Dear husbands,
I need your attention for a minute or two. I want to talk about something important. It’s so important that it keeps me up at night trying to figure it out. I can promise you this, it keeps your wife up at night too.
There is no easy solution, and it’s a huge problem. A monster of a problem. But God is bigger than any monster, and He cares about you and your marriage, so I am willing to flip on the light and look it in the eye because I have the Creator of the Universe standing behind me. If God is for us, who can be against us.
Pornography.
It’s not just a man problem. It’s a human problem. And your family needs you to stop ignoring it. You need to talk about it because this issue loves to stay so silent. It stays silent because it’s way easier to pretend it doesn’t exist because nobody really knows what to do about it.
It has torn apart relationships. It has destroyed hearts, stolen innocence, ruined intimacy, and traumatized children. It has caused so much harm, there is no way to measure it. It’s so out of control, it almost seems pointless to discuss it.
It’s on the laptop, the iPad, the phone. It is accessed through apps, and oftentimes cannot be tracked. It’s always there. Your whole family can access it with just one click. Let’s not pretend it isn’t happening. The way I see it, we have to talk about it in our homes and call it out. Because it isn’t going away. Not until all things are redeemed. It affects the way people interact with each other. It chips away until it destroys. It’s death by a thousand cuts.
Let’s look at it in light of the Gospel. OK? I’m not here to sling mud or to shame anyone. My home needs the same protection as yours. The first step is bringing it out in the open so it’s not some dark secret anymore.
Sit your family down and talk together about pornography.
Open the floor so your kids can talk to you. They need to have a safe place they can go to ask questions and they need to hear your thoughts on it. And I’m not talking about one sit down discussion so you can lay down the rules, I’m thinking of it as an ongoing conversation. Lead your family in this.
The statistics are staggering. And don’t tell yourself it doesn’t matter if you speak up. According to Julie Hiramine, author of the book, “Guardians of Purity”, “children whose parents monitor their activity closely, are 30 percent less likely to be sexually active compared to children who’s [sic] parents are less strict monitoring their children’s behaviors.” Clearly, it matters if you are dialed in.
I understand this might be a difficult thing to bring up with your spouse because she might be incredibly sensitive about this subject. But be brave, and talk about it anyway. I am a wife, and I would rather know if it’s an issue rather than allowing it to slowly kill my marriage. Because it’s a domino effect. When a person is addicted to porn, they begin to change. They retreat. They become distant. They hate how trapped it makes them feel, because deep down, they know it’s not honoring or life-giving.