#101: Healing Sexual Brokenness: Freedom from Porn | Matt Fradd & Jason Evert
When it comes to pornography, there are basically two types of people:
Those who believe that porn is wrong and harmful.
And those who do not.
But beyond the arguments, millions of people struggle with a pornography compulsion or addiction. They want to break free, but they feel stuck and hopeless. No matter what they try, it doesn’t work.
In this episode, popular speakers and authors Matt Fradd and Jason Evert join me to answer these tough questions:
Is porn harmful and wrong? If so, why?
What does it do your brain and your relationships?
How do you actually break free from porn?
What resources are out there to help you or someone you care about?
Buy the Book: Forged: 33 Days Toward Freedom by Jason Evert and Matt Fradd
Buy the Book: The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography by Matt Fradd
Get the FREE Mini-Course: Why You Feel Broken
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
When it comes to the topic of pornography, there are basically two types of people, those who believe that porn is wrong and harmful and those who do not. But beyond the intellectual argument, millions of people right now are struggling with the pornography compulsion or addiction. They want to break free but feel stuck and hopeless and no matter what they try, it just doesn't work. They always seem to fall back into it. In this episode. Popular speakers and authors, Matt Fred and Jason never join me to answer these tough questions, is porn harmful and wrong. And if so why, what does it do to your brain and your relationships? How do you actually break free from porn? What resources are out there to help you or someone you care about? And finally, we discuss a 33 day resource to help you break free. If you believe that porn is not wrong or harmful, this episode will just give you a lot to think about. And I challenge you to listen with an open mind. And if you struggle with a porn addiction or compulsion, not only will you be given tactics to break free, but more importantly, you'll be given encouragement not to lose hope. So, keep listening, welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents, divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again and break the cycle. I'm your host, Joey Panelli. This is episode 101. This episode is actually part three of our podcast series called Healing Sexual Brokenness. So typically on this show, we feature stories and expert interviews about how to heal from the trauma of your parents', divorce and broken family or how to navigate the pain and the problems that stem from it. And one of the biggest problems that often stems from your family's breakdown is unwanted sexual behavior, like pornography, masturbation, hook up culture, paying for sex infidelity and so much more. In fact, one expert found that almost 90% of those who struggle with sexual addiction come from a broken family. And so in this series, you'll get tactics and resources to overcome unwanted sexual behavior so you can find freedom and a little trigger warning. This is obviously a mature topic. So we would definitely recommend putting in earphones or at least not listening around Children with that. My guests today are Jason Everett and Matt Fred. Ja is a speaker, author and podcast host. He's traveled to six continents, speaking to millions of people for the past 25 years. He's lectured at dozens of universities including Harvard Princeton and the United States Naval and Air Force Academies. He's a best selling author of more than 15 books, including How To Find Your Soulmate without losing your soul. The Dating Blueprint and Forged. He and his wife Crystalline are frequent guests on radio shows and podcasts throughout the country. And their television appearances include MS NBC Fox News, the BBC and EWTN. Their resources have been distributed in over 40 countries helping teens and young adults to build authentic love. Jason earned a bachelor's degree in theology and undergraduate degrees in counseling and theology with a minor in philosophy at Franciscan University of Steubenville. Actually, my alma mater as well. Jason lives in Arizona with his wife and kids. Matt Fred is the creator and host of the popular podcast, Pints with Aqua. He's the author and co-author of several books, including the porn myth and delivered. Matt earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy from Holy Apostles College and Seminary which also awarded him an honorary doctorate. He lives in Steubenville, Ohio with his wife Cameron and their four kids. Quickly, I want to let you know that Matt's connection was a little bit spotty during the interview. So I apologize in advance. You should be able to make up most of it, but it is a little bit spotty. Here's my conversation with Jason and Matt. Matt and Jason. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us on. Thank you. Pleasure to have you. There's two types of people listening right now, there's people who believe that there's nothing wrong with pornography that it's not damaging. Uh, but then there's also people who do believe that there's something wrong that it is damaging, but they struggle to break free. And so in this conversation, I want to talk to both people. But let's start with the first to everyone listening. Who doesn't believe that there's anything wrong with pornography. If they came up to you and asked, what's wrong with pornography? Why is pornography wrong? If you had to put it in just one sentence, I'm curious, what would your answer be? And then I'd love for you to elaborate on it. Let's start with Jason. What's your one sentence? I would say that it's because people who are created to be loved and pornography is the opposite of that because it's using another person instead of loving them beautiful matt. Yeah, I would say that over the last 40 years, there's been a ton of research that's come out of academia, different branches of science, like neurology, psychology, and sociology. And all of it says unambiguously that pornography is detrimental to the consumer, to our relationships to society. So if you're interested in science and you're pro science, then that should at least get you interested in in some good reason to so good, let's go deeper there. Then Jason, what else would you say on this topic? And one of the things I learned from you when I heard you speak uh years ago when I was a freshman in high school is porn destroys your ability to love. And so if you want authentic love, porn is not your best bet. Yeah. No, people will say, well, porn doesn't really hurt anybody. I don't know that you could get a statement more factually untrue than that one. I mean, the, the user, his capacity to love is, as you said, is diminished, the person behind the camera, the person filming it, the person in the scene. I I just think that porn only exists because it shows so little of the person because if it actually showed the full woman or the full porn star, what's actually going on in her life, how she was sexually abused when she was eight years old by her uncle that she was raped on a date when she was 18. Uh Then when she was 21 she entered into this, I remember one woman who had had that she decided to quit after being in the porn industry after her fourth abortion, she said I just couldn't take it anymore. But could you imagine if you saw this full picture? Uh like I'd known of one woman. She said that after the, the filming of the scene, it only took three minutes for the whole finished thing to be done. But the filming of it took hours and hours and hours and she was just brutalized. During it and she said it was so bad that when it was done, I had to go to the hospital. Uh but the, the porn producer was such a jerk. He didn't even drive her there. He called an Uber to take her to the, er, after the filming. But imagine if the viewer you saw this, ok, this scene that I'm seeing right here, uh A child that is conceived during this scene is gonna be aborted six weeks later and this woman had to go to the er, afterwards and this and that, like, how could you possibly get gratification out of staring at something like that? If you saw the full picture, you saw the full woman porn would go out of business overnight. That's why it has to reduce the woman only to her sexual value and show nothing else. And so, yeah, the viewers capacity to love is harmed. Kids are harmed, the porn. I mean, everybody's harmed and so we got to ditch that, you know, objection right away and then Matt. Yeah, let's, I, that's wonderful. Jason. It's like we've reduced morality to, if it doesn't hurt, it's OK, which is just a real reduction of the way we should be viewing anyway. Two people can choose to do things that hurt them and that doesn't make it ok. There's a famous story in Germany of a man who had always wanted to eat another one and a man who had always wanted to be eaten. They got together and this actually occurred, both of them consented to it. But I would hope that most people, all people would say this is horrific. Obviously, that's a very intense example. But in pornography, even when two people consent to degrading each other or consent to me lusting over them, people are still being hurt and this is still a perversion of the, the sexual faculty. It, it makes it such that it isn't as it should be. And I had, I had once heard also in the occult kind of the motto uh for witchcraft is harm ye none. And so basically saying, don't harm anybody and then you do whatever you want. But it's like, ok, if that's a good enough motto for the witches, shouldn't we shoot a little bit higher in our own ethical life. And so that should be a red flag. If we think that that consent is the highest good, there's got to be other goods higher than that. Then the greatest of which is love. And Jason I've heard you say, and I'd love you to expound upon this that it's like we reduce our morality in the sexual realm to so long as I'm not raping her, I'm basically at the pinnacle of masculine morality or something. Yeah, like, well, she agreed to everything. How could I be in the wrong? And I, I convinced her to do this and I convinced her to that and she was ok doing this. Well, we're good. It's like, dude, where's your moral backbone? I mean, where's your compass? It's like his barometer is what she's willing to do. And as long as I'm not forcing her to do anything. Oh, I'm quite the gentleman. It's like, ok, I think we got to set the bar a little higher here. Fellas. We couldn't agree more. Matt. Let's go deeper into the science. So, what does pornography do to your brain? And if you wanna talk about what it does to your relationships too, yes. Well, we used to say that only drugs can be addictive and since pornography isn't a drug, it's not something being injected or ingested, it's therefore not addictive. But since, uh, neuroscientist started looking into the brain, it's changed how they understand addiction. They now think that behaviors can be as addictive substances can. And we've heard, we hear a lot about dopamine these days but that when somebody consumes pornography on a regular basis, sort of downgrading occurs in the brain so that the brain cannot feel as it were dopamines effects in a way that it once did. And because of this, the brain is in a state of dopamine craving. And that's why the person immersed in pornography feels the need to perhaps watch more pornography and even more violent or shocking forms of it just to boost those dopamine levels up enough, uh, to get the same kick he did in the beginning, I heard someone use this analogy. He said, if you were on the phone with somebody and they started yelling, you might remove the phone away from your ear and you'd be able to hear them. But if they started to speak, normally you wouldn't be able to hear them unless you brought it back up to your ear again. And likewise, if I spend so much of my time looking at pornography, it's as if my brain is being shouted at by dopa. And when I shut that laptop lid and go out into the world and try to enjoy the things I've, I used to enjoy. I can't feel or hear dopamines effects as it were as I once did. And this is why people immersed in pornography tend to lose interest in very good and beautiful things that you find interesting and obviously that has a negative impact on not just romantic relationships but friendships and family life. Absolutely. Jason anything. Yeah. And I once heard that the one, the pleasure center of the brain uh is the medial preoptic nucleus. And it's very easy to train you think of Pavlov's dog. You know, he'd feed the dog a be ring a bell, feed the dog. And eventually he just ring the bell dog salivates. And what happens is when we get immersed in this world of fantasy and porn, we essentially train our brains to associate sexual joy with dirty, illicit, forbidden sexual fantasies that are always new. But then you transition to a real relationship and your wife is not dirty. She's not illicit, she's not forbidden. She's not a fantasy. She's not ever new. And, and there's a mad thing, like, how, how do you readjust? How do you be, like, ok, I just taught my brain that what is most sex satisfying is something other than a human relationship. And then I try to enter a human relationship and, well, she can't put up with my porn problem. Well, she must be approved. It must be her issue. I'm not actually cheating on you and you could just see how it would deteriorate the very fiber of that relationship because of what it's done to the guy's brain or to the girl's brain because we got to be fair. This isn't just some guy issue. More and more women are struggling this as well. Get, getting into this sometimes out of curiosity. Like, what do I need to look like? What do I need to do? What do I need to be? But I need, we need to remind them that they were never even created to be porn and they were created to be loved. A good point. I love that. I think often I've been thinking about this more and more about how porn lies to us. But, but in a way that's it. It's so much more insidious and goes so much deeper than we often realize And I know for me when I started to, when I became a Christian at the age of 17 and started to try not to look at pornography or masturbate, that sort of stuff. I kind of had this intellectual conversion where I realized that I probably shouldn't be treating people as consumable goods, you know, like animate providers of pleasure. And I kind of thought, well, that's it. Like I, I understand it now but, you know, I've been married 17 years and I still wrestle with liars that I apparently are still holding on to at some level about what pornography and what Hollywood has taught me about the way what women are, how they should respond, how they should desire these sorts of things. So, it's, yeah, I just, just to that point, I think it's a lot more insidious and goes a lot deeper than we often realize it sinks very deeper. It's just, and I remember you having like points about what porn teaches men about women. Some, like the, the value of a woman is determined by how much lust she provides to you. Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean, that, that's a, that's a big one. I mean, wouldn't even start there of just like, ok, then you start treating women according to how much lust they're generating in you. And if I don't feel a lot of lust towards that woman, then I don't even treat, give her the time of day. Whereas this one, you know, is really sexually alluring and so all treat her in a different way. And so you become very utilitarian just using people according to what you're getting out of this arrangement. And for the guy who's getting hooked on this stuff, I think in a sense he's, he's got that moment of male validation in her eyes that the way she looks at me is like, I'm handsome, I'm desirable. I'm powerful. I'm good, I'm sex and all these things that I really don't think that I am. But just for the moment, she makes me feel those things and then you get on this high and then you walk out of the world and just crash afterwards of just like, wait a minute, the girls in my gym, the girls at the mall, like nobody's looking at me that way. In fact, they look down at me if they were to find what type of guy I am behind closed doors. And so there's a lot of power in the way that a woman I think presents herself to a man. And there's a lot of power in the way that a man looks at a woman and, and whether he's looking at her as a thing as a collection of body parts, I think women can sense that from 100 yards away and, and it creates this kind of restless vulnerability and resentment in the woman towards the guy and even perhaps towards her sexuality itself where she could even swear sexuality. I'm asexuals. I'm not into any of that stuff because of how porn fi it's become. But likewise, if a man grows in purity of heart, uh he can give his beloved this piece of the way that he looks at her. Like, wow, he's not looking at me for something he can get from me. He sees me as his respected and beloved companion. And I think everyone wants to be seen that way and every man wants to get to the point where he can look at his beloved that way. But porn really ensnares us in this cycle of OK, you make me feel valid, you make me feel manly. But then when it's all over, you feel like I'm not a man, I'm just a boy trapped in a man's body. And so to find freedom, obviously, we got, it's not enough to say, hey, look, this is why it's bad. This is why it's damaging. We got to get to deeper roots to find healing. We often talk about the feminine genius, but I would say that the masculine genius could be summed up as strength on behalf of others. But uh with pornography, it's, it's the opposite. It's I'm taking your strength to validate my poor self esteem or something like that. I think we all kind of realize that look to a woman to validate my masculinity is not the way to go. And I think at our core we know that that's fake. But Jason, like you're saying, like you said before, Matt too, there's something about it that's so ensnaring. Like we get back to it even if it is fake and maybe that's, maybe that's just so important to begin with. Like, pornography. Thank you. Perfect. Right. Like, it'll make you feel alive, you know, really important to say those things. If it didn't, it wouldn't be this multibillion dollar industry and people wouldn't find it so difficult to quit. But then you go a little deeper than that, say, well, what's pornography promising? And, and what is it actually resulting in? You know, because I don't know if I'm parroting Jason here, I'm sure you said something to this effect, but it promises us freedom and we find slavery, promises us entertainment, we become bored, it promises us adult, adult entertainment. We become increasingly juvenile. So it does give us something in the short term, but it leaves us emasculated, bored and um unfulfilled. And anybody who's looked at pornography I think is aware of that. Like, that's just a common experience that men have when they and I'm sure women when they engage in pornography during the anticipation and act, it, it might feel incredibly rewarding in a but then as soon as it's done, you're like, oh my gosh, what the hell am I doing with this beautiful gift of sexuality? And there's a reason we feel like that. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I think so much of it is also sought after for some sense of adventure, some sense of like, you know, the rest of your life kind of, you were saying before Jason might feel incredibly boring, you might feel so unvalidated. Um, but pornography feels exciting, it feels like some sort of an adventure. So, I mean, I guess the challenge there for people is like, go find real adventures. They're out there. I mean, people for thousands of years have found that sort of adventure. It doesn't need to be found. And that's Jason. Did you have some say in that? Yeah. Sometimes when I talk to people about trying to break free, one of the first things I encourage them to do it. Ok. Look at, when are you messing up? Where are you messing up? What's the circumstances there? Are you bored? Are you lonely? Are you angry? Are you stressed out? Are you tired and perfect? Yeah. Yeah. When I'm bored or, you know, it's when I'm all stressed out, I go to that for some relief. But it's in a sense a bit like alcoholism. They say that the emotional age at which you get hooked on alcohol and I would say drugs, porn, whatever is the emotional age at which you remain until you learn how to cope with moments of desolation with healthy consolations instead of false cons. And so I'm bored, I'm lonely. I'm angry. I'm stressed. I'm tired. Boom. I'm on my laptop, I'm into porn. Did it solve the problem temporarily? Yeah. I mean, just for the moment I was on that I could forget about all this other stuff I felt wanted. I wasn't lonely, certainly wasn't bored for that time being. And, you know, and, and it seems like, ok, it solves the problem then as soon as it's over, all the problems are there and they're deeper. And so it's like, ok, I'm bored, I'm only, I'm angry, I'm stressed, I'm tired. Maybe you need to take a nap. Maybe you need to go for a jog. Maybe you need to connect with your family. Maybe you need to get a job, maybe to get off video games, maybe you need to go, go for a hike, go, go bench press, like go sweat, like go do something, get some healthy dopamine, flooding through your system instead of always thinking like, ok, sitting on my couch all day on flipping through Instagram reels. Why do you think you're bored out of your mind? Why do you think you're lonely? Because the only things that would actually remedy this thing is getting off the screen, engaging in reality and doing something noble. And so obviously, it takes a little bit more effort to do that. But that's the only way that you become a man when you're able to say, yeah, I am bored. I am lonely. I'm not, I'm really lonely right now. What do I gotta do about that? Well, maybe I should start up a young adult group at my church and get to meet 30 people. Maybe that would work better than the porn website. Jason. I'm curious, what effect does pornography have in addition to what you already said? What effect does pornography have on a macro level on our culture? Uh, I mean, it's, it's impossible. I mean, how much time we got about four hours you could dive into this but just this isn't Matt's podcast. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I mean, you just think of the poor kids that have been exposed to that stuff. I think of two girls in particular. One girl told me, she said she's been looking at porn every single day for the past five years because she said that's when I found my dad's porn collection and he doesn't know that I know he looks and he doesn't know that I look, but every day since I found his addiction, it has become my own. Now. Imagine an adolescent girl for five years absorbing that violent degrading imagery. How do you transition from that into trusting a man with your body into what healthy sexuality is supposed to look like and what, what your body is supposed to look like, what the bedroom is supposed to look like? How do you heal and transition that when your own family doesn't know about that? Then I know of other people who basically had the opposite reaction found their dad's porn collection and said, look iiii I used to, to look up to my dad and now, now I can't even look at him anymore like I thought he was a better man than that. And my dad is lusting after girls who are two years older than I am. Why my mom's sleeping in the next room then erases internet history. Kisses my mom and goes off to work and thinks we don't know. She said it makes me sick. How much, how much I resent that guy. And so you imagine this stuff now compounding exponentially over the hundreds of millions of young people getting exposed to this stuff. Like, no wonder relationships are imploding after three months. No wonder kids just want to run to some dating app to com modify each other when it comes to dating relationships and none of it is ultimately satisfying us. And so, yeah, it, it's hard to, it's impossible to overestimate the harm that this is doing to young people, old people alike because I mean, I, I've met men who've told me they've been addicted to porn for 40 50 years. I get emails from the wives on a weekly basis of like, yeah, I'm trying to work with them but it's been 20 years and he, I caught him with it again. It's like, wow, like, how do you build a marriage in the absence of trust. I mean, the answer is you don't. It's heartbreaking. Jason. I, I recall you talking about a British researcher, maybe an anthropologist who studied all these different cultures over time and noticed that any culture that persisted in sexual immorality for, like, more than two generations eventually crumpled or something like that. Do you recall? Yeah, I believe his name is JD Unwin Un. Win for someone who wants to look that up. But, yeah, I mean, he studied ancient Greece and Rome and all these seemingly cultures that would never collapse. But once they diverted the sexual energy away from its natural end, which is marriage and the family, they just imploded. And you see like, ok, well, how are we here in America since the 19 sixties? Wow. Things are going, getting pretty messy real fast and that's why I think the family is so much under attack. Not because like, it's just a target of attack. It's, it's under attack because it is the weapon. I mean, you think of like the top gun movie, you know where Tom Cruise? Just that came out Maverick last summer or whatever the whole point of the movie was to attack. One thing and what was the one thing? It was the weapon, it was the weapon of the enemy. And so it became the object of all the bombs and missiles at the end of the movie. And so in the same respect, the family is the cell of resistance to oppression. GK Chesterton said, and, and that's a very, that's a very weapon that's needed to build up a civilization of love. And that's why it's under such tremendous attack. And so we've got to realize the greatest weapon we have our little holy families. That's why there's so much under attack. That's the solution to this cultural mess. And the only thing that's gonna get us out of the disaster that porn and the sexual revolution is driving us into. I think often what we do is we see the extremities of perversion and then point at it and seek to remedy it. But I was just reading this today from Acts chapter two verse 40 where Saint Peter says in his preaching immediately after Pentecost, save yourselves from this wicked generation, we live in a wicked generation. And if we're going to save ourselves from it, we need to acknowledge that the generation in which we live is actually wicked. We also have to take uh the words, you know, don't be polluted by the world or keep yourselves unpolluted by the world. Don't let there be a hint of impurity among you. And I think for too long Christians seeking to cozy up with the world, seeking to prove to the world that it's cool and tolerant has just given way too much ground. I was on an airplane flying back from France the other day and a couple of ladies were in front of me watching that movie, Wedding Crashes. I think Owen Wilson is one of the actors and I haven't seen the movie, but I glanced over a few times and I realized it might be funny. I don't know, I haven't watched it but it's deeply wicked and perverse. And I think as Christians in this kind of day and age, it's just, it's not enough to kind of cut off the flour. Like it's kind of the porn is a problem. We really have to be serious about not ingesting the same entertainment that the world is ingesting. And instead we've got to be ingesting that which is true, good, beautiful. And that's, that's tough. That's tough. I think a lot of people don't want to do that. We, we really, we want to just receive from the world and from the entertainment it produces on Netflix, peacock, et cetera, whatever we can. But especially for those who are in the midst of this struggle that I think all Christians, especially those who are struggling with sexual purity, which is gonna be so vigilant that is challenging. But I think there's so much freedom there if you actually do about what you're saying and we could talk about this forever guys. Um especially responding to this question of like, what's wrong with pornography. I wanna tie that question up there. Um But do you have any resources that you would recommend if someone's hearing this for the first time? And they want to know more about why pornography is damaging, why it's wrong. Yeah. Well, first I wanna pitch over to Matt because I know he's got a book he did in terms of the scientific research on it. And then I can talk about the one that we did together. Yeah. I wrote a book called the porn Myth which is a non-religious response to pro pornography arguments. I thought just like someone can make a case against abortion without appealing to Christian morality or scripture. Even though those things, I think obviously the strongest side, then someone can do that with pornography as well. So this book, the porn myth, there's no quoting of scripture, no referencing to Christ or the teachings of a particular church. It's just, here's the findings like I mentioned earlier, neuros psychology, sociology. So even if people watching right now, they're not religious and they're not interested in religious arguments. Well, they don't need to worry. This book isn't based on that. Um And so that book is on audible paperback and whatever. So that I, I was pretty happy with that book. I thought, I thought it was a, I tried to, I responded to about 27 arguments that people often, you know, like maybe animate porns or maybe masturbation is ok without pornography. All those sort of things that we maybe say to ourselves that we hear from society. Yeah. And, and that, and I teamed up a couple of years ago because so many guys and girls would come up and say, hey, look, I've been trying to break food from porn. I know it's wrong. I get the arguments but I'm good for like a two week and then it's back at it and I'm good for a month and I'm back at it, I'm good for a day and it's back at it. Like, how do you actually find lasting freedom? And so he and I met and I teamed up and created this little book called Forged. And essentially what it is is a 33 day game plan to find freedom where you're really getting to the roots of the issue that we're not just tackling it from a, you know, a neurological perspective or just from a spiritual perspective, just, just pray more Hail Marys and it'll go away. Obviously, prayer is an essential component. I believe the spiritual element is there. But also there's physiology we're dealing with there, psychology, sometimes emotional wounds and trauma. And so we really try to tackle the porn issue from a fully human perspective of emotionally, physically, psychologically, spiritually covering all these bases. And then with every day, it's like a 33 day challenge, you get emailed to you a free video from a different person. And so some are doctors and psychologists, some are more spiritual, you know, leaders in the church and this and that. So every day you're getting it from a different angle. So it's not the same talk and head. And that little short inspirational video is corresponding with that day's content to really get to the roots of the issue and help people that and it's obviously not a money back guarantee, 33 days and your porn is gone for the rest of your life. No, but it's 33 weapons in a sense that you can use in this daily battle because it's not like you, you sign some chastity commitment card and like, oh, now I'm good to go. I'm like this is something you're gonna fight for your whole life. And if you don't have the strategy in the battle, I think you've pretty much already lost before the battle began. So it gives those strategies of how not to lose your peace when you fall, how to start over, how to have accountability, all the different components because Matt and I felt we were hodge podging. People would meet him like, hey, try this filter and use this thing and call that counselor and felt like we were just patching things together. So we thought maybe let's just create one resource that's got it all. And uh and that's why he created the book for. And the idea is that you don't do it alone, you need to do it with another guy. Uh We have a similar one for the women called an uncompromising purity. Uh It's let lust is not just a guy problem that Kelsey Sco wrote. But this is the one specifically designed for guys to do in community where there just one guy, father, son, men's youth group, whatever do that persevere in 33 days. And I think you'll have the strategies you need to win because honestly, defeat is not an option here. I mean, being some 48 or 35 year old porn addicted husband or father, that's not on anybody's radar as the goal. And so this is just a battle, not only that you can win, but that you can't afford to lose. Also, I point out real real quick a ministry specifically for women would be Magdala Ministries dot org started by a friend of mine, Rachel Klei Magdala Ministries don't bog if they're women watching who are struggling with pornography and wanna find like a safe group of other women and, and, and if a woman is struggling because her spouse or partner is looking at porn, there's another one called Bloom for Catholic women. Uh Even if you're not Catholic, you find a lot of helpful stuff there because the women going through this, if their partners are looking at are suffering really a sexual betrayal, trauma, that's often gaslight. I'm just like, oh, you're just a prude or you're getting too worked up about this whole thing. There's a lot worse husbands out and all of her emotions and feelings get completely invalidated. Um And so she needs support through this whole thing as well. Not only the guy so bloom for Catholic women is a helpful one too. So I think that this is so needed. Especially Matt, I saw your interview with Dennis Prager and I think there's a lot of people out there who, you know, by all other measures are really intelligent, but they don't really understand what's going on with pornography, how damaging it is on our culture. So in the time we have left, I want to switch gears over to that second person that I mentioned, people who they know that pornography is wrong, they know that it's damaging. But Jason, like you said, they struggle to break free. And so let's go deeper into that content. If one of them came up to you right now and said, hey, how do I finally break free? What quick advice would you give them, Jason? Well, one is, does anybody else know about this except for me? Because if I'm the first person you're telling, uh obviously you haven't done the most important thing because in order to really strike at the wound uh of pornography, we've gotta, we've gotta address the pride issue of just like nobody can know that I'm not the guy who they think that I am. And so as long as you want to wear that little cloak, uh you're not gonna see a lot of victory. And so you need to have accountability, somebody that you can talk to someone that's a little further along on the road in terms of these battles instead of like, I look yesterday, hey, I did too see any good websites. Like, no, we need somebody who's gonna call us on and sometimes counselor is necessary finding whether it's a sex addiction therapist and really kind of getting down to the roots. There's an, an evangelical therapist named Jay Stringer who's got some really good stuff online about really getting to the core. And, and I like his approach. We just did a podcast with him where he talks about that the the desires, the things that you're looking for online and these unwanted sexual behaviors are often a road map towards your healing. And he, he did a study more close to 4000 people of what their internet searches had to say about them. And they were able to kind of create these templates that if you're looking at this type of porn, odds are you had a really authoritarian father and you have a relationship towards women that's more fantasizing about this because this piece is kind of lacking in your life. And if we can remedy that really get down to those issues, then you're dealing with the roots of the weed instead of forever, like Matt said, just clipping at the leaves of it. And so therapy is often a very underestimated tool and the importance of breaking free because this, this has been going on for years and I've tried this filter and I've tried that thing. Maybe it's time to get down to the root structure beneath it to help find the healing. So good love Jay Stringer. He's actually the next episode in this series on healing, sexual Brokenness. Oh, awesome. Now, what would you say if someone came up to you in addition to what Jason said and said, hey, I can't break for you. How do I finally get rid of this stuff? Yeah. Well, I, I guess I'd want to define what is meant by break free because what is freedom? It's not like this thing that we like this milestone that we pass one day after having read a book or having watched this video and then you have some kind of phenomenological reaction where you feel freedom is now something you're living in. I think I found it helpful to think for freedom is one day rather than a finish line. And so like, what kind of man do I want to be? What kind of things should I be doing? Should I not be doing in order to be the kind of man that I, those are really good questions that I'm asking. You know, when I, if I do, if and when I do fall to rely on God's Mercy, I think incredibly important great book called I Believe in Love. He's got this great line. He says, I'm not telling you, you believe too little or too much rather in your own wretchedness. He says we are far more wretched than we can ever imagine. He says, what I'm telling you is you don't believe enough in the love of God. And so I think whenever we are become face to face with their own wretchedness and Brokenness and selfishness and lust, that's a horrific thing to look at. And it all, it should always be looked at in light of the savior's merciful gates. Chris loves us. He doesn't give up on us even when we want to give up on ourselves. I think honestly having a more gentle approach to ourselves is actually more effective. Like not just that it makes us feel better than being a hard ass to ourselves, although sometimes that can help, but it can be kind of just, it's actually counter productive to call yourself like a worthless sack of crap. He again, it's actually a lot more healthy to be like, what, what happened there? Like, why did I do that? What was happening? What was I looking for? You know, uh What, what um what, what kind of negative emotions was I maybe running from and having that more curious approach. Uh I, I found the same thing that if you have more compassion on yourself instead of just beating yourself up out of shame. Uh You, you make a lot more progress because a lot of times the root of these things is wounds of shame and just identity of just like I am a failure. I am a hypocrite. I'm not a real man. And so I might as well just go back to all that stuff because that's not just what I do, it's who I am. Whereas if you start to see yourself in the light of God's love. Well, maybe I'm not a worthless piece of garbage. I remember one guy he, I read about that who was hooked on porn, going to prostitutes, strip clubs the whole nine yards. And he finally opens up to another Christian guy. And this other guy who was a real upstanding Christian man in the community said to him, well, what you really want to do is look at porn and masturbate, then go ahead and do it. And the guy was like, what like, yeah, if what you really want to do is look at porn, Masur bait, go ahead and do it. And the guy was, he just kind of pounded the desk. He said, no, that's not what I really want. And the guy looked at him and smiled and said, exactly. And for the other guy, it was this watershed moment of like, maybe I am not pure depravity. Maybe there's actually something good in me that craves for something better than the next hit on the next porn website. But it's just been buried under all this shame. And so if you have a little bit of mercy, you make a lot more progress, I think than just trying to white knuckle it to the finish line, let's say with that theme of shame because I think this is so important. I think shame is at the root of staying stuck. Matt. I've heard you talk a lot about this as well, Matt when you were in the midst of this and in the midst of your struggles with pornography, what did that shame feel like? And what did you do in order to break free from that or to deal with that shame? So you could find that freedom that you mentioned. It just feels hopeless. Feels like there's something fundamentally wrong with something fractured at the core of other people don't experience. I'm special in my group. Other people can be free of it. I can't. And that must mean that there is something just irreversibly wrong. And I think what's interesting is we sometimes make agreements with those things, you know, like, yeah, I am. That is true. That is a true fact about me and then we walk around not realizing we've made these agreements with the enemy and these agreements need to be broken. And so I don't know, I've had several really powerful experiences where I've said in the name of Jesus Christ, I renounce, I there is something fundamentally broken. I, I proclaim the truth that I am a beloved son of the father, you know, and, and to be kind of patient with myself during that time and say, ok, like this is completely unacceptable. Of course. And yet, like you were exposed to porn when you were eight, he didn't ask for that. You just stumbled across it. And then you had a, I'm talking to myself here. Then you had a best friend's mom who would buy you porn when you were 12 and 13, like go to BHS stores and buy them and like, if you like, yes, like you're a victim in this like this, this isn't ok. Like there's a reason you're struggling with this, that kind of, that kind of patience. And I know sometimes people are reluctant to talk like that because I like what Jason said a moment ago about being gentle with yourself because we fear that. Well, if I'm gentle, then somehow I'm giving myself a pass, but that's not what we're saying. So I think that really helped as well. And then, um as Jason said earlier, kind of bringing people into that. Some things can only be healed by the antiseptic light of truth. This is one of those things. So bringing it out in the open before people that you can trust. I think one of the things that does as well is you see in their response to you that you're worth being friends with. You know, I think that's one of the lies we believe in when we slip up into serious sin. Be it pornography or something else is like, if people really knew what I was like, they would not stick around but having a good friend that you trust and rely on or multiple people, this proves that like, no, it, people are gonna stick with. People do love you. They are here to help. They're not ashamed of, but they do believe. Yeah, so true. It's beyond healing when someone loves you. Not in spite of your Brokenness, but perhaps even because of it like they're there for you through the thick and thin. And I love that. And I think that that approach makes so much sense. And I, I love the different tone we're taking now to people who again, they understand that it's wrong and they want to break free but they're struggling to do. So I want to go deeper on something I don't think is talked about much in Jay Stringer's awesome book, Jason Unwanted. He says this. He says when you are involved in unwanted sexual behavior, one of the most maddening dimensions of your life becomes your fight with freedom. You long for liberation. But you also experience a strange comfort in the misery and pleasure. Your unwanted behavior provides. How can someone break that attachment and overcome that fear of letting go? Because maybe this thing has just been a crutch for them. Yeah. Well, I think one thing would be helpful is keep in mind what Matt just said a few moments ago about what freedom is, you know, is freedom a finish line or is freedom, the road that you're on and that, you know, once you get your will set in the right direction, yeah, there's gonna be setbacks, but don't think. Ok, well, I had a setback, I guess I'm not free, you know, I, I got wounded on the battlefield. I guess that means I trade my troops. No, there, there's no dishonor and getting wounded on the battlefield. The, the real dishonor is fleeing the battlefield, kind of waving the white flag and leaving the rest of people on the battlefield. And so I think with Jay Stringer, one of the things that's so helpful is that he really kind of really gets down to these core issues of having compassion on yourself. And it, yeah, it seems like a mystery of like, what the heck, when is this thing gonna be away? You know, how am I gonna be done with it? And then you get upset about the fact that you got upset about getting upset that you were upset. It's just this cycle of scrupulosity and shame and it's just like, ok, hit the time out. You know, you are not defined by your weakness. You know, you're more than that. And yeah, you, you had a little setback but you know what your heart's in the right place. You can have victory in this regard. And so don't give up like, let's just keep fighting at this thing because maybe this false notion of freedom is what's holding you back of thinking. Uh You know, maybe you grew up with a lot of scrupulosity, maybe with an overly authoritarian parent, you know, maybe in a home environment where you felt you needed to earn the love of the father. And as long as you kept screwing up, it's just like, man, until I get that straight. A's until I, until I win that state champion being in ship until I do all things, right? The father's never really gonna approve of me. And if we think that, hey, winning his love is impossible, sometimes we just sit down in our shame and be like you, you resign yourself. It's kind of like the movie, The Shawshank Redemption where there's that guy who lived basically most of his whole life and you know, in prison and then he finally was getting released from prison. What's the first thing he did? Like he tried to commit a crime in the prison so he could stay in prison longer because for him, it, it had become like a, a false companion. It's all that he ever knew was that. And so in the same respect, porn or unwanted sexual behavior becomes our false companion that goes with us through some really dark times of life. That time I was laid out for my job and I was lonely and I was struggling with this and that I could always go to that to find a little bit of comfort. It becomes almost a maternal sensuality that it's sexual, but there's a maternal element to it. And that's why porn keeps us as boys. Because if you think about it, when we're conceived in our mothers, we associate the woman's body with comfort and warmth and safety, then you're born into the world. And again, the woman's body, I'm crying. Well, your nurse and your mother holds you at her breast. And again, the body is a source of comfort and warmth and consolation and all these things. And then eventually the boy gets weaned and grows in enough strength to become a source of consolation for the woman. And that's the ascent towards manhood. And, but what porn does is it retards the entire process of masculine development. Where now in your moments of desolation, you're running back to the woman for consolation instead of being a source of consolation for her. And so once you, once we start understanding like, what am I really doing here and why, why is this having the effect that it is? Sometimes you can kind of stop beating yourself up and be like, ok, here's what's going on. I understand my shame a little bit. I understand my cravings. And so I don't need to identify with shame because they say, you know, guilt is that you did something wrong, but shame is that you are wrong because of what you did. It's like that quote I once heard from a priest that God knows your sins, but he calls you by your name. The devil knows your name, but he calls you by your sins. And so just be mindful if, if you're trying to identify yourself by your sins, that's not the voice of God. That's so beautiful. Jason, my goodness gracious. Well, but you know, to that point that you just made at the end there, you know, in revelation chapter 12, verse 10, Satan is called the accuser of our brethren who accused him day and night before the throne of God. Conversely, the Holy Spirit is called the uh parachute, which they tell me means defense a turn. I love that. Uh this idea that the father is on our side, you know, you're not the enemy, there is an enemy and it is not you. You are a beloved son so good. We've touched on this a couple of times, but I just want to put a picture in people's minds. So let's say you get porn out of your life. Let's say you, you learn to master, you know, your desires and you're not falling and on wanted sexual behavior. What does that leave you free to do? Like again, we've touched on this a little bit. But I'm curious, Matt, what would you say? Like, what sort of freedom waits people for people on the other side? Because I feel like sometimes all we hear about is like, just quit porn, quit porn, quit porn, but we're not really selling them. The vision on the other side. Yeah, that's a good point. I tell you the times I feel most masculine is when I am serving my wife, when I, but I feel like I am offering my strength to her and the kids and I'm not just trying to take it from them. There's something so right about that and it's so liberating. It's almost like I'm no longer driving in second gear. I'm in fifth gear and I'm cruising and I'm 11 as I should. So I don't know, that could be part of what you experience as you begin to break free of this stuff, begin to feel like you're living the way that you should now, maybe you weren't, you know, maybe you could quit porn and then just replace the addiction or still waste your life in a mind numbing time killing pursuits. But one thing I like to think about is and, and Jason forgive. You can tell me if I stole this from you, I steal much from you because you have, you say things so well. But when a person battles against pornography, he's actually growing as a, his, his virtues are sort of growing together. He's not just growing in sexual purity, but he's growing in like, like think about what's required of the man who makes the decision to stop looking at porn, not just chastity, it's moral courage, patience and humility. Like the battle itself can be a way that I kind of grow as a man. So that when I find a good degree of freedom from it, it's not like I'm as I was, except my chastity Health bar is up here. It's like, no, like I, I'm actually becoming a more to put Matthew Kelly, a better version of myself in every respect. I I once seen the stats for porn, biggest porn website in the States, how much porn was consumed in one particular year? And it was 4.5 billion hours that people spent streaming pornographic videos in one year. And you do the math on that. It's 500,000 years of human life wasted on one porn website in one single year. And so now now think of that, OK, what could human beings do with 500,000 additional years of human life for the good of humanity? I mean, you, you can't even conceive how much more good could come into the world and the time that was wasted doing that. But just to get really micro instead of macro like that. I remember talking to father Augustino Torres who was giving counsel to a woman on what should I look for in a potential husband? And he said, make sure you find someone who's fat and he said, faithful available in tea and in terms of the faithful, it's obviously not just I want cheating on other people but obviously the, the fidelity of your imagination, but the one I wanna hone on is available, he said a lot of times when guys get hooked on porn, they're just not available. Not in the sense that he's sitting in a basement looking at porn, but when you're having a conversation with him, he's not even all there. I remember talking to a guy and his girlfriend once and as I was talking to the guy, I was thinking like this guy's got to be hooked on porn like he's just like, he's just not here in the con, he's not fully there. And sure enough, within 10 minutes of conversation, he divulged how, how hooked he is. It just keeps you from being fully present as a man, not only to your partner and to God, but to civilization as a whole. Yeah. And I remember one of the lines, Jason, you would say a lot is like the peace and the joy that come from living this pure life. It's worth more than anything that the world has off. And I found that to be so true as well. Matt, I want to go back to your wife. I think your wife is basically a living saint. Most women, she's like most women, uh wouldn't respond to maybe their husband struggling in the ways that you did in your past, uh, in the way that she did. How did she respond and what can spouses listening right now who are going through this do for their spouse? Yeah. Well, I would say like if you're a fella and you're married, you realize that, you know, maybe to state the obvious, but your wife has every right to be angry, I think, uh, you know, I think a lot of wives fear that they're not allowed to show any negative emotion because if I do that, then that's gonna trigger you. And apparently it's all about you anyway. And so I've got to somehow react to this with a complete stoicism, but I think just kind of giving your spouse the freedom to react however they want to react. Um And I've heard Jason say before that rather than just telling your spouse that you might be engaged in these things, you're ashamed about. What if you went to them with a litany of things that you are doing and have been doing in order to be free out of love for them. That's just, that's also just kind of a more masculine approach. Like here's what I'm doing. I'm not just complaining because I fell again. Now, I'm letting you know that I've implemented this software. I'm going to an essay meeting maybe where I've, you know, I, I've, I no longer have a smartphone and these sorts of things and I want you to know that I'm doing this not primarily for you, primarily for my love of God. And next, because this God has commanded me love you. Well, yeah, it's, it's kind of like a Jaco approach. You know, that ex Navy seal guy, business entrepreneur of just extreme ownership. Like I'm not gonna pass the buck on this. I'm not gonna blame distress in my life. I'm not gonna blame you for not being as sexually available as I might have wanted you to be. I'm not, I'm not gonna sit the plane anywhere. I'm the one who clicked on that website. I'm the one who did this. I own it and I'm gonna get myself out of this. I think that is the hope that the wife needs to see because if it's anything other than that, I mean, it's crushing for a wife, uh, to have the husband pass the book and make excuses and say, well, I'm trying, it's like, could you be trying any more or are you just trying any? Could you not even try any less than you are? Yeah. It's such a good point, right? Like, it's so easy to, the easiest thing in the world is to criticize other people. The hardest thing in the world is to own their own stuff. And that's true in this situation. Yeah. And it, and it pays off because like when II I read one book by Jaco where he just talks about that extreme owner ownership principle and he just talks about him and some other troops when they made some faults on a mission, just totally owned it in front of the commanders and just said, look, it was my fault and I know my fault, my fault, my fault. And it's counterintuitive that you think by taking on the fault that the person would look down on you. But the opposite effect actually happens. It's like, ok, now I actually admire that person. I remember we let go of a company once that we were working with when things didn't go as planned, it just seemed like they were making kind of excuses. Whereas what I was looking for for them just like own it. Yep. Drop the ball. Could have done better. Here's what we're gonna do next time. We probably would have kept him. But the very fact that it was just always another reason I, I just never saw that ownership. We decided, hey, we might want to move in a different direction. So from a, an executive business perspective, bosses, look for that of like, wow, that guy stepped in it but he owns ok, I can see that guy moving forward in this business whereas you got this guy. Yeah, he stepped in it but it's everybody else's fault. Somebody shoved me into it. It's like, ok, that guy's not owning it. Let let's move on. And so same thing in a marriage, I think you might fear that if I really own this stuff, my wife is gonna see me as less of a man. I think the opposite is true. When you, when you own your junk, that's when she's gonna see you as most of a man. It takes a lot of humility to do that. I remember a priest telling me once that Augustin said this. He, he said that Augustin said this. I've never been able to find it, but he said that Augustin wrote that lust is the sin of the proud. Lust is the sin of the proud. And so naturally, the antidote to lust is not just chastity or purity but humility. And so I think it's anyone struggling right now, especially don't just develop the virtue of chassis, develop the virtue of humility because of course, that's the foundation of all the virtues, but it will directly counteract this struggle as well. Yeah. And, and it's not like the, the more pure I get, I suppose I'm stronger and stronger and stronger. I think the opposite is kind of true that the more you grow on purity, the more you just realize your weakness that it first I wanna walk with God, then you trip. It's like, ok, I'll crawl with God. Ok? That's not even working. I just need him to pick me up and just carry me. And so it's returning to this spirit like a child like spirituality, not childish in any respect, but a child like of an utter dependency on the father instead of just trying to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, which never works. Yeah, so true. Uh Before we end up the show, Jason, I had one question for you. I think for people who, who have adopted this life, so who have gotten porn out of their life? Who are living this virtue of purity? I think there's this faulty assumption often that if you live purity before marriage, you're guaranteed to have a great marriage. I know I kind of subconsciously fell into this myself. Why is that not the case? And what other virtues are necessary in order to build a great marriage? Yeah, I think we kind of need to avoid kind of a sexual prosperity gospel when it comes the marriage, uh like a health and wealth kind of thing. Like if you just stay faithful to God and you signed your commitment card, then hey, you did what mattered and you're gonna have a fruitful marriage. Ok. Well, that's, that's covering maybe the sexual piece of marriage. But guess what, 99% of your marriage is not on the bedroom. You know, it's not sexual, what's going on with that other 99 piece when I was interviewing uh Jay Stringer recently, he told me that when he's an evangelical and he was going through his seminary, they had to get 40 hours of psychotherapy before they were allowed to graduate from the seminary. 40 hours of psychotherapy. Like I think that should be part of every pre K A program for marriage preparation. Like, imagine what would happen at the divorce rates if we actually put couples through the ringer like that? Like, OK, is there some junk that you're dragging into your marriage? You're expecting marriage is gonna be some kind of car wash. Whether it be financial, emotional, mental, psychological. Like that's real. Get into the nitty gritty. I'd heard of one Protestant marriage prep program where they gauged how successful it was by how many couples they could get to call off their engagement and they would typically get about 50% of the couples to call off their wedding after going through the course. And that is massively successful. And you think, oh no, it's not. It's breaking up all these future marriages. No, it's not. It's preventing all these future divorces is what's going on there. And so I think what we've got to do is make sure we're not treating marriage prep like triage like something you're doing four months before you get married. Now, we got to be doing this in junior high and high school saving marriages before they even begin. Matt. Anything to add to that in the past. So I'm curious if you were to leave everyone with like one challenge that they can do after listening to this in order to break free, what would that challenge be? Yeah. So I agree with everything Jason said and yet to add to it, I would also point out that neither of us is saying that we have to be saints before we're married. And yeah, because I had this idea when I got married, I was like, I, I kind of get the theology of the body and I'm not sleeping around and you know, like I got this and I had no idea how selfish I was like, especially when kids came and demand how selfish you were either Matt, Nobody knew. Not Jason, not me, not my wife. But it was shocking to me. You know, and I've heard Jason say that like marriage often kind of brings to the surface like oil and water, all the imperfections and, but sometimes I'll say to people who are like, I don't know if I'm ready to get married. I'm like, dude, I've been 17 years married. I'm not ready either, but it's a beautiful thing to grow together. Uh grow in virtue, spouse. Uh One thing, what did you say? One thing, one challenge. Yeah. If you, if you want people to do one thing to break free from unwanted sexual behavior after listening to this, what's one thing that you would challenge to? I, well, I just to kind of circle back to what I said earlier. There's a million things you could say, right? But one thing is to stop justifying entertainment. That's evil. Stop it. Don't watch it. And that might mean smashing your computer. It might mean getting a, a dumb phone, they have these smart looking phones might just mean that living a more radical lifestyle looks different, those around you. So might want to get serious and that seriousness might wanna become visible in making these manly kind of decisions. Awesome. Thank you both. Uh Jason, how can people get the forged book and how can they find you both online? Yeah, if you just go to chast dot com, chastity dot com, they can click on the books and the forge book is available there. And I think if I could throw out one challenge, just just be in today. Don't worry about tomorrow, don't worry about it. I gotta be absent for the next eight years of my life or what about the past? What are the devils so obsessed with getting you either in the past or the future? Because only in the present moment is sanctity to be found. And so all you gotta worry about is today just between now and time to go to bed, just keep your focus there. Don't lose your peace and then I'll kick it over to Matt in terms of how people can get a hold of him. Yeah, I have a podcast called Pints with a Quus. It's on youtube. You could type that in and find it. We have long form discussions. Folks might find it helpful. So good. Thank you both for your time. Honored to, to have you on the show. Everything you said is so, so helpful. We'll throw all the links in the show notes and uh yeah, just honored by both of you have learned so much from you over the years. So keep up with the great work, so much good stuff packed into that interview. Two final thoughts or challenges. One, I'd invite you to actually listen again. If you can make the time. There's so much to digest a lot to learn from that interview. Next, it's a pick up Matt and Jason's book Forged. The subtitle is 33 Days toward Freedom. Just click on the link in the show notes to get that very affordable. And by the way, at this recording, the book is so popular that it's actually on back order. And so if you find that that's the case when you click that link, just set a reminder on your phone to check back in like 2 to 3 weeks. So you can pick up the book. So obviously, in this podcast series, we're talking a lot about sexual Brokenness and how to heal it so often though at the root of sexual compulsion or Brokenness is trauma. But before you can heal it, you have to understand it. And our free mini core trauma titled Why You Feel Broken consists of just five short videos by a trauma therapist with 17 years of experience that answers the questions. What is trauma, what impact does it have on your body? How does it affect your emotions. How does it affect your mind and how does it impact your relationships again? Once you understand what trauma is and how it's affecting you today, then you can begin to heal it and build the life that you long for. If you want to get that free. Course, it's really easy. Just go to restored ministry dot com. Restored ministry ministry, singular dot com slash broken restored ministry dot com slash broken. Sign up for free and then you can begin watching the mini course again. That's restored ministry dot com slash broken. Or just click on the link in the show notes that wraps up this episode. If you know someone who's struggling from their parents, divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. And in closing, always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in your own life. And keep in mind the words of CS Lewis who said you can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
