Photo by Jilbert Ebrahimi on Unsplash
You have been seriously thinking about giving up porn. You’ve likely heard about all the devastating impacts it has on your life. You’re tired of dealing with the shame and guilt. Are you ready to quit porn for good and start focusing on a porn-free future?
To help get you started, let’s look at five reasons how your new life will be much better. There are many more reasons to quit, but these five are pretty strong motivators.
First, understand that these are not instant results. You will not turn off your computer one night and wake up the next morning feeling totally free and renewed. Your recovery will take time and effort, and it will be painful along the way. But it will all be so worth it.
1. Get A Clearer Mind
Your pornography use has trained your mind to crave it. Each time you repeat a thought or action, you create neurological pathways in your brain, causing these patterns of thought to become subconscious and programmed in your mind.
Fortunately, new pathways can be developed, basically ‘re-wiring’ your brain.
As your brain begins to clear from its obsession with porn, you will start to notice that you regain your confidence, your concentration, your optimism, and your attention.
In general, your brain will become much more efficient and work at an increased capacity as you feel like expanding your activities and open up to new and exciting adventures.
Christian Post contributor J.S. Park said,
“I once calculated the time I lost during my fifteen-year porn addiction. If I count on the low end of the average, I lost about two whole years. I could’ve learned a third language, or the piano, or fully qualified to become a NASA astronaut. When you quit porn, you suddenly have a few dozen hours free every month. The self-indulgent hours are now open for something better.”
2. Develop Healthier Relationships
Your porn use has likely caused you to live a large part of your life in isolation. The shame has caused you to feel that nobody would love or accept you if they knew about your porn use. Your relationships with your wife, family, and friends have been strained and damaged as you kept them at a distance.
But when your porn use is gone, you will begin to interact more with people and become more sociable and involved in their lives. Your wife will once again be the focus of your love and affection instead of some pixels on a screen. You will have more time to spend with your family and to share their interests and hobbies with them.
“Porn destroyed every relationship I had,” said T. Bennet, who has been free from porn for five years. “I didn’t want sex or love or kindness. But once I quit I found what I was missing. Caring about someone else. Their thoughts, how they smelt, how they laughed. Just spending time together, being in each other’s company, enjoying life, being a part of someone else…I will never replace what I have now with porn. I’m through it and life is wonderful.”
3. Gain A Higher Value of Yourself and Others
Your pornography usage most likely was rooted in your past when you were abused, ridiculed or neglected by people close to you. You turned to porn to help self-medicate your pain.
When you quit porn, you will realize that whatever negative labels were stuck on you no longer define you. The shame will fade away as your self-respect blossoms. Your renewed or brand-new relationships with your family and friends will prove that you are indeed worthy of being loved.
Author Marnia Robinson explained that people quitting porn notice increased self-esteem. ”Their desire to connect with others surges. So does their confidence, their ability to look others in the eye, their sense of humor, their perception of their ‘manliness,’ their concentration, charisma, their optimism, their judgment, their attractiveness to potential mates, and so forth.”
Since you will have experienced the pain of feeling unworthy of acceptance, you will also have a higher value on other people. You will understand that every person should be cherished as the unique creation they are.
4. Enjoy A Healthier Lifestyle
Since you won’t be spending time at your computer, you can focus on developing a healthier lifestyle to replace your old chair-bound routines. Eat a healthier diet and start activities like swimming, running, biking, golfing, or anything that you might enjoy.
Researcher and author Tim Simon wrote, “When you’re feeling good about yourself you are more likely to want to seek out company and engage in sociable positive activities. Many men who are giving up porn claim that exercise helped them by giving them energy and the confidence to get out from behind the computer screen and engage with people and real women.”
5. Have A Stronger Relationship With God
Perhaps the greatest benefit of overcoming porn is building a stronger relationship with God. It’s great that you are working on renewing your mental and physical health. But it is God who has always loved you, and it is His mercy and grace that has brought you through your struggle with porn.
Spend time daily growing your intimacy with God. Read the Bible and pray. Connect with other Christians who can encourage and support you through your recovery.
God has never thought of you as unworthy of love, especially His love. You are of unimaginable value to Him, and He wants to see you free of porn and living your life to its fullest. Make sure He is the centerpiece of all the rest of your life.
Dr. Tim Chester, a pastor of Grace Church in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire, UK, said,
“A life-with-porn versus a life-without-porn is a poor choice. A life-with versus a life-without. If you set it up in these terms then you won’t produce lasting change. We need to set it up (as it truly is) as a choice between life-with-porn versus life-with-God. We need to show how God always offers more than porn.”
Article first appeared here. You can start your journey to a life free from porn as over one million men around the world have done. The Conquer Series is a 12-DVD cinematic resource that uses powerful testimonies, solid Biblical teaching, insightful scientific information, and military action scenes.
