The Steve Nam Podcast

All right, let's get into it. We are going to debunk some myths about porn that are floating around there on the interwebs. Okay, and the first one is that porn is normal.

Okay, some people say porn is normal, but really it's not. All right, it's not like we were meant to watch others have sex on a screen and get off to it, right? When we do that, what's happening is we're tricking our brains into thinking that we're having sex when actually we're not. We're just oogling at a screen while we're touching ourselves.

Okay, I'm sorry for the graphic, but that's actually what's happening when you're watching porn and masturbating. And so you've changed your brain makeup so much that eventually you'll prefer porn over actual sex. And I don't think that's normal.

That's pretty messed up, right? See, porn tricks us into feeling connected with the people that we're watching on the screen, right? With these images of fake people having fake sex, right? When real intimacy is built on trust, it's built on communication, it's built on affection, it's built on a host of other things that have nothing to do with that person that you're watching on screen. That is not a real connection that you're experiencing. And you're fooling your brain into thinking that it is.

And that's why you think that, oh, porn is normal. No, it's not. It's not.

It's distorting your expectations of what a real relationship is. And it's presenting to you this unrealistic scenario with fake people, and it gives you a counterfeit experience. And so over time, you continue to rewire your brain, and it affects the man that you show up as.

It affects your social relationships, your connections, your confidence that you bring into a room. It affects your clarity of thought. Your brain's now so occupied by all these thoughts of porn, right? And so, if you think that porn is normal, it's not normal, right? In fact, that brings us to the next myth, and that's that people think that porn is healthy.

I don't need this to say, we just talked about how porn is not healthy, but some folks claim that it's healthy. And that's just ridiculous, okay? Watching it does not have any health benefits. Your doctor does not tell you, hey, go home, watch some porn, call me in the morning, and let me know how it went, okay? It does not help you with mental or emotional health.

And in fact, it contributes to depression and anxiety, and it raises your stress levels. And not only that, it's linked to erectile dysfunction, and it's even more on the rise now for younger guys, because they can so easily access porn. And now, tell me, all these different consequences of watching porn, tell me, does that sound healthy to you? And we haven't even talked about how, you know, let's say that you aren't watching porn regularly yet.

Eventually, it leads to an addiction. We already know that. You likely are here because you're experiencing that.

There's no way around it. And you continually need, and you want, and you crave more and more and more quantity. And then, I'm not saying to say quality, but levels of porn, you need more and more doses, intensity in order to get up, in order to feel satisfied that, oh, okay, now my brain has something more novel, something new for me to get off on.

And so eventually, unfortunately, you can get to a really dark place. It creates odd ideas about sex. It warps your taste, your sexual tastes, your attractions.

And it changes what you find attractive and desirable. And the more explicit porn that you watch, the more that you get desensitized. And so you can get deep into this thing, and you just don't even know the person that you are.

Tell me, do you think that it's going to become easier, or is it going to become harder to enjoy intimacy with your wife, or your future wife, right? So no, porn is not healthy. Porn is not healthy. The third myth that we want to debunk is that porn is a reward.

People think that porn, oh, that's my reward for a long day's work, okay? But it's not really a reward if you think about what happens after you watch it. And I know you've been here, right? It might feel like a treat when you're looking forward to it, when you're anticipating it. It feels like a prize for accomplishing something.

Maybe you just, you know, you had some frustrations throughout the day, you had some things not go your way, or maybe you're just bored, and maybe you just got nothing to do, and you start to feel lonely. Maybe you start to feel like, I just need something to stimulate me. And so you sit down, you lie down in your bed, scroll on your phone, open your laptop, whatever it is, and you just watch some porn, right? And you think it's harmless, but it's terrible for you in the long run.

And even in the short run, I mean, right after you watch and you sober up, you know how you feel afterwards. And you know, some guys, they feel like, well, look, okay, the reason why I watch it, it has nothing to do with that. Actually, it's because I think I deserve it because my wife right now is pregnant, or my wife doesn't like sex as much as I do.

I just, I'm not sexually satisfied. And so I think I deserve to be sexually satisfied. Like, they feel like they deserve to watch porn, or they feel like that if they don't, they're gonna explode.

And how will they ever be fulfilled? Or how will they ever get what they need if they don't watch it? So let me just cover one thing for sure. And that is that first of all, you do not need to watch porn to be sexually satisfied. You do not need to watch porn to be fulfilled in your life.

Okay? If you do, that's just your warped brain talking. All right. Secondly, your relationship is struggling with intimacy right now, likely, because you haven't figured out a healthy way to deal with the man that you are.

And so if you actually started working on yourself on your fitness on the character traits that you have in being the man who can lead your family in who can become the better partner for your wife who can communicate with your wife who can be that man that that she's really hoping shows up in her marriage, that is going to be the way that you really get what you want deep down, it's way better to work on growing as a man than to rely on porn as a solution for your life's problems. And so off the tail end of that, the fourth myth is that porn helps you relax. Okay, a lot of guys think that, okay, I just need porn so that I can just get to sleep because I have insomnia, I need porn so that I can sleep and get some rest for the next day.

Right? But it's just not true. You're likely if that's what you think, then maybe you've just relied on this so much to get to sleep. But there's so many healthier ways to relax to fall asleep really well and have better quality sleep without using porn to do it.

And so of course, if you think that that's the only way you could ever fall asleep, you likely haven't been educated, you haven't done any research, but also you're likely being fooled by your addiction by the brain that is so addicted to that pathway that craves porn as the only way that it can get that release that it craves. And you've associated that with falling asleep. And so you think that you need porn so that you can finally relax and finally get that good night's sleep.

Just think about it. What happens after you watch porn, watching porn leads to guilt, it leads to shame, it adds stress, it does not help with relaxation. And so when you watch right before bedtime, what's likely going to happen is that you're adding, you're releasing stress hormones, and it disrupts your actual quality of sleep.

So you're likely going to feel tired the next day, it's going to make it hard to get a good night's rest, especially when you watch right before bedtime. And now you're likely not just watching it real quick. And then just going to sleep, you're going down what you do when you watch porn, you're opening up a lot of content, and you're binging on it, then you crave more and more explicit content, you know how it goes.

It further creates shame in the process gives you anxiety in the like, why can't I stop? Okay, well, maybe just another and you're going back and forth. And there's all of this anguish within you at some point, you start to realize I wish that I didn't have to do this to fall asleep. I wish I didn't have to do this to feel better.

I wish I didn't have to be stuck wasting my time when I could be doing so many other productive things with my life and things. If you're a Christian, that would be more glorifying and honoring to God with my time, especially right before bed, especially getting a good night's sleep, that would be better for my day tomorrow, so that I could honor God with it, then watching porn the night before. And I know a lot of stuff, you know, this deep down, I know a lot of stuff I'm talking about, you actually intuitively know it, it's just you don't know how to plug it in and implement it into your life, because your warped mind that has been warped by porn is telling you that you need this.

And so you haven't considered another option for yourself another way that you can live your life. Okay. And what happens is that now you have furthered the shame and anxiety cycle, and you haven't been able to hop off of it.

And so I just want to tell you, brother, the reality is that sure porn might offer a temporary escape might offer a way to feel sleepy or relaxed. But it's definitely not addressing what's beneath the surface, what's going on inside the heart, what's going on inside the core. And all it's doing right now for you is it's just aggravating, and it's raising your stress levels, it is not helping you to calm down, it's deep inside, it's causing you to feel incongruent and with a lack of integrity.

And as a man, it eventually will show up in depression, it will show up in anxiety, it will show up in feeling unfulfilled, and that something is off with your life. Okay, and you don't have to look very far. If you're stuck in porn, and you're watching porn, let me tell you, porn is going to be if not the sole contributor, it's a huge contributor, it's probably the main contributor.

And so the myth that you need porn to help you relax total lie, you have to get that myth debunked in your mind. All right. And the fifth myth about porn is that porn is not actually cheating.

I you know, at least I'm not going out and sleeping with other women. At least I'm not going out and having an affair with my wife because at least I have porn to keep me you know, on the right track. It's keeping me on people like to argue that porn is not cheating.

And while technically, yes, you're not actually, it's not the same thing as a as a physical relationship with someone else physically sleeping with someone else. There's no denying that it can still hurt your relationship. If you haven't already experienced this in your marriage, for starters, if you're lying to your wife about your porn use or hiding your porn use from your partner, you already know in your own mind that is a betrayal of trust to betrayal trust.

You're not being honest, you're not being upfront with her about what you're doing sexually, right. And and also, do you think it really doesn't interfere with your thought life? Like you really can just turn your brain off once you're done with porn like, oh, yeah, watch porn. I got fulfilled.

I'm sober now. And so like, I'll never look at another woman like that. If you're honest, it totally affects how you look at the other women around you, you know, how you relate to other women in your life, what you may be fantasizing about with them, and worse, what you might be even right now considering acting out on Wow, I wonder about that girl at work, you're putting yourself in these different situations, scenarios that you're trying to fantasize about the things that you've seen in porn, and you just associate it with other women in your life, right? And you know what I'm talking about, whether you are having a physical affair or not, the thing is that watching porn, it's really like it feels like having an emotional affair, because you are sharing these intimate moments of yourself, you're making yourself vulnerable.

Now, I get it, it's to a computer, it's to a phone, you're googling at another screen, but you're giving yourself in your mind, at least your mind is not perceiving it as a Oh, I'm looking at a computer, and I'm getting off to it. No, you know, you know that you're looking at that person on the screen. And you're telling your mind that this person is the one that you are wanting to ejaculate to, sorry for the graphic language, but that's really what you're doing.

And it's time to get real about it. It's time to get serious about the gravity of what you're doing it here. sneaking off to watch porn makes you feel like you're cheating, whether you are acknowledging it or not in your mind every time that you Okay, my wife's asleep.

Oh, okay. My wife's not home. She left to go do this, whatever it is, whether you're telling yourself that it's cheating or not, you know, deep down that it's cheating, you can feel it in your gut, your heart is nodding.

As you're listening to me right now, at some level, you know that there's a breach of trust with your partner, you're breaking that bond with your partner. And that not only damages the trust you have with your partner, obviously, if they found out they would damage the trust, right? But it damages the trust that you have with yourself, your mind is keeping score of, okay, I'm somebody who's actually unfaithful. I'm not somebody who's truly in all sense of the word when I made those vows to my wife, when I promised my wife that I was going to be faithful to her, I didn't say but maybe I'll just keep porn in my life.

Maybe I will just continue jacking off to other women that I see on screen. That was not part of your vows. Okay, so when you're fantasizing with other women, and you're acting out situations in porn, and then you're climaxing to it.

I don't want to apologize for being so real here. We have to be real. We have to be real.

Whether or not you want to say that it's cheating, I'm not having an affair. What does your heart tell you? As soon as you climax? What is the feeling that you feel right after that? Do you really feel like a man of integrity and a faithfulness after you do that? Whether you're a Christian or not? Do you feel like the man that you want to be after you do that after you watch porn, right? Maybe you've overlooked this. But don't forget that porn takes the desire that you should be giving to your wife that you should have for your wife.

It erodes it, it cheapens it, it weakens it. And because now you've taken that desire, and you've just given it to so many other women that you're looking at on the screen. And so whether it's happening slowly, and maybe, oh, I'm still super attracted to my wife.

Maybe that's your rationale. Oh, I still totally attracted to my wife. The truth is that you either could be way more attracted or that you're not really there's no Oh, it's the same thing compartmentalizers that I'm totally giving the same type of love that I would to my wife, even though I'm watching porn.

Don't fool yourself. You know, deep down what you're actually doing. Okay, so whether it happens quickly or slowly, no matter which way that you slice it, why would you desire your wife more when you can sleep with 1000 other women whenever you want at the comfort of your own screen, like you know what you're actually doing to yourself, what you're doing to your heart, what you're doing to your mind, what you're doing to your brain, what you're doing in with your physical body, you know what happens when you actually act out and the type of man that it makes you feel like and so if you think that your desire for your wife is going to become more because you're watching part Oh, like some guys say, I'm gonna actually desire my wife more.

Because now I've watched porn and now I'm like sexually activated or something like that your desire for your wife becomes way less when you're addicted to porn way less. There's no denying it. Tell me how your marriage is doing right now.

Tell me how your sexual intimacy with your wife is doing. Don't tell yourself don't tell me if you're telling me that this is not cheating. You're only fooling yourself.

Okay, it's crazy. The things that our brains come up with when we're stuck in addiction. And that brings us to the sixth myth.

And that is that porn is victimless. Right? If you believe that porn is victimless. Oh, I'm not hurting anybody.

Oh, maybe I'm hurting myself because I yeah, I'm not the ideal man that I want to be but it's not hurting anyone else. If you really think this then maybe you are just misinformed or uninformed or just not acknowledging what you know in your conscience. And we don't have time to go into it right now.

But the porn industry is linked to some really terrible stuff. And you've likely heard about these what happens to these performers. And not just that, but there's sex trafficking, there's posting videos without consent.

There's so much stuff besides that beyond that. But not only does it hurt the people that are on those videos, it hurts the people in the watchers life. The watcher is you right? It hurts your spouse.

We talked about that. But it hurts your family because there's people that are counting on you to be the man that you said you were going to be when they hired you when they asked you to leave their group when they asked you to be their role model. Do you really think that you're going to be the person that you are in public, and that it's not going to be affected by the person that you are in private, right? Maybe you're just hoping that it's not the case that your private life never makes it to your public life.

But let me ask you this, what happens when you feel guilt, when you have shame, when you have a lack of confidence, when you have anxiety, when you feel powerless, when you feel like there's just this conflict and this anguish inside your soul, and you're just wrestling with God, and your relationship is severed with him. And you know that you have a lack of self control, and a lack of being able to master your own desires and master your own sexuality. And there's just all these mental and emotional consequences that come with the use of porn, right? Like what happens when you're that man who's dealing with all that stuff, you have this operating system that is just warped and messed up and not the person that you want to be? How do you actually show up? Who is the person that your partner gets that your wife gets that your kids get at the end of the day? What does your church get from you? Who's the person that your friends get from you? How are you showing up for you? Right? How does it affect your self esteem? Right? How does it affect your ability to be creative and to start building the business that you want to build? You're so occupied with the man that porn has shaped you to be and you're wrestling with that you've sapped so much energy, creative energy, mental energy, emotional energy, all of the physical energy, all of that has been robbed because you allow yourself to stay stuck in this addiction.

And you think that it's not affecting you and you think that it's victimless and that no one else gets hurt by you watching it and that you can just keep it in a box and hidden and never bring it to light and that you're going to be the same person and that it never affects you, it never affects your wife, never affects your family, never affects anybody around you. No one else has to know porn is victimless. Tell me, is that true or is that not true? What do you think? And maybe you're like, Steve, well, I don't have a wife right now.

I don't have kids What about your ability to work hard, to set yourself up for your future, to be more productive, to make more money, to be more focused? What about the work that God is calling you to right now in your season of singleness? And speaking of God, how does it affect your relationship with God when you're watching porn? What about your ability to be able to hear from him and be led by him? How has that impacted, right? So don't get it confused. Every single person that your life touches is affected by the man that porn is now shaping, that you've already allowed porn to shape you to become. So the answer is no, porn is not victimless.

Your entire sphere of influence is impacted by how porn has impacted you. Your entire circle is weeping the man that you're sowing right now, the man that you become based on the seeds that you're planting today by your continued porn use. My question to you is what kind of seeds are you planting if you let porn remain in your life, right? You think you're planting seeds of righteousness, of faithfulness, of integrity? All right.

I know some of this is pretty heavy, but if we don't get real with ourselves, if we don't actually look and face and confront porn for what it is head on and acknowledge that these are myths, these are lies, these are things that we need to take out the garbage and get rid of this mindset of these things that we allow to remain, the thoughts that we allow to tolerate, that we allow our minds to stay stuck in and we just say, okay, I don't need to choose because I don't know, I'm kind of one way I'm feeling like it, maybe I might be done with porn, maybe I just need to stay with this forever. Maybe every time that I try, I just keep going back and so why try? Maybe you've given up or maybe you're struggling right now, but let me give you something that is going to really help you make a choice. You have to decide is porn going to stay in your life or is it not? Because I'm telling you that you can be free of porn.

The good news is that you can be free and so are you going to choose life or are you going to choose death? There's no in the middle. There's no being lukewarm. God will spit you out, okay? You need to figure out where are you going to let your life go? Which path are you going to take? You're going to choose the way that leads to destruction, going through the wide gate that everyone else does.

You're going to choose the narrow path that leads to life. My intent here is that if we don't get rid of the lies and the myths about porn that are occupying our heads, then the truth about freedom will have less space to renew our minds and make its way into changing our heart. And so that is why we're talking about this today.

That's why I put this training out there. I hope it was helpful. I hope it was encouraging.

I'd love to hear what you thought and I look forward to talking to you in the next video.