Part One: Family Brokenness as a Source (Testimony)

I was ten years old when I spoke those words to myself in the back seat of my mom’s purple Toyota Camry as she drove me back to my dad’s house.  

My parents had separated a year earlier after a tumultuous final stretch of marriage, one that culminated in my dad discovering my mom’s affair.  My dad worked shift work at the local cement factory, often gone all night and catching up on sleep most of the day.  On weekends, my mom would take my older sister and me to places to meet up with an “old friend” of hers.  My sister and I would spend a few hours playing arcade games while they talked, and during the drives home my mom would coach us in the stories we’d tell my dad.  This was my initiation into the world of lying and keeping secrets, a “skill” that would eventually help insulate and preserve my own brokenness in the years to come.

After the affair came to light, there were no more lies to tell my dad, but there was also no more normalcy.  My parents’ departure from their wedding vows left a void in my childhood, and I soon found a new “vow” to fill it.  When I reflect on the origins of the addiction to pornography and masturbation I developed in the subsequent years, this is the moment I return to, my resolution against love as a 10-year-old boy.

It was better not to trust others, I thought, best not to get too close.  No relationship – even the closest friendship – would last.  No one beyond my family could possibly understand.  No one cared – not even God Himself, if He even existed.  Everyone was bound to turn their back and abandon me eventually.  The safest bet was to never allow another within arm’s reach of my heart.

This made perfect sense in theory to my young and wounded heart, but it would take almost fifteen years for me to see the deeper truths beyond the scope of my experience and wisdom. In the words of psychiatrist Curt Thompson, “We all are born into this world looking for someone looking for us, and we remain in this mode of searching for the rest of our lives.”  That desire for connection wasn't one I could simply turn off, and instead my “vow” simply imprisoned and starved it.  

If only I had known from C.S. Lewis that without vulnerability my heart would become impenetrable and irredeemable. In the pain from my family’s breakdown, I closed off the only true avenues to connection with God and others because in my estimation there was too much risk of hurting and being hurt. 

St. John Paul II once wrote that “man cannot live without love,” that “his life is senseless” if he does not experience love and make it his own.  At a time in my life when I felt that senselessness most acutely, sexual fantasy presented itself as a faithful solution to my hunger for love.  

I first discovered masturbation around a year after that fateful car ride.  Initially it resulted from simple curiosity and exploration but, trapped in my self-isolation with no one beyond MTV to speak into my questions about sex, I found the pleasure to be a means to escape from the strain of my parents’ divorce.  When I couldn’t stand another burst of badmouthing from one parent about the other, or another meeting with a judge and attorneys, or another Christmas with a 9 a.m. custody line creased as neatly as the gift wrap on the presents under trees at both houses, there was always masturbation.  

The Rainbows program my mom enrolled my sister and me in did little to alleviate the pain of my family’s breakdown, but masturbation – at least in the moment – certainly did.  Looking back, I've had to forgive that little kid who was just trying to survive another day of suffering and depression, drowning in the reality that his family would never be whole again, and who unwittingly used the means he had to stay alive.  One of the hardest things to admit in my recovery is that I would probably be dead – having taken my own life–  were it not for porn and masturbation to escape the horrific feelings unleashed at a time when I had no ability to process them, nor any support system to help me do so.  

But things quickly escalated.  What started out as a survival mechanism for the unbearable moments of my childhood became a near-daily ritual to numb even the most minor inconveniences.  First it was a bad day at school when I was bullied for my weight.  Before long it was because the wrong team won that night’s baseball game.  The means for me as a child to avoid problems beyond my years ended up preventing any growth of a capacity to face or endure even mundane hardship in a constructive manner.

By the time I reached junior high, pornography entered the mix.  It began with a fascination at the mystery and beauty of the female body. However, I soon found it serving to heighten and expedite the rush of masturbation.  Occasional searches for movie scenes soon advanced to more explicit and disturbing depictions I would entertain multiple times a day.  

All of this served to create a world I deemed safe.  After my parents’ divorce, I was deathly afraid of not just being wounded again but also of inflicting wounds the way I had witnessed at home.  In the real world, I believed that the weight of my “baggage” exceeded the carry-on restrictions for dating and marriage.  I convinced myself that the fantasy realm of pornography, on the other hand, had endless overhead space for my brokenness.  No one would be hurt or burdened.

Pornography also gave me the illusion of control.  I couldn't get my parents back together.  I couldn't end the chaos.  But with pornography I could dictate the outcomes. In my eyes the fantasy around pornographic depictions could turn powerlessness and futility into efficacy.

That simply wasn’t true, though.  Not only were the women I viewed fellow human beings made in the image and likeness of God, real persons deserving of respect, but they were likely also the victims of the networks of coercion and trafficking woven throughout the porn industry.  Porn also began to warp the way I viewed and interacted with the women in my daily life.  All the while, the one thing that failed to actually exist–  the one thing I remained powerless to effect – was authentic love.  Instead I drove deeper into isolation and thus loneliness and shame, and further from the connections that actually satisfy.

My parents’ divorce not only built the emotional stage upon which my addiction began.  It also created the circumstances where it could thrive.  My dad ended up with primary custody of my sister and me, and yet my mom was the dominant agent in our education.  My dad had little idea of the sort of work I was doing at school, and so when I explained the hours spent in my bedroom on my computer with the door closed as studying and homework, I raised little suspicion.  My mom took on extra shifts to cover the cost of our education at a Catholic high school, and so even on the weekends she had custody, I would often be left alone all night while she worked.  This left me free to browse late-night content on premium cable channels.  

I’m not making the argument that I would have never become addicted to pornography had my parents stayed together.  However, the breakdown of my family played an important role in my particular story.  Even when I began to realize the mess my addiction had become toward the end of high school, I pushed off reaching out to anyone.  This was partially motivated by the belief that the best way I could salvage what little stability remained in my family was to rock the boat as little as possible, to create absolutely no situations that injected more chaos into the family dynamic and gave my parents another topic to disagree about. I strove to be the perfect child with flawless grades and behavior.  That certainly kept me from getting help sooner.

Over many years, and many ups and downs, steps forward and steps back, I did find the deep healing I was seeking. In the next article, I’ll share what pathways to healing were helpful in my journey to be free from addiction to pornography and masturbation and, even more important, to learn to love more deeply and authentically.

See Part Two: Pathways To Healing

[Editor’s addendum: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has compiled a list of resources for those who are struggling with, or know someone struggling with, pornographic addiction. Also, another new ministry helping in pornography recovery is Fight Club Catholic.]

Intercessory Prayer

St. Mary of Egypt, patron of chastity, pray for those who are struggling with sexual and pornographic addictions, and for those who are involved in its production.

About the Author

John McLain lives in his home state of Missouri, which he often thinks might be etymologically connected to misery.  His parents divorced when he was nine.  He went on to complete his Masters in Theology at the Augustine Institute and now teaches math and other wonderful ideas at a Catholic high school.  John attended his first Life-Giving Wounds retreat online in the fall of 2020.  When not making the world a better place one pun at a time, he is either hoping a new baking experiment will pan out or leading off a conversation with baseball nerdiness. 

Reflection Questions for Small Groups or Individuals

1. What comes to mind after you read John’s testimony?

2. Did your parents ever ask you to lie for them? If so, what do you recall?

3. How did you cope with your parent’s divorce? Did you go down any dark paths or rebellious streaks?

4. What are some ways you can help people similar to John, in his younger days as a child of divorce, working through similar circumstances?