Look at what quitting porn did for me. You'll wonder why more guys aren't giving it up

How much does porn cost? Many of the guys reading this are thinking Uh, I only look at the free stuff. And the rest are thinking Great, he's going to give me a guilt trip by telling me how much it's costing my soul. 

Photo courtesy of nebojsa mladjenovic at Flickr.com

Nope. There are spiritual ramifications, but that's not what I'm talking about. There's a cost of looking at porn that the vast majority of guys don't ever calculate. It's not monetary, it's not spiritual, or even relational. In order to explain it, let me ask you another question.

How much time do you think guys spend looking at porn?


How about 10-20 minutes once or twice a week. Let's just split the difference and call it 30 minutes a week. That's pretty close to what it was like for me when I was a customer. It comes out to about two hours a month on average. That's not that much right?

Two hours a month wouldn't be all that great of a distraction if  that were all the time the average porn user spend on his habit. The truth is, guys who look at porn invest way more time than they realize.

The average guy's porn habit is made up of several stages that form a cycle, ultimately consuming a large quantity of his time and negatively effecting nearly every area of his life. Let me explain. Here are the average steps a guy goes through.

It all starts with a stimulation. This is the spent actually watching porn. And the first time a guy views porn, it begins the cycle. It also takes up the smallest amount of time of any stage within the cycle (20 minutes).

Then there's that empty regret feeling. It's the feeling that sets in just after looking at porn where the fun is over and the viewer is left with the unsettling reality that he just had a counterfeit sexual experience. This can last for a little while, but most guys try to move on to something else to keep from thinking about it (30 minutes).

After that, there's the anxiety of carrying around a shameful secret. This step is especially true for guys that have a girlfriend or wife. It's the realization that they've done something they can't tell other people about, which triggers some anxiety. Some people describe it as feeling a physical weight on their chest. This feeling can hang around and be brought back up as long as you're in relative proximity to watching porn (1/2 day).

And there's always denial. This is where guys try to convince themselves they don't really have a problem. They tell themselves Everybody's doing it. or I can stop doing this any time I want. But the constant undertone of this step is a fear that their porn habit rules their lives. This can happen on and off for a day or two, but I'll round down (1 day).

At some point, we feel triggered and we begin to obsess about looking at porn again. Something happens that makes the porn watcher feel irritable, restless or discontent. After that, he has an anxiety that his brain tells him can only be calmed with more porn. Some men even start planning and obsessing about the next time they'll be able to steal away a few minutes to look again. This obsessing can go on for a day or more before the guy  finds sufficient time (1 day).

Lather, rinse, repeat - then break the cycle.
Those basic steps make up the porn cycle for most guys. The amount of time they spend actually looking at porn is the smallest slice of the pie. And the other stages of the cycle, which consist of anxiety, denial, and frustration, factor into pretty much all of the time in between their porn watching sessions.

It's not a 2 hour/month habit for most guys, and it certainly wasn't for me. The anxiety and regret took up most of my time. My porn habit, or it's effects, were always on my mind robbing me of my ability to offer my very best in any area of my life.

It was only when I stopped that I realized what I had been giving up. Now that I'm not investing any time in feeling shame or obsessing about looking at porn, I have discovered more potential in my life than I could have imagined. For instance, since I quit porn:

• I have become a mentor to several more guys than before and actually helped them accomplish their goals. 
• I've written my first ebook, and made a mountain of progress on my second. 
• I was published in print for the first time in Let's Worship Magazine, and have regularly written on this blog three times a week for about a year and a half. 
• I've been invited to speak at conferences and workshops on various topic. In fact, this weekend I'm speaking to a group of middle and high schoolers about the effects of porn in their lives. 
• I organized and ran fundraisers that raised about $5000 for a couple nonprofits that I'm really passionate about.
• I've read books! Big books. Ones without pictures in them (that's been a big deal for me).
• I started my career as a boxer and won two out of my first three fights (which was my goal).
• I married the girl of my dreams and became a husband and father with no dirty secrets. 

While it's fun to toot my own horn, the above things are more than just accomplishments for me. They're evidence of the huge number of hours I got back when I stopped investing all my time in watching and regretting watching porn.

Here's my question to you. If I could magically add 10 daytime hours to your schedule every week, what would you begin doing that you're not doing now? Please chime in in the comment section below.

Thanks for reading,
Tim H. Swanson