives that are filled with meaning and purpose, a sense of personal empowerment, which is, by the way, the theme of my latest book, awakening the Soul of Power, which is what Stacy and I are going to be discussing more during the interview. So thank you. Much love and many blessings. And this is Christian de la Huerta signing off.

I love that. That's Christian. He's going to be back here with us next week. And as we wrap up every episode, it's with a can you feel it? And today our song has been Ruth B. Mixed Signals. Addiction does that to us. It mixes up the signals and confuses us. So check out that playlist on our podcast or on our website, staceybartley.com thank you so much for being here with us today. It's been such a pleasure to share this conversation very importantly with you. For you, we look forward to being back here next week with you.

Bye for now.

Yeah, see you next week.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com podcast Love the Show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, to time to go. We got to close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack Live with Tom and Stacey Bartley.