Where it all started

First was exposed to intense pornographic material at a friends house during a sleepover. I hated it, but it made me very curious. I did not know that it was pornography as it was on YouTube (thank goodness times have changed). It was not for sometime that I realized that would I had seen was bad, although I knew it was, and once I found out thanks to my Boy Scouts online safety training, but at that point I didn’t feel like I could tell anyone. Flash forward a little over half a decade and the pandemic made what was definitely already a problem much worse. Anytime I would be in a relationship it would die down quite a bit, and depending on the relationship would stay gone completely, but in others it would rear its head again, including my last relationship where it definitely created distance between us. I want to go through this course and really get the tools on my tool belt so I can be done for good and help other men in my life to do the same, and so that I can respect not just my future partner(s) but also the humans who are tied up in that cruel system. I am lead by a chapter in the Bible, it is 1 Corinthians: 13 13 If I speak in the tongues[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. All though I love all of this chapter and for many different reasons, verse 11 speaks to me about this issue I wish so deeply to be triumphant over; this after all stemmed from my childhood and has followed me up to this point, but no more. Praise God, from whom all blessings flow, praise Him all creatures here below, praise Him above ye heavenly host, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! Amen! Amen! Amen!