Dear men: PORN IS AN AFFAIR. Just ask my ex-wife.

LIFE SITE ^ | Donny Pauling

[Morgana]

My previous columns drew attention to some of the ways pornography affects the actresses within it. Today I’d like to draw awareness to another fact that we don’t seem to comprehend:

Pornography

IS

an

AFFAIR.

Any time we bond sexually with another person besides the one to whom we’ve committed ourselves, an affair occurs. It doesn’t matter if that bond is in person or via a computer screen, a dating or married person who uses pornography is literally cheating or committing adultery.

Rather than go on about this at great length, I’d like to share two emails that I received. Lots of people email me. Sometimes I have something to offer in response. Many times I don’t. I’m not a counselor, and am in no position to give advice for many cases.

While it’s easy for me to identify with men who struggle with an attraction to porn – as I was one of them – and those who are involved in creating or acting in porn – since I produced it for so long – it’s particularly hard for me to answer emails from women who are in pain due to a husband’s porn addiction. I don’t know what to say most of the time, and I also feel so much guilt for contributing to that cycle.

When these emails come in, I’ll sometimes ask Wendy for feedback. Wendy is my amazing ex-wife, the mother of my son, whose heart I ripped to shreds with my lies, cheating, deceptions and involvement in porn production. After all I’ve done to her, especially because of all I’ve done to her, I’m honored to call her my friend – a very good friend.

When a woman recently emailed me asking for help…well, I’ll just let you read the email, followed by Wendy’s response. The first time I read Wendy’s letter in church it helped save a marriage, when a man in the audience recognized the truth of her response, drove half way across LA, apologized to his wife, and then drove back across town to come clean with his pastors about his porn addiction. I hope you find it useful, too. But first, the plea for help from a wife whose husband’s porn addiction is impacting her life:

Hello Donny,

I first want to say that I just found your blog yesterday and I sat and wept at my kitchen table as I began to read the entries, one at a time from start to finish. You have chosen such an amazing journey and I have NO doubt that God will continue to bless you and your family as he has already started to do.

I’m not really sure where to begin so I guess I will just start here…I found out a little over a year ago that my husband is addicted to pornography. It is so overwhelming for me as I am just starting to learn how deep and dark these wounds are for a man, his wife, and their marriage. I struggle every day with the fear of what’s next.

I know my God protects me. I know who I am in his eyes. But as confident as I am in that…my husband’s addiction is stripping away all that I am. I feel that I am alone in this fight because I have not really found anyone who understands or can guide and support me in the decisions and choices I need to make in order to cope with this reality.

I want to be the wife that I feel in my heart that God has called me to be…I just have no idea how right now. I have been touched by your entries about your ex-wife Wendy and all that the two of you have been through. She seems like a woman who has been through it and come out in a stronger place because of it.

My question is this…does she have a blog or email that she makes public? Does she, in any way, support wives who are dealing with this issue? I am really just looking for any kind of support from women that I can get. I want to know there are strong women praying for my husband and I. I want to know there is someone I can turn to when the heartache and sadness seem like the only things that are certain in my life. Advertisement

If she has nothing like this, do you have any suggestions for a wife who needs support? It seems like the wives are a lost casualty in this war…there isn’t much out there for us that I have found so far. We are from the (location removed) area so maybe you know of some things that I don’t.

I appreciate all the help you can give.

Keep up the fight…you are truly a blessed and courageous man of God. Thanks for your honesty.

At the time of this email, it had been years since Wendy and I divorced, but I think you can see the emotions still present when you read her response, which I’m about to share with you.

[Secret Agent Man]

you are obviously unaware of the large genre of women’s books categorizee as “romance novels”. they have no serious literary value at all. they are simply ground out as porn for women.

[GeronL]

“He took her”... that is some vague porn

[Secret Agent Man]

throbbing member, blah blah, you get the idea, i’m not gonna go down the list or go verbatim here. just pick up a barbara cartland anything and you’ll see. imworked in a library in high school as a page and part of the duties was putting books back on the shelves, i know all these books are just smut books. no redeeming literary value at all. the stories are just mechanisms for verbal porn. just as the stories in film porn is just a mechanism to get to the next porn scene.

[GeronL]

yes but at least with words there is no real people

I would treat the authors the same way as I would treat porn stars; total avoidance

[Morgana]

Harlequin romance novels? Never touch them. Yes I agree they rot the brain.

[informavoracious]

Would you want your daughter or son to be a porn star, ogled and masturbated over by strangers? Why would you want somebody else’s daughter or son used in that way?

[Secret Agent Man]

you are rationalizing.

the people on the cover of those books are often real models. sergio is a real guy and he appeared on a lot of romance book covers.

regardless, they don’t have to be real. if one pictures another person in their mind and pictures doing it with them while they read the words and pleasure themselves, that’s an affair. they’ve just fantasized having sex with that person.

don’t rationalize away the truth.

[GeronL]

I was talking about the other end

fingers on a typewriter and real people having sex (sharing STD’s) on camera are not the same thing.

[Secret Agent Man]

you do know that porn movies have story writers and scriptwriters that do screenplays. a script for a porn movie is porn.

all these women’s books are is just for porn purposes, there’s no other reason they exist. they have zero value as literature.

one is visual, one is words and in the theater of the mind. both are fantasy and both are porn.

[RichInOC]

I firmly believe that Satan’s second best trick after getting people to think he doesn’t exist was getting them to call that stuff “adult entertainment”. (My personal nomination for third is bottle service.)

[Secret Agent Man]

books only require an author, not actors because they aren’t a play or a film. that doesn’t mean what the author wrote isn’t porn.

the films require someone to write them and those writers are no different than the authors writing porn for women.

just consider that the porn books for women are just porn scripts not just yet made into movies. same damn stuff. fifty shades of grey the book, is porn for women. make it a movie and it’s visual porn.

[Secret Agent Man]

thinmk his second greatest trick is teaching people to rationalize their sinful behaviors away, whatever those particular behaviors may be.

[GeronL]

I never said it wasn’t porn

[GeronL]

one is real people doing real things on camera, the other is words on paper

[Secret Agent Man]

yes, you are right.

and yes, a person who writes words isn’t the same as an actor who acts them out. but i would reply that think that is a captain obvious statement and if it’s not in the context i took it to mean, originally, it adds nothing to the conversaton we’re having here. because they are writing porn. regrdless if it stays on paper or if someone turns it into a movie.

as you agree the book writers are writing porn, in a nutshell your statement is “porn writers are not the same as porn actors” - but everybody already knows that.

[Morgana]

“sergio is a real guy and he appeared on a lot of romance book covers.”

Sergio or Fabio?

MST3K did a take on Fabio

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=matItkfzqAA

[Secret Agent Man]

i did mean fabio. :-) i was trying to wrack my brain on that b/c i don’t recall any other model than him.

[GraceG]

What about twilight novels. They seemed like angst porn...

[RichInOC]

I could go with adjusting my list for that, definitely.

[wardaddy]

Porn may be mostly created by men....I could go even further and say its disproportionately made by Jews and distributed by Italians

But now folks make porn at home and sell it on the internet....the San Fernando Valley model has been eclipsed by the internet

Gone the way of Blockbuster ....now anyone can look on the computer or hook their TV via HDMI and stream porn from their phone

There have always been women making porn from Candida Royalle and Suze Randall to Naughty Allie today

Who is cheating or not is not dependent on who’s making it.

I’m almost 57 and have enjoyed many women before my rib and never knew one who wasn’t at least curious about porn and some who requested it but did so as a couple....not as a substitute where a married man might preferring that to his wife.....which is bizarre to me but......understanding the nuance or complications of sexual relations between men and women is not something that will ever be mastered

Hence....unless the man dumps his wife for porn I disagree with the premise even though I’m ambivalent about porn and the impact in general....ambivalent in the dictionary sense.....a word of emotion usually misunderstood

For instance

Wife loses interest in sex....it happens.

Man has stronger interest in adventurous sex....I mean some folks...likely on this very forum consider oral sex verboten...a sin.

Wife quits taking care of herself.....it happens.... porn girl is younger and fitter.....this can sequence to cheating but at what point does wife bear responsibility for having a fat apron?

Man only has porn and likely will never really have a woman.... erotic westerns.....same instrument really....doesn’t work for visual men versus less visual girls

Those are just off the top of my head..... complications standing in the way of broad firm edicts like this title.

I do think the more public the porn...its a bad cultural indicator

And I think women in relationships view porn as competition....and that can be at times.

I think women like porn too....and the ones I have known prefer hard porn more than fuzzy.....don’t ask me why....fantasizing about something they wouldn’t do themselves....the rougher non romantic stuff....sorta submissive......or maybe surrendering control is more descriptive.......which is why so many women swooned over 50 shades....I did not read it...lol.....its a chick book like a Longhorn erotic WESTERN

I don’t think Playboy is porn....in fact its become just another men’s magazine gone soft and run by fembots and faggots where Lisa Lampanelli is lol...edgy

I think there is more than enough porn already.....please

But if a couple wants to watch it at home and get stimulated its not my business

I think lonely women who use toys and watch porn or read the afore mentioned throbbing westerns are just fine if that is all they can get in their sex and romance life

Adults need sex....it is the closest to pure intimacy between a man and woman possible and is the cement of a strong marriage....normally

I’ve been faithful(not my strong suit prior to marriage) to the mother of my 5 kids for 20 years and she turns 50 in two weeks

I would wish that for everyone.....you can’t beat it

But some folks don’t have that and if all they have are video or literary fantasies

I’m not gonna judge them

And normally I have no problem judging folks....but not over this except is problem cases I already elucidated

I think women in porn get damaged.....but they usually went in with issues already

The men....not so much....some but not most

There was actually a documentary on this recently....still on Comcast

Meanwhile horrors go on in Iraq which truly do matter but I couldn’t resist your salacious thread...