Working with another therapist a few months ago, I got a recommendation for a book that has now blown my mind. In Unwanted, How Sexual Brokenness Reveals our Way to Healing, researcher Jay Stringer has compiled data from 3,800 individuals that connects our porn searches with our attachment wounds, meaning he can accurately predict your internal pain and need for relational healing by looking at what it is you chase down on the internet. Really impressive.
This makes so much sense to me. Rather than seeing porn searches as nasty or dirty or naughty or evidence of moral failure, we can now see them as the soul crying out! Of COURSE we tenaciously seek the things we need most. Do we actually need porn? No. But our hearts don't know the difference when that's the closest thing we've found to connection. It's a sad testimony of the disconnectedness of our communities.
If we want the "porn problem" to go away, we need to get kinder and more focused on the wounds where it starts. No amount of rubber band snapping is going to stop the soul. We need to get better at paying attention to hearts and the things they need. We need to learn how to love each other better in community, instead of shaming one another for our wounds and coping skills.
Unsplash photo cred: Corey Saravite