Why Sex in Marriage Can Trigger Porn Cravings | How to Rewire Your Brain for Healthy, Connected Sex Using Principles of Neuroscience and Faith

Today, we’re tackling a topic that hits home for countless men—especially those working hard to stay free from porn:

Why does sex in marriage sometimes trigger porn cravings? Why can sex with your own wife feel almost like a relapse—or leave you wanting porn even more?

For many men, sex inside marriage becomes one of the biggest triggers for porn cravings—sometimes even more than loneliness, stress, or boredom. And that truth can feel incredibly confusing, shameful, and isolating—especially for men of faith who believe marital sex should be sacred, satisfying, and pure. I know I felt this same way for many years.

You might be wondering:

• Shouldn’t sex with my wife satisfy my sexual needs rather than spark urges for porn?

• Is something wrong with me if sex leaves me feeling disconnected, guilty, or craving porn again?

• Is it possible to rewire my brain so sex can become exciting, special, and bonding rather than a dangerous trigger that brings me feelings of fear, craving, and discouragement?

• Is it possible for me to be aroused by real-life sex in a good way, rather than unconsciously comparing it to my past experiences with porn?

  
  

These are questions I hear from men in my coaching practice every week. You’re not alone—and you’re not broken. There’s a real reason this happens, and there’s a real path to healing.

I remember for me, I dealt with this in my own marriage.

When I first got married, I was very confused. I remember I felt terrified that when I engaged in sexual intimacy with my wife, I craved porn after. And I also felt afraid at how similar the sexual arousal and the feelings that I had—during what should be a pure and a positive and a bonding experience—felt to porn use.

I felt similar shame, guilt, isolation, forbiddenness, and dirtiness to how I had felt during relapses in the past.

I didn't understand how to approach this. No one had ever told me that sex within marriage could feel this way. I understood that porn, or sex outside of marriage could cause these types of feelings, but I couldn't possibly feel this in marital sex because...God has sanctified this, right? This is special...God's going to make sure that I feel good when I have sex in wedlock, right?...

In this article, we’re going to dive deep into:

• Why sex can sometimes feel like a relapse—even inside marriage.

• The neuroscience and psychology behind how porn rewires your brain’s sexual pathways—and why that impacts marital intimacy.

• Why you are not condemned by God, nor is He simply going to take these feelings away from you.

• Practical, powerful tools you can use to transform sexual intimacy into a place of connection, freedom, and joy rather than shame and relapse.

  
  

We’ll explore:

• How porn trains your brain for performance rather than connection

• Why your brain might crave porn even after “real sex”

• How faith and neuroscience can work together to help you heal and build healthy, connected sex in marriage

  
  

If you’ve ever felt confused, guilty, or hopeless because sex in marriage doesn’t feel like the solution you thought it would—this article are for you.

You are not doomed to:

1. Always feel that sex with your spouse is triggering and loaded with negative emotion.

2. Find yourself in a mental battle with relapse following sexual intimacy.

3. To live a sexless life (or nearly sexless) in order to avoid these triggers.

   
   

You deserve better than this, and so does your spouse.

What you’ll discover today could completely change how you see your sexuality—and bring hope, healing, and freedom into your marriage and your life.

The Problem — Why Sex in Marriage Can Feel Like a Relapse

If you’re a man working to break free from porn addiction, there’s one painful reality that many men don’t expect—and almost nobody talks about:

Sometimes, sex with your wife can feel just like a relapse.

For many men I work with, sex inside marriage can become one of the biggest triggers for porn cravings.

If you want true porn addiction recovery and freedom, you need to learn why this happens and how to undo it.

Let’s break down what many men actually experience.

The Common Experience of Sex as a Trigger

I want you to know this upfront: You’re not broken or weird if sex feels like a trigger. Here’s how it often unfolds for men recovering from porn addiction:

Shame and Guilt During or After Sex

Even though you’re married, sex might still feel “dirty” or wrong. Deep down, your brain may carry sexual shame in marriage left over from years of hiding porn use.

You might feel:

• Foggy or disconnected afterward

• Guilty for wanting sex

• Spiritually conflicted, especially if you’re a Christian man taught that sex should be purely sacred

Post-Sex Cravings for Porn

You might find that sexual intimacy leaves you feeling:

• Restless

• Unfulfilled

• Vulnerable

Instead of quenching desire, sex triggers cravings for porn. Why does this happen? In part, it is because your brain associates sexual stimulation with:

• High novelty

• Intense visuals

• Isolation

This makes normal marital sex feel almost flat or underwhelming compared to the hyper-stimulating world of porn. And the isolation, shame, and forbiddenness actually plays into this, if you can believe it. These painful emotions contribute to the intensity of the experience, making it more stimulating. Then, when you engage in sex with your spouse, as special as it is, it can't compete with this intensity.

In order for it to feel satisfying, you must go through a long period of time where it feel underwhelming, until eventually your brain acclimates to real-world sexual experiences and you come to desire and enjoy the purpose and connection behind sex, rather than simply the mental and emotional arousal and intensity alone.

Over time, purpose replaces pleasure, while you are still able to enjoy the physical and sensual satisfaction that naturally come with sex.

Emotional Distance or Avoidance

You might feel emotionally distant from your wife after sex—even though you love her deeply.

Sometimes, you may want to avoid intimacy altogether because you fear:

• Feeling triggered

• Falling into shame

• Craving porn afterward

The Emotional Conflict for Christian Men

For Christian men, this struggle often carries an even deeper layer of confusion and spiritual pain. The Bible and church teachings often speak of sex in marriage as sacred—a gift designed to bond husband and wife.

You might think: 

“If sex in marriage is holy, why does it feel shameful or dirty?”

Or: 

“Why do I want porn even more after being with my wife? Shouldn’t marital sex heal this struggle?”

This disconnect creates profound spiritual guilt and fear:

“Is there something wrong with me spiritually?”

“Did I do something wrong to deserve this? Am I dishonoring God or my marriage?”

"Perhaps I am being punished due to the years of porn use."

These spiritual wounds can intensify the secrecy, self-condemnation, and emotional pain that keep men trapped in the cycle of porn addiction.

The Psychological Distress Behind “Sex Feels Like Relapse”

Here’s a crucial truth: your brain wires sexual desire through the pathways you’ve used most often.

If porn was your primary sexual outlet for years, your brain learned to connect sexual arousal with secrecy, speed, and visual novelty. As a result, even healthy marital sex can trigger the same neural circuits.

The experience might include:

• Brain fog after sex

• A hollow, disconnected feeling

• An immediate spike in porn cravings

This is why so many men say:

“I feel like I relapsed… even though I just had sex with my wife.”

It’s not because marital sex is wrong. It’s because your brain has learned an unhealthy sexual script that confuses pleasure with secrecy, shame, and novelty.

Pleasure, in and of itself is not evil or dangerous. Instead, it is our relationship to pleasure that causes us pain:

• We fear it

• We judge it

• We indulge in it

Each of these reactions poison our relationship to physical and sexual pleasure. They fuel the addiction cycle, keeping us stuck.

You’re Not Alone — and You’re Not Hopeless

If this is your story, please hear me:

• You’re not alone.

• You’re not broken.

• You can heal.

  
  

There’s a reason why sex in marriage sometimes triggers porn cravings—and there’s a clear path to change.

In the next part of this article, we’re going to dig into what’s really happening in your brain and body. We’ll talk about:

• How porn rewires the brain to crave novelty and secrecy

• Why your brain sometimes mistakes healthy sex for relapse

• The powerful intersection of neuroscience and faith that can help you rewire your sexual desires toward true connection

What’s Really Happening — Neuroscience and Psychology

So why does sex with your wife sometimes feel like a porn relapse rather than the healing connection you long for?

To answer that, we have to go beneath the surface—into the neuroscience of porn addiction and the psychology of sexual intimacy.

Understanding this is crucial. You’re not failing because you’re weak or defective. You’re fighting brain pathways that have been wired over years of porn use.

How Porn Warps the Brain’s Sexual Template

Let’s start with the reality that porn rewires the brain. It physically changes how your brain responds to sexual cues, intimacy, and arousal.

Here’s how:

1. Sex as Performance, Not Connection

When you’ve used porn for years, your brain associates sex with:

• Spectacle

• Intensity

• A performance to be rated or judged

This creates anxiety during real sex because:

• You’re focused on “doing it right”

• You worry whether your wife is satisfied

• You’re stuck in your head, rather than being present

This can feel very confusing and discouraging for your wife. While sex can naturally be more more physically-focused for a man, this is not the case for most women. For the average woman, sex is far more an emotional matter.

That said, it should be equally emotional for a man as well, it just often takes more conscious practice for him to get in touch with this.

So your wife wants to connect on an emotional level, meanwhile your brain is focused on performance. She can't feel you. She can't connect with you. And this is frustrating and confusing for her.

Some women adapt by accepting this is just how men are, and they twist their feminine core to become more masculine about sex; becoming more focused on the physical objective of sex.

And this is unfortunate, because I believe men and women are meant to teach each other new ways of thinking and feeling. In modern western culture, sex, in many ways, has become physically objectifying, and this toxic and broken way of viewing it does not render itself well to relational and romantic happiness.

This shift from connection to performance is one of the biggest reasons sex feels emotionally empty after porn. This shift from a whole experience to a broken one leaves you craving more, because you never got what you were ultimately after: a fulfilling connection in tandem with the sexual pleasure.

2. Pleasure Without Personhood

One of porn’s most damaging effects is that it erases personhood. In porn, people become bodies instead of individuals. There’s no eye contact, emotional exchange, or mutual respect.

The brain learns: 

“Sex is about using someone for pleasure, not connecting with them.”

When you then engage in marital sex, your brain struggles to stay connected emotionally.

You might feel:

• Detached

• Like you’re observing, or being observed

• More focused on visuals than your wife’s presence

This is why many men describe dissociation during sex—like they’re not fully there. And you may do this without even realizing it. You may think you're there, but only part of you is, and that's the part that's indulging and trying to get you that next hit of pleasure in an attempt to soothe you and distract you from the brokenness you feel inside.

This is a major reason why healthy sex feels unfulfilling or triggers porn cravings.

3. Unrealistic Expectations

Porn teaches a script that simply doesn’t exist in real life.

• Endless arousal

• Instant, passionate desire

• Exaggerated anatomy and performance

• Zero awkwardness, emotion, or aftercare

This primes your brain for unrealistic sexual expectations:

• “My wife should always want sex.”

• “Sex should always be intense, spontaneous, and perfect.”

• “I should never have awkward moments during intimacy.”

When real-life intimacy is vulnerable, messy, or emotionally layered, your brain registers disappointment.

This sense of letdown can trigger frustration, and drive you back toward porn seeking an “easier” high. It can make you feel like sex in marriage is lacking, rather than understanding it is meant to be messy, imperfect, and complex.

Sometimes sex feels unfulfilling. Sometimes it doesn't always peak your pleasure. And sometimes your partner feels insecure or uncertain. When that happens, it is your role to reassure her and help her feel safe. And when you feel insecure or uncertain, it is your job to witness and hold space for your painful feelings and to be appropriately open and vulnerable with your partner, standing strong in your masculine core, attuned to your emotions and hers.

4. Sex as a Need vs. a Gift

Another core distortion is the belief that:

“Sex is a NEED. If I don’t get it, I’ll go crazy.”

Porn fuels this narrative. It trains you to view sex as a fix for boredom, stress, or loneliness.

It breeds entitlement: 

“I deserve sex whenever I want.”

Healthy intimacy, on the other hand, sees sex as:

• A mutual gift

• An act of service and connection

• A sacred space to see and be seen

When men approach sex as a need or entitlement, it kills true intimacy. And it sets you up for frustration, resentment, and further porn cravings if your needs aren’t met exactly as expected.

The Neuroscience Behind Porn and Marital Sex

Now let’s get into the fascinating science behind why marital sex can feel like a relapse.

1. Dopamine and Novelty

Porn floods your brain with extreme novelty. Every click is new faces, new scenes, new fantasies.

This drives huge dopamine spikes, which heighten pleasure pathways and wire arousal to novelty and shock value.

Over time, your brain craves faster pacing, higher intensity, and constant variety.

In contrast, marital sex can feel predictable, less visually stimulating, and emotionally vulnerable.

This creates a chemical letdown that feels like boredom, triggers cravings for porn’s artificial highs, and makes normal sex feel insufficient.

2. Conditioning and Triggers

When you used porn repeatedly, you trained your brain for:

• Secrecy

• Isolation

• Solo gratification

• Quick fixes

So even though marital sex is meant to be loving, mutual, and safe it can activate those same neural pathways.

Your brain floods with sexual arousal signals. The same pathways tied to secrecy and shame light up. You can even feel nervous, fearful, and guilty. You can feel that what you're doing with your wife is bad or should be hidden.

After sex, you may feel:

• Brain fog

• Shame or guilt

• A strange compulsion to “finish the job” with porn or masturbation

3. Emotional Imprinting

Many men’s earliest sexual experiences involved feelings of being dirty, hiding, forbiddenness, guilt or fear of being caught.

This created emotional imprinting. Sexual excitement feels intertwined with shame.

Even healthy marital sex triggers subconscious memories or echoes of painful emotion. You might not even be aware it’s happening.

That’s why:

• You feel disconnected after sex

• You crave porn to self-soothe

• You experience shame even when you did nothing wrong

4. The Shame Loop

This potentially creates a vicious cycle:

1. You have sex → triggers old pathways

2. You feel shame and confusion afterward

3. You isolate emotionally

4. You crave porn to cope with the shame

5. Porn relapse reinforces those same neural pathways

This is known as the shame loop—one of the most powerful forces driving porn addiction.

Spiritual Layers for Christian Men

If you’re a man of faith, there’s an even deeper layer.

You’ve been taught: “Sex in marriage is holy and pure.” But your brain and body still react with guilt, shame, and emotional distance.

You feel:

“I must be spiritually broken if sex feels this way.”

“Maybe I’m not right with God.”

This spiritual conflict intensifies the shame loop. It makes it even harder to open up to your wife—or to seek help.

But hear this clearly: You’re not spiritually broken. God is not here to tear you down for your choices. Your brain and body simply need healing, and that requires learning and implementing the right emotional and neurological tools, and God can be a powerful catalyst for this process, when you're not busy believing He is the voice berating and criticizing you. That's not Him.

Why This Matters

Understanding all this changes the game.

• You’re not failing because you’re weak.

• You’re battling a brain trained by years of porn addiction.

• Marital sex can feel like a relapse because the same neural circuits are firing.

• You can rewire those circuits.

• God knows this process inside and out, and He feels compassion for you and a desire for your progression.

  
  

There’s hope. There’s healing. And there’s a path to experiencing sex as: 

✅ Connection 

✅ Joy 

✅ Spiritual unity 

✅ Emotional safety

In the next part of this article, we’ll explore practical tools to start rewiring your brain so sex can become all this and more for you—rather than a trigger for porn cravings.

The Path to Healing — Rebuilding Sexuality

All the neural pathways wired by porn can be rewired toward healthy sexuality in marriage.

It takes time, intention, and often guidance—but I’ve seen it happen with the men I coach across the world. This is not just theory—it’s neuroscience and real-life transformation.

Let’s talk about how you can start rewiring your brain for healthy, connected sex and escape the cycle of porn cravings triggered by sex in marriage.

Changing the Meaning of Sex

The first step toward healing is changing how you see sex.

Porn and modern western culture has implicitly and explicitly taught you that sex is:

• A performance to judge

• A transaction to meet your needs

• A place to escape from emotions

To experience true porn addiction recovery, you have to reshape your sexual template so sex becomes:

✅ Connection rather than isolation

✅ Presence rather than performance

✅ Honoring rather than using

✅ Purpose and service rather than just pleasure

✅ A sacred space for vulnerability, joy, and mutual care

1. From Isolation → Connection

Pre-Intimacy Emotional Check-In

Why It Matters:

• Create safety and emotional presence.

• Interrupt autopilot "sex scripts"

Practice:

Before sexual intimacy, pause and ask each other:

• “How are you feeling emotionally right now?”

• “Is there anything on your mind that might make it hard to connect tonight?”

Even 2 minutes of this check-in softens tension and helps shift sex from task to shared experience.

Before you do this, be sure that you ground yourself, breathe, and become fully present. You're not here to fix feelings, nor to unload your dirty laundry. You're simply here with openness, allowing each other to be seen.

Painful and joyful emotions are both welcome during sex. Painful emotions are not inherently "bad" nor "negative". They become "bad" when we resist them and believe they shouldn't be there.

If you instead act as a witness for and welcome all emotions, and allow yourself and your wife to feel them, then they can be a trailhead for self-understanding and intimate, vulnerable connection.

They can actually bring us closer together, but only if we are willing to hold space for them. And, as a man, you bear a responsibility to show up as a masculine leader to provide safety and stability. While your wife is capable of providing these things herself, she will appreciate you doing so as the man in the relationship.

Practice Eye Contact

Why it matters:

• Eye contact triggers bonding (oxytocin)

• Retrains your brain to connect rather than dissociate

Practice:

• During foreplay or intercourse, look into each other’s eyes for 5-10 seconds at a time.

• Try syncing your breath while maintaining eye contact.

Start small. This may feel awkward at first, especially if porn has trained you to avoid genuine connection. That's okay. Embrace the awkward. It will feel better down the road as you practice.

Post-Sex Debrief

Why it matters:

• Reinforces connection and security

• Helps process any shame triggers

Practice:

• After sex, stay close and ask:

  • “What did you love about tonight?”

  • “Was there anything that felt disconnected or uncomfortable?”

This helps transform sex into a conversation—not a silent transaction.

2. From Performance → Presence

Porn conditions you to believe:

• Sex must look perfect

• You must perform flawlessly

• Anything awkward = failure

This fuels performance anxiety during sex, which destroys real intimacy.

Instead, practice being present. Presence is the antidote to performance. And it’s how you rewire arousal away from spectacle and into connection.

Affirm Your Partner Instead of Yourself

Why it matters:

• Performance mindset = worrying how you’re doing.

• Presence = focusing on connection.

Practice:

• During sex, practice saying things like:

  “You feel amazing.”

  “I love how you touch me.”

  “Your smile turns me on.”

Shifting focus from your performance to your partner’s presence builds mutual connection.

And if it feels awkward or arousing just hearing these phrases, and if there's a sense of fear or needing to control that feeling, I want you to notice that. Notice how a part of you is afraid that sexual arousal is negative or dangerous. Instead, I challenge you to open up space for it to be there, and just allow yourself to become aware of that part of you.

Your sexual desire is not bad. It simply is. It is a powerful and strong force. It's good for it to be there.

Sensate Focus

Why it matters:

• Sensate Focus (from sex therapy) retrains your brain to experience touch without pressure to perform.

• 
  

Practice:

Set aside time with your wife. Agree that there is no goal of intercourse or orgasm.

Spend 10-15 minutes simply exploring:

• Touching each other lightly

• Describing sensations out loud

• Experimenting with different types of touch (firm, gentle, tickling)

If sexual arousal happens, notice it but don’t pursue it.

This exercise removes the “performance script” and makes sex playful and present.

This is easier said than done when you've had so many years instantly gratifying that desire. Consider that it may be possible (and good) to simply be with sexual arousal and not need to gratify it. Again, this may be hard, but just practice getting better at it over time.

3. From Using to Honoring

Porn teaches you to see partners as objects—bodies for pleasure. Healthy sex is about honor, mutuality, and seeing your wife as a whole person.

Here are some practical ways to shift this mindset.

Meditate on Your Relationship as a Whole

Spend just 3-5 minutes before you engage with your wife contemplating and focusing on things you've accomplished , persevered through, or enjoyable experiences you've had together. Write about them briefly or simply see them in your mind's eye.

You can ask God to assist you in focusing on things that will help you feel closer to your wife and show up lovingly for her.

This can help you override the automatic objectifying thoughts and perception that porn has trained your mind into. These thoughts and perception do not make you bad, they are simply results of years of conditioning. And they can be changed.

Bless Rather than Take

Why it matters:

• Using takes; honoring gives and blesses.

• Sex becomes an act of service rather than selfish pursuit.

Practice:

• Before sex, set this mental intention: “My goal is to bless her — emotionally, physically, and spiritually.”

This subtle inner shift changes your presence, tone, and touch.

As strange as it may sound, you can include God in this process, by praying that He teach you to bless her in these ways during sex. Again, this can be far outside our traditional understanding, but it can be a simple and powerful practice.

4. From Entitlement → Mutual Gift

Porn culture teaches:

“I deserve sex whenever I want.”

This mindset destroys intimacy and breeds resentment.

Healthy marital sex embraces sex as a gift both partners offer each other freely.

Let go of “needing” sex as your right. Instead, cherish sex as:

• A shared experience

• A chance to connect and serve

• A beautiful part of your marriage—not the only part

This shift is crucial for Christian porn addiction recovery as well. It aligns with the belief that sex is sacred—a place of love, unity, and self-giving.

Check Your Motive Before Initiating

Why it matters:

• Entitlement seeks to get.

• Mutual gift seeks to give and share.

Practice:

• Before initiating sex, silently ask yourself:

“Am I seeking closeness and connection—or just release and validation?”

If it’s purely about release, pause. Find a way to connect emotionally first. Don't utilize sex as an escape. Instead, break the cycle by shifting your perspective and intention first, and then engaging. This can assist in your recovery, rather than harming it.

Ask Your Wife About Her Needs

Why it matters:

• Entitlement centers on your desires.

• Mutual gift honors hers.

Practice:

• Ask questions like:

  • “What helps you feel most safe and desired?”

  • “What’s your favorite way to connect physically?”

  • “Are there times when you’d rather just hold each other?”

Her insights teach you how to make intimacy a shared gift. Sometimes this may not feel as thrilling or enticing as trying to instantly gratify your own needs. You may feel impatient. But over time, you can shift these mental habits from self-centered to others-centered.

This does not mean you are not allowed to have desires and preferences, or to feel strong drive to be sexually satisfied. It simply means you are practicing putting her desires and needs up front, so she can feel safe and cared for, and so you can feel more connected and in love.

You love people only to the extent that you invest in and serve them. Your wife is no exception.

Takeaway Practices and Reflections

If there’s one thing I want you to remember from everything we’ve shared today, it’s this:

Sex in marriage doesn’t have to be a trigger for porn cravings.

You can retrain your brain. You can transform sex into a place of genuine, whole, mutual enjoyment and connection. And you can build a marriage that’s deeply intimate—physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

God Has Not Cursed You Forever

Understand that God did not curse you with this, nor is He simply going to take it away.

You need to go through the growth process to transform the way that you think. God cannot do this for you, because you are an agent unto yourself.

He will assist you in the process — even perform miracles in your life — but He cannot override your agency and choices. You are required to take the steps to change your brain. This requires the accumulation and utilization of knowledge and skills. This is how the universe that God designed works.

Let’s talk about some practical next steps to help you get there.

Reflection Questions to Rewire Your Mindset

One of the most powerful ways to heal from porn addiction and reshape your sexual template is through intentional self-reflection.

Consider journaling on these questions:

• What messages did I learn about sex from porn, media, or society? How have those messages shaped my expectations about sex?

• What messages did I learn about sex from my faith, family, or upbringing? Are there conflicting beliefs causing shame or confusion?

• What would it look like for sex to be sacred to me—not just in a rule-based way, but as a relational or spiritual experience? How would that change my desires?

• When I imagine sex as emotional, relational, and spiritual—not just physical—how does that shift what I long for in intimacy?

• What kind of man do I want to be sexually? Am I seeking connection or merely pleasure?

These questions help you expose and replace false beliefs that keep you trapped in cycles of sexual triggers in marriage.

Daily Practice Challenge

I hope the practices above are helpful. I want to give you something even easier to reference and put into practice over the next 30 days. Let’s keep this simple and actionable.

Try this practice for the next 30 days:

✅ Before sex:

• Take 2 minutes with your wife.

• Hold hands, breathe together, and share: “Here’s how I’m feeling right now.”

✅ During sex:

• Keep gentle eye contact at least once every few minutes.

• Slow down the pace.

• Focus on sensations rather than fantasy.

✅ After sex:

• Stay close for at least 10-15 minutes.

• Hold each other, talk, or share something positive about the experience.

This practice helps you:

• Stay emotionally present

• Rewire your brain’s pathways for connection rather than performance

• Reduce shame and porn cravings

Hope and a New Future

Through neuroscience, faith, and intentional practice, you can:

✅ Rewire your brain

✅ Experience healthy sexuality in marriage.

✅ Turn sexual intimacy into a sacred, joyful bond rather than a trigger for relapse.

Thanks for being here with me. If you’d like more support, resources, or coaching on your journey to porn addiction recovery, keep exploring the blog, subscribe to the podcast, or reach out to connect.

God bless.

Recommended Episodes: 

When Wives Become Sex Objects - Hope & Healing

My Wife Won't Have Sex With Me - What Do I Do?

Sexual Desire Isn't Sin

Get Help with Porn Addiction: 

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Full Transcription for Episode 102: Why Sex in Marriage Can Trigger Porn Cravings (Part 1) | How to Rewire Your Brain for Healthy, Connected Sex Using Principles of Neuroscience and Faith

Jake Kastleman (00:05.528)

Welcome to No More Desire, my friend. I'm Jake Castleman. Today we're tackling a topic that hits home for countless men.

Jake Kastleman (00:24.856)

Welcome to No More Desire, my friend. I'm Jake Castleman. Today, we're tackling a topic that hits home for countless men, especially those working hard to stay free from porn. Why does sex in marriage sometimes trigger porn cravings? Why can sex with your own wife feel almost like a relapse or leave you wanting porn even more? Because this is a topic that requires a lot of depth,

and one that many of my clients have asked for in varying forms, I've created a three-part series to address it. Today's episode is part one. For a full-length copy of all three parts, you can check out my blog article, Why Sex in Marriage Can Trigger Porn Cravings, at nomordesire.com. Before we get started, a reminder to follow this podcast and hit the notification button, so you can receive a notice

when each episode in this three-part series lands. And if you like this episode, be sure to give me a rating. And if you like this episode, be sure to give me a rating. It helps others in recovery find this show. With that, we'll dive in.

Jake Kastleman (02:11.992)

For many men, sex inside marriage becomes one of the biggest triggers for porn cravings, sometimes even more than loneliness, stress, or boredom. And that truth can feel incredibly confusing, it can feel shameful, it can feel isolating, especially for men of faith who believe marital sex should be sacred, satisfying, pure. I know this because I felt the same way for many, many years.

You might be wondering, shouldn't sex with my wife satisfy my sexual needs rather than spark urges for porn? Is something wrong with me if sex leaves me feeling disconnected, guilty, or craving porn again? Is it possible to rewire my brain so sex can become exciting, special, bonding, rather than a dangerous trigger that brings me feelings of fear, craving, and discouragement?

Is it possible for me to be aroused by real life sex in a good way rather than unconsciously comparing it to my past experiences with porn? These are questions I hear from men in my coaching practice each week. You're not alone and you're not broken. There's a real reason or reasons I should say that this is happening and there's a real path to healing. I remember for me, I dealt with this in my own marriage.

when I first got married a decade ago, I was very confused. I remember I felt terrified at the truth that when I engaged in sexual intimacy with my wife, I craved porn after. And I also felt afraid at how similar the sexual arousal and the feelings that I had during what should be a pure and a positive and a bonding experience

I felt shame, felt guilt, felt isolation, and I also felt the forbiddenness and the dirtiness and the, again, kind of the shame surrounding it. For me, I didn't understand how to approach that. No one had ever told me that sex within marriage could feel that way. I understood that porn, you know, or like maybe sex outside of marriage could cause feelings of...

Jake Kastleman (04:36.534)

You know, this is dirty. It's forbidden. It's sinful, right? That's the way that I thought of it back then. It's like, well, I can't possibly feel that because because God has sanctified this, right? God is this is special. And so God's going to make sure that I feel good when I have sex in wedlock, right? Through my spiritual beliefs and my moral beliefs that really gave me this perspective that honestly lacked a

Basis of psychology and an understanding of how our brains work how our bodies work and I'm in today in this three-part episode series I really I want to I want to give you Hope in this throughout this series. We're gonna dive deep into why The why okay why sex can sometimes feel like a relapse even inside marriage and Then the neuroscience and the psychology behind how porn rewires

your brain's sexual pathways and why that impacts marital intimacy. It's not that God is punishing you or causing you pain or looking down on sex or you're doing something wrong or immoral. We're gonna talk a lot more about that. It's that your brain has been wired this way. This is how the laws of life, the rules of psychology work, right? It's not that God is personally bringing you down. It's that this is how your brain works, okay?

And then lastly, in this three part series, part three, we're gonna talk about practical, powerful tools that you can use to transform sexual intimacy into a place of connection, a place of freedom, a place of joy, rather than a place of shame and relapse. So throughout this three part series, we're gonna explore how porn trains your brain for performance rather than connection, why your brain might crave porn even after real sex.

Right? And then how faith and neuroscience can work together to help you heal and build healthy, connected sex and marriage. If you've ever felt confused, you felt guilty, you felt hopeless because sex and marriage doesn't feel like the solution that you thought it would be, this episode is for you, my friend. So I want to emphasize that you're not doomed to always feel that sex with your spouse is triggering and loaded with negative emotion.

Jake Kastleman (07:00.834)

You're not doomed to find yourself in a mental battle with relapse following sexual intimacy all the time. I remember exactly what that was like. That does not have to be your life. I promise you this can change. And I'm going to teach you how in this three-part series. And then you're also not doomed to live a sexless life. That would be another option, one that some men choose. OK, a sexless life or nearly sexless.

always avoiding sex, the sexual anorexia, because of this experience of sex being triggering and making you feel like you are isolated, you're filled with shame, you're filled with guilt, you're filled with even things like brain fog or lack of motivation, lack of focus following sex. You're like, why does this feel so similar to how porn felt for me? It has so much to do with the wiring of your brain. We're going to dig into that.

So you don't have to live a sexless life or lack that in order to avoid these triggers. Okay, you wanna seek for balance in your life and tempering of those desires. That's part of being a man. But you do not need to be sexually anorexic in order to be okay in your life. Okay, you can feel that way, because you wanna run. Especially when you're trying to get sober, or maybe if you've even been sober for a few years and you're feeling this with your wife.

Like, gosh, I just can't engage sexually. I'm too messed up. I'm too broken. Again, I know what that feels like. So you deserve better than that, and so does your spouse. And what you'll discover today could completely change how you see your sexuality and bring you hope, bring you healing, and bring you freedom into both your marriage and your life. So I want to talk about the problem first off, why sex and marriage can feel like a relapse. If you're a man working to break free from porn addiction, there's one painful reality that can hit you.

that many men don't expect that I didn't expect when I got married, almost nobody talks about this. Nobody ever talked to me about it. Sometimes sex with your wife can feel just like a relapse. For so many men I work with, sex inside marriage becomes one of the biggest triggers for porn cravings, right? Just like I was saying before, you might find yourself asking, why does sex with my wife leave me feeling distant, empty, or ashamed? Why do I crave porn even more after we've been intimate?

Jake Kastleman (09:19.862)

Or shouldn't sex and marriage satisfy my sexual desires, not make me want to run back to porn? Again, we're going to answer all these questions. And these questions are not only normal, they're crucial to address if you want true porn addiction recovery and freedom. So let's break down what many men actually experience first off. There's a common experience of sex as a trigger. If you want to know this upfront, what I want you to understand is you're not broken or weird if sex feels like a trigger.

Here's how it often unfolds for men recovering from porn addiction. They feel shame and guilt during or after sex. So even though you're married, sex might feel, like I was saying before, dirty or wrong. Deep down your brain, it may carry sexual shame into marriage left over from years of hiding porn use. You might feel foggy or disconnected afterwards, guilty for wanting sex in general, spiritually conflicted, especially if you're a Christian man.

taught that sex should be purely sacred, right? Often sacred can also be coupled with secret or something I should hide, not talk about. That's not the true meaning of it. I think of sacred more as whole or holy, something that's powerful, it's beautiful, it's filled with this, with so much beauty and meaning, right? It's meaningful.

Then something you can experience is these post sex cravings for porn. might find that sexual intimacy leaves you feeling restless or unfulfilled, right, or vulnerable. Instead of quenching this desire like you think it would, sex triggers cravings for porn. Why does this happen? And part of it is because your brain associates sexual stimulation with what? If you've been using porn for 20 years,

Your brain associates sexual arousal and stimulation with high novelty, with intense visuals, with isolation, with all the other things that you experience after the fact. And so, again, to be frank, but not too crass here, when you ejaculate, your brain has associated years of experiences of painful emotion with that ejaculation. That is important to understand. That's wired into you.

Jake Kastleman (11:36.418)

That can change. This makes normal marital sex feel almost flat or underwhelming, by the way, compared to the hyper stimulating world of porn. This is another aspect of this. Okay, so not only can you experience the painful emotion and the shame or the guilt, right? But you also may feel like real world sex is kind of underwhelming. It's like, well, it's not as hyper stimulating as porn was.

The isolation, the shame, the forbiddenness, strangely enough, it actually plays into this. It's a bit of a different concept, but it's important to understand this. If you can believe it, those feelings play into the intensity of the experience. These painful emotions contribute to making it more stimulating overall. And there's a part of you, I would posit, the one that carries your sexuality, the sexual part of you that is also a part of you that...

helps you be present in life, helps you adventure in life, helps you take risks, helps you engage in the moment and the sensuality of experience. Not just sexuality, but all sensuality in general. making some generalities here, but this is a theory on how the mind works and something that I've found to be true thus far. That part of your mind that carries the sexuality is also specialized in multiple other areas. And this part of you.

Again, something that I've seen that's a potential is that this part of you loves to engage in experience as a whole. Stimulating, whether painful or joyful, just stimulate, just intense, just an experience that you can have. And that can be something that's meaningful, it can be something that's really positive and beautiful, or something that is painful and shameful and overwhelmingly intense from a negative standpoint, or would say a painful standpoint.

This part just wants to experience, right? And this is a very, I wanna say this is very powerful, good part of you. When utilized properly, right? And when utilized from a sexual standpoint, it can be very powerful and very positive. It can lead to a lot of good in your life. But if it's twisted and it's directed in ways that are not helpful, obviously you can see how much pain that causes for you and also for other people, such as your spouse.

Jake Kastleman (13:58.944)

So when you engage in sex with your spouse, as special as it is, it can't compete with this intensity for that part. So in order for it to feel satisfying, you must go through a long period of time where it feels frankly, underwhelming. It's a hard thing to grasp. It's a hard thing to accept. It's something to grieve that you've spent years engaging in something so intense.

and something so heavily based in physical pleasure, you are now needing to rewire your brain. That is difficult, it is sad, it does hurt. You should feel compassion for yourself in that, in that frankly you've traumatized yourself and you're needing to heal that trauma through new life experiences, including good experiences with sex, until eventually your brain acclimates to real world sexual experiences and you come to desire and enjoy the purpose.

and connection behind sex rather than simply the mental and emotional arousal and intensity alone. You're not wired for that as a human being from a spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, and a relational standpoint. You're wired for sex to be deeply meaningful and expansive in how it impacts you, not just as a source of physical pleasure. And that is all that porn offered you, is a broken experience. So over time, this purpose

and sex replaces pleasure, essentially. So I also want to talk about the emotional distance or avoidance you can experience after sex and marriage. It can be so similar to your experiences with porn. You might feel emotionally distant from your wife after sex, even though you love her deeply. Sometimes you may want to avoid intimacy altogether because you fear feeling triggered, falling into shame, craving porn afterward.

And the emotional conflict, especially for Christian men, there's this struggle that a lot of us often carry an even deeper layer of confusion and spiritual pain. Because the Bible and church teachings often speak of sex and marriage as sacred, again, a gift designed to bond husband and wife. So you might think, if sex and marriage is holy, why does it feel shameful or dirty? Or why do I want porn even more?

Jake Kastleman (16:19.762)

being with my wife, shouldn't marital sex heal this struggle? This disconnect creates profound spiritual guilt and fear. Is there something wrong with me spiritually? Did I do something wrong to deserve this? Am I dishonoring God or my marriage? Perhaps I'm being punished due to the years of porn use. And these spiritual wounds can intensify the secrecy, the self-condemnation, and emotional pain that keep men trapped in the cycle of porn addiction.

So here's a crucial truth, your brain wires sexual desire through the pathways you've used most often. The more that you move down that highway, you dig that trench in your brain to form those neural pathways, the deeper that trench goes. The more you walk down it, the more you travel down it, the deeper it goes, the easier it is to walk down. If porn was your primary sexual outlet for years, your brain learned to connect sexual arousal with secrecy, with speed, with visual novelty.

And as a result, even healthy marital sex can trigger these same neural circuits. So the experience might include brain fog after sex, a hollow disconnected feeling, an immediate spike in porn cravings. This is why so many men say, I feel like I just relapsed, even though I just had sex with my wife. It's not because marital sex is wrong. It's because your brain has learned an unhealthy sexual script that confuses pleasure.

with secrecy, shame and novelty. Pleasure in and of itself is not evil, nor dangerous. Instead, it is our relationship to pleasure that causes us pain. We fear pleasure, we judge pleasure, and we and another part of us seeks to indulge in pleasure. Each of these reactions can poison our relationship to physical and sexual pleasure. They fuel the addiction cycle, keeping us stuck.

So I want to tell you that you're not alone. You're not hopeless. If this is your story, please understand that you're not broken in a permanent sense. You can heal. There's a reason why sex and marriage sometimes triggers cravings. And there's a clear path to change. And the next part of this three-part podcast series, we're going to dig into what's really happening in your brain and body. We'll talk about.

Jake Kastleman (18:40.91)

how porn rewires the brain to crave novelty and secrecy and more depth. We're going to talk about why your brain sometimes mistakes healthy sex for relapse and the powerful intersection of neuroscience and faith that can help you rewire your sexual desires toward true connection. God bless and much love, my friend.

Full Transcription for Episode 103: Why Sex in Marriage Can Trigger Porn Cravings (Part 2)

Jake Kastleman (00:07.532)

Welcome to part two of why sex in marriage can trigger porn cravings. My name is Jake Castellamo with No More Desire. This is a three part series that addresses the neuroscience and psychology behind how real life sex in a committed loving relationship can trigger relapses with porn. We are taking a compassionate, science-based and faith-based approach to a complex problem that many of my clients and other men who struggle with porn addiction face.

In part one, we addressed why sex can sometimes psychologically feel like a porn relapse, even inside marriage. In part two, this episode, we'll address the neuroscience and psychology more specifically and in detail behind how porn rewires your brain's sexual pathways and why that impacts marital intimacy. And then in part three, I'll outline multiple practical, powerful tools that you can use

to transform sexual intimacy into a place of connection, of freedom and joy rather than fear, shame and detachment. Before we get started, a reminder to follow this podcast and hit the notification button so you can receive a notice when each episode in this three-part series lands. And if you like this episode, be sure to give me a rating. It helps others in the recovery field find this show.

It helps others in recovery find this show. With that, we'll dive in.

Jake Kastleman (01:51.288)

So why does sex with your wife sometimes feel like a porn relapse rather than the healing connection you long for? To answer that, we have to go beneath the surface, deep into the neuroscience of porn addiction and the psychology of sexual intimacy. Understanding this is crucial, my friend. You're not failing because you're weak or defective. You're fighting brain pathways that have been wired over years of porn use. So porn wraps the brain's, warps the brain's sexual template, excuse me.

So porn warps the brain's sexual template. I want to start with the reality that porn rewires your brain. It physically changes how your brain responds to sexual cues, intimacy and arousal. And here's how. I'm going to talk about some really crucial components of this. Four different crucial components. So number one is that sex, we come to understand sex as performance, not connection.

When you've used porn for years, your brain associates sex with a spectacle, intensity, a performance to be rated or judged. And this creates anxiety during real sex because you're focused on doing it right, quote unquote, right? Whatever right is, whatever you've learned in culture or from entertainment or movies or obviously from porn itself, but all of these things play into it.

and what you've been taught by other people. You worry whether your wife is satisfied, you're stuck in your own head rather than being present. And this can feel very confusing and discouraging for your wife. While sex can naturally be more physically focused for a man, it can more easily be that way. This is not the case for women. For most women at least. For the average woman, sex is a far more emotional matter. Most of us know this.

That said, I will say it should be equally emotionally for a man as well. In a lot of ways, it just often takes a lot more conscious practice and effort for him to get in touch with this, at least to be relatively within the same range of emotional connection and importance of sex rather than it just being to get a fix or to get physical pleasure or to be self-centered in that experience. It's very crucial that we change that and we can.

Jake Kastleman (04:08.738)

So your wife wants to connect on an emotional level, meanwhile your brain is focused on performance. And she can't feel you, right? In an emotional sense, she can't connect with you. And this is frustrating and confusing for her. But some women adapt by accepting this is just how men are. They twist their feminine core to become more masculine about sex or more straightforward, more objective, right?

more focused on the physical objective of sex. As men, we have these objectifying brains. We can have a mission, a goal, an objective, and we can pursue and be hyper-focused. Our linear minds are extremely powerful and important, but they can also be our greatest advice and to the bane of our existence, essentially, and of our partner, our wife's existence. This is unfortunate because I believe men and women

know, women actually adapting to this and accepting this. Men and women are meant to teach each other new ways of thinking and feeling. in modern Western culture, sex in many ways has become this physically objectifying experience or this practice that we believe that's normal. And this is, it's a toxic and broken way of viewing sex. does not render itself well to relational and romantic happiness.

So this shift from connection to performance is one of the biggest reasons sex feels emotionally empty after porn. I believe naturally in our innocence in younger years, before we were taught all this, sexual intimacy would be very naturally this connecting experience, this very positive, beautiful experience. But we're taught so many things that just twist our perspective on it. And this shift from a whole experience to a broken one.

Right? It's just fully focused on sexual pleasure. It leaves you craving more afterwards because you never got what you were ultimately after. A fulfilling connection in tandem with this natural sexual pleasure. So then the second thing I want to talk about is pleasure without personhood. Pleasure without personhood. What does that mean? So one of porn's most damaging effects is that it erases personhood. In porn, people become bodies instead of individuals.

Jake Kastleman (06:33.486)

There's no eye contact. There's no emotional exchange. There's no mutual respect. And you may be thinking of exceptions to that, but ultimately for you, I mean, not in what you're watching, but for you, there is no eye contact. There is no emotional exchange. There is no mutual respect. You're not engaged with another person. It's fully focused on your own self-centered pleasure. And that's not me condemning you for that. That's me calling reality to the situation. This is what it does to your brain. It's how it trains you to perceive sex.

and how it trains you to see it and feel it. It's all about me, my sexual pleasure. Very discouraging, very hard to change, but it can be changed with the right skills. You can rewire this desire, and even just becoming aware of it is an extremely powerful step. So the brain learns through this. Sex is about using someone for pleasure, not connecting with them. And when you then engage in marital sex, your brain struggles to stay connected emotionally.

So you might feel detached, you might feel like you're simply observing or being observed. Kind of that anxious feeling, that spotlight effect, right? Like you're being observed for your performance, right? Or more focused on visuals. You'll be more focused on visuals than your wife's presence. I you know exactly what this is like, because I know exactly what it's like. It's a very disconnected

place to be in. It's very sad. mean, when I look back on how sex was from years ago and how it felt, it was so detached. It was so empty. It was physically pleasurable. That was intense for me. But I didn't understand everything that I was missing from that experience and how much more fulfilling, peaceful, joyful it could feel.

that I could feel actually more connected, that I could heal these sexual parts of myself and become more more whole in this experience, that it could be a far more deep and expansive kind of experience. So this is why many men describe dissociation during sex, like they're not fully there. And you may do this without even realizing it. You may think that you're there, but only part of you ultimately is.

Jake Kastleman (08:52.108)

and all the other parts of you are kind of checked out or stuffed away or suppressed. You're not feeling everything that's meant to be felt in that experience. And there's this part essentially that's taken over that's just indulging in the experience and trying to get you that next hit of pleasure in an attempt to soothe you or distract you from other things you're going through in your life, right? Because you've developed this as a protective mechanism in your life.

protective strategy that porn and sex are these protectors in your life. Trying to keep you from feeling painful emotions and painful feelings and stress at work and stress in the home and detachment, disconnection in your relationships, whether that be with your spouse, your friends or your coworkers or your family. This is a major reason why healthy sex feels unfulfilling or triggers cravings.

Because we're not getting what we want, right? What we deeply, truly want, okay? It may be what we want from a physical pleasure standpoint, but that's so little of the game, right? So number three I want to talk about is unrealistic expectations that pornography gives us. Porn teaches us a script that simply doesn't exist in real life. It teaches us endless arousal, teaches us instant passionate desire, teaches us an exaggerated anatomy.

and performance, and it also teaches us zero awkwardness, emotion, or aftercare. And this primes your brain for unrealistic sexual expectations. One would be, my wife should always want sex, or sex should always be intense, spontaneous, and perfect, or I should never have awkward moments during intimacy.

When real life intimacy is vulnerable, messy, or emotionally layered, your brain registers disappointments. Like, what's going on? It shouldn't feel this way. This isn't how sex is. The sense of letdown can trigger frustration and drive you back toward porn, seeking an easier high. It can make you feel like sex and marriage is lacking, rather than understanding it's meant to be imperfect and complex and...

Jake Kastleman (11:19.69)

Sometimes sex feels unfulfilling. Sometimes it doesn't always pique your pleasure. Sometimes your partner feels insecure or uncertain. These are all parts of being human and part of the sexual experience when we're able to embrace it. But porn teaches us to not be able to embrace that. It teaches us an unnaturally high level of comfort and control surrounding sex. I control every aspect. There is no risk. There is no vulnerability.

There is no person I'm facing that I need to ultimately gain the trust of and trust in. When that happens, okay, in a healthy kind of relationship, in a healthy sexual relationship, if there is uncertainty or insecurity or if your wife is feeling insecure, uncertain, your role as a man is to reassure her and help her feel safe.

Right? And when you feel insecure or uncertain, because that's going to happen too, it is your job to witness and hold space for your painful feelings. This is part of having a masculine core. And to be appropriately open and vulnerable with your partner, with your wife, standing strong in your masculine core and attuned to your emotions and to hers.

Jake Kastleman (12:52.238)

The fourth thing that I want to talk about is that sex, porn can teach us to see sex as a need versus a gift. Another core distortion is the belief sex is a need. If I don't get it, I'll go crazy. Very easy to get into this as a man. Or you can get into this as a woman as well. It's just more common for men. Doesn't mean it doesn't happen for women. Porn fuels this narrative.

that sex is a need, it trains you to view sex as a fix for boredom, for stress, for loneliness. You may not even realize that you've done this in your life. It's very easy for this to get built in from a very young age, starting with masturbation, right? When you're 12 years old or 13 or whatever it might be, right? 11, et cetera. You engage in masturbation as a means of self-soothing, a means of escape, a means of feeling pleasure and trying to feel okay. Okay, so.

This then, unfortunately, can breed entitlement, right? Experience with porn and these sexual outlets as addictions and ways of relieving stress, boredom, or loneliness can breed entitlement. I deserve sex whenever I want. And healthy intimacy, on the other hand, sees sex as a mutual gift, an act of service and connection to each other, a sacred space to see.

and to be seen. When men approach sex as a need or entitlement, it kills true intimacy. We can't do that, right? Whether the... this is reflected in all relationships, in our sexual relationship with our spouse or in our emotional relationship with her, obviously, or in our spiritual relationship with God, right? And it sets you up for frustration, resentment, and further...

porn cravings if your needs aren't met exactly as you expect. Again, I speak from personal experience here. I know exactly what this feels like. It's where I was for much of my life. So the neuroscience behind porn and marital sex, let's dive into that now. I want to get into the nitty gritty of how the brain works when it comes to this. There's a fascinating science behind why marital sex can feel like a relapse. Number one is dopamine and novelty.

Jake Kastleman (15:18.818)

So porn floods your brain with extreme novelty. Every click is new faces, new scenes, new fantasies, and this drives huge dopamine spikes. All dopamine is that feeling of pleasure, but it's also in charge of feelings of purpose, motivation, focus, and connection with other human beings. So it gives you huge dopamine spikes, pure pleasure, which heighten pleasure pathways and wire arousal to novelty and shock value. Okay, and I wanna make it clear that

Dopamine plays a part in, again, I said purpose, motivation, meaning, focus, connection. But if you're using it in the context of porn, it's just, all pleasures just using up all your dopamine. You only have so much of it to give and you deplete it and damage your dopamine receptors. So these huge dopamine spikes, they're heightening pleasure pathways and wiring arousal to novelty and shock value. So over time, your brain craves

faster pacing, higher intensity, constant variety, and in contrast marital sex, of course, because it's a normal life thing, can feel predictable, less visually stimulating, and emotionally vulnerable. whereas porn is none of those things. So this creates a chemical letdown that feels like boredom.

Jake Kastleman (16:47.158)

So in contrast, right, you have marital sex, this contrast between marital sex and the experience that you had with porn for years. So this creates a chemical letdown, right, that feels like boredom or triggers cravings for porn's artificial highs so that we can actually get satisfied to the level that we're used to. It makes normal sex feel insufficient.

This can feel very discouraging. Again, I remember for me, there was this massive letdown. I was like, this should be incredible. This should be amazing. But again, real life cannot deliver what porn did. It can't. It's not possible. You cannot have access to hundreds or thousands of women with perfect bodies, with any experience that you want to have. Anything. Whatever you want it to be.

Real life can't offer that. So the second thing is conditioning and triggers. So when you used porn repeatedly, you trained your brain for secrecy, isolation, solo gratification, and quick fixes. So even though marital sex is meant to be loving, mutual, and safe, it can activate those same neural pathways that made you feel what? Secrecy, isolation, solo gratification, and quick fixes.

Your brain floods with sexual arousal signals. The same pathways tied to secrecy and shame light up. You can even feel nervous, fearful, and guilty the same way that you did with porn. And you can feel that what you're doing with your wife is bad or it should be hidden. After sex, then, you may feel, and I said this in the previous episode, you may feel brain fog. You may feel shame or guilt. And then you may feel a strange compulsion to finish the job with porn or with masturbation.

extremely common, you're not weird for feeling this, this does not make you odd, it also doesn't mean that you need to go down that path. Who do you want to be as a man? You want to be the man that just seeks for solo gratification and quick fixes? Or do you want to be the man that engages with his wife sexually from a loving, emotional, and and spiritual standpoint, right? You want to be that man? Or you want to be the man that engages in this as a crutch for the rest of his life?

Jake Kastleman (19:11.192)

This can be changed, but you do need to have compassion and understanding for yourself that this is brainwiring. And it takes time to shift. And there are certain skills and skills that you can build. And we're going to talk about those in part three of the series. So I want to talk about the next two things is emotional imprinting and the shame loop. let's talk first about emotional imprinting. Many men's earliest sexual experiences involve feelings of being dirty, hiding, forbiddeness, guilt, or fear.

being caught, right? So this created an emotional imprinting and sexual excitement feels intertwined with shame. That's what happened. So even healthy marital sex triggers subconscious memories and echoes of painful emotion. You might not even be aware it's happening. That's why you feel disconnected after sex. You crave porn to self-soothe. You experience shame even when you did nothing wrong. And then there's the shame loop.

That's the fourth thing that I'll talk about. This potentially creates a vicious cycle. You have sex. This triggers old pathways. You feel shame and confusion afterwards. You isolate emotionally. You crave porn to cope with the shame. And then porn relapse reinforces those same neural pathways. And you go around and around and around and around in the shame loop. It's one of the most powerful forces driving porn addiction.

So I want to talk about some other spiritual layers for Christian men. If you're a man of faith, you've probably been taught sex and marriage is holy, it's pure, but your brain and body still react with guilt, shame, and emotional resistance. So again, you may feel, must be spiritually broken if sex feels this way. Maybe I'm not right with God. And this spiritual conflict intensifies the shame loop. It brings in religious shame on top of all of it. So it makes it far worse.

Makes it even harder to open up to someone or to seek help. But I want you to hear this clearly. You're not spiritually broken. God is not here to tear you down for your choices. Your brain and body simply need healing. And that requires learning and implementing the right emotional and neurological tools. And God can be a powerful catalyst for this process. I believe he's here to help you. When you're

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not busy believing he is the voice that's berating and criticizing you. That's not his voice. Okay, sometimes God can speak from a place of authority and with directness. It's a very masculine kind of approach. He even uses the word judgment. But I don't believe that judgment equates to being judgmental. I don't think God ever comes from a judgmental space as the

the word goes right in our current culture. We can often equate those two things being judgmental and judging. I believe God comes forward from a very straightforward place in some cases and speaks with strength and straightforwardness to let us know the importance of something. But he's never going to sit there and berate you and criticize you. That's a part of your mind that does that. Don't mistake that for spirit, for light.

Why this all matters. Understanding all this can change the game for you. I want you to understand you're not failing because you're weak. You're battling a brain trained by years of addiction. And sex can feel like a relapse because the same neural circuits are firing, that fire during all those years of addiction. You can rewire those circuits. And God knows this process inside and out. And he feels compassion for you.

I believe, a desire for your progression. So there is hope, there is healing, there's a path to experiencing sex as connection, joy, spiritual unity, and emotional safety. And in the third and final part of the series, we'll explore practical tools to start rewiring your brain so sex can become all this and more for you rather than a trigger for porn grip, rather than a trigger for porn.

cravings. And with that, I'll say God bless and much love, my friend.

Full Transcription for Episode 104: Why Sex in Marriage Can Trigger Porn Cravings (Part 3)

Jake Kastleman (00:04.482)

Welcome to part three of Why Sex in Marriage.

Jake Kastleman (00:12.065)

Ahem.

Jake Kastleman (00:37.944)

Welcome to part three of why sex in marriage can trigger porn cravings. My name is Jake Castleman and you're listening to the No More Desire podcast. This is the final part of a three part series that addresses the neuroscience and psychology behind how real life sex in a committed, loving relationship can trigger relapses with porn. We're taking a compassionate, science-based and faith-based approach to a complex problem

that many of my clients and other men who struggle with porn addiction face. In part one, we addressed why sex can sometimes psychologically feel like a porn relapse, even inside marriage. In part two, we addressed the neuroscience and psychology behind how porn rewires your brain's sexual pathways and why that impacts marital intimacy. In part three, this episode, I'll outline multiple practical

powerful tools that you can use to transform sexual intimacy into a place of connection, freedom, and joy, rather than fear, shame, detachment, and potential relapse. Before we get started, a reminder to follow this podcast and hit the notification button so you can receive a notice each time a new episode lands. And if you like this episode, be sure to give me your rating. It helps others in recovery find this show. With that,

We'll dive in.

Jake Kastleman (02:24.174)

So here's what you need to understand my friend. All the neural pathways, all the neural pathways, all the neural pathways wired by porn can be rewired toward healthy sexuality in marriage and it takes time, it takes intention and often guidance. But I've seen it happen with the men that I coach across the world. This is not just a theory, it's neuroscience and it's real life transformation. So let's talk about how

you can start rewiring your brain for healthy, connected sex and escape the cycle of porn cravings triggered by sex in marriage, right? How do we change from this being a triggering experience to one that is actually healing and can drive recovery? So we want to change the meaning of sex. The first step towards healing is to change how you see sex. Porn in modern Western

has implicitly and explicitly taught you that sex is a performance to judge, a transaction to meet your needs, and a place to escape from emotions. To experience true recovery, you have to reshape your sexual template. We all have a sexual template based on our experiences, our beliefs, the things that we've been through throughout our lives.

that have actually trained our mind to see sex a certain way and much of this is unconscious so we need to bring the unconscious into the conscious and change it so you want this to become you want your sexual template to become connection rather than isolation you want it to be presence rather than performance you want it to be honoring the other person and yourself rather than using

the other person or using yourself. You want it to be purpose and service to each other rather than just pleasure. And you want it to be a sacred space for vulnerability, for joy, and for mutual care for one another. So the first thing I want to talk about is some practical exercises and things that you can do to move from this isolation that you learned through pornography addiction to connection in a sexual relationship. Pornography is all about

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So low gratification by myself, no eye contact with another person, no connection with another person. It's just me. And that can be extremely lonely, extremely isolating, and it's extremely broken as compared to what sex is supposed to be, what it can be for us physically, emotionally, spiritually. So one of the things that you can use is a pre-intimacy emotional check-in. This gets pretty practical.

So why this pre-intimacy emotional check-in matters is it creates safety, it creates emotional presence, and it interrupts the autopilot sex scripts that are going on in your head. So the practice is specifically, before sexual intimacy, pause and ask each other, how are you feeling emotionally right now? Is there anything on your mind that might make it hard to connect tonight?

And just get present with that. Let painful emotion be there. Let awkwardness be there. Let insecurities or hard things be there. This is not a stage on which to spill your guts and to make this kind of a place where you're expressing all of your insecurities as a man and you're unloading. I want to make it clear that this needs to be a genuine expression and an expression from a place of strength. Here's what I'm feeling right now.

Here's how I want to feel. Here's how I'm trying to change things. And yeah, that's what I'm going through. And just for each other to listen and open up a bit. So even two minutes of this check-in softens tension if we can be self-aware and aware of the other person's emotions. And it can help shift sex from a task to a shared experience. So before you do this,

Be sure that you ground yourself. Get strong in your core. Breathe. Become fully present. You're not here to fix feelings nor to unload your dirty laundry. You're simply here with openness, allowing each other to be seen.

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So again, you want to be aware of the part of you that can kind of dramatize this and latch on to painful emotion.

the part of you that can actually.

It can try to indulge in negative emotion and make yourself a victim. That's not where you want to go. I hope that makes sense. I don't mean that in a harsh way. It's just something to call attention to. That's not what you're going for here. You're going for authentic self-aware expression and to do the same for your spouse, to sit in that place of openness. So painful and joyful emotions, they're both welcome during sex.

This is going to be a really novel idea for us. But painful emotions are not inherently bad, nor negative. We associate those as the same thing. We say there are good emotions, like happiness and laughter and fun and connection. And then we say there are painful emotions, or sorry, negative emotions, like sadness and grief, fear, shame, anger.

I will tell you in the work that I've done for myself, the work that I've done for men across the world,

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These painful and joyful emotions are not inherently negative and positive, nor are they inherently bad nor good. Painful emotions carry a message for you. They're actually an opportunity to deepen understanding for yourself or deepen understanding for another person. They're a force for connection and a deepening of awareness, a growth, okay, and a bonding. They become bad when we resist them and we believe that they should not be there.

We try to chase them away, we try to escape them, we try to control them. If you instead act as a witness for and welcome all emotions and allow yourself and your wife to feel them, be present with them, then they can be a trailhead that you can walk down for self-understanding and intimate, vulnerable connection. They can actually bring you closer together, but only if you are willing to hold space for them. Let them be there. And as a man, you bear a responsibility, I will say.

We as men bear a responsibility to show up as a masculine leader to provide safety and stability. And while your wife is capable of providing these things herself in many ways, she will appreciate you doing this as the man in the relationship.

The next practice I want to talk about is to practice eye contact. Again, very basic. Why it matters, eye contact triggers bonding. It releases oxytocin, a bonding chemical in the brain. It retrains your brain to connect rather than to dissociate. Porn trained your brain to dissociate during sex and to use it as a coping mechanism. Eye contact is one of the things that you can use to associate, to be present, connect.

So the practice is to during foreplay or intercourse to just look into each other's eyes for five to 10 seconds at a time. And try, you can even try sinking your breath while maintaining eye contact. It's a pretty amazing thing. Start small. This may feel really awkward at first. That's fine. Especially if porn has trained you to avoid genuine connection. It's okay to feel that. It's a normal part of the experience and it can get better over time.

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You want to embrace the awkward. It will feel better down the road. The third thing that I want to tell you about a simple practice is post sex debrief. Why this matters is it reinforces connection and security and it helps process any shame triggers. So the practice is to after your sexual experience together, stay close and ask, what did you love about tonight?

Or was there anything that felt disconnected or uncomfortable for you? And again, this requires authentic expression of emotion and an openness to one another's feelings. To not see is why I harped on this truth that it is not negative and positive emotions, they're painful and joyful emotions. They're inherently comfortable or uncomfortable. It doesn't make them bad or good. If you're willing to accept that over time,

that requires practice, and we're all practicing. It's a lifelong pursuit to practice and practice and practice that. But the more you can move into that belief system and that acceptance, the better that human connection will be for you, ultimately. So this helps transform sex into a conversation, not a silent interaction, not a silent transaction, I should say, is more accurate.

So again, for me in my life, these are things that I'm practicing and that were extremely difficult for me for years and many things that I just didn't know. Like lot of what I'm telling you right now, I just wasn't aware of for a vast majority of my life until I started learning it from other experts in this field and other people who were able to teach me and then my own development and personal discovery.

along with God and those on the other side of the veil I believe have helped me out and inspiring me. number two, I want to talk about moving from performance to presence and some specific exercises for moving from performance to presence. Porn conditions you to believe sex must look perfect, that you must perform flawlessly, and anything awkward equals failure as a man.

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This fuels performance anxiety during sex, really destroys real intimacy. Real intimacy which is engaged with both painful and joyful emotion. Instead, you want to practice being present. Presence is the antidote ultimately to performance in a lot of ways. To just be aware of and be aware of the party that wants to perform and that feels like you've got to put on this show or you got to do...

do things just perfect or if you feel awkward at all it's a failure. Call awareness to that and just be present with that. And it's how you, this is how you rewire arousal away from spectacle and interconnection. It's one of the things that you can ultimately do. I will say that it is not easy though. Again, this is painful, but allowing the pain rather than resisting it is key. So.

One of these practices is you affirm your partner instead of yourself. It is a service oriented, of more selfless practice in sex. And why this matters is a performance mindset is worrying about how you're doing. Self-centered, self-focused, that's what porn trained you to do, to focus on yourself during sex. And you need to train your mind out of it. That takes time.

and patience with yourself, compassion towards yourself as you learn that. And then presence on the other hand is focusing on connection, right? So the practices during sex or throughout that experience, you practice saying things like, you feel amazing, I love how you touch me, your smile turns me on, right? And reading that, I feel some of the awkwardness in saying that.

I feel kind of silly or it feels kind of funny or it's like, you know, titillating, if you will, something of that effect. It's kind of like a, we've all got a boy inside every man. There's a boy, right? That would be that part of me expressing that. So you're shifting your focus from your performance to your partner's presence. And this builds mutual connection. And if it feels, again, if it feels awkward or arousing,

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just hearing these phrases and if there's a sense of fear or needing to control that feeling of arousal or the awkwardness, I want you to notice that. Notice how a part of you is afraid that sexual arousal is negative or dangerous, right? Instead, I challenge you to open up space for it to be there. Okay? The same thing as in this episode, when I say words like porn or like sex,

Right, or I talk about this, that may be triggering for you potentially. I want you to be deeply aware of that. Just give that your full attention. Welcome that feeling in. Let it be there. And notice that part of you that had these parts that have these really strong, fearful and controlling reactions towards that arousal. The arousal itself is not a thing that is so overwhelming. It's a powerful force.

But the fear and the desire to control or the desire to indulge, those are the things that are, when you combine all those together, that's what makes it such a strong force that can be very overwhelming unless you practice deep awareness of each of these parts of you. So your sexual desire is not bad, it simply is. It's a powerful and strong force and it's good for it to be there. Sensate focus, this is another practice.

So why this matters, sensate focus, which is from sex therapy specifically retrains your brain to experience touch without pressure to perform. So the practice is to set aside some time with your wife, agree that there is no goal for intercourse or orgasm and spend 10 to 15 minutes simply exploring. Touching each other lightly, describing sensations out loud, experimenting with different types of touch.

firm, gentle, tickling, right, et cetera. If sexual arousal happens, notice it, but don't pursue it. This exercise removes the performance script and makes sex playful and present. This is easier said than done, I will say, especially early on in recovery and when your brain has been so trained. You've been trained after so many years for instant gratification to just really just gratify that desire very quickly.

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So consider that it may be possible and good to simply be with sexual arousal and not need to gratify it. Again, this may be hard, but just practice it. Practice incrementally getting better at it over time.

Now I want to talk about going from using to honoring in sex. Porn teaches you to see partners as objects, bodies for pleasure. Healthy sex is about honor, mutuality, and seeing your wife as a whole person. We can easily go into an automatic mode of objectification and transaction. I'm seeking this for my own personal pleasure.

And we cannot even realize we're doing that. It's very easy to go into it a man, just generally and naturally, I would say. But especially when we've dealt with years of pornography or sexual addiction, that exacerbates that tenfold. So here are some practical ways to shift this mindset. One, and this is reminiscent of my free ebook. You should check out my free ebook if you want to know more about what I'm about to say on this or other techniques that you can use when it comes to addiction.

But this first thing you can do is to meditate on your relationship as a whole. So spend just three to five minutes before you engage with your wife, contemplating and focusing on things you've accomplished together, persevered through together or enjoyable experiences that you've had together. Write about them briefly or simply see them in your mind's eye.

Okay, you can ask God to assist you in focusing on things that will help you feel closer to your wife and show up lovingly for her. That can sound strange in some ways, like I would include God in sexual experiences. It feels so awkward for so many people, but it truly is something you can do. God designed your body, God designed sex. It's not like he doesn't know about it. Okay, I think he looks at it he thinks it's a beautiful thing. He doesn't feel awkward about it. That's human fabrication.

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So this can help you override the automatic objectifying thoughts and perception that porn has trained your mind into. These thoughts and perceptions do not make you bad. They are simply the result, results of years of conditioning and they can be changed over time. If you are patient with yourself. And then the next thing is to bless rather than take. So why this matters is using takes and honoring.

gives and blesses. So sex becomes an act of service rather than selfish pursuit. You want to practice before sex, set this mental intention. My goal here is to bless her emotionally, physically and spiritually. This subtle inner shift changes your presence, your tone and your touch. It sets your intention. And as strange as it may sound, again, you can include God in this process by praying that he teach you to bless her in these ways during sex.

That he teach you to make this a positive, loving, uplifting experience for her. To bring all the love that he has for her into this experience. Again, this can sound awkward and strange for people, but this is powerful. Try it for yourself. Feels weird at first and over time. I believe that you will see some really incredible results just from that practice. So, I'm probably gonna get flack for that. Some people are gonna be like, that's weird, Jake. And I get that.

Believe me, I really do get it. The next thing I want to talk about is moving from entitlement to mutual gift, the mutual gift of sex. So porn culture teaches I deserve sex whenever I want. And this mindset destroys intimacy and it breeds resentment. Healthy marital sex embraces the sexual experience as a gift for both partners that both partners offer each other freely.

that we're offering to each other of our own agency and it's a gift. It's a gift of an experience for one another. It truly is. Why would it not be? It's highly enjoyable. It's highly bonding. It's beautiful. It's an amazing experience. it should, if it can be seen as good, then it can be healthy and it can be something we don't need to indulge in so heavily and pursue with such lust, right?

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Instead it can be something we just enjoy and appreciate and it's uplifting and it's bonding. It's beautiful So letting go of needing sex as you're right you want to do that instead you want to cherish it as a shared experience a chance to connect a chance to serve and a beautiful part of your marriage not the only part right and not even a Prominent part there's so many parts of your marriage

Okay, and sex is, I would say it's an equal part to many other parts. There's differing ways of looking at that, but I think ultimately it's an important part, right? Your sexuality as a human being is, it's a part of you. And this is an important part of you, but it is not by any means the focal point of your marriage. If it is, then things are out of balance, I would say.

So one of the practices that you can use here is to check your motive before initiating. So this matters because entitlement seeks to get and mutual gift seeks to give and to share with each other. So you want to practice sex being a mutual gift. So the practice is before initiating sex, silently ask yourself, am I seeking closeness and connection or just release and validation?

If it's purely about release, I want you to pause, find a way to connect emotionally first with her and with yourself internally. Step out of that mindset and into one of connection. Set your intention to be here to share, to give, to serve, to love. Don't utilize sex as an escape. Instead, break the cycle by shifting your perspective and intention first and then engaging. This can assist you in recovery.

rather than harming you in your recovery. If you engage in sex from a self-centered space and using it as a means of escape, it will drive your addiction the same way relapsing with porn will.

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So the next thing you want to do is ask your wife about her needs. This is another practical thing that you can do. Why this matters is entitlement centers on your desires, whereas if you approach sex as a mutual gift, it honors her desires. So you want to practice asking questions like, what helps you feel most safe and desired? What's your favorite way to connect physically? Are there times when you'd rather just hold each other?

These can be hard questions for some of us. Her insights teach you how to, because sometimes we don't want the answers to those questions. We don't want to go through the discomfort of it. But her insights teach you how to make intimacy a shared gift. Sometimes this may not feel as thrilling or enticing as trying to instantly gratify your own needs. You may feel impatient. Be aware of that.

hold back from it, witness it. But over time, you can shift these mental habits from self-centered to others-centered or centered on her, right? Doesn't mean you don't have needs or you're not allowed to have preferences or to feel a strong drive to be sexually satisfied. This is normal, okay? The obsession with it though is not inherently normal nor needed. It does not need to be something that you go through forever. You can harness this passion inside of you. You can direct it.

You can learn how to tolerate and regulate discomfort, physically and emotionally, over time. When you've dealt with so many years of addiction and giving into this instant gratification, that becomes impossible. But you can build the ability for it over time. Be patient with yourself. It takes repetition. It takes practice. And it comes over time. This could be, depending on your addiction, weeks, months, or years to develop that.

This simply means that you are practicing putting her desires and needs upfront so she can feel safe and cared for, and so you can feel more connected and in love. You love people only to the extent that you invest in and serve them. Your wife is no exception to that. You need to invest in and serve her if you want to love her. That is where I believe love ultimately comes from in a selfless sense.

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I want to share some other takeaway practices and reflections. We've gone through multiple practical exercises and things you can use. If there's one thing I want you to remember from everything that we've shared today, it's that sex and marriage does not have to be a trigger for porn cravings. You can retrain your brain. You can transform sex into a place of genuine, whole, mutual enjoyment and connection. And you can build a marriage that's deeply intimate, physically, emotionally, spiritually. And then the other thing that I want you to understand is God has not cursed you forever. Understand that God did not

curse you with this nor is he simply going to take it away. This is extremely important you understand this. You need to go through the growth process to transform the way that you think, the way that you live, the choices that you make. God cannot and will not do this for you. He is not coming to save you from this addiction because you are an agent unto yourself. You have agency. You have choice. He will

I will say though, while he's not going to save you from it, and there's that word save, it's an interesting word because we use it in Christianity a lot, Christ saves you. What does that mean? Repentance is part of that saving process. It's a necessary part. We need to repent, in other words, change. And repentance requires confession. So first we need to confess, or other words, understand ourselves. We need to

Understand at the deepest level the things that we go through and why the what's in the wise behind what we go through and express those get in touch with them that is that is the confession process between you and God right and Then we need to repent in other words when we understand we confess and then we change our ways over time We make new choices then we change fundamentally and then we are saved through that process and I will tell you

That process is my perspective on this differs from a lot of people's. That process is only possible through the power of God. And as a Christian, I believe it's only through the power of Christ, right? That we are ultimately changed entirely, right? That Christ empowers that through his atonement. His atonement is this driving force for empowering change. And so we are saved by God. We are saved by Christ. We are saved by grace.

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Because we put in the effort to change and due to the power, the light, the love, the truth, and the force that He has gifted to us, our agency, He's gifted us the ability to change. Without Him gifting that to us, we cannot change. Therefore, we are saved by grace. We are saved by Christ. We are saved by God. Because they gift us the ability to repent and change.

We did not have that light, that truth, that love within us, all around us, that ability to call on it. We couldn't change. That ability has been gifted to us. We carry that ability inside of us. I believe that was given to us by God. There's a lot of ways of looking at that. I haven't expressed it perfectly, but that's some of what I believe. So you're required to take the steps to change your brain.

This requires the accumulation and utilization of knowledge, of skills. God wants you to change. God wants you to grow. This is how the universe that God designed works.

Okay, so let's talk about some practical next steps to help you get there. I've shared a lot of practices and I'm going to share some more. if you're not taking notes, I would take some here. Here are some reflection questions to rewire your mindset. There are five of them. So one of the most powerful ways to heal from porn addiction and reshape your sexual template is through intentional self-reflection. It's something I do consistently with my clients and I've, see miracles occur for people just through changing mindset and through

Deep self-awareness and reflection dredging up and bringing out the unconscious into the conscious. And when we understand it, we come in touch with the painful motion. It can rise, peak, and descend and move through us. And that's a little bit of a complex concept I've just touched on, but hopefully that makes sense. So you're wanting to bring the unconscious thoughts into the conscious so that you can understand them and they can move through you rather than them just being stuck down inside. It's important to self-reflect.

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This has been shared for who knows how long since the dawn of time. We're taught to self-reflect in all sorts of ways, including prayer, right? In an original sense, in many ways, that's how we were taught. depending on your beliefs there, meditation, right? In Eastern societies, that's really, that's been the case. then journaling, we're taught all these ways, therapy, we're taught all these ways of self-reflecting and expressing. So I want you to journal these five questions.

What messages did I learn about sex from porn, media, or society? How have those messages shaped my expectations about sex?

What messages did I learn about sex from my faith, family, or upbringing? Are there conflicting beliefs causing shame or confusion for me?

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What would it look like for sex to be sacred or I would say meaningful, right? Something that is whole or holy. Not just in a rule-based way, not sacred in a rule-based way, but as a relational or spiritual experience. How would that change my desires? When I imagine sex as emotional, relational and spiritual, not just physical, how does that shift what I long for in intimacy?

Okay, that's question number four. And then question number five is what kind of man do I want to be sexually? Am I seeking connection or merely pleasure? Again, you may mentally know the answers to these questions. That is not what is important. That is so unimportant. You having an emotional experience with these questions is what is important. That is what will change you. And I believe fundamentally that's because emotions have a spiritual component.

It is only through spiritual change, emotional change, that real healing can occur. Not just mental, it's not just in the brain, it has to occur in the body. You have to feel it as you write about these questions. There has to be a shift. So these questions can help you expose and replace false beliefs that keep you trapped in cycles of sexual triggers in marriage. And then again, just to add on at the end here, I hope these practices have been helpful.

I want to give you something even easier to reference and put into practice over the next 30 days. And if you're listening, you're listening right now, you can check out my, blog article on no more desire.com. It outlines all three of these episodes entirely in the blog article. It's an extremely long article, but it's, it's, contains a ton of information. So these daily practices, this daily practice challenge, it's a 30 day challenge is located at the end of that article. So I encourage you to go there, open that up.

There is a link to it in the description of this episode. So let's keep this simple and actionable. Try this practice for the next 30 days. Before sex, take two minutes with your wife. Okay, we talked about that. You want to hold hands, breathe together and share. Here's how I'm feeling right now. Okay, so it's going based off of those practices that I shared earlier. Just a very simple way to do it. Okay, before sex, two minutes to talk.

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Hold hands, breathe together, share. Here's how I'm feeling right now. During sex, keep gentle eye contact at least once every few minutes. Slow down the pace. Focus on sensations rather than fantasy. Be present with it. And part of you is going to get really paranoid about that, likely, and very afraid of that. It's going to try to control that and push you away from the feeling. And then another part of you is going to try to indulge in that and go crazy with it.

I want you to instead center in on and focus on the sensual experience and just be aware of and present with it and allow yourself to enjoy and experience it. Not to indulge in it but to connect with it. This can be a really hard thing to describe in words but there's a difference in the way that it feels when it's actually a connected experience with your wife or your partner. Then after sex, stay close for at least 10 to 15 minutes

going to be kind of a long time. If it's five, that's okay. Just do what you can. Hold each other, talk, or share something positive about the experience for you. And talk about also what may have felt difficult for you. This practice helps you stay emotionally present, rewire your brain's pathways for connection rather than performance and reduce shame and porn cravings. So

Through neuroscience, through faith, and through intentional practice, you can rewire your brain. You can experience healthy sexuality in marriage. You can turn sexual intimacy into a sacred, joyful bond rather than a trigger for relapse. I want to thank you for being here with me. If you'd like more support, resources, or coaching on your journey to recovery, keep exploring the blog. Subscribe to this podcast.

Follow this podcast, hit the notification button so you can get updated every time I put out a new episode. Or check out my free workshop or my free ebook on nomordesire.com. God bless and much love, my friend.