- A story from one of our Why Not presenters
“I remember going through training to present for Why Not and hearing that 2/3 of students who engaged in sex and sexual activity regretted their decision and wish they would have waited longer. Of all of the information this stood out to me because it was very relatable.
“It started when I was around 13 years old, and a friend introduced me to porn for the first time. It didn’t take long for that first introduction to become an addiction. What started as viewing porn once every 4 or 5 weeks became viewing porn 4 or 5 times every week. What I didn’t realize at the time was how terribly distorted my view was becoming of women and relationships. This addiction to porn gave me a false sense of what relationships were all about and an even more crooked view of what girls wanted in a relationship. I assumed every girl wanted nothing in a relationship except to please me and wanted to be treated like the girls in the pictures and videos I was watching. Of course, this couldn’t be further from the truth. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized the stupidity and ignorance that clouded my idea of relationships as a result of porn.
“This addiction led me to not date very much because I figured if I dated, I may get a girl pregnant and get in trouble, but with porn I could hide it and not worry about getting in trouble. I dated a couple of different girls in high school. I was 18 years old when me and my girlfriend took the step to engage in sexual activity. Throughout the whole relationship we never engaged in sexual intercourse (when the penis penetrates the vagina) but we did engage in a lot of other forms of sexual activity. Outercourse (genital to genital contact without penetration), mutual masturbation (hand to genital contact), and oral sex (mouth to genital contact) were common place for us. Almost every time we saw each other we engaged in some form of sexual activity. This went on for almost a year and then we broke up. After about 3 months apart we got back together and picked up right where we left off. After about 4 months of dating, we broke up again. We got together one more time after that break up before we finally went our separate ways for good. This whole time in the relationship and times of taking a break and getting back together, I was trying to figure out and process how something that made me feel so good in the moment made me feel so bad the rest of the time.
“There were two lies that I bought into that made this hard to process. The first lie was the lie pornography told me. Porn made it seem like nothing but good could come from sex. But what porn made seem so normal and good made me feel so bad. In the moment we both enjoyed it, but we both regretted what we were doing. At 18 years old I wasn’t mature enough to process the emotion of sex and neither was she. Sex isn’t just a physical act, there is an emotional component that I was not ready to handle. Porn made it seem emotionless and completely physical and that is not at all the case. Sex and sexual activity are deeply emotional and there are absolutely better times to engage in such physically and emotionally involved activities.
“The second lie was that as long as it wasn’t “sex” everything else was okay and “didn’t count”. This was probably the most devastating of the two lies. I figured there were no consequences to what we were doing. We hadn’t been with anyone else so STDs/STIs weren’t an issue and since we weren’t having intercourse, we couldn’t get pregnant. Well, those are just the two consequences that get mentioned the most. The reality was, both of us were dealing with the emotional consequences. Towards the end of our relationship, we were not good for each other. We fought a lot, we didn’t communicate well, we each became controlling and jealous, it just wasn’t good. But we didn’t want to break up because of what the other person meant to us. As bad as we wanted to be apart, we didn’t feel like we could be.
“We both fell into the category of students who regretted their decision and wish we would have waited longer. This was a big motivation for me becoming part of the Why Not team. I made decisions that I regret because I didn’t have accurate information and I want to help students avoid the regret that I have. Sex outside of marriage, of any kind, has consequences. Some of those are physical and not all will experience those consequences. Some of those consequences are emotional and everyone experiences them to some degree or another.
“If you are like me and you made that decision and regret it, it isn’t too late. I learned from my choices and made a decision going forward to renew my abstinence and avoid the physical and emotional risks. It isn’t easy, but you can make a new decision at any time. So why not make a healthier choice today?”