Book Review: The Porn Trap, by Wendy Maltz & Larry Maltz

Back in the 1980s, Wendy Maltz and her husband and fellow therapist, Larry, were not that concerned about pornography. Like most in the field, they thought it was essentially harmless. The use of porn was even promoted at professional trainings as a way to help couples reinvigorate their sex lives. Then the authors noted a trend: porn was moving couples away from being sexually intimate with each other. For too many of their clients, porn itself had become the object of desire. They wrote Porn Trap because "We believe you have a right to healthy, love-based sexual expression, and that today's multi-media driven pornography is interfering with that right" (p. 8).

The authors share this gem of a line from the 14th Century Sufi poet, Hafiz:

Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
that may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
but then drag you for days
like a broken man
behind a farting camel.

The Maltzs' case material was gleaned from interviews with those whose lives have been depleted by porn. "While pornography may promise sexual freedom, it can eventually deliver a form of sexual oppression--robbing people of sexual innocence, sexual self-determination, and the skills to experience healthy relationships based on a loving connection with a real partner" (p. 8). The cases in the book make real the suffering, but also help illuminate the way out. And that's one real value of the book: if you're stuck, you read of others who have been, too, but have made their way out. When you've been stumbling in the dark, such rays of hope are precious.

Here's what I appreciate most about the book: the authors back up their compassion and optimism by providing practical tools. They suggest steps for deciding whether porn is hampering your happiness and relationships, tactics for quitting porn if you decide it is a problem, and in-the-bedroom practices for turning your sex life around so that it can build closeness and fulfillment in place of the separation and depletion that pornography fosters. Wendy Maltz's expertise in healthy sexuality and some great material from her previous books are distilled into the chapter entitled "A New Approach to Sex."

Of the many tools the authors share, I'll highlight a couple I find particularly helpful:

When you feel the gravitational pull of porn, here's something you can do to literally come to your senses. It's an exercise they entitle Shifting Your Attention. "A simple sensory awareness exercise can help you shift your attention away from what you've been thinking about and on to something else in your environment. For example, 'Now I'm aware of the sun coming through the window." Repeat and complete the phrase 'Now I'm aware of...' until you have identified five different things that you see. Continue the exercise stating five different things you are aware of hearing, then five different things you are aware of touching or feeling inside your body. This exercise can help center you sensually in the reality of your present environment and take you farther away from the fantasy world of porn" (p. 195).

This is a theme throughout the book: real life--everything from real events to real emotions to your flesh-and-blood lover--are antidotes to the unreal world of porn. This theme reaches its pinnacle in one of the final skills they cover, Involving Your Heart in Sex, which is needed because porn-informed sex is all about stimulation rather than heartfelt connection. When you are engaged in sexual activity:

• Take a moment to touch your heart or your partner's heart to activate or stay connected to feelings of caring and love.
• Take time to smile and make loving eye contact with your partner. 
• Temporarily shift your awareness from your genital arousal to the attributes you most admire and appreciate about your partner.
• Take time to verbally express your feelings of affection to your partner.
• Touch in loving and affectionate ways that you have learned will be valued and appreciated by your partner.

Thank you Wendy and Larry for this invaluable book! Your deep care for those caught in the porn trap shines through. Your work is helping make that group smaller--one person, one couple at a time!

Why Does My Boyfriend Look at Girls Online?

Rachel's boyfriend Carl never talks about it, but there's evidence on the computer that he spends a lot of time looking at other women's bodies. Today she found evidence in the clothes hamper that those images are satisfying more than his curiosity. This kind of discovery is confusing and disturbing to many women. 

Regular visitors know that this blog explores how porn impacts relationships and what we can do about it. Today I'd like to share some insights from another therapist who works in the field of sexual addiction. 

Todd Frye, Ph.D., runs a sexual addictions provider certification program at MidAmerica Nazarene University. In this video he gets to the heart of the matter: porn addiction is an intimacy disorder. I'm excited to share it with you.

Here are a few of the insights he shares:

"Most people who struggle with intimacy struggle with the capacity to acknowledge what's going on inside of them and share that. Intimacy in Latin is intimus, which means innermost. They don't have the capacity to be reflective enough to know what is going on inside them and share it in a way in which someone else can connect with that, relate to that, and respond to that. [Intimacy] also has components of empathy, the capacity to give comfort, protection, and attunement to someone else....

"They don't learn how to take their pain, their sadness, and their joy to someone else and share it with them and experience it with them so that in turn that person can in turn offer a response that is a natural antidote to how they feel, that's validating and creates connection. They tend to isolate more, they tend to withdraw. The way to lower their anxiety is to isolate themselves and pull away.... 

"Just because I isolate myself, the need to connect with people doesn't die, doesn't just go away. So they position themselves to need something that's non-relational to feed this inability to connect or manage their mood. They use sexual addiction as a way of doing that."

Thanks Dr. Frye, for articulating these truths so well!

Image: graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Revisit the Moment You Got Hooked on Porn

Wyatt's eyes were closed and his face was flush. Watching his eyes flit beneath the lids, I knew his imagination was taking him on a wild and vivid ride back in time. He was going back to that moment when he got hooked on porn.

He could see the 12-year-old he once was. He felt for the kid. He spent most of that summer home alone. Older brother, his usual partner in crime, was off working in the laundromat at the strip mall halfway across town. Dad was at work and it seemed that Mom was always off with little sister helping at dance practice or traveling to competitions. Then Wyatt had the falling out with the gang of buddies in his neighborhood over a kick soccer ball game gone bad. He couldn't believe what poor sports they were. After that, it felt like all of the usual avenues for excitement were shut down. He rode his bike around town for a while, but that got old. Then he started watching a ton of TV.

The pictures in the magazine he found in the grove of trees near his home weren't hard core by today's standards. Wyatt had never tried drugs, but he couldn't imagine a drug unleashing a more potent euphoria than the warm, eager looks of those women. Their inviting, yet concealing poses knocked the breath right out of him. To say that he felt compelled to hide the magazine so that he could come back and look again is too weak a way to put it. His chest was heaving with breath, even his head pounding as he left the grove that day, wondering when he could return.

That is where the adult Wyatt imagined stepping into the path of his much younger self. He escorted him home and into his room, where he'd feel comfortable. He wanted talk to him about what had just happened, share his perspective as someone older and wiser. He wanted to help.

"That was something else, wasn't it?" He asked.

Still dazed, his younger self faintly nodded.

"I want you to know that what just happened inside of you is completely normal. It's not a good thing for women to expose themselves in that way for men's entertainment. It's not good for them or for the men who view it. But the fact that you had such a strong reaction is understandable. God gave you the gift of your sexuality. It's this tremendously potent life force within you, and what you just saw awakened it more powerfully than anything you've ever experienced.

As Wyatt watched him in his mind's eye, it seemed that his younger self was taking this all in.

"Your reaction does not mean you're a bad kid. Nothing of the sort! You're a good kid. In fact, you're a fine young man! Don't let that experience convince you that there's something wrong with you, that you're not a an upstanding, righteous individual. You don't need to feel ashamed that you were drawn by those images and feelings. You could have walked away from the magazine when you saw what it was, and that is the best way to handle it in the future, but it's understanding that you found it so riveting.

"That's one of the problems with pornography. It is riveting. As pleasurable as it can feel, it can also take control of your life. That's one of the reasons it will be better for you to avoid viewing it in the future. And that's one of the main messages I came back to give you: the conclusion you came to, that you have to go back and look some more, you can't pass up that opportunity, is incorrect. You can say no. You're better off avoiding it than indulging. To the degree that you pass on pornography, your life will be better.

"You just concluded that you need more of that in your life. Well, you don't need pornography the way it feels like you do. Part of the reason you don't need it the way it seems to you right now is that this hard time, when it feel like you're alone all the time and it seems like life is passing you by... this time is over. It's not happening anymore. I came here to show you you're not still stuck here. Time passes. Life gets better.

"Let me show you these pictures of how you grew up to become me: Here's you at 13 on the track team. 14 at your cousins' ranch riding horses. 15 practicing football with the high school team. 16 with your beat up red Toyota..." And so on Wyatt went, up to the present day. Then he imagined bringing his younger self into his home as it is now.

His younger self had all kinds of questions: What's it like to drive a truck? Is that really your boat in the driveway? When did you get a dog? As he answered the questions, Wyatt realized that this part of him that was most hooked on porn was not his adults self. It was a part of him that had been oblivious so far to the passage of time. In a way, this made sense: only a part of him who hadn't tasted the toxic fruit of porn in his life would still find it so magical and inviting.

"You don't have to go back there," Wyatt said finally. You don't live back there in that loneliness and addiction anymore. You don't have to live that way, vigilant for an appealing distraction from pain. On the lookout for an escape. You can stay with me and the dog and the boat here.

"If you stay here, and your job is no longer to look for opportunities to look for sexual stimulation, what would you like your new job to be?" Young Wyatt thought about that. "I want to look for other ways to have fun."

That sounded like a good compromise to Wyatt's adult self. He needed more fun in his life.

(The above account is a brief excerpt from a session of therapy technique developed by Peggy Pace called Lifespan Integration. To be effective, the process actually requires multiple "trips" through the client's timeline. If you think Lifespan Integration might help you, here is a directory of therapists who have been trained in the method.)

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net