Sexual Purity Support & Recovery Group
By Castimonia
Morning! If you’re in need of a Thanksgiving Telemeeting this year, join us this Thursday, November 27th on Zoom, at 7 am, as we celebrate the Lord’s goodness with hearts of gratitude.
Please email info@castimonia.org for the Zoom meeting links.
We’ll see you then.
By Castimonia
originally posted at: https://sexuallypuremen.beehiiv.com/p/entering-your-spouse-s-world-of-pain-88aa
One of the most important—yet often misunderstood—aspects of relationship repair is the ability to enter your spouse’s world of pain, or what I refer to as the Pain Field. This is not about giving the right answers, explaining your side of the story, or doing enough to be forgiven. It is about emotional presence, compassion, courage, and humility.
And this is where many men struggle.
In my counseling work with men, I have watched good-hearted individuals who genuinely want to make things right stumble repeatedly—not because they do not care, but because they do not know how to step into their wife’s pain without defending themselves or trying to fix it too quickly. They think they’re doing the right thing, but they’re missing what she truly needs.
Let’s unpack the four critical components that will help you shift from confusion and failure to empathy and connection.
1. Identify the Real Pain Point
Here’s the truth: what she says she’s upset about and what she’s really hurt by are often two different things.
Take this example: you don’t check in during the workday. You come home, and she’s upset. You immediately go into defense mode:
What you fail to realize is that not calling is just the circumstance—it’s not the core. The real pain point is that she feels neglected or overlooked. Over time, the absence of your attention triggers something much deeper: a sense that she is invisible, unimportant, or not worth the effort.
Here’s the key: if you stay stuck defending yourself over why you didn’t call, you’re missing the emotional heart of the matter. She is standing in her Pain Field—and you’re standing on another field altogether. When you’re on different playing fields, you miss the key moments that allow you to bring comfort and repair.
Real empathy starts by asking, “What is the emotional message underneath her words?” It requires slowing everything down (my number one recovery rule) and listening—not just to her words but to her heart.
2. Lead with Curiosity, Not Assumptions
A second major trap is assuming you already know what’s going on in her mind.
You think:
But what’s really happening? You’re trying to control the outcome instead of understanding her pain. Your anxiety escalates, and you start looking for the exit ramp.
Curiosity is the antidote. But what does that look like? It sounds like:
Curiosity is not interrogation. It’s not asking questions to fix, defend, or redirect. It’s about showing her: I see you. I’m here for this. Your pain matters to me.
When you’re truly curious, you become safe. And when you become safe, she begins to open.
3. Her Pain. Not Yours.
This one is hard—really hard—for most men. Because when you hear her hurt, what do you do? You internalize it. You start thinking:
But the moment you let your pain become the focus, you’ve exited her Pain Field and entered your own. And that creates a no-win situation. She feels unheard and emotionally abandoned, while you feel misunderstood and defeated. The cycle of disconnect continues.
Here’s the truth: her pain is not a weapon—it’s a wound. And it’s a wound that you caused. Your job is not to defend yourself against it. Your job is to tend to it.
That requires emotional maturity—a willingness to sit with her pain without needing to correct it, justify it, or outmatch it with your own.
4. The Final Key
You’ve heard me say: Being emotionally regulated is recovery. Think about it—if you are emotionally regulated, what can go wrong? If she’s in the midst of a triggering event, you will be able to carry yourself in a way that avoids further damage and may even de-escalate the situation.
That’s why it’s critical to focus on maintaining emotional regulation throughout the day. Take three breaks and utilize one of the 20 emotional regulation techniques I’ve identified to keep yourself in the window of tolerance.
You can learn more about this important topic by reading my article, The Cornerstone of Recovery: Emotional Regulation, at https://sexuallypuremen.beehiiv.com. While you’re there, sign up to receive all of my articles.
Final Thoughts
Entering your spouse’s Pain Field is not easy—but it is sacred work. It requires the courage to face your own discomfort, the humility to admit and own your mistakes, and the strength to stay present even when things feel overwhelming. Yes, it’s difficult.
But here’s what I can promise you: When a woman feels emotionally safe, consistently seen, and deeply understood, her healing accelerates. And when you can do that—not just once, but over and over—you don’t just help her heal.
You become the man you were always meant to be.
Dr. Eddie Capparucci is a licensed counselor, speaker, and creator of the Inner Child Model™ for treating addictive behaviors. His mission is to help men complete their recovery by embracing emotional maturity. You can reach him at innerchildmodel@gmail.com.
By Castimonia
Originally posted at: https://fightthenewdrug.org/early-porn-exposure-impact/
Porn exposure in boys begins as early as 5, leading to potential brain changes and aggressive behaviors. With easy access to increasingly violent and addictive content, it’s crucial to educate and protect children. Here’s what you can do to help.
The problem starts at 13.
That’s the average age that boys are exposed to porn, according to multiple studies.1 And that’s not even the worst part. Some studies suggest that pornography exposure in boys can happen as early as 5.2
At five, boys should be learning to read, developing their imagination, and building early friendships, not being exposed to pornography. But in our era of smartphones and unlimited internet, pornography access has largely become a quick internet search and click away. And restrictions on computers can be easily overridden.
A recent article by Mamamia addressed the difficulties of raising boys when pornography is so easily accessible and difficult to censor. Mamamia covered how common it was for young boys to watch porn. They found that out of “830 young Australians aged 16 to 20, half of young men watch porn at least once a week and nearly 20 percent almost daily.”3
The problem is both the type and the amount of porn that boys are watching has changed.
Back in 1953, Hugh Hefner released his first Playboy. Still, images of naked models opened the doors for modern-day pornography. Just three years later, VCR emerged, and in the 80s, video pornography became available in the United States for the first time. Still, you must show your ID to prove you’re 18, but it’s becoming more accessible. Nothing, however, compares to how accessible it became once the internet started in the 1990s. Suddenly, anyone can access just about any type of porn they want with just a quick search.
Now porn sites consistently remain some of the top most used websites in the world. As of May 2024, Pornhub was the leading adult content and pornographic website for global users. It averaged about 5.49 billion monthly visits. Xvideos ranked next with about 4.02 billion monthly visits.4
That’s an average of 92 billion visits for 2024. That’s 252 million visits a day. 175 thousand visits every minute. So if it took you six minutes to read this article, Pornhub and Xvideos would have already received over a million visits.
Porn started out as just still images, but now it’s grown to be something much bigger than that.
Not only did how accessible, affordable, and anonymous porn became change, but the type of porn that people were producing changed too. A concerned mom in Mamamia addressed the growing disparity between what started out as still images but has grown to something much worse. “The online environment and the porn and depiction of violence against women in particular is something most adults didn’t grow up with themselves.”
Unfortunately, studies only confirm this mom’s worry. Research suggests that 1 in 3 pornographic videos contain some sort of violence against women. In a 2010 study on the “best-selling” pornography videos, a study found that “the 304 scenes analyzed 88.2% contained physical aggression, principally spanking, gagging, and slapping, while 48.7% of scenes contained verbal aggression, primarily name-calling. Perpetrators of aggression were usually male, whereas targets of aggression were overwhelmingly female.”5
A recent NSW health report showed exposure to violent porn was one of the four common factors behind harmful adolescent behaviors.
A study from 2021 suggests that porn encourages aggressive behavior in men toward women. The study surveyed 320 men and found that the objectification and aggression that often happens in porn leads men to be associated with “aggressive attitudes” and “aggressive behaviors.”6
A study from 2016 found that pornography consumption was associated with a likelihood of “sexual aggression among adults and adolescents.”7 The study also found that there was no significant research to support the idea that men with tendencies for sexually aggressive behavior were only watching pornography to support their “already established sexual scripts” (199). Instead, it found that “pornography consumption predicted boys’ later sexual aggression” (199).
That means porn has an impact on whether boys will develop these behaviors. Porn establishes aggression and objectification, possibly developing these behaviors in boys who may not have had them initially.
The problem isn’t just that boys are being exposed to porn at a young age or that porn has changed. It’s that a combination of these two things has an actual impact on a young boy’s brain.
Although not formally diagnosed as an addiction, porn induces dopamine in a way that mimics addiction. JAMA Psychiatry found that, like with alcohol or cocaine addicts, there is a smaller grey matter volume. They concluded that neural changes in the “brains of pornography users…mirrors the use of addictive drugs.”8
The fact that porn is so violent, easy to access, and anonymous makes it dangerous for young boys to see. And unlike alcohol, cocaine, or other addictive substances, there’s hardly anything standing between young boys and getting access to it.
Luckily, we have some tips on how to fight it.
Mamamia pointed out that often, “parents aren’t aware their child is watching porn or the nature of the porn they’re watching, so education is the first step.” One mom discussed how she was already having educating conversations with her seven-year-old boy. “We break it down and talk to him about boundaries… and if he feels scared or uncomfortable, there are only two things he needs to do: turn away and tell a safe person.”
Like Mamamia, we agree that education is so important in the fight against pornography. That’s why we’ve compiled different resources to make educating your kids, friends, or even yourself easy and accessible.
Some of our resources include our age-appropriate and engaging presentation series about the harms of porn and what you can do, our Brain, Heart, World documentary, hundreds of Youtube videos, and of course, this blog.
You’re not alone. We believe in you, so keep fighting!
1British Board of Film Classification. (2020). Young people, pornography & age-verification. BBFC. Retrieved from https://www.bbfc.co.uk/about-classification/research; https://www.jmir.org/2023/1/e43116/PDF
2https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2017/08/pornography-exposure
3https://www.mamamia.com.au/how-porn-is-affecting-young-boys/
4https://www.statista.com/statistics/1445661/most-visited-porn-websites-worldwide/
5https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/epdf/10.1177/1077801210382866
6Zhou, Y., Liu, T., Yan, Y., & Paul, B. (2021). Pornography use, two forms of dehumanization, and sexual aggression: Attitudes vs. behaviors. Null, 1-20.
7Journal of Communication, Volume 66, Issue 1, February 2016, Pages 183–205, https://doi.org/10.1111/jcom.12201
8https://acpeds.org/position-statements/the-impact-of-pornography-on-children#_edn13
9Robb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.
10Martellozzo, E., Monaghan, A., Adler, J. R., Davidson, J., Leyva, R., & Horvath, M. A. H. (2016). “I wasn’t sure it was normal to watch it”: A quantitative and qualitative examination of the impact of online pornography on the values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours of children and young people. Middlesex University, NSPCC, & Office of the Children’s Commissioner.
11Robb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.
12Fritz, N., Malic, V., Paul, B., & Zhou, Y. (2020). A descriptive analysis of the types, targets, and relative frequency of aggression in mainstream pornography. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 49(8), 3041-3053. doi:10.1007/s10508-020-01773-0
13Bridges et al., 2010, “Aggression and Sexual Behavior in Best-Selling Pornography Videos: A Content Analysis,” Violence Against Women.
14Fight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.
15Robb, M.B., & Mann, S. (2023). Teens and pornography. San Francisco, CA: Common Sense.
16Fight the New Drug. (2024, May). Get the Facts (Series of web articles). Fight the New Drug.
By Castimonia
Dr. Patrick Carnes, Leading Sex Addiction Expert, Video Interviewed by Joe Polish http://www.sexaddictsupport.com is the latest resource for sex addiction. Dr. Patrick Carnes, leading sex addiction expert, and use the confidential sign up form to get more resources, information, and additional interviews with experts. http://www.sexaddictsupport.com Joe Polish is the founder and president of Piranha Marketing, Inc., creator of Genius Network® (aka 25K Group) and Genius Network® Interview Series, co-founder of http://www.10XTalk.com and I Love Marketing®, highly popular free weekly podcasts on iTunes.
By Castimonia
This site is intended for individuals who struggle with maintaining sexual purity. This information is posted for individuals at various stages in their recovery, year 1 to year 30+; what applies to some, may not apply others. Spouses are encouraged to read this blog with the caveat that they may not agree with, understand, or know the reason for some items posted. As always, take what you like and leave the rest.
