45 | Drew Boa: How We Outgrow Porn

People  addicted to pornography often experience lots of shame and self-contempt ("What's wrong with me?!"). They often see their sexual desire, and the fact that they go to porn to try and satisfy it, as THE problem.

Our guest, DREW BOA, disagrees. In his new book Outgrow Porn: Find Lasting Freedom Without Fighting an Exhausting Battle, Drew says, "Your sexuality is not the problem, and the urge to watch porn is not bad either. It's a symptom of unprocessed pain. When you understand this, your journey will dramatically change."

In this great conversation with our first returning guest, we talk with Drew about how compassion and curiosity are far more helpful in outgrowing porn struggles than shame, self-condemnation, and strategies limited only to behavior management. We discuss how evangelicalism's history of unhelpful messages about sex have negatively contributed to people's struggles. And we talk about how committing to a path of healing and recovery can help us find what we've been looking for all along.

Drew is the founder of Husband Material, an online community where men can find friends, coaching, and resources to support them in their path to living as mature, healthy men.

Some of the items we discussed in the episode:

• Drew's previous episode of What We Really Want
• Sheila & Keith Gregoire's episode of What We Really Want
• Johan Hari's famous TED Talk

How to connect with Drew:

• Husband Material website
• Husband Material podcast
• Outgrow Porn book from Drew's website (discount + bonus materials)
• Outgrow Porn book on Amazon

#drewboa #husbandmaterial #outgrowporn #healtheboytofreetheman #purityculture #pornography #pornaddiction #sexaddiction #healing #recovery #grace #gospel #transformation #awaken #awakenrecovery #awakenpodcast #whatwereallywant #wwrw  #connection #conversation

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Just like porn offers the illusion of intimacy, I think purity culture offers the illusion of freedom. If you do all these things, you'll be pure, so to speak. But it's still behavior modification motivated by fear instead of love.

Announcer 0:16

Welcome to What We Really Want conversations about connection. Settle in and get ready for a great conversation. Let's talk about what we really want.

Greg 0:29

Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of What We Really Want. It's episode 45, and it's called How We Outgrow Porn. You know, some of our episode titles, you read them and you have to listen to know what it's about. This is not one of those. This is pretty straightforward. How to outgrow porn. And our guest today is actually our first returning guest, if you don't count times that Stacey and Bobby and I are on the show. This is Drew Boa. Drew was with us way back in episode 10 last year, and he was talking about affirmation and blessing and how powerful that is when we offer it to other people. And he's back with us today to talk about a new book that he has written, which I'll talk about in just a second. Drew is the founder and CEO of Husband Material Ministries. For years, he has been helping men outgrow porn. Drew recognizes, as we do, that for people who struggle with pornography, porn is not the real problem. And you may hear that and think, well, that sounds weird. I mean, of course it's a problem. We're not saying it's not a problem. Porn is not the main problem. It's an attempted solution, trying to address the deeper problems that often we haven't even identified. We often don't know really fully what's going on underneath the surface that's causing us to feel the way that we feel, to attempt to get our needs met through something that we can eventually see as so unhealthy. And so he has been helping men in the husband material community outgrow porn through online coaching, through a lot of helpful resources. And he has just released a book, also called Outgrow Porn: Find Lasting Freedom Without Fighting an Exhausting Battle. This book represents what he has offered and been about online ever since the inception of husband material about five years ago. In the podcast, we talk about the impact of purity culture and other well-intentioned but unhelpful evangelical messages about sex. We talk so much about how a kind and curious and gentle and compassionate process that really doesn't focus just on behavior, but on getting underneath the behavior offers and facilitates and allows for real healing to take place. And then the growth that we've been looking for can actually happen. We hope it'll encourage you. We hope that you'll find things, and really I think that you will find things that you can relate to, whether specifically pornography is your struggle or maybe your strategy shows up differently. But I'm really excited to have my friend Drew Boa back as our first returning guest. Hope this will be a really meaningful and helpful episode for you. Again, it's episode 45. Our guest is Drew Boa, and it's called How We Outgrow Porn. And it starts right now. It's been a little over a year since your episode went up, and you are our first return guest on what we really want, right? First person to come back. And so I'm thankful that you came back. Excited for people to hear about what's going on. We're going to talk in a few minutes about something exciting. But before we do that, I'd love for you to just kind of catch us up on what's been going on in life and family in the husband material community. Since we last posted the episode, which was in July of 24, what's been going on in your world?

SPEAKER_05 3:48

Well, I bought a house for the first time. And that's actually really redemptive for me because I grew up moving around so much. And I didn't have a voice or a choice about where we lived. We moved between USA, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Canada for my dad's job climbing the corporate ladder. And it's a big part of my trauma and why I developed an addiction when I was a teenager. So to be able to have a home of my own feels so safe. I felt God inviting me to go lie in a hammock, and it was like he was rocking me back and forth.

Greg 4:47

Wow.

SPEAKER_05 4:47

That's been a big part of the last year.

Greg 4:49

That's really cool. Well, hey, before we jump too much further into what we're talking about, Drew, what do you really want out of our conversation we're going to have today?

SPEAKER_05 4:58

I want to connect with my friend Greg and I want to tell people about this new resource that I've been creating for the last four years.

Greg 5:05

Yeah. It's exciting. It's a book called Outgrow Porn, which anybody who has any familiarity with the husband material community that started in 2020, you know that is the tagline, right? Husmand material, outgrow porn. And so that has become a book.

SPEAKER_05 5:21

Yeah. It takes a lot of stories and insights and practical tools and puts it all in one place.

Greg 5:31

And it puts it in place for someone who is realizing that there's a certain kind of work that they need to be incorporating into their life. Somebody who's been experiencing sexual brokenness, unwanted sexual behavior, sexual addiction, whatever fits the best with their experience. And they just don't want to stay in that status quo anymore. And I'm interested in how you would answer this question. Zooming back out away from your book or any other resource, but just to the concept of engaging in work around this area. How do you believe that this is going to help them experience overall better, healthy connections in their life with God, with themselves, with other people?

SPEAKER_05 6:13

Well, there's that famous quote from Johan Hari in the TED Talk saying, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. And in many ways, that's what we really want. Yep. But practically, what do you do with that? Yeah. You know, it's one thing to say, okay, that's what I need, but how do I actually get it? What does that practically look like scientifically, in community, spiritually, and psychologically within myself? The book is addressing all of those angles. Wanting to give a fuller picture of step by step, here's what you can do. And it's based on taking hundreds of people through our online course. And so the book is originally an online course that we tested and got feedback on and saw what resonated with people and now formalizing that and saying, hey, here's what works.

Greg 7:07

Right. And one of the things, too, just before we go any further, I know that when people check out husband material online, they're going to see that it is a community for men. You say in the book, I think in answering kind of some frequently asked questions, or hey, I'm a woman. Is there any point in me reading this book? And you say, yes, there is, because obviously there are experiences that are unique to men and women, but there are a lot of experiences that are pretty universal. And so with the husband material community being something that is gender specific, did you have some particular goals with this book and being a little bit more open than that? Or are you just hoping that that will happen?

SPEAKER_05 7:47

The book is unashamedly, unabashedly for men. And that's because all the stories I have come from men, come from members of our community. And so it was more about humility of saying, This is what I know. This is this is who I'm familiar with, and would love to be able to offer more resources to women as as time goes on. The language of heal the boy to free the man needs to be adjusted to heal the girl to free the woman.

Greg 8:18

Yeah. Heal the child to free the adult, right? Yeah. I like that. Yeah. When somebody comes to the point of realizing that that's what they need to do, they I need to engage in this. I need to ask for help. I need to find uh resources, community, people that that know what to do because they're ahead of me on the timeline. What do you think are the main things that keep people from going in that direction even after they know that that's where they need to go?

SPEAKER_05 8:47

Fear, shame, and loss. It's it's fear of the uncertainty, the unpredictability of reaching out for help and taking that leap of faith and not knowing how people are going to respond. Also, shame. Such a deep, vulnerable, secret part of our lives for the most part. So the lies we believe about ourselves feel most true, I think, often in this area of sexuality. And then also negative experiences in the past, especially people who have tried opening up before and they've been rejected, they've been burned. Maybe they've tried lots of other programs and they're familiar with trying to fight the battle for purity.

Greg 9:34

Right.

SPEAKER_05 9:34

I can understand how oftentimes people are frustrated and exhausted and maybe not open to trying something new.

Greg 9:42

Well, I wondered when you said fear, shame, and loss. I expected you to say fear and shame. I was interested in hearing more about what you meant when you said loss. You know, you you referenced losses that they've had in the past from some bad experiences, which can obviously hitch on to fear that I'm I'm gonna lose everything. I'm gonna lose more than I gain by pursuing this. And that's sort of the crux, isn't it? I mean, you get to the point where you have to take that risk. This might go badly, but I just can't stay where I am.

SPEAKER_05 10:15

Yes. And that's what I call a redemptive risk. Every step towards lasting freedom from porn involves redemptive risk.

Greg 10:25

I mean, it makes sense why people would be risk averse, doesn't it? I mean, when you look at our stories, the type of connection and community that promises to be helpful, it's it's like returning to the scene of the crime, wanting to believe that this one's gonna be different, but what if it's not?

SPEAKER_05 10:41

Yeah, you're right. We've been hurt. Or we uh didn't get what we needed relationally. And that's what often led us to porn. So those three things fear, shame, and loss are what I call the three great sexualizers. When those experiences don't get processed, they need someplace to go.

Greg 11:02

So I have a question for you, just specifically and personally. Being someone who started a community for people who have had that type of pain and loss and harm, do you ever feel fearful yourself? Like, what if they come to this community and they perceive that some of those old things are happening? Like, are there ever senses of wanting to try to be in control of that? How can I keep that from happening to somebody?

SPEAKER_05 11:30

Yeah. Yeah. There's a part of me that wants to prevent all possibility of people being re-traumatized or sexually acting out with each other in our community. That's out of my control. All we can do is create the space.

unknown 11:49

Yeah.

Greg 11:49

Being able to sit in rest and peace, knowing that bad things could happen anyway, is are two different things, though. I imagine that that takes some getting to, where you can really say that's out of my control and let that go. Or have you found that not to be too challenging?

SPEAKER_05 12:06

Well, it is my job to do as much as I can to make it safe. And yet we never want to become the born police. Right. And we don't want to reenact a rigid family environment for people where here are all the rules and you absolutely must keep them or else. Yeah. Like we want relationships to always be more important than rules.

Greg 12:28

Well, I want to pivot a little bit and start talking about the book. So you have a book releasing August 25th, 2025. We've already talked about the fact that this is a culmination of work that you've been doing and material that you've been leading men through for years now. So for a while you were doing this without a book. Now you have a book. So what was it that that made you think now's the time to put it out in this form?

SPEAKER_05 12:55

There are some great books out there, yet I never read the book that I wanted for my clients. I so wish that I could have some of this over here and some of this over here and some of this over here, all in the same book. Right. And then also my story is just so particular in regards to the type of porn I've preferred. And so I wanted to be able to engage with more of the particularity of people's sexual fantasies. Even Unwanted, which was such a powerful book for me by Jay Stringer, where he he says our sexual fantasies can be a roadmap to healing. Um, he he doesn't talk about specifics of like porn featuring men, um, porn featuring older or younger people, or what what might be underneath that? And and parsing out, okay, how exactly does it become a roadmap to healing? And and when once you understand your brokenness, now what?

Greg 13:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 13:59

And so in many ways, it's building on his work, building on some of the other experts out there, and especially uh internal family systems was a big inspiration. Because there's a lot of great books about internal family systems, but none of them zero in on sexuality.

Greg 14:15

Yeah, that's right. And when sexuality, which is such a deeply personal part of our identity, gets distorted and gets ambushed and I would say attacked for many people so early on. How many people that you work with do you, in talking with them in the early phases, think they probably have no idea the depth to which this has impacted them? They're just beginning to unpeel this.

SPEAKER_05 14:43

We're always revealing more and more of what needs to be healed within us. So I look at myself and think, wow, I'm still telling people things I've never told anyone before.

Greg 14:57

So if if a person is getting to the point where they're wanting to open up and say, maybe I maybe there's some things I've been missing, tell me a little bit about how your book is gonna help be a guide for somebody like that.

SPEAKER_05 15:10

It's gonna help them connect the dots and and see how life experiences contribute to the types of sexual stimulation they prefer or the behaviors they keep coming back to. I mean, they are so, so specific to our stories. And we need help to be able to see that. So if you read the book, you're gonna start having these light bulb moments. Oh, I I can see where all this came from. And I I say our life experiences contribute, they don't cause sexual symptoms per se. We can't just say that if you have this problem, it obviously comes from this origin. Right. There are a million different combinations. But if you start to look into this, it doesn't take long before you think, oh wow, that's what happened to me. My story makes sense. And and that unlocks self-awareness, self-compassion, and so much more ability to self-regulate.

Greg 16:15

How many people do you think doing this kind of work are looking for a smoking gun? Are looking for like that one event that started the cascade of everything else that followed? Do you think do you find that to be pretty common in the people you work with?

SPEAKER_05 16:28

Well, a lot of people are still trying to get their minds around the fact that there was a crime for the first part. Like, no, I had a great childhood. My parents loved me. What are you talking about with wounds and trauma?

Greg 16:44

Well, that's kind of to my point, though, because it could be like trying to identify the smoking gun or being confused because I can't think of one. Right. And and this this kind of linear thinking, there has to be a reason why I'm doing this. People who do this is because that happened, or because, you know, or or maybe from a hyperjudgmental church standpoint, well, just because they don't they don't love Jesus enough or or whatever.

SPEAKER_05 17:08

Yeah.

Greg 17:09

But in the absence of like one particular smoking gun, then that can be confusing. But what I heard you say is the connecting of the dots maybe brings us to a place where we can say, well, I don't know if that's exactly it, but it sure helps things make more sense. Yeah. And maybe that's enough.

SPEAKER_05 17:26

Yeah. I mean, my particular sexual fetish for girls and women with braces seemed so strange to me, so odd and so weird. Now I look at that and I think, yeah, of course. Right. There's there's space to welcome and bless this part of me. Doesn't mean I'm gonna go do whatever it wants me to do, but like underneath that attraction, there's a little boy who got stuck in middle school specifically. And I have learned to love that middle school boy and it changed my life. I also have experienced the love of Jesus for that middle school boy.

Greg 18:07

When you first were able to think of your middle school self in that way and experience love and compassion for him, what was that like for you? Did it did it require a bit of a learning curve to be able to see yourself in that way?

SPEAKER_05 18:22

It all started with a YouTube video I watched in 2015.

Greg 18:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 18:29

Featuring Dr. Patrick Carnes, the grandfather of the field of sex addiction. I was engaged to be married at the time. And I was learning everything I could to be able to take my wedding vows with integrity. I wanted to be husband material, and that's where the name husband material came from. My deeper journey really started when I was getting ready to get married and hoping that that I would have enough freedom under my belt to do that with confidence. So I'm watching this YouTube video, and Patrick Carnes described a boy who never dated anyone. He spent a lot of time online, and his sexual development got stunted. So the same material that he was watching when he was 13 continued to arouse him when he was 23. And I realized that's what happened to me. That's me. And it broke open the doors to not hating myself. So it really just started with watching a video. And I hope that in some ways my podcasts and videos and books will be that for other people.

SPEAKER_02 19:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:43

It it didn't happen in the context of a therapy office or a counseling office. And since then, I've had even deeper insights. It's it's like this great mystery, it's this puzzle that over the years gets more and more pieces filled in.

Greg 20:00

Yeah. I think it's important that you just said that because there can be an expectation that in order to get these aha's or these revelations, we have to get it just right. We have to find just the perfect therapist or go to the perfect intensive or go to the best inpatient program. And all of those can be wonderful. And all of those have been wonderful for many, many people. And yet God can give a person the aha at any moment, in any place, and watching a YouTube video, which is also not prescriptive to say, don't go to therapy, just sit home and watch YouTube all day. It's just God can do what he wants, how and when he wants. And and those experiences do build on each other.

SPEAKER_05 20:42

And no one else can tell you where your specific sexual attractions or behaviors come from. We have to be able to own it for ourselves. And so maybe it could even just be answering a few questions.

Greg 20:57

Yeah. Well, one of the things that that I heard you saying when you were unpacking that experience you had 10 years ago watching that YouTube video, it sounded like you had a lot of contempt that you had been carrying for your younger self. And I couldn't help but think about something that you wrote in one of the earlier chapters in your book, the chapter on purity culture, when you talk about this concept of anti sexuality.

SPEAKER_05 21:23

Yeah.

Greg 21:24

And you describe it as it's a negative view of sex, a posture of hostility towards sexual thoughts and feelings, and a rigid over-emphasis on sexual restrictions and prohibitions. I mean, if there is a succinct way of describing what the marching orders of purity culture were, it's that, right? And it's it's funny because in in a real desire to engage with some of the voices of purity culture from a place of grace, you know, there's a difference between intent and impact. And I do think that buried underneath the negative impact, there was Some probably a lot of good intent to have Christ honoring sexuality. But the way that we as a church culture embraced there in the starting maybe in the late 80s, throughout the 90s, early 2000s, put the emphasis on rigidity, idolatry, of abstinence, um, and of virginity in a way that like it was taking good things, but not really allowing us to have full and healthy engagement and experiences with those things. And I know purity culture is just one of the things that you talk about in the book, but I think it's so hinging for so many people. If there are people who grew up in the church who are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, who hear about purity culture and they're like, that seems like one of the most powerful negative influences in my life. Talk to us a little bit about why it was so important to address purity culture in a book on outgrowing porn.

SPEAKER_05 23:00

Well, purity culture is the water I grew up swimming in. And if you ask a fish, how's the water? They're gonna say, What's water? Yeah, it's just where you are. Yeah, the air that we breathe. And I thought it was normal. Older generations may not resonate with purity culture so much, which is why I coined this term anti-sexuality. Because purity culture is just one example of that. But there are so many versions that came before. Purity culture is unique, though, in that it was the evangelical church's overreaction to the sexual revolution of the 60s and 70s, overly permissive, very experimental and and revolutionary ideas swept over the United States. And it was a very scary tidal wave for the church to feel like we we have no control over the the culture here. But we gotta have a voice. Yeah, we gotta have a voice. And so naturally, especially in the 80s during the AIDS crisis, they overemphasized abstinence, and ultimately the problem was not so much what was recommended, but why it was recommended. So the why of purity culture was fear and shame. The why was so that you don't get a sexually transmitted disease, or so that you don't become damaged goods and ruin God's plan for your life. And by doing that, it really instilled a lot of the toxic shame. It's just fuel for the fire of porn and sex addiction. So just like porn offers the illusion of intimacy, I think purity culture offers the illusion of freedom. If you do all these things, you'll be pure, so to speak. But it's still behavior modification motivated by fear instead of love.

Greg 25:01

And I think you could also even make an argument motivated in part even by pride. The ability to be able to say, Well, I did this and I made it to the altar without doing all those things that other people do. And then the either overt or covert promises of what would happen if you did save all this till you got married, then a lot of people got surprised. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:25

Marriage was presented as the reward for staying pure. And for many of us, we thought marriage would solve any sexual issues that we had. When in fact, it only multiplied the mess.

SPEAKER_03 25:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 25:44

Because now multiple people need healing and the relationship needs healing. So yeah, there's a lot to undo. There's a lot to unlearn with purity culture. And ultimately, I hope we're we're creating a culture now of curiosity, compassion, connection, courage, what we really want.

Greg 26:04

What would you say to somebody who one of the specific ways that they were damaged by purity culture is maybe this is someone that God could be calling to vocational singleness. And here's the so much of the messaging on purity culture is just hold it together till you get married. Well, what if marriage is not in my future story? Then where does that leave me? What would be a specific kind of harm you could see to somebody who's grappling with that?

SPEAKER_05 26:34

There's such a double standard to say that within marriage, men need an orgasm every 72 hours or they're gonna go look at porn. Right. And then to say to single men, you'll you'll be fine if you don't ever have an orgasm for the rest of your life. You know, just you know, take up your cross and obey.

Greg 26:58

That's really interesting, Drew. I have heard a lot of single people who, you know, just in in talking about how hard it is to be single, you know, especially how hard it is to be single when you've got a history of like porn and masturbation or other kinds of sexual acting out. And now you're trying not to have that as a part of your life. And some of the advice that single men get are well, you know, God graciously and lovingly made your body to where your junk's not going to explode. And if, you know, if you are committed to not taking that into your own hands, then God will provide that release. And that's true. Like God did make our bodies that way. I've never heard a married man say that he was given that advice. Yeah, so that's not okay. Well, and part of it, again, to try to be understanding, I was gonna say fair, but to try to be understanding, I get the train of thought that would omit that because in a healthy, intimate, equitable, mutually present marriage, you're probably not going to have a continuous, no-end in sight sexual fast. And that there is, there is the possibility of having a healthy mutual sexual release. But what if that's not a season that you're in?

SPEAKER_05 28:23

And it will be difficult for seasons. Yeah. I did not get taught that when the abstinence educator came to my school. Uh, she said, especially if you save sex for marriage, it's gonna be so satisfying. It's going to be a dream come true. And I thought, okay, I'm just gonna hold my breath sexually until my wedding night, and then I'm gonna be able to let it all out.

SPEAKER_03 28:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 28:46

First of all, because of porn and purity culture, it took me seven months to be able to fully respond to my wife sexually. First seven months of marriage, I was going through so much disappointment because that dream was not coming true. Now we worked through it and it was a learning process, and I loved it. And then when we had kids during those seasons, like there, there is a huge period of time where where I needed to know how to regulate without that release.

Greg 29:18

That's right. Because it's not just about the physiological regulation, the itch that you feel in your body. I mean, that's certainly a real thing. It's very present, but how much of the time when people's sexual acting out happens, did it not begin with a specific recognition of arousal? It started with something else. And that something else is often emotional dysregulation. But one of the damages of purity culture that I see is how many women I have heard who, after childbirth, would just basically give their husbands permission, just, you know, do whatever you need to do until my body heals up. Oh, it just it grieves me the devaluing of themselves and of also the intimacy of the relationship to buy into and co-sign on that. Well, he has to have it. And so, you know, I've just got to be understanding and and you know, let him let him augment however he needs to.

SPEAKER_05 30:20

And maybe there's fear and shame underneath that. Sure. Fear of what he might do or the shame of not feeling enough or feeling like I won't be a good wife, perhaps. Um so I hope to call men to a higher standard.

Greg 30:34

You know, before we move on, could you say a little bit more about the fear and shame that could be present in in her heart, in her mind, in her experience, that would cause someone to be permissive in something that I would say a part of her has to know is not healthy?

SPEAKER_05 30:52

Yeah. Um just as so many of us, oftentimes in purity culture, came to view women as sexual objects. We also came to view men as sexual objectifiers. Yeah. Every man's battle is a resource that really promoted this view of men. Yeah. Almost like men are monsters.

Greg 31:15

Or just that they can't help it.

SPEAKER_05 31:17

Yeah. So that book even said to men, your wife can be a methadone-like fix. And it said to women, when he is feeling those urges, give him release, which is essentially treating a woman like a drug. So, so dehumanizing. And and it's a low view of men to say that you you essentially are helpless against the seemingly unstoppable cycle. Yeah, your eyes are going to lust unless you have some kind of orgasm. Of course, speaking to married men, right? Not speaking to single men with that. So the result of this is that a lot of women have felt like it's their job to be the gatekeepers of their husband's sexual behavior. And Sheila Ray Gregor has done a great job of talking about this, especially in the great sex rescue. Yep. If if a man and a woman are together, just let's say in a church small group, it's the woman's job to wear clothing that's modest enough that that she's not going to cause the guy to lust. And and so that gets taken into a marriage. It's the woman's job to keep him sexually happy enough that that he's not going to be forced into infidelity.

SPEAKER_03 32:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 32:34

You know, and if he's going to porn, well, then maybe she's doing something wrong. It like all of these lies and distortions have had so much damage. And so without comparing, I think it's safe to say purity culture has harmed a lot of women and harmed a lot of men. But it wasn't so much just the purity rings and pledges and things. It was what was underneath all of that. The toxic shame, the repressed sexuality and the false promises.

Greg 33:03

That also represses people's capacity for engaging with each other in really healthy, vulnerable, intimate conversations about this. Because it's one thing to say, well, wives, your husband needs an orgasm every 72 hours, so you need to give it to him, or else he's going to really be in a tough spot. Or a married couple where things have been busy or she's been sick or whatever. I mean, just that they haven't been connecting sexually and it's been several days. And he is starting to feel something. And he can go to her and say, Hey, I realize we haven't had the kind of time to connect that we like to have. And I'm just wanting to voice that I'm feeling a desire in my body for a release. I just want to let you know about that. I'm not expecting anything. I want to know how do you feel about that? And that opens the door for a conversation. And that's an element of mutuality. She can say how she feels about that. And that's something that Sheila and Keith, her husband, talked about when they were on the show is this mutuality. When it's present, it's unbelievable how much safety can be cultivated within a marriage, where a man's not afraid of saying, Hey, I'm really feeling that desire. And I'm going to say it, even though I know you could say no, and I'd have to struggle with that fear of rejection. But in doing that, I'm connecting to my own heart and I'm pursuing yours, and I'm I'm really coming to know you and not just use you.

SPEAKER_05 34:30

Right. And hopefully prioritizing the woman's sexual pleasure as well.

Greg 34:34

Exactly. Yeah, I hadn't even gotten to that part yet. It's critical.

SPEAKER_05 34:37

The end goal of purity culture was ultimately what not to do. It was all about avoiding certain things. The end goal of outgrowing porn is very clear. It's positive, it's maturity, becoming sexually, emotionally, spiritually mature. Yes. And growing up.

Greg 34:58

Yes. One of the things I love about the book is you have throughout the book lots of charts and tables that sum up what you've been talking about. And one of them at the end of the Purity Culture chapter, it's called Purity Culture versus Outgrowing Porn. And it contrasts the way each of those movements view things like, you know, what our main problem is. Purity culture would be the main problem, it's a lack of sexual purity. But the outgrowing porn approach would say it's a lack of sexual development, healthily developing how we experience and understand our sexuality. This comes from our sinful heart condition versus our childhood experiences. And I think looking at that, I would say there's probably a yes and also element in there, but we can't just we can't pigeonhole it and try to force fit like one way that applies to every situation, everybody.

SPEAKER_05 35:53

Yeah. And everybody has a sinful heart condition. Right. That's not unique to these issues. Yes. But our childhood experiences, not everybody has those childhood experiences of being neglected or being abused.

Greg 36:08

And the next thing on your table, it, you know, one builds upon the other. So our core desires are purity culture would say fundamentally bad. And your approach would say fundamentally good. And that's the yes and also as well. We can say that we have sinful bent to our hearts. Even as a redeemed Christian, we still have the flesh that would want to tell us that that bad things are good and good things are bad. And yet the desire underneath some of the behaviors is a good desire. And to be able to separate those is so critical.

SPEAKER_05 36:43

Absolutely. And something cannot be broken unless it is good.

Greg 36:47

Say that again.

SPEAKER_05 36:48

Something cannot be broken unless it is good. If my child's bike is broken, it doesn't mean it's bad. It means it's a good bike that needs to be repaired.

Greg 37:00

That's what I'm talking about. Yeah. And when we zoom in on it, it seems so simple and it seems so obvious. But those experiences that were formative and were coming at the time that we were paying attention and basically believing everything that our authority figures were telling us created complicated ways of looking at this stuff. And that that's a knot that has to be untangled. Yeah, definitely. I'm curious as to your thoughts about this, Drew. You and I are both people of faith. We're, we would both say that we are Christ followers. Not that the work that we do will only be helpful for people who are Christ's followers, it's helpful for everybody. But a lot of the people that I know you and I interact with are people who have these deep spiritual wounds because they grew up in an environment that they believed was safe and then they're coming to realize now wasn't. So how can a person who is negatively impacted, whether it was specific messages of purity culture or just other harmful messages at those formative places in their lives, how can they grieve what happened and at the same time avoid becoming resentful towards the church or towards faith?

SPEAKER_05 38:13

Yeah. One very simple shift you can make when grieving the harm of purity culture is to use the word and instead of but. So for example, the way I was raised taught me some good things and taught me some bad things. I love Jesus and I have been really hurt by the church I grew up in. I need some time to figure out what I believe and I'm committed to processing this. The the space of and allows me to breathe. Sometimes we feel contradictory things at the same time. And so rather than using a but, but, but, we can use and.

Greg 39:02

Well, and I know that I personally feel, I don't know whether I would call it fear or pressure or concern somewhere in that sphere when somebody that I really care about is saying things that sound a lot like faith deconstruction. And I'm like, oh my gosh, it it wasn't Jesus who did that to you. You know, that's what that's what I want to say. It was, but it will, but it was people who represented him. And the thing that I've had to struggle through and and come to realize, like you said earlier, my lack of control is I'm not responsible for the outcome and I can't control the outcome of what this person chooses to do with their faith journey.

unknown 39:47

Yeah.

Greg 39:48

But I think a lot of the time, Jesus would be just fine with some of the things that were constructed in their lives being deconstructed. So that something pure and true and healthy can be reconstructed in its place.

SPEAKER_05 40:02

Exactly. And so my book is trying to deconstruct purity culture and other anti-sexual attitudes that we've had so that we can deconstruct addiction, so that we can die to that and and resurrect connection and love and self-acceptance and become more of who we truly are. So deconstruction followed by reconstruction is like death and resurrection.

Greg 40:28

And deconstructing those hurtful experiences, deconstructing addiction would then allow for what to happen ideally in your world. What would be your desire on the other side of that deconstruction for them? What would get reconstructed?

SPEAKER_05 40:44

I hope that you would change your brain, heal your heart, and restore your relationships.

Greg 40:49

Boy, that sounds good.

SPEAKER_05 40:51

Yeah, exactly, right?

Greg 40:54

Okay, quick question about the book itself. This is just a personal curiosity. Your book is called Outgrow Porn, and on the front cover, it's got a big picture of a pacifier on it. And I have used the pacifier as an analogy for sexual acting out for years because it's such a good one. And in talking to people about how, like, when you masturbate, it's basically your age's version of when a toddler sucks on a pacifier to sue themselves, right? Have you ever had a person take offense at some of the terminology or iconology that you use, like outgrow, like, what are you saying? I'm childish, or you know, the the use of a pacifier. Has anybody that you've worked with ever not liked those analogies or taken them to a place of shame? Or have you found that by the time you work with them, they're they're pretty much open?

SPEAKER_05 41:46

Yes, I have received pushback about the pacifier image, usually from people who don't know me. They've never listened to my podcast or they're not part of my community. If you actually hear me talk about it, you will hear nothing but kindness and empathy behind that image. So at first glance, it can be off-putting. Most people don't have that off-putting reaction.

SPEAKER_03 42:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:10

For most people, uh, this is intriguing.

SPEAKER_03 42:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 42:13

This this feels like it could be something different. Yeah. Um, it's a very different paradigm than the sword and shield you will often see on the logo of a men's ministry. Because we're not trying to fight a battle against ourselves. We're trying to befriend a little boy who learned how to deal with life by holding onto this pacifier long into his teenage and adult years. And so I almost called the book Drop the Pacifier. Okay. I didn't because it would have sounded like a parenting book and it would have probably been more shaming. But everybody loves the word outgrow for 95% of people. Right. Because it's not a negative word. It's an empowering word. Sure. It's it's a word that makes you think, yeah, it's more of what I want. It's more of who I am, not just what I don't want.

Greg 43:07

And I'm envisioning a life for myself where I'm living out of my full adult self, and my adult self doesn't have any room for pornography.

SPEAKER_05 43:15

Yeah, yeah. Getting to a point where you don't need it anymore.

Greg 43:18

Yeah. Well, for me, when I see those words next to a picture of a pacifier, I think because of my story and what I do, I know exactly what he means by that. Yeah. I don't think it's just me. I think there are probably a lot of men who would look at that and there's something in them, even if they haven't formed the words yet, that would know what this is going to be about just from that image.

SPEAKER_05 43:41

Yes. And if you really want to get down to the details of it, a pacifier is a fake nipple.

SPEAKER_03 43:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 43:48

And maybe for some a fake penis. It's not about the nipple, it's not about the penis. It's what that symbolizes and what that promises to your heart. When we start to understand. That and really get to the core of it, the pacifier loses its power. Yeah. Because we get the the real version instead of the counterfeit.

Greg 44:08

If we come into the world with a desire and a need to be seen, soothed, safe, and secure, and a pacifier or other kind of physical manifestation is a temporary or counterfeit or synthetic way of feeling a little bit of that. The only way to get the real thing is to put aside the pacifier. And so, but to say to somebody, well, just put the pacifier down without offering them what to do instead is cruel because the pacifier has been a caregiver, even if it's been a damaging caregiver. It's done both, bringing back the word and it's helped me and it's harmed me. And so if we're wanting something that's going to help me only, we've we've got to be willing to offer that. And I really love the fact that just in what you're doing with your life and with husband material, but then now in a very succinct way in the book, you're saying, here's how to put the pacifier down. Even before that, here's what you've been looking for from the pacifier.

unknown 45:06

Yeah.

Greg 45:06

And here's how the pacifiers made you feel like you've gotten it, but also harmed you. If you put the pacifier down, this is a direction in which you can move in order to actually get those needs met in the way they were meant to be met. Amen. Thanks for coming back and being my first repeat guest. You're welcome. I'm honored. I'm honored that you came back, and I'm so thankful for our friendship and uh just truly grateful for what you're doing for men out there. Thankful that we got a chance to talk about it.

SPEAKER_05 45:35

Same. Thanks, Greg.