Online Porn, Cosmopolitan Magazine & Me

When I got a message from a writer for the Australian edition of Cosmopolitan magazine, I never thought anything would come from it. I’d been contacted by large-scale media in the past and after being interviewed, they might use a line or two of what I said in an article. Maybe.

I assumed the same would happen with this. First, I’m not Australian. Second, I’m about as far away from a Cosmo girl as a Lean Cuisine is from making it as a centerfold for Food & Wine Magazine. But when I saw my name pop up on Twitter from someone saying she enjoyed the “Anne Jackson article” in the August issue, my stomach freaked out a little.

A few emails later, I had a PDF copy of the article. Sure enough, it was completely focused on the story of my addiction to pornography that I wrestled with in my late teens and early twenties. Aside from a few misquotes (one saying I still “look at porn, just not compulsively” – the truth is I don’t look at porn, especially not compulsively…on rare occasion I have given into temptation, but have gracious accountability on the other side),

I was surprised but thankful a magazine like Cosmo opened such a proactive and vocal door to women and pornography addiction.

Unfortunately, I can’t publish the article online (the screen shot above is as good as I can do), but if I can, I’ll certainly do that. Until then, I thought I’d share an essay out of my book Permission to Speak Freely (which I learned is currently on sale for $7.98) that shares my journey.

It’s my hope that if someone Googles something about women and porn addiction seeking help, they’ll find some hope and support here. This is a problem that loves to hide in the dark. It could make a huge difference in the life of someone you know if you shared this openly with your small group, the women you know, or on your blog or Facebook.

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Essay #5 – Shattered Pixels

As you saw from my playground experience earlier, I run when hurt hunts me down.

I put the blame for the pain I was experiencing from the “relationship” with this youth pastor on God and began to run from my faith again. God and I were through. He obviously didn’t care about me, so I didn’t care about Him anymore either.

To help numb the pain, I began experimenting with a lot of things that weren’t healthy for me.

A little alcohol.

Some pills.

And pornography.

I know, I know. Porn is a guy’s problem. Girls—especially teenage girls—don’t look at porn.

And the last place you would expect to see porn is the living room of a former pastor, right?

But during these “dark years,” between a portrait of my family taken at Christmastime and an old, broken, dot matrix printer sat a computer screen. The place where I typed book reports and instant-messaged my friends became the doorway to an endless amount of forbidden fruit—and even more amounts of guilt.

Still in culture shock from our move to Dallas, and now with an awakened sense of myself sexually, I began to notice the provocatively lit neon signs loudly proclaiming XXX and FULL NUDITY. On the way home from school on my bus, I overheard two boys talking about looking up images of people having sex online. Ignited teenage hormones combined with the new technology of the Internet proved to be a dangerous combination.

Late one night, after my parents and younger brother had gone to bed, I logged on and did an online search for “sex.” I had no idea that typing that one word into a computer would lead me to an addiction I’d fight for years.

And it wasn’t just a physical addiction either. Viewing these outwardly flawless women fed the huge emotional need that was left by my dad’s withdrawal and the youth pastor’s rejection. Through the fantasies I would have by looking at that computer screen, I would find love and affirmation.

I graduated as planned my junior year and moved out a few months after my seventeenth birthday. Now I had my own apartment with my own computer, and all the freedom in the world. I would go to work (now the manager of the Christian bookstore), come home, and look at porn almost every night. Soon my porn binges started affecting my performance at work and my relationships because I wouldn’t get any sleep, and when I was with friends, I would secretly obsess about how soon I could be home and when I could get my next fix.

What’s a girl to do?

Of course, I never mentioned my struggle to anyone. Looking at porn was typical, even expected, for men . . . but a girl? A girl who likes porn? I often questioned my sexual orientation. If I was straight, why did I like looking at naked women? So was I gay? Or bisexual? Or was I just perverted?

I hated the pattern I had fallen into. I think I knew it was wrong. At least I realized anything that caused this much obsession couldn’t be right.

But I couldn’t stop.

The addiction went from online to offline. When something as dark and lonely and shameful as a sexually oriented addiction has a grasp on you, you do a lot of things you’d never in a million, billion years dream you’d ever do.

My boundaries crumbled and I began sexually experimenting, at times with men I barely knew. One night when I was almost eighteen, I remember going to a cute guy’s house. He was a junior in college, and I had met him only a few days before at a local Waffle House. Aside from a few mental snapshots, I don’t remember anything from that night except having a drink and waking up fuzzy, alone, half dressed on his couch. He was nowhere to be found; I dressed and went home. I never saw him or heard from him again.

I don’t even remember his name.

According to everything I had seen, to be accepted and loved meant to have a sexual relationship, and what girl doesn’t need to be accepted and loved?

For years this addiction held me tightly in a dark embrace, and somewhere inside me I knew it wasn’t the life I was intended to have. I knew it was wrong. And as I got older and began to rediscover my faith and my purpose and identity in Christ, I knew I had to break away from the safety I found in my morphed perspective of sex.

As twisted as it was, it was familiar. And that familiarity brought me comfort.

But I knew I needed to let it go.

I confessed everything I could remember to God, even asking Him to cover the things I had forgotten or didn’t want to bring up because I was so ashamed of them. I took my computer out and placed it in the dumpster by my apartment and refused to have Internet at home for the next several years. It helped me break that cycle.

That confession and resulting penance seemed like it was good enough. For the time being, anyway.

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Aside: I also ended up confessing a couple of years later to a friend, who had shared some of her secrets with me. Her opening up to me about her brokenness first gave me the courage to speak freely about mine. It’s never easy or comfortable asking for help, but in the end, speaking the truth about who we are and what God has done in our lives shines more brightly than we’ll ever know. If you’re needing help with any addiction or abuse, click here.