POSA™ Blog

Here's a wonderfully researched article on the way pornography is affecting our young people. Some of you may remember the journalist, Sara Israelson-Hartley, from her interviewing me in The Deseret News here:

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865582633/Second-hand-porn-the-spreading-circle-of-damage.html

This week, she explores the tragic facts behind how early the kids are that pornography is finding through subversive means....pop-up ads, mouse-trapping and using the most commonly mis-spelled words that kids type into google to then open up pornography teasers to get kids to click onto the actual porn sites.

If you are a parent, or are concerned about how our youth's sexuality is being hijacked by the commercial pornography market, this article will be of interest to you.

And here's a big shout out to Sara for her formidable efforts to keep us all informed about this gigantic elephant in our societal living rooms.

Thank you, Sara!

Since Posarc is a site dedicated to the partners of sex addicts, you may be wondering why we include some resources for the addicts as well. Here's why:
I frequently receive mail from partners (of sexual compulsives) who ask me for my opinion on everything recovery-related. My private clients as well, whom I do Recovery Coaching or Consulting with, ask me for my preferences in recovery materials for their addicted spouses.

I want to be able to direct seekers to help when they ask for it. And--please note:
I do not receive any benefits whatsoever for promoting the resources that I do. It's also the reason you'll notice my website is free of all advertising.

Therefore, if you find a resource on this site, be assured that it's here because I have personally road-tested this resource or watched the effects of said resource closely on those I know well who were using it, not because it's my uncle's company or because I'm getting a trip to Florida in January out of it. Though Florida does sound alluring this time of year!

So let me introduce what I consider to be a great online porn and sex-addiction recovery tool: CANDEO.

IT HAS BEEN SO VERY INSPIRING TO WORK WITH THESE POSAS

There have been at least five new POSA Meetings formed in this past year alone! It has been so very inspiring to work with these POSAs who took the initiative to begin hosting meetings in their local areas. Our communications in working together have energized and empowered all of us!

We know how treacherous life can feel in the wake of discovering that your life partner has betrayed you. One of the more extraordinary gifts hidden within this relational devastation is the power of POSAs to find and to support one another. To begin our healing process, we can learn to stop trying to bond back to the person who carelessly ruptured our bonds (at least until they've earned our trust back sufficiently), and to find new, supportive people to trust and to create healing community with.

One of the potential liabilities of doing counseling in this field is the susceptibility to feeling discouraged; consciously one has to work to offset the effects of feeling defeated by the depressing realities of sex addiction's rise. I am well aware that as the hypersexualization of our culture increases, PoSAs (partners of sex addicts) encounter more and more triggers, as do the sexual addicts/compulsives we share our lives with. That, in and of itself, can be incredibly challenging for all of us and asks us to maintain rigorous boundaries around how we live, what shows we watch, etc.

So, when I find news about someone who is making a difference by asking the mainstream public to question their consumption of sex as a commodity, I am incredibly heartened. To be honest, I'm overjoyed. When that person appears from outside the sex addiction recovery community, I'm highly intrigued (not that those inside the recovery community don't add a lot to the discourse happening more frequently). 

One of the challenges of working with a topic for many years is that one can end up burrowing deeper and deeper into more complex aspects of the topic. One of the risks can be possibly losing touch with how a newcomer to the topic may still be struggling with "the basics". So while still engaging my interest in delving into the more complex aspects of progressed behaviors in addiction as well as chronic infidelity, I am devoting some time and webpage space to apprising newcomers of what they might expect as they find themselves in a strange new world of sex addiction or chronic infidelity with all its pain and confusion. Here, then, is Part One of the new series:

Sexual addiction, including pornography addiction, is one of the most harmful in relationships. The shame with this addiction for the addict and the spouse, the betrayal, trauma and stereotypes linked to the addiction are often devastating.

FROM EX MEN'S MAG EDITOR MARTIN DAUBNEY:

PoSARC Note: Presented by DailyMail.co.uk , By MARTIN DAUBNEY but we assure you it works the same everywhere !!!

The moment I knew internet pornography had cast its dark shadow over the lives of millions of ordinary British teenagers will live with me forever.

I was sitting in the smart drama hall of a specialist sports college in the North of England with a fantastic reputation.

Before me were a group of 20 boys and girls, aged 13-14. Largely white, working class children, they were well turned-out, polite, giggly and shy.

As the presenter of a Channel 4 documentary called Porn On The Brain, airing next Monday at 10pm, I'd been invited to sit in on a forward-thinking class led by sex education consultant Jonny Hunt, who is regularly asked into schools to discuss sex and relationships. To establish what these kids knew about sex - including pornography - he had asked the children to write an A-Z list of the sexual terms they knew, no matter how extreme.

I think it is courageous to produce a mainstream film about the recovery from sex addiction.

Recently, a recovery coaching client of mine asked me if I thought the movie Shame(2011)would be suitable to show her family and friends as a way of inviting them to understand the hell she has been living in, as the wife of an intransigent sex addict. I told her no, for many reasons that I won't go into here. But my client's question did get me thinking that there hasn't yet been a film that can elucidate what we go through as POSAs. This film, Thanks for Sharing, does express this perspective and yet, does not fit that bill all that well either. I'll explain:

On April 17th, 2012 Lili and Terre hosted a Facebook live stream event with our friends from PornHarms on the devastating effects of porn on the partner of the user.

We felt our community may like a replay of this event We hope you are inspired, and will share it
with those you know who may benefit from seeing it, and promote it to your support networks.