Recovering Porn Addict: Porn Is No Match for Real Love
WASHINGTON – Real love is the "common denominator" among people who break free from pornography, says faith blogger and recovering porn addict Matt Aujero. Speaking for a summer Theology on Tap series Tuesday, Aujero recounted his own struggles with pornography as a college student and later as a husband. In those times, he said, the real love of God, his brothers in Christ and his wife rescued him.
Real love, Aujero told the crowd of young adults, is "something that porn can never ever measure up to" because real love sets higher expectations than settling for self-fulfillment. Porn, he explained, "prevents men and women from becoming the men and women they were meant to be for God, for their significant others and their loved ones."
3 photos(Photo: Christian Post/ Sonny Hong)Catholic Fried Rice blogger Matt Aujero talked about porn recovery Tuesday August 5, 2014 at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C. for the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington's Theology on Tap SeriesThe Catholic writer behind the blog CatholicFriedRice.com noted that porn breaks up one in four marriages and even may lead to erectile dysfunction. Most notably, Matt discovered that porn is a poor way to fill the void that has long existed in his own life.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
"I was spending my entire life chasing girls and never being fulfilled," he said. It was not until he finally took himself away from the distractions of relationships and seeking love online that he discovered only God's love can make him feel wholly loved.
Now a mentor, Aujero sees that same void in other porn addicted men. He described, "There's a lot of reasons why guys look at porn and there's boredom and there's stress, but there's something deeper there when I work with guys and there's this deeper love and guys, we want to bring our heart to someone, we want to bring it out to a woman and often, unfortunately, we bring our heart to the women on the internet."
He summed, "Only the perfect person – God – can fulfill that [void] and it wasn't until I got to bring my heart to God when things started turning around."
Aujero's journey away from porn has involved friends and family members who continually reflected God's love and challenged him to grow spiritually.
"Anthony (Aujero's accountability partner) was the first guy ever in my life to basically say the words, 'look man, I don't judge you but I care enough about you and I love you enough to not let you stay where you are,'" he recalled. His wife Mimi echoed those same words when he returned to his porn addiction during their first year of marriage.
He concluded his speech on the rooftop terrace of the Catholic Information Center by encouraging the men listening to let real love defeat porn in their lives so they could fully love the people around them.
Theology on Tap is a program of the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington's Office of Young Adult Ministry. Aujero's T.O.T. Talk and others reach out to young adults who want to explore the role of faith in their daily lives.
