To The Guy In The “I Love MILFs” T-shirt At Home Depot

How Porn Reveals and Radicalizes Pain

“That which we don’t transform, we transmit.” Richard Rohr

“If you do not address the past you will repeat it into the future and think that’s it’s just inevitable.” Dan Allender

Not so long ago on a Saturday, I walked ripped jeans and dirty T-shirt into a Home Depot for at least the fourth time that day. It was one of those house projects—the ones that make you question the meaning of life because they only get bigger the more you work on them. As I made my way through the door, I filed in behind a guy wearing a T-shirt announcing in big bold letters, “I love MILFs.” Huh, I wonder what sports team that is? I see a lot of dirty shirts at Home Depot—all covered in sawdust, paint, and grime—including the one I was wearing. But not this dirty. This one took the cake.

Nothing screams more loudly a man’s desperation to talk about his sexual story than buying a T-shirt to announce his porn preferences (dictionary cheat sheet here). In billboard sized letters, he is letting everyone know his story and his struggle. To make them abundantly clear this guy has mother hunger and a lot of anger about it. And there he was walking in front of me screaming from his T shirt, “I need help!” Except I bet a million bucks he has no idea about any of this. I bet he thinks it’s edgy, funny even, and sexually flirty or bold. He has no idea he’s putting on display his whole sexual story. This man is so close to his story and yet so wildly far from it at the same time.

But we don’t have to be so unaware. So let’s talk about it. He gives us a chance to understand compulsive sexual behavior, like porn use, and the deeply meaning-filled and symbolic nature of it as well as the utter tragedy and harm of it. Nothing shows us more clearly that we are not animals driven by urges, but deeply feeling lovers that reflect the glory of God, like the bind of sexual sin.

Photo by Luis Quintero on Unsplash

Bad Behavior

We tend to think that men use porn out of an abundance of sexual desire. We may picture a lonely lover that stumbles into this behavior because he’s so forlorn and full of desire. It’s possible we even think porn use to be a healthy outlet for sexual desire when you’re not in a relationship or when your partner is not in the mood. We may see it as a regrettable but understandable struggle for a guy that’s just that virile.

But nothing degrades our view of men more than this urge model for sexual desire. It scripts men as animals with drives that have little or nothing to do with the heart and soul of us. We treat it is a biological function, even a need, with as much meaning as a sneeze. But sex is a desire not a drive. We aren’t that animal. Which means sex is never just about sex. Sex always lives in a story with a plot and a context, as I say in my book. Its always chock full of meaning and mystery and symbolism.

Sex researcher Emily Nagoski points out that sexual desire is never purely spontaneous, arising out of nowhere from some mysterious realm. It’s always a response to our context—what’s going on in our relationships, what we are feeling in our bodies, and even the literal geographic place we are standing when we feel desire. That can be a good thing, like wanting to make love with your spouse after a beautiful sunset walk on the beach or a deep conversation on the couch. Or it could be more confusing and difficult, like the guy that wants to look at porn every time his wife leaves town or when he goes back to his childhood home to visit his parents.

Our sexual desire is impacted by far more than we care to admit.

We want to think sexuality just one day clicks on in our body and runs preprogrammed on its own wiring independent of the rest of us. We like to think it exists in a transcendent realm untouched by human experience. We may even think our fantasies or fetishes arise from a powerful mythic self, who’s been suppressed and only needs to be brought out and acted on to be empowered. To be sexually free and alive, we simply need to follow our every intrigue. We even call this sex positivity.

Oh, I so wish sexual freedom were this easy. But our sexuality is living our story right along with us this whole time—shaped by all we experience, in the present and past too. Yes, your sexuality is storied, with all the good and the bad we go through. And though arousal and desire come to us as wordless feelings, they are chock full of plot and story.

Riddle

What drives our sexual desire and arousal may be subconscious to us at first but it is no less intentional. Suppressed experiences in our story can bubble up in our fantasies and compulsive sexual behaviors because it’s a place our conscious mind goes offline. Which is why these behaviors and impulses can also catch us off guard and baffle us. Like a riddle. They are so shaped by little bits of enigmatic symbolism—riddled with meaning.

And it’s up to us to read the riddle.

I believe one of the gifts of the gospel is the freedom to be curious about our sin. God invites us, even bids us be curious about our behavior, our compulsions, our shadowy selves. After Adam and Eve sinned, God asks them lots of questions, “Where are you?” “Who told you that you were naked?” “What have you done?” In other words, far from being repelled and turned away from them in disgust, God goes after them. It’s a staggering picture of love. God pursues them by getting curious about their sin, which may sound strange for an omniscient God. I believe he asks questions not so much to gain knowledge as to draw Adam and Eve out of their shame back into love. He has not given up on them.

We too must join God in being intrigued with our own sin. In the words of Jay Stringer, “One evening of deliberate curiosity for your sexual fantasies will take you further into transformation than a thousand nights of prayerful despair.” Your sin is not random nor is it simply bad behavior. Earthquakes erupt along fault lines. Buildings crumble along foundation cracks. And people struggle along storylines. Dan Allender pointed out (on this Podcast) that we tend to equate “brokenness” with sinfulness only. But we miss the wounding that set us up to be defensive in the first place. That messy mix of human suffering and sinful participation must be untangled. And curiosity is the tool.

But maybe that pornography or sexual fantasy is exactly what you’re trying to forget. Oh, we’d rather see our sin as bad behavior, a mistake, rather than a more intentional but confusing blend of pain and self protection. We would far sooner confess and move on than stop and be curious about our motives or, even more terrifying, our pain.

We will only find lasting sexual freedom when we get curious about our behavior and recover the good parts of us hiding behind our sin.

Read The Shirt

So let’s return to our fellow weekend construction warrior and practice this task. He gave us a riddle. Or in this case a T-shirt. Let me start again with the obvious. The sky is blue and this man has sexualized mother issues. This man is in pain with some mother wound. I obviously don’t know his story of mothering or early attachment with caregivers and what trauma he holds. But so clearly, he has a mother hunger and is trying to get relief of that pain. That moves me.

Taking that pain to porn may right away feel so extremely bizarre. Surely somewhere his desire for nurture was sexualized. We just don’t know where and I doubt he remembers either. As I said, this stuff comes from our suppressed subconscious.

But notice he didn’t get a “Help! I have a mother wound” shirt. This is not a vulnerable cry for help. There is open aggression in his shirt slogan—a very clear expression of sexualized violence. As author bell hooks points out about the F word part of MILF, f*** can mean two different things: both sexual intent and violent aggression. This is the utter dark antithesis to safe, mutual love-making.

Imagine being a mother with children walking an aisle in Home Depot on a Saturday morning. You turn a corner and find a man letting you know loud and proud on his T shirt in violent terms that he is sexualizing you. How terrifying! You wouldn’t even have to be a mother to feel this. Any woman capable of nurture or attachment (hint: all women) would feel caught in his crosshairs.

This man doesn’t simply have mother issues. He has aggression issues.

There is revenge in his behavior, revenge at the mother that wounded him. He is not simply desperate, but angry and far beyond the good vulnerable anger of all grief. And it shows up in his shameless pride and numb expression to even wear this shirt.

And this brings us to a deeper reality: This man is harming himself too. He is sabotaging any meaningful relationship he could have with women in his life, which could be so healing. But rather than feel the powerlessness of his pain, he is using both sexualization and aggression to maintain some sense of power. His behavior simply keeps the wounded boy suppressed and the adult immature. The boyhood hunger for a mother became the fetish of the man.

Yep, all that in a T-shirt. His story is trying to find him.

Radicalized Pain

Porn has both revealed and radicalized this man’s story in a way that is hard to describe. This man is so close to his story and yet so wildly far from it. He is living what is true for all of us: It is far easier to simply act out, projecting our pain outward, rather than turning to be curious and kind within.

A man acting out alone with pornography can feel like a victimless crime in many ways. Who’s he really hurting? But let this stand as a warning and an invitation to us all. In the words of Richard Rohr, “What we don’t transform, we transmit.” If we don’t engage our own story, if we don’t do the curious work of exploring the riddle of our fantasies and compulsions, we will act them out. We actually become hardened people, making us numb to ourselves and others. An attempt to escape our story only makes us more stuck in it.

The only kind and open hearted way to heal our stories and gain freedom from our brokenness is through the path of curiosity. We will talk more about how to be curious about your own sexual story in the next post.

What I Didn’t Say To You, Sir

Well, my fellow weekend warrior, I almost answered your cry for help and walked up to you to say, “Sexualized mother issues? Man, sorry to hear it. What’s your mother wound story? There’s help for that.” I still regret it to this day. But I found your shirt to be screaming I am in pain but I am angry. And that anger made me hesitant. Yet it’s still hard for me to see a man persist in his wound and his revenge. I feel for you. And I hope you come to find the true source of empowerment in the courage to heal your pain.

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