It’s Wednesday, that day that we always talk marriage! Today’s guest post is from Jennifer Ferguson, whose husband, Craig, battled through and recovered from a pornography addiction. Together they’ve written the book Pure Eyes, Clean Heart: A Couple’s Journey to Freedom from Pornography. Today she tells part of her story and how she had an attitude shift, regarding the unglamorous life of a porn star.
I used to think the voluptuous girls with the sleek bodies, cascading hair, and pouty lips were the enemies.
I would think horrid thoughts about them, judging them as they flaunted their goods in front of a camera to be broadcast for the entire world to see. I judged them the first time I saw them by accident on my husband’s computer screen and every time the incident replayed itself in my mind.
I couldn’t ask him, “What do they have that I don’t?” because the answer was obvious to me: Everything.
And it seemed that everything I had was detrimental to my ability to even try to get close to achieving what they had:
- Baby fat…from 2 babies
- An “A” cup
- Stretch marks
- Cellulite
The only time my lips were pouty was when I was complaining about lack of sleep. Not sure that jives with the sex appeal I was going for.
Even though I knew I could never look like them (at least, not on my budget), I tried to do what I could. I lost weight. I became a runner. I started trying to look better generally (a.k.a. taking five minutes to throw on some mascara).
But a shrinking me didn’t equate to less porn use by my husband. Trying to become more like them did not draw him more towards me. And the bitterness and rage building in my heart towards these porn stars started making me a jealous fool regarding any woman.
I gave anyone the power to make me feel less-than without the utterance of one single word. All they had to do was walk by. Wear a low-cut shirt. Breathe.
As Craig started his journey to freedom from porn addiction, God pointed out I had been ensnared by images of fantasy, too. Where he had been trapped by lust, I had been trapped by comparison.
Somehow, while working on our book, a miracle happened. I found myself filled with compassion for these women who had paraded across the screen and in my husband’s mind. Those whom I perceived as home-wreckers, I now viewed as women with wrecked hearts. Those whom I thought had it all, I realized had very little: safety, self-worth, family who cared. Those I thought were the definition of sexy were actually sex slaves.
Instead of spending so much time pitying myself, I found myself weeping for them.
And repenting. I had judged deeply and wrongly. I had let hate obscure my vision, not only of them, but also of myself. I thought I knew their world, but the truth is, I knew nothing. I started to turn my harsh language into compassionate prayers, that the women in the industry would find freedom, hope, and Jesus.
Because no one should think this is the way to live. No one should think they are worth nothing more than what the porn industry has to offer. The grass is definitely not greener. Consider these facts:
• One male pornographic performer, Rocco (600 films and 3,000 women), said: “Every professional in the porn-world has herpes, male or female.” (www.covenanteyes.com)
• The average life expectancy of a porn performer is only 37.43 years. The average American lives to be 78.1 years old. (www.shelleylubben.com/porn-industry)
• The US adult film industry earns between $9-13 billion annually. Performers make $400-$1000 per shoot and are not compensated based on distribution or sales. (www.shelleylubben.com/porn-industry)
• “Nobody really wants to date a porn star, stripper or escort. Also the whole family thing and having kids, I’m like ‘who’s gonna have kids with an ex-porn star,’” Belmond said, according to the Christian Post. “And even when I’m 60 I’m still gonna have this porn on the Internet. It’s like having a virus or something that never goes away.” Vanessa Belmond, former porn star (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/24/ex-porn-star-reveals-the-horrors-of-working-in-the-sex-industry/)
Ladies, these women, or any woman, you deem as prettier, sexier, whatever-ier, is not your enemy. As Paul writes in Ephesians, “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12, NIV)
When you feel the need to compare, pray.
Pray for yourself that God might show you how intricately you were made.
Pray for the woman you feel you’re up against, that she might know the same – that there is a God who loves her passionately.
Pray thanksgiving for beauty – that which is in you and every other sister – the beauty that is worn on the outside as well as the beauty that blooms on the inside.
Pray against the forces of darkness that belittle, that lie, that damage – those things within the porn industry and all the other dark places in this world.
And pray there would be no room for bitterness or rage to take root, for there is little beauty in those things at all.
Jennifer Ferguson and her husband Craig are the authors of Pure Eyes, Clean Heart: A Couple’s Journey to Freedom from Pornography.
Now it’s your turn to be part of Wifey Wednesday! What advice do you have for us today? Leave the link to your marriage post in the linky below.
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Sheila Wray Gregoire has been married for 25 years and happily married for 20! She loves traveling around North America with her hubby in their RV, giving her signature "Girl Talk" about sex and marriage. And she's written 8 books. About sex and marriage. See a theme here? Plus she knits. Even in line at the grocery store.
I read up on porn actresses while working on a post about why women would pose for porn, and like you, my heart broke with their stories. Many of these women come from abused homes, so their self-worth is low to begin with. And then they are abused further by film makers.
I’ve wondered sometimes: If more men realized this, would that help them reconsider their actions? I’m not saying that it would stop things immediately (I understand the addictive pull of porn), but I believe it’s worth pointing out that these are real women, with real wounds — not merely cardboard fantasies.
Thanks so much for sharing your insight.
I think at a certain point in their desire to heal from porn addiction, this can be a salient point for men to really consider and understand. What happened for my husband is that he realized it was all a sham AND that he was contributing in some way to human sex trafficking and abuse because these women are being so mistreated in so many ways. As a man of integrity, he just reconcile it anymore as “harmless.” So thankful for your insight here!
Great insights. Thank you.
Jen! So great to see you here 🙂 Sheila, thanks for having my friend here! I am so proud of her! And I absolutely love this perspective…there are prostitutes on this side gravel strip off the road I take home from my daugther’s school & son’s former school. Sadly, this is pretty typical & the porn industry so big too, here. It breaks my heart & I pray & one day I hope to have the courage to get out of the car and ask them what their story is…offer Jesus somehow.
Oh, Abby, you are the BEST! Thank you for pointing me here! Sheila is a great hostess! I, too, pray that we would all press in for the stories and offer hope and prayer in whatever way we can. Praying for the ladies that you pass by on your way to school.
Very insightful essay.
There is sex then there is love. A husband ought to view his wife in the context of their loving and committed relationship we know as marriage. The sexual intimacy for the spouses (within their marriage) ought to be more about expressing and celebrating the love they feel for each other rather than merely seeking physical release. The sad fact is that many men get hooked on porn early in their lives and cannot break with it when they get married. It can be addicting just as alcohol and drugs are. (Not a few wives live with husbands that are still smoking marijuana regularly.)
Not many wives are going to look like the women porn “stars” (“. . . the voluptuous girls with the sleek bodies, cascading hair, and pouty lips . . . .”). Not many husbands are going to look like a movie star or a Mr. Universe either. Spouses need to accept each other as to their physical looks. People are more than just their faces and their bodies. If a husband cannot get past that stage, he has failed to mature. Men’s brains are wired for visual stimulation, but this need not be an obsession for the husband.
Perhaps it does not need to be said on this blog, but one thing that wives can do is to consciously make the effort to satisfy their husbands sexually. Not just frequency of lovemaking, but being willing to initiate sexual intimacy and love play is appreciated by most husbands. As well, being enthusiastic and even a little more adventurous cannot hurt.
I liked the “pouty lips” – made me chuckle when I first read that phrase.
I agree that a healthy sex life is crucial to a marriage. However, I think there is truth in this: porn is not really about sex. Porn is about escaping reality and choosing fantasy. I can also honestly tell you that I was often the one asking for sex during Craig’s addiction, but this did not pull him away from porn. In fact, the more he engaged with porn, the less interested he was in me – not because of me, but because he was choosing to live in a fantasy world.
Yes, Jen, I’d agree–that’s a story I see over and over again. Porn really does make one lose interest in a spouse!
I remember the torture of comparison all too well. I repeated it fiercely to myself, hissing almost under my breath so as not to be heard by others, as a refrain:
I will not compete.
I will NOT compete.
I WILL NOT COMPETE.
Yet I did. He was the man I believed I would marry. We had talked about names for our future children.
Porn, and the deception and lies that almost always accompany it, destroyed that dream- and threatened to bring me down, too. I wonder how many other young women have punished themselves with intense workouts while simultaneously starving themselves.
But I am not here to dredge up the painful past. Let it stay in the past! It’s been a year and a half and I have moved on with my life. I applaud the growing masses of those who strive for and win their freedom from the enslavement that porn represents- whether it be actors and actresses, addicted men and women, producers, the significant others of the addicts, etc.
But in all honesty, to think that a man could be satisfied (or preferably ‘intoxicated’) with me, and remain completely faithful, often seems to be a foolish hope. And so I am deeply grateful for this post- I know God led me here, for the journey is not over yet. At least, not until I fully embrace who, and what, He created me to be.
Rachel, I am praying for the restoration of hope in your life. You are enough. You are more than enough. There are so many things that the enemy uses to destroy marriage, but God helps us fight with weapons not of this world – prayer, scripture, and faith. I am praying that His Word would speak so fully into your life that you would not be able to doubt at all that you are intimately and wonderfully created by God to be and do amazing things. May the trap of comparison be banished and may you hear Him sing over you with joy.
The post said it all, majority of the so called porn star don’t know what they are doing. They are not mindful of their future, that is why they end up destroying their future. Any right thinking individual should as a matter of fact pray for them. Not only that they are destroying themselves, the devil is equally using them to destroy many homes and marriages.
I think the sad part is that they don’t actually know the fullness of what they are getting into – until it’s too late. Or they see so little of their gifts and themselves that they don’t know they are worth more. I remember watching a documentary where Crissy Moran said something like “Porn was the only thing I thought I was good at.” I’m praying for a radical intervention – that they would know they were created for so much more.
I need to hear this. Even though my husband’s porn use is in his past, before I came along, I struggle with this. At my ripe old age of 47 you’d think I’d have dealt with this already.
At 17 I over heard a guy in my youth group ask my boyfriend why he was with me since I wasn’t well endowed. That broke my already frail spirit. Ever since then I’ve compared myself with other women and have had trouble being friends with them. The pain of comparison has followed me to this day.
When I was 17I over
I think comparison can haunt us no matter how young or old we are. I still struggle with my self-image when it comes to my breasts – I feel like they are not enough even though I know Craig and I are happy with our sex life. It is such a distraction the enemy uses to get me off track spiritually and emotionally. I’m praying for a huge break in your life from the trap of comparison, that you would see how wonderfully you were created and how God wants to lavish His love on your and through you.
It took me a while to realize that porn has nothing to do with the man being unhappy with his wife. It really has to do with the fact that it is an addiction, one he struggles with.
The thing my mom always told me was that I draw my confidence in God, not in a person. It is very important that all of us understand that we are special because God created us that way. We can have confidence in who we are apart from our spouse, parents, or other people.
Not to say it doesn’t harm us when our husband’s fantasize about other women. However, we have to remind ourselves that it is a problem in his life, not an indication that we aren’t enough.
Porn stars do not have glamorous lives. Any person that exposes themselves to others are showing how dissatisfied they are with their lives. They are in search of acceptance just as much as we are. I wish the porn industry was not growing.
I wish that, too. And you have a smart mama.
Sheila, thank you so much for having me here!
I love Jen and her testimony. So glad to read this today. My first husband was (still is) addicted to pornography. He is a 68 year old sad man. I pray that before he leaves this earth he will find Christ and become a new creation IN HIM.
Thank you for your kindness, Susan. I didn’t know that about your first husband. I am praying for him, too!
Is it possible for men to not be tempted by porn actresses? I struggle with this question daily..
How do we not compare ourselves to these women when they might tempt our partners?
Sara, even if our partners are tempted by porn actresses this does not mean we have to be lured into the trap of comparison. You comparing yourself to someone else has no baring on whether or not he is tempted by them. His struggle with lust is independent of your struggle with comparison. However, both temptation need Jesus’ intervention in order overcome and restore healthy mindsets and life patterns. This process can start as simply for you as this: “Jesus, I confess I am envious of _____________. Show me how You made me with purpose and intentionality. Help me to be satisfied with what You have blessed me with and let Your glory shine through me.”
Oh, and one more thing. I think anything is possible with God. Can our men resist temptation? Yes. Does it take help from Jesus for most men? Yes.
So many people blame porn for their trouble in their marital sex life. In my opinion porn is not the issue. The issue is the male sex drive and wiring.
The ‘visual nature’ of the husband puts incredible pressure on a wife whose body rightfully transitions throughout her life. His hard wiring for youthful fertile visual cues makes him prone to a wandering eye and the onus is put on the wife (especially in Christian circles ie. focus on the family and Feldhahn’s books etc.) to present herself as acceptable to him for sexual release as the need builds up so he doesn’t fall into temptation to sin. What a huge burden for a woman whose body and appearance will change over her life! She cannot possibly meet his sexual needs all her days, since it is so wired for exciting youthful variety, no woman could meet that – not even a porn star for she too will age etc. So wives are reminded that they are possibly going to be sexually cast aside at some point in their marriage due to his visual wiring.
Then there is the argument that men are wired to spread their seed far and wide and this is the reason for the desire for variety. Yet there are only so many young fertile women populating the earth at any given time and apparently men crave this until they die in old age living in perpetual frustration as they can’t compete with the younger men for access. So therefore the male sex drive doesn’t even serve him well either!
So it’s easy for everyone to point the finger at porn and get angry about this thing they have to compete with and live up to when porn was created to satisfy the insatiable – the male sexual drive. So really wives are trying to live up to the demands of the male sex drive of their husband which has it’s preferences, expectations and hardwired requisites for arousal. According to Shaunti Feldhahn this is the part of a man that he tries to control to honour his wife. So for a wife to have the sexual intimacy of marriage and be desirable to keep him connected she has to comply to his hard wired visual standards – very difficult since those standards are reflected in porn performers.
This all places enormous pressure on wives, not the porn – that is merely a symptom of the drive. Oh the pressure. Look at how many of God’s precious daughters are dieting, cutting up their bodies, having stuff sucked out or plastic implants shoved into the beautiful handwork of our Heavenly Father as He had created in their own mother’s wombs. Wives do not need porn to create this pressure of comparison, their husbands are already drawn to women on the street, the beach, work or tv/movies. So the visual nature of a man’s sexuality appears to be the root cause of the issues around women and comparison. For us to say it is porn is to say the issue of murder is the weapon itself – someone had to operate it didn’t they?
For women it is a battle already lost due to biology not porn. Thankfully our God blessed us with the ability to form deep and meaningful bonds with women to buffer us.
I might add that wives can find some comfort in knowing that most men are wired in this way, that means even the partners of the porn stars themselves! So this is in no way a reflection a wife. God made you the way you are, beautiful in his sight. If your husband’s wiring causes him to not appreciate what he has and to desire others or more it is not a reflection on you. It is however a reflection on his make up or his own sexual greed which would still operate if you were Miss Porn 2015. Once you’ve detangled yourself out of what’s his and what’s yours and can look at it objectively you can see that it has nothing to do with you, you are just experiencing some collateral damage from the wiring itself. Wives, you are beautiful and God loves you and in Him there are no comparisons.
I love the saying: ‘Comparison is the thief of joy’
Thank you for sharing your opinion. This post was really to cultivate a sense of compassion for women in sexual slavery and bondage (which is what porn is) and to show that women don’t need to compete with porn stars (or really, anyone else). I think that the male wiring argument is a generalization – not all men have an insatiable sex drive. And at the core, I don’t think this is really issue. The issue is that men are using porn to fill a hole in their spiritual lives. They run to porn to escape, to exist in a fantasy world they can control and manipulate in order to feel like they are the man they think they want to be. This could be another generalization and I do think that men are initially stimulated by the visual images. But then, I think the enemy keeps them ensnared for far more than that. If they aren’t functioning as God created/intended to be in real life, they can’t do the things He has called them to do. Satan keeps them trapped so they can’t live for God in the fullness they were created to do so.
Thank you Jen for replying, I can see that my post was loaded with much fury at the pressures for women around this issue and that it was very one eyed, based on dismay from reading much about male sexuality generally. I apologise for my tone. However, I was responding in part to pressure for wives which can be subtly seen in an above post:
” Men’s brains are wired for visual stimulation, but this need not be an obsession for the husband….Perhaps it does not need to be said on this blog, but one thing that wives can do is to consciously make the effort to satisfy their husbands sexually. Not just frequency of lovemaking, but being willing to initiate sexual intimacy and love play is appreciated by most husbands. As well, being enthusiastic and even a little more adventurous cannot hurt”
This kind of common subtle pressure was what I was responding to. Yes, we get that men are visually wired and knowing what he is wired to be attracted to is what can burden a woman because she may be unable to be that through no lack of trying. It just feels like advice to try a little harder to help keep him from consuming porn, this can place a woman in competition with other images. Of course comparison becomes a natural response although unhealthy for the woman.
Yes, you’re right the ‘wiring’ point is a generalization as all men are not the same as is the spiritual hole explanation, either may be relevant for one man. What I really meant to say was that the women involved (wives of porn users and porn stars) are in the predicament they are in due to male sexuality ‘which has not been brought under submission to God’, which God clearly warned men to take control of. It is here that wives can find compassion for porn stars and each other and stop comparing themselves to them because it is not anything they are doing wrong. I am speaking as someone who has been profoundly affected by porn (as a child) and repeated exposure to raw male sexuality from many males who appeared wholesome yet were driven by an undisciplined sexual wiring. Many times they would blame the stimulus rather than taking personal responsibility for their own sexual wiring and I believe women often blame the stimulus (porn star) and compare themselves to her rather than accept the real issue that she wouldn’t be doing what she is doing if someone wasn’t seeking it out and that she is just as damaged. I apologise that my opinion is unpleasant as I am speaking from a position of having been profoundly impacted by this as the stimulus and that is what it is, unpleasant.
However, although I have revealed one woman’s wounded heart in this matter it does not mean that I have no compassion for the struggle many men face. I truly pray that God would release His power into their lives to enable them to submit their sexually to their Creator to be made whole and new, to find true joy again. And that God would also provide protection and healing for hurting wives, reminding them that they are enough – that the issue doesn’t start with them.
On another note, I’m grateful for your site as I think it’s really helpful and encouraging to many women, myself included. I hope you can continue blessing women with your posts.
I completely agree with this: “What I really meant to say was that the women involved (wives of porn users and porn stars) are in the predicament they are in due to male sexuality ‘which has not been brought under submission to God’, which God clearly warned men to take control of.” And yes, many fail to take responsibility and cast blame outside of themselves instead of looking at the problem in terms of their own emptiness.
I am so sorry for what you have experienced through porn exposure and the abuse you have suffered. It is an abomination to God and to me and I pray for amazing healing for you, if it hasn’t already taken place. I loved your words of compassion for men who struggle and I am on my knees for them to come to Jesus and receive the healing they need as well.
You are a blessing. Thanks for sharing your story and your thoughts with me.