Taylor’s painful – but victorious – story provides an eye-opening reminder to those who are helping others on the road to porn recovery.
Humility and kindness are key.
We are thankful for his willingness to share so we can learn together.
Where I am standing as of this moment – I have been free from porn for 3 months. I did relapse one day making it 60 days without porn in a row. But, during these 3 months, I have only looked at porn one time.
Before this though, I was a mess. I struggled with porn so bad to the point that the CEO of Ever Accountable actually reached out to me, and we had a talk.
He challenged me sometime in 2020 to go 30 days without porn and masturbation. Fast forward to now, and I have done that successfully!
An IT guy's challenge and pitfalls
How I overcame porn would not be how you think.
I do still have the Ever Accountable monitoring software on my devices, but it’s to show I have nothing to hide with my accountability partners. In fact, one of my accountability partners is my mentor who is gay. I am a straight man, but the fact my mentor is gay is an important detail I will get into later.
I don’t use app blockers either, because if I block Facebook, it still doesn’t change the habits I have, and I still either unblock it or find a workaround.
I don’t restrict my devices, because as a guy who works in IT, I’m too smart for my own good and find workarounds. Even if it’s passcode locked by an accountability partner, I could reset the device and it takes it off. I don’t block websites for this same reason.
My background with the church and purity culture
My beef with all of this is: I grew up under purity culture and in a Christian home with strict rules. The thing is, rules can be good in creating boundaries, and stopping the kid from putting his hand on the hot stove.
But some of the rules I had to follow were that I was only allowed to listen to Christian music and not allowed to consume any entertainment that had the GD combination. The problem with this is in my adult life I grew to listen to 90% secular music, and some of my favorite video games and movies of all time had the GD combination.
Why rules by themselves didn’t work
These kinds of rules made me want to do it MORE. They did not change who I was on the INSIDE.
From a counseling perspective, this is just behavior modification. You do these things for a while, then get lazy going back to your old ways. From a fitness perspective, it’s like diets, as those tend to fail when trying to lose weight. That’s because you’re eating food that’s healthy, but it’s so bland that you would go right back to fast food, even if you did not want to.
As a man in his 30s, the things I tried for a long time were like pushing a heavy boulder up a hill only for it to come back down. I used this analogy with a friend, and he asked “why the boulder” and “why even push the boulder up a hill.”
Mindset shifts: facing my shadow self
So, one BIG thing that led me to freedom was realizing ways purity culture ruined my life.
I realize this is a long read, but my testimony of how I came to know God and how my relationship is growing which is ESSENTIAL to how I claimed victory.
If you are a video gamer, have you ever played the game Persona 4?
If so, you know the concept of shadows. In this game, the main characters have a shadow counterpart.
These shadows are the insecurities, reasons for self-hate, etc. manifested.
The main characters would deny that their shadows are them and said shadows would turn into monsters thus becoming boss fights.
The character would actually die because of this monster, but the game is about community. The community works together to beat the monster, thus saving the person who needed saving.
Once you beat the boss fight, the character would do the hard thing, and talk to his or her shadow, and accept that it’s a part of them.
That is essentially what I did. I confronted my shadow and faced myself.
I had already given a glimpse of what my childhood was. I grew up under loving parents in a Christian household. However, growing up I was insecure around girls, because looking back, I am autistic and see the world differently from most people.
In high school, I did not look at porn due to my sheltered home, but I had sexual desires I tried suppressing. In college, I had (and still do) have this desire and attraction for a certain body type, and that is when Pandora’s box flew open.
Thus I struggled with porn for a decade plus. The thing is, before 2018, I had struggled with porn due to my depression over never having a girlfriend and really wanting one.
Spiritual stumbling blocks on my path to freedom
In 2018, however, when I went to seek help, I was spiritually abused. I had a pastor as a mentor. He looked at my list and said “it was subject to change” and “this doesn’t matter.” He also said “God doesn’t care about looks.”
The Bible supports the idea that words are powerful. I went from depressed to struggling with HIGH anxiety. Thing is, I wanted a girl with certain looks and common interests, as well as a believer. The fact that he said “this doesn’t matter” kicked my mental health into a nose-dive.
He said it only mattered if the woman loves Jesus and nothing else. This is wrong for reasons I’ll get into later.
Now, I was deathly afraid of the future. I ended up parting ways with this pastor, because I ended up having a mental breakdown because of his expectations of me, disregarding what I wanted in a wife, and looking down on my hobbies.
He even tried gaslighting and manipulating me into going to his church when I felt led to a different one.
I sought help from another pastor. It turns out this one had narcissistic tendencies – like he always had to be right even if he was wrong.
So, I had a female friend who was under his ministry. She was sexually assaulted. She went to this pastor, and the pastor gaslighted her saying “you’re blowing it out of proportion.” I heard this, and have never been so angry, and so disappointed my entire life.
This second pastor was strongly against porn, yet he minimized and gaslighted me over this serious issue of my female friend. I tried to confront him, and he just brushed me off, blaming other people for their points of views.
He refused to take responsibility for his actions, even though he told me to do so when I was looking at porn. That hypocrisy triggered me to look at porn more!
He also expressed a different taste in women than I have.
If I’m evil for liking one body type while it’s okay for another pastor to like a different body type, then the first pastor was wrong about loving Jesus being the only thing that matters in a woman.
But, because of the spiritual abuse, I almost walked away from the faith. To add insult to injury, I was also badly burned by a girl in my church who hurt me with her sharp, angry, critical spirit, causing me to struggle with my faith even more.
Later on, the pastor who said God doesn’t care about looks did apologize to me.
The second pastor who gaslighted my friend on her sexual assault was the kind of guy who had to be right even if he was wrong. He did, however, give me a more objective opinion in an argument we long ago had. And, I have not spoken to that girl with an angry spirit since she had her biggest outburst with me.
Forgiving these people were the hardest things I have ever done — but I could also tell God was working in them.
Finding grace, freedom, and growth in community and mentorship
Fast forward to now, after being in Celebrate Recovery for a while, and struggling spiritually and mentally, I finally found freedom.
As I said in the beginning, purity culture ruined my earlier life.
It is common to say that men objectify women when they look at porn, but women are also objectified in a different way in purity culture.
When a woman has premarital sex, she is treated as less valuable in the community, whereas Christ died for that, too, making her as valuable after as before she committed the sin.
Again, purity culture is ALL about rules.
Grace to be kind and forgive myself
When I moved from being under the law to grace as Paul would say, that was when I found freedom from porn. I lived in grace as a believer for quite a while, yet I treated this one area of my life as living under the law, and that is why I kept struggling.
To give another Persona gaming example, in 5 the Phantom Thieves would change the hearts of corrupted individuals making them regret horrible actions they have done.
Jesus was my Phantom Thief.
When I began to live under grace, I grew out of porn very naturally. Before that, I would count the actual temptation as failure – making it to where I struggled more.
However, temptation is not a sin, and grace allowed me to be nicer to myself.
The difference today is, I am still tempted to look at porn.
But if I get bored and don’t look at porn to get a dopamine hit, it’s still VICTORY because I overcame temptation.
Porn is an escape. During my experiences of spiritual abuse I would have hundreds of instances on my reports, but now I have weeks where my accountability reports have no suspicious activity.
Now when I see a girl with my desired body type, I think to myself “nice” and go about my day.
Growth and support with a positive mentor
My gay mentor supports my desires for a certain body type, because even as the most godly man I know, his homosexual desires are still a thorn in his side.
He provides a unique perspective, because he wishes he were like me and could find girls attractive, unlike the straight pastors who took their sexuality for granted.
He has also been celibate 20 years and free from porn himself.
He taught me to read the Bible without chapters and verse numbers. Those were not added into the Bible until much MUCH later, and this led me to living under grace. It keeps specific verses in their proper contexts.
For instance, a lot of people quote Matthew 5:28 as a rule for not looking at porn. Jesus says to his audience that they will not inherit the kingdom of heaven unless they surpass the righteousness of the Pharisees just MERE verses before that. The Pharisees had over 300 laws to follow. Adam and Eve broke the ONE rule they were given.
Trusting unconditional love
Jesus was setting an impossible standard that reminds everyone they need a savior.
To this day, my mentor and I still pray that I would find a woman I need as far as Christian beliefs and walk with Christ goes. In addition, we also pray that I would find that woman who also has my desired body type and likes video games. No matter what some churches say, I find that God still understands my sexual desires, and I will continue to grow in Him.
I have left Egypt but as of my writing my story, I am in the wilderness. I long to be married and am still single in my 30s, so I have not made it to the promised land.
I can see why God kept me single, as he is working with me to recover from spiritual abuse that kept me coming back to porn.
Praise be to the Lord for his grace and being near the broken hearted. This is what led me to be free from porn.
Conclusion
Everyone’s porn recovery journey will look different, even for people of faith.
We applaud Taylor’s courage to share his story. Never give up fighting porn, no matter the obstacles!
Please feel free to reach out at marketing@everaccountable.com if you have a porn recovery story you’d like to share.
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