Learning to Thrive Beyond Pornography use was the greatest challenge of our life and marriage. It had rocked my self confidence, tainted all of the most important experiences of my life and become the most impossible challenge I had.

With this podcast or at https://www.GetToThrive.com you'll learn about the struggle, how to overcome pornography use, and where to find additional resources to begin to thrive beyond pornography with your spouse.

At some point I took a step away from all the 12 step meetings and councilors and started to figure out my own brain, to look at my issue as something that I had the answer to and I was going to figure it out. Here I share those lessons and give you the power to start your own journey free. Whether you struggle with unwanted pornography use or are the spouse or partner, whether you feel stuck or just don't know where to start, here I will teach you principles, tools and skills that you can use today to change how you think and, in the end, what you do.

You'll hear interviews with my spouse, with experts on human sexuality and with former and current pornography users on how you can overcome your own struggle with addictive behavior.

The Thrive Beyond Pornography podcast will bring new perspective to your struggle and keep you coming back to improve all aspects of your life. (formerly, The Self Mastery Podcast: Overcome Pornography Forever)

Episode 156

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, I guess unless you're a pornographer. Uh, anyhow, an odd phrase kind of occurred to me. And it was basically that, you know, and I don't remember what led to this context, I could probably go back and watch the video, but, as I was talking to this client, I was like, you know, porn is basically like a participation trophy.

So on the podcast, we don't do a lot of porn bashing. And mostly, this is because when people come to listen, I feel like they already have a really keen sense of shame. And for most of the people who are listening to this podcast, they're like, I full on know that watching porn is not my ideal way of engaging in the world.

And I think this is hopefully I don't want anybody to come away from this thinking, well, Zach's a jerk. So, if you feel like I'm a jerk here, I'm sorry, cause that's not my point, but I want to walk through this idea, that's been bubbling around in my head for a little while and it's really based on how effective pornography is at engaging people and drawing them in.

So let me tell you what I mean. First off, I think it's really important to recognize that, One, this isn't about shame, and I'm not trying to shame anybody and give them, like, a new phrase to punch themselves in the face with, so please don't use this as a way to beat yourself up. Just kind of see it as an understanding that you might want to use if it's effective or if it's useful for you, but I don't want you to beat yourself up with it.

Moving on to really the topic, which is it's really important to recognize that validation is one of the most highly sought after interactions that we have. Almost every person in this world chases. We, almost everyone that you know is looking for validation. We look to others to validate our views.

This is why we see this kind of ever narrowing of our social media spheres of influence. If somebody disagrees with us on social media, oftentimes we're like, block, you're no longer my friend. Or, we want to watch the news programs that validate our sense of the world we want our politicians to validate our sense of fairness or tell us in some way that the other side is doing us wrong or it's validating to hear that the other side is doing us wrong.

Okay? And closer to home, we want our partner to validate the view that we have of ourselves as maybe a good spouse, or a good partner, or a good parent, maybe a good lover. Why else would you ask, how was it? You ask that after dinner, or dessert, or after sex or whatever it is, we, that's why we ask that question.

We want somebody to tell us, Hey, it was great. We want validation for a number of reasons. Most important among them, it feels good. This is part of the reason why, when we ask our spouse, if they want to make love and they say, no, it can be some of the most disorganizing, frustrating, and invalidating words that our spouse can say when they say no, however it is that they say no to us, it can really feel personal.

It can cause us a lot of worry and feel like we aren't enough. Even, it might even feel like our spouse is rejecting us. So, many of us feel even worse. Because we might have put all kinds of efforts to make the rejection less likely by maybe cleaning the house and putting the kids to bed or, whatever we think might help people feel better.

Our spouse, say yes and maybe keep them from being able to say no. I know there's lots of us out there. I used to do this. I would, make sure the dishes were done and make everything just right. She'd get a back rub and all kinds of things to make sure that yes was really the only possible answer that Darcy could give me.

And so that makes it even worse when they say no. And I think this kind of desire for validation, especially the validation that says, I'm okay, or I'm enough. Then shows up sometimes maybe as neediness. I have a client who would view pornography and then after he viewed pornography, he would tell his wife and then he would mope and pout, just beating himself up.

And he would do this until she had sex with him. And he connected her having sex with him as a revalidation of himself into a person that was worthy of participating in their family life. So all of these kinds of ways that we go about getting validation have pointed me at this idea, this thought.

And as I've thought about pornography and its capacity to draw people in, although this isn't really not the only reason that people view porn, it just seems to me that One really clear reason why people choose pornography is that it always validates them like

Because it's a real thing, right? Whatever it is you search for, that's what it is, and it's real, and it's like, okay, this is my thing, and you've never once, not ever, typed that in to this, to the, your computer, your phone, or your tablet, or whatever it is you're searching on, and Google or whatever platform you're using to find pornography goes," I'm not feeling it tonight. Can we maybe just try tomorrow? Right? Like the internet has never said no to you. Porn has never, never, never said no. Pornography is, especially I think in today's day and age, always on. It always says yes. It is willing to try anything that you might want to try. And it doesn't matter what it is, right?

Like you type it in and the internet will be like, here you go. It likes the things that you like. It believes in what you believe and it wants to please you. And I want you to think about this, the face that pornography makes whenever you're watching it is essentially one of desire, always, always desire for you.

So I want you to see, and this is where I've made this connection, porn is a lot like a participation trophy of emotional and sexual interaction when you, I don't know if any of you ever got participation trophies when you were kids. If you think about it, everybody gets a trophy and everybody's a winner.

I was the soccer coach for Brody when he was maybe like five or six and we lived in Thousand Oaks, California. And it was a league where they didn't keep score because the kids are too young to keep score. And everybody was a winner, but the kids were keeping score. And I think we also, like, as adults, we keep score.

We keep score. Like, am I really earning this validation that I'm getting? Am I really earning what it is that pornography is offering me? Or am I simply Getting something for basically nothing here. It's a lot like a participation trophy. And I think the difficult reality is that when we're willing to face up to who we really want to be, most of us don't want participation trophies.

I, I can tell you that the kids kept score in Brody's soccer league. I know like officially there was no score, but at the end of the game, and we had this really great kid on our team who was, I'm going to call him the Maradona of. Of the five year old soccer. Cause he was fantastic. He was in there and like everything he did was gold.

And of course everybody else was horrible. So we kicked their butts every time, but the kids kept scoring after every game. They would say, man, we won, we won, we won. But then there was this one game where he didn't show up for whatever reason. I think he had, some other obligation. His parents had some other obligation.

What five year old, no five year olds have obligations. So he was not there and we did not score more goals than the other team. And the kids counted it and they were like, man, we lost this one. That, that really feels brutal. And this is the reality of real life. When our partner says no to us.

And doesn't validate us in a way that pornography will never be capable of doing. Our spouse says, no, I'm not in the mood tonight. That's a moment of growth, of honest growth. And if I want to be able to say that my partner loves me, I don't necessarily need them to have sex with me, but I need to be able to deal with myself when they say no.

Because if I can't deal with myself when my partner says no, guess, guess how long that's going to last as an awesomeness in your relationship? Not very. Your partner is going to be like, get tired of it pretty quick. And I think we all want honest, real desire. We want our partner to desire us because we are desirable, not because we can type in a few characters into the Google search and get exactly what it is that we want.

And. Real desire and honest growth, neither of those come at a command. They're earned with effort over time. Whereas pornography is, it's commandable. It, you just say, okay, I want it and it shows up. And so it's very much like a participation trophy. And it's very much, it's very, it always validates you.

If I'm playing sports, I don't want a participation trophy. If I'm, , if you are in musical instrument or if you play in the band or you're into music, you don't want a participation trophy, you want to be the best, you want to be better than you were last time, you want to be awesome.

Because you're awesome, not because everybody just says yes to you. It's the same principle as the emperor has no clothes, right? Like, no one will tell you the tr if, if you are not capable of handling the truth, no one will tell you the truth. And you'll be miserable for your whole life because you're not really growing.

You're not really becoming a better version of yourself through the process of the discomfort that comes from hearing people say no and not having, , the internet tell you, yeah, absolutely, I'll give you whatever you ask for. And that's, that was the thought that I brought today. So I hope you're not beating yourself up.

I hope that You know, you take this and you really, not just see yourself as someone who can succeed at this, but that you are better than a trophy. You're better than getting it for free. You're amazing. I talk to so many people and I hope that each of you takes a moment and signs up for a consult and comes to work with me because so many of the people that I work with, their lives are changed dramatically by this.

You've heard this in the interviews with my clients. They are different because of the work we do. And they grow and they change and they become so much better than anything they could have done without the coaching that we do. So I love you guys. I'm going to record a couple of, of podcasts this week, but Darcy and I, we're going to the beach for a couple of days. We're going to Malibu. So, you guys have a great week. Week. And I will talk to you next week.