Actor, director and former NFL player Terry Crews has long been open about the pornography addiction that once ruled his life and almost ruined his marriage. But now hes opening up in even more detail in a series of videos designed to explain the realities of pornography addiction and to encourage others experiencing the same struggles to do what he did — reach out for help. Titled “Dirty Little Secrets,” the unscripted videos provide an intimate look at the evolution of a pornography addiction and its toll, the things that can motivate it, and the therapy that helped him heal. “It’s just me, talking from the heart,” Crews explains. As he chats, key takeaways emerge. Among them:
‘It was my secret. Nobody knew. And that allowed it to grow.’
Crews spends a lot of time emphasizing the dangers of keeping your problem to yourself — something that’s easy to do with today’s easy access to online porn. “Thing I found is by not telling people, it became more powerful. But when you tell, when you put it out there in the open to the whole world, just like I’m doing now, it loses its power.”
‘Once you say you’ve got control, it’s over. You don’t have control.’
In Crews’ case, pornography became a way to self-medicate away distressing feelings. Though it seemed to offer a kind of relief, the truth was “it really, really messed up my life in a lot of ways.” Like many, he spent time and energy trying to convince himself that a person cant be addicted to pornography. “But I’m gonna tell you something, if day turns into night and you are still watching, you probably got a problem. And that was me.”
‘Pornography is an intimacy killer.’
“Every time I watched it, I was walled off,” Crews explains. His wife would say something and he would snap. “I would be angry because I was feeling guilty.” And guilt, he says, breeds bad behavior. “You say, ‘Forget it, I might as well do drugs, I might as well overeat, I might as well use porn, I might as well go do something crazy.’ Because if you believe you are bad, then you act accordingly.” Pornography also has the ugly effect of turning people into a collection of body parts rather than someone to build intimacy with, he says. While noting that both men and women can become addicted to porn, he points out that he is speaking from his own perspective as a heterosexual male when he says, “You see women as objects, as things that are less than.” It comes down to a sense of entitlement, he says. “I felt the world owed me something. I felt like my wife owed me sex. I felt like everybody owed me.” And that mindset is dangerous, he discovered. “You find a way to medicate, to act out when you feel your needs are not being met. … What entitlement does is it gives you self-pity, and self-pity feels good.” Pornography addiction therapy helped him become aware, a crucial word in his recovery, of such thoughts. “It starts with belief and then it permeates and then your actions begin to change. … If you do not change your beliefs, it is impossible to change your actions.” By Kendal Patterson Follow Kendal on Twitter at @kendalpatterson
