I was exposed to pornography at the age of 7. I would sneak and watch HBO after dark when my mother fell asleep. 

The older I became the more my curiosity grew on sex and porn. My family was not a faith–based household and masturbation and porn was just a thing kids did when they were discovering their sexuality. 

My cousins and brothers influenced me to not only watch porn but also look at women only as a sexual object. This influence followed me through my childhood into my marriage. At the time I got married it was based off of sex and cultural perspectives. Pornography numbed my emotions. I began blocking out my wife feeling completely and only focused on my own desires. 

Through the grace of God and the relationship, He had with my grandmother. My heart had finally opened to listen to her advice of finding a church home and giving my life to Christ. 

The first church I was introduced to was Real Life Church and the sermon they were preaching was Marriage and Sex. They talked about the ramification of porn within a marriage,it irritated my soul because I was still deep into pornography at the time. 

I wasn’t able to handle the truth, so I never went back to the church, but I didn’t give up on finding my faith. Through my continuation of growing in my faith, I was finally convicted to give up porn. 

I tried on my own and made progress, but I found myself falling over and over again. My pastor preached a sermon of allowing God to help you through building relationships. In the process of creating boundaries for my addiction, I visited covenant eyes and found a link to 180 Ministries on the page. 

I instantly thought of my pastor’s sermon and sought out ways to join the group. It was the best decision of my life, It helped me to find a band of brothers who support each other in overcoming this addiction and living a better life. As my group always says and “a lone sheep is a dead sheep”

TM

The Power of Community

I’d like to credit John and the give and take of 180 ministries for their part in a recent breakthrough. I am experiencing unprecedented freedom in my decades-long struggle with porn addiction.

I praise God for the information, support, and prayer I found in my 180 group. I learned how the Holy Spirit could daily inspire me to not give up and see God build a transformed life. God has taken away my misdirected desire for porn as a way of satisfying my God-given desires and redirected me to believe the truth and seek the pleasures at his right hand.

The final phase of the breakthrough was getting in touch with my desires and emotions–hard for most men to do–and understanding deeply that porn was an empty well, never able to give me what I really need and want.  P.M. 1/8/20

Divorce Letter

Dear “friend” and companion,

We have to talk. I told you how much I appreciate everything that you have done for me in the past. You know that I have been spending less and less time with you and I have even sworn off you and broken up with you many times over the past few years. You have pleaded with me and I have taken you back many times, although I regret it every time.

I am writing you this letter and sharing it with my friend John so that I have a witness to this, the final divorce.  I have told you that I am through and have walked away but always knowing that you were there for me and that I wold probably go back to you, eventually. I have tried to spend less time with you, just a little bit here and there, but it never works.

The relationship that we have is abusive. I have abused myself in so many ways in your name. I have lusted after friends and friends’ wives, family members, strangers, people I respected and people whom I hated. I have lusted after pastors’ daughters and you have made me degrade myself and disrespect these women and girls in the most horrible ways possible. My addiction to sex and porn and lust and orgasm has poisoned my relationships and almost made my wife cheat on me, because I was so distracted that I would rather jerk off to a computer screen than spend time seducing her and sharing time together.

You’ve made me lie to my wife, to my parents, to my friends, to my church. You have crept into every facet of my life including even my work. You have left me exposed to losing my job and being humiliated and shamed because WHY? Because you got into my mind and stole my innocent body away from me when I was 12 freaking years old!! You knew my parents wouldn’t address it. You knew that my friends and society wouldn’t care. You let me wallow in this shit for almost 30 years. I get so angry when I think about the amount of time that I wasted with you, and what I could have accomplished if you never got your hooks into me.

You abused me. I have been a victim of you, and the worst part is that you turned me to your dark side. You made me a co-conspirator. If I get caught doing something shameful, it’s not your fault, but mine. And you just laugh and do it again.

For all of these reasons and many more, I am done with you. I can’t keep doing this. To be honest, it’s not even fun anymore when I fall back into your trap, and it hasn’t been for a long time. I fucking hate it every time you get into my thoughts and you tweak that chemical into my system. I have had enough of your crap and I’m ending this once and for all. I hate you. You are tacky and disgusting. Get the fuck out of my life and do not come back. You are no longer welcome. I wish you could just appear in some physical form so that I could spit in your face, beat you to death, kick your dead face and piss on your rotting corpse.

This is me telling you the truth. Thanks for everything, now seriously, fuck off. I hope you choke.

Thank You Letter

Dear friend,

I am writing this letter to thank you. You, spirit of sexual immorality, have been a companion to me for many years. I can remember times when I was a child, lonely, hurt, angry, or bored, and you came to me offering distraction and comfort. You entertained me with images and thoughts that promised another world which was not as demanding or cold as this one.

As I grew older, you matured with me, adapting to technology and always bringer more variety, better quality, more interesting images, and girls who never got older, even as I did. You sparked my imagination and rewarded me with pleasant sensations and emotions, and you helped me to relax, to unwind, and to fall asleep many times. You gave me great pleasure in my body and mind.

When I had a bad day or when I was alone, you were with me. You were the reward, the secret treasure that I could think about at any time to take me out of my situation. You offered endless novelty, always something new, some new image, some new girl to look at, to fantasize about, to investigate and own. You provided the chemical and hormonal fuel to my obsessions for collecting and categorizing images and videos. You always had something new and exciting.

When life was unexciting, or when sex wasn’t everything that I dreamed it could be, you were there. In my mind and in the porn, sex was fantastic. There were young girls who desired me, and I was the insatiable stud. At times you made me feel like a hero, like the ultimate lover, like the alpha male, like the master over my slave girls. It felt fucking great. I absolutely enjoyed it.

I thank you that you are still offering, still upping the ante with promises of some new girl that I could discover. You know my secret thoughts and desires, and you are doing your best to offer me what I think I want, and even things that I don’t know about, or things that I don’t want to admit that I want.

Thank you for your constancy and persistence. You have never left me or abandoned me.

Sincerely,

N

“As a 21-year-old guy, struggling with porn addiction, it was hard to find someone to help lead me in the right direction. Not knowing who to turn to, I reached out to John and talked to him on the phone about his recovery program. I was a little nervous at first because he was an older man. I was scared we wouldn’t connect because of our age differences.

Boy, was I wrong!  John is extremely funny and always brings a smile to my face. He really understands all the struggles of being a 21-year-old guy and has set up a fantastic program to help young guys break those bad habits. If you like a good storyteller, John is the man! Not only did I learn a lot about the addiction recovery process, but I learned about all facets of life! He always stresses that recovery is a process, and it doesn’t happen in one week. He is always there for me when I am struggling, and has made recovery simpler than it seems.

I recommend any young person who is struggling with porn addiction to seek out coaching from John! After meeting with John, I have grown in my Christian faith, and have become a more sociable and productive person. I can’t thank John enough for the man he has made me become, and I hope other young guys will give him a call. I can’t recommend him enough.”

An Endorsement for John Doyel Coaching

I am so grateful for John’s help!  A crisis in my marriage FINALLY caused me to see how much my sexual brokenness and addiction was about to cost me.  I was ready to change and ready to stop hiding, covering up, and lying about what I was doing but I needed help getting started on the right path.

I felt alone and lost.  I was terrified!  I had no clue what the pathway out of my situation looked like.  How do you get out?  How do you start addressing the darkest and most secret things in your life? This was such a vulnerable time for me.  I needed to find someone I could trust.  Beyond that, as a Christian, I wanted help that was clearly anchored in Biblical principles.  This is when I met John.

In addition to being married for 28 years and a father, I’ve also been a Christian, a dedicated church member and a ministry leader in my church for many years but I could never get free from issues with pornography use and other habits of sexual brokenness.  John was the first person I ever trusted with the absolute, honest details of what was really going on in my life.  John’s faith in God, his gut-honest openness about his own journey out of sexual brokenness, and his care for me, stirred up hope within me.

John’s coaching style is a terrific mix of compassion, unflinching directness, and practicality: exactly what I needed.  Without John’s coaching and accountability, I know I would not have started making the consistent, daily, and intentional effort that the recovery process requires of me.  John’s care for me is like scaffolding so God’s reclamation work could finally get started for real in my life – inside and out, top to bottom.  I’ve got a long way to go but I feel good about the progress I’m making and feel so much more hopeful.

— Mark