EDITOR'S NOTE: Because of the sensitive, sexual nature of this story, and to protect the privacy of family members, the names of the married couple in this report have been changed.
Parents are also advised to use discretion in determining whether children should read this feature, as well as the other related stories in this section that deal with the subject of pornography."It's just what men do."
"It enhances our sex life."
"It's not hurting anyone."
These are among the mantras chanted about pornography in America.
But there are others, more desperate, perhaps more honest.
"I'm drowning in debt and I lost my job."
"He sleeps on the couch and won't touch me."
"I want to die."
Those intoning the latter describe pornography as the surreptitious power that snatches away hobbies, savings, marriages, jobs and even the very sex life it promised to enhance.
When David, 50, and Jill, 52, both of Lancaster County, married 28 years ago, they frequently watched X-rated movies together. But their attraction to porn started much earlier.
From the age of 10, Jill read romance magazines with her mother. She also looked at pornographic magazines belonging to her father, whom she describes as a womanizer.
While Jill was learning to equate sexual performance with love and acceptance, David was discovering erotica's power to make him feel validated, successful.
His courtship with it, too, started at about age 10, when he was smitten by sexually suggestive female superheroes in classic comic books. By adolescence, he discovered "Playboy" and "Penthouse" magazines with his friends.
"We all knew what 'dirty books' were. We'd find them in the woods. Then I started seeking it out at stores," he said.
He became attentive to advertisements, Sports Illustrated magazine, catalogs — anything, "as long as there were women involved," he said.
"I thought that's just what men do. I thought, 'Geez, you gotta look at these magazines, or what, are you queer?,' " he said.
Pornography is pyschologically magnetic, said John D. Lehman, co-founder of CrossRoads Counseling Services, Leola. Many of the center's clients come for help with addiction to porn and its consequences.
"It creates a place of fantasy where you can't fail. That's why it has such a hold," he said.
The fantasy temporarily suspends the sense of inadequacy that many people have, he said.
David said his ego was bolstered by "that woman on that screen [who] says, 'I want you.' "
But the payoff comes at high price.
"Here's the danger in that mind-set: How does your partner measure up [to what you have viewed]?" Lehman said.
When they were ready to leave the house, David would often send Jill back to the bedroom to change into some other outfit he desired.
"He always wanted me to dress provocatively when we would go out anywhere," Jill said.
David explained, "I was always worried about having an affair. So I thought if I dressed her up, like a doll, I'd prevent that."
As David projected his ego-building fantasy world onto Jill, she measured her worth by his lustful attention.
"No matter what it takes, I will do [it] because I have a man who loves me," she told herself.
Eventually, their arrangement wasn't enough to fill either of their emotional voids.
Toxic chemistry"The more you get," Lehman explained, "the more you need."
"Sexual addicts develop tolerance and will need more and harder kinds of pornographic material," said Mary Anne Layden, a psychotherapist and director of education at the Center for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania, when she spoke to the U.S. Senate during hearings on "The Science Behind Pornography Addiction," in November, 2004.
"They have escalating compulsive sexual behavior becoming more out of control," she said.
Research shows that anyone can easily become addicted to pornography, not just those with addictive personalities.
"Addiction to pornography is addiction to what I dub erototoxins — mind-altering drugs produced by the viewer's own brain," Judith Reisman, president of The Institute for Media Education, told the Senate.
In a phone interview, Layden described a study in which cocaine addicts and nonaddicts were shown images of cocaine use. The addicts displayed an impressive brain response, while the others showed none.
When subjects without any addictions whatsoever were shown pornography, however, their brain responses were equal to, or greater than, the cocaine addicts who viewed drug use.
"Certain centers of our brain that are highly responsive light up when we are doing something that is extremely pleasurable and people can get addicted to the pleasure," she said.
And that danger is amplified by the natural way we learn.
Vision is one of the strongest teaching tools for the brain, Layden said. "Anything you interact with in a visual way is more potent to your ability to encode it," she said.
Furthermore, anything learned while aroused is easily retained and "orgasm is a highly reinforcing event," Layden said, adding that most people who use porn masturbate in the process.
Addiction to porn also differs from a drug or alcohol addiction because there can be no detox, Layden said.
Pornographic images trigger neurochemical memory pathways that are impossible to erase from the brain, Reisman told the Senate.
"The images are stored forever. You can't get the addictive substance out of your body ever. It can be called up in a nano-second," Layden said.
"Those images stay with a man like a Rolodex," David said.
High-cost bait-and-switchForty percent of porn addicts lose their spouses, 58 percent suffer severe financial losses, and as many as 40 percent will lose their jobs, Layden testified.
Even those who don't divorce become dissatisfied with their spouses' appearances and sexual behaviors, she said.
Once he started surfing the Net, David found easier access to his fix.
He's not alone. Twenty-five percent of all search-engine requests are for pornography, according to the Family Safe Media's Web site
http://familysafemedia.com/pornography_statistic.... (It should be noted that Family Safe Media sells Internet filtering devices.)
"I clicked on [a porn link], then another, then another. ...," David said.
That's also when he started viewing movies without his wife.
And stopped sleeping with her, too.
"I started getting desensitized to where I didn't want to have a relationship with my wife, to have a relationship with my kids," said David in remorse.
Porn use damages sexual performance, too.
"Viewers tend to have problems with premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction," Layden said. "... Pornography is raising their expectation and demand for types and amounts of sexual experiences at the same time it is reducing their ability to experience sex."
Lehman said he has counseled many men in their mid-30s who have been prescribed Viagra — a drug used to treat erectile dysfunction — as a result of their addiction to pornography.
Double exposureDavid told himself that because he didn't physically touch other women, he wasn't hurting anyone. "That's how I justified it," he said.
This widely held belief must be debunked, Lehman said. "To say it doesn't affect me, or my marriage is a lie."
"Most spouses are devastated," Lehman said.
"My husband was sleeping on the couch, not coming to bed," said Jill. David had also developed a short and frightening fuze.
"I said, 'God, what is wrong with my marriage?' " Jill recalled.
A week after this prayer, David's secret was exposed. And so was Jill's.
Jill logged on to the Internet to look up the Whitaker Center, which she planned to visit that day. David was grocery shopping.
She began to type, mistakenly misspelling "Wi ..." in the address bar, and the drop-down menu appeared, listing previously visited sites beginning with those letters.
First on the list was a porn site.
Shocked, Jill scrolled through the address-bar list and clicked on every link. One erotic site after another appeared.
With each page view, she took another heavy hit of rejection until David's car pulled into the driveway.
She ran outside to meet him at the car door.
"Are you into Internet pornography?!" she demanded.
David denied it.
"But I looked in his eyes, and I knew," she said.
"I kept saying, 'I thought I was your sexy girl?' " she said.
Jill was left to face her own sense of inadequacy, long masked by the lascivious lifestyle that now proved empty.
"I wanted to die. I had to go back on antidepressants. I went to a therapist," Jill said. "When it exposed [my husband], it exposed me. There was nothing that had any value."
Spouses of porn consumers struggle with depression, poor body image, and even eating disorders or other addictions to anesthetize their pain, said Layden.
"These wives can't function in the fake sexual world in which their husbands live," she said.
Way of escapeFor the 10 percent of adults admitting to sexual addiction, there is help — if they want it. But it won't come easily.
On the brink of suicide, Jill called New Life Ministries, based in Laguna Beach, Calif. She had turned to the counseling ministry during an unrelated crisis years earlier, after listening to its national radio program.
This time, a counselor advised her, "He has to want help. You have to give him an ultimatum."
The ultimatum was that David attend "Every Man's Battle," an intensive three-day workshop to help men regain sexual integrity, offered by New Life Ministries.
"I don't need this. I'm not hooked on this," David said.
Reluctantly, however, he agreed to participate, but later got cold feet. He called to cancel, saying he just didn't want to spend the money for the sessions.
" 'Pay for a divorce. See what that will cost you,' " David says he was told by the ministry, to provoke him to take the first step to freedom.
It worked. David went, but only to make nice with Jill.
His motives did a one-eighty in the initial two hours, though, when David identified heavily with the first speaker.
"When I left 'Every Man's Battle,' I knew I was in for a fight. They explained everything to me," he said.
A network of support and complete change of lifestyle were required.
"The accountability with this thing is huge. ... You can't do it alone," said David, who sought local counseling and joined a support group.
"I had to transform my mind," he said. "I had to stop listening to Howard Stern on the radio; I had to start blocking TV channels."
Even the Travel Channel.
He doesn't go online much anymore, but there's a filter on his computer for when he does.
As for the marriage, David said, "There's no human words to make this any better."
Healing comes over time through genuine intimacy, which starts with a vulnerable heart, he said. "You have to start praying with your wife."
"Intimacy doesn't come through Royer's Flowers or Victoria's Secret," said Jill.
Layden believes that as a result of continued scientific research and public awareness, "we will get to the point when we'll get clear on what pornography and the sex industry are doing to the society."
David, Jill and others like them say research will only continue to confirm what they have learned from experience: The best sexual-enhancement tool is authenticity.
For Jill, that meant facing her insecurities head-on. For David, it meant admitting adultery of the heart. Neither could conquer these alone.
"When you get hidden sin out, everything is in the open. You're exposed," Jill said. "You have nowhere to go then. When you finally say, 'I can't do it anymore,' you're calmer. You have more time for intimacy."
And it didn't mean settling for hum-drum sex. According to Jill, she and David are now having more fun than ever.
XXX stats•Estimated annual "adult entertainment" industry profits worldwide: $57 billion
•Paying subscribers to adult Web sites: 10 million
•Individuals viewing at least one adult Web site per week globally: 70 million
•One viewing session typically involves: 75 to 100 pages
•Pornography Web sites: 4.2 million
•Daily search-engine requests for pornography: 68 million (25 percent of all requests)
•Daily pornographic e-mails: 2.5 billion
•Monthly peer-to-peer downloads: 1.5 billion (35 percent of all downloads)
Sources: TopTen REVIEWS Inc., which lists more than three dozen sources, and a 2002 report by the National Academy of Sciences. The TopTen REVIEWS site, it should be noted, sells Internet software and carries the caveat: "... In reality, statistics are hard to ascertain and may be estimated by local and regional worldwide sources."
Where to find help•CrossRoads Counseling Center
14 Keystone Court, Leola
www.crossroadscs.org 556-4673
•Family Resource and Counseling Center
91 Newport Pike, Gap
www.fracc.net 442-9577
•Sex Addicts Anonymous
www.sexaa.org (800) 477-8191
•Every Man's Battle
www.everymansbattle.com (800) 639-4673
•Sexual Recovery Institute
www.sexualrecovery.com (310) 360-0130
Jeannette Scott is a Sunday News staff writer. Contact her at jscott@lnpnews.com or at 291-8689.
