What does white rice have to do with pornography? I know that sounds like a strange question, but stick with me here because this analogy completely changed how I understand what pornography does to our relationships.
I’ll also share a more compassionate, Christ-centered approach to overcoming pornography habits that doesn’t rely on shame or willpower alone.
Here’s what we’ll cover together:
• The surprising history of rice and what happens when you strip away the “bran” – and how this perfectly illustrates what pornography does to sexuality
• Why shame, hiding, and secrecy actually prevent us from growing and healing
• How to embrace your full sexual nature alongside your spouse instead of in isolation
• A more nuanced view on sexual imagery, arousal, and discernment that might surprise you
If you’ve been struggling with pornography or if it’s affected your marriage, this episode will offer you hope and a more loving way forward. Because here’s what I’ve learned: building a marriage that’s deeply nourishing – body, heart, and soul – requires us to understand the difference between empty calories and real intimacy.
Let’s dive in.
👉 Let us know what you think of this episode in our Free Facebook Group. And don’t forget to download the Intimately Us app for more tips, and check out the Get Your Marriage On program for personalized help.
Transcript
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors or inaccuracies. For the most accurate and complete experience, we recommend listening to the full podcast episode.
254: Pornography and White Rice: Nourishing Your Marriage with Real Erotic Connection
[00:00:00] He was ashamed of his pornography use, so he hid it and he hated his deception, and he kind of hated himself afterwards, so he’d feel even worse about himself, making him feel anxious, stressed, and not good about himself and it was easy for him to confuse normally healthy sexual feelings and thoughts and urges with shame and unworthiness, and that pairing doesn’t go well when you’re trying to build a sexual relationship in your marriage.
I grew up in Japan where there are more words for rice than there are words for love. Rice is a huge part of Japanese culture, an important part of pretty much every Japanese [00:01:00] meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In fact, the Japanese word used for meal or dinner is literally the same word for rice Gohan.
When you think of rice, you’re probably accustomed to thinking of the sticky white rice variety and think of sushi and other delicious foods, right? But rice in its natural state is brown, not white
today, the white rice you buy at this store is vitamin fortified, where they add in nutrients as the food is processed. But this hasn’t always been the case. During the Samurai era in the 16 hundreds, the Japanese discovered that if you polish the rice kernel to remove the bran. Or the brown part of the rice, you’re left with the white rice, the starch part, which tastes better, and it was considered more elite and more classy to eat.
But because it’s labor intensive to remove the brand. Remember this was before the industrial revolution. Only the wealthy could afford the white rice while the rest of the population ate brown rice. The typical [00:02:00] Japanese diet is vegetarian. So the wealthy and upper class Samurai eating a lot of white rice with other vegetables, developed a disease.
They called Betty Betty. The symptoms were poor energy, restlessness, difficulty sleeping, memory loss, and poor reflexes, which by the way, neither of those are good if you’re a samurai warrior. The poor class who ate mostly brown rice never experienced this disease, and it wasn’t until the mid 18 hundreds when Dr.
Karo, a Japanese naval doctor, proved that the disease is from a deficiency of the essential vitamin thiamine, also known as a vitamin B one, and that the brand of the rice kernel, which is the brown part, contains a lot of vitamin B one. In essence, when the Japanese ate just the starchy white part of the rice, they were missing the vital compounds that aids the body to convert the carbohydrate into energy in the body.
which by the way is [00:03:00] amazing to me that the rice kernel itself contains both the brown and the white parts that work together for your body’s proper nutrition. Now let me switch gears for a moment and share something that hits many of us deep to the heart. And let’s talk about pornography Today, I like to think of pornography as the white rice version of sex.
Using this metaphor, pornography fills our bellies with the sensations and excitement of sexuality without the intimacy or the essential relationship nurturing aspect of sexuality,
pornography, divorces, sexual excitement from the relationship work that goes along with building an intimate connection. Pornography is counterfeit intimacy. It promises to satisfy your sexual appetites, but it is incapable of offering lasting fulfillment or nourishment. I. And let me be clear from the start.
I agree fully with many religious leaders and taught marriage researchers like Dr. John Gottman and many others that discordant pornography use has a [00:04:00] strong negative effect on marriages. Many people email me about how its use has damaged trust and confidence in their marriage, and frankly, I can understand the draw of pornography.
Sexual imagery, fantasy and sexual exploration in and of itself can be really good, healthy, and fundamental to building a strong and intimate marriage that lasts a lifetime. But when it comes to porn, the woman and men on the screen never say no. They never have a headache or always willing to sugar their boobs or their bottom or whatever without asking.
They’re interested in performing whatever sex act you want to see. Pretend to give you their full attention and do all this eagerly with the veneer of happiness, freedom, and liberation. But remember, you don’t share bills a mortgage, children, or real life with those you interact with in porn. They don’t share with you the times when they’re sick, feeling insecure, frustrated, or when they pursue other valuable life interests that don’t directly relate to sex.
Okay, [00:05:00] and this is to say nothing of the industry itself, right, which is highly suspect with human trafficking, drug use, and addiction and antisocial behavior. Bringing out sometimes the worst in people, not their best. The fundamental lie of pornography use is that it will satisfy you, but it just causes Betty Betty disease in the individual because pornography never can fully satisfy because it can’t, it’s cheap and a counterfeit form of connection.
But real life is different though cultivating a real, authentic sexual relationship with your spouse is much like a diet of brown rice. Taking in the starch of sexual excitement alongside the brand of relational and emotional work, but both taken together allow the marriage to thrive long term.
Let’s be realistic for a moment. There’s a reason why people are drawn to using pornography. There’s nothing wrong to admit to finding the idea of sexual imagery. Exciting and kind of [00:06:00] fun in the proper context are sexual urges, curiosities, fantasies, and the excitement we feel from certain themes or images can be good and healthy.
And there’s a reason why a wise God placed these desires in us. I believe it matters far more. Though that we are in charge of our urges, them letting our urges have control over us or be in charge of us. My friend was exposed to pornography at a cousin’s house when he was 12 years old and instantly felt drawn to it.
My friend, couldn’t deny his natural curiosity to seeing those images depicting naked women and men enjoying sex acts and the powerful sensations he felt in his body when he viewed or thought about it was also different and awesome. In fact, as an older teenager when my friend felt deeply unpleasant emotions such as anxiety, high stress, or boredom, he found that viewing pornography helped mask those emotions for a time I.
Pornography became his solution to anxiousness, stress and [00:07:00] boredom, albeit temporary. In that moment, he felt like he was in control. He felt powerful and it felt good, but his quote unquote solution to those unpleasant emotions actually maintained the bigger problem, rather than solving them afterwards, he would feel indulgent.
He was ashamed of his pornography use, so he hid it and he hated his deception, and he kind of hated himself afterwards, so he’d feel even worse about himself, making him feel anxious, stressed, and not good about himself and bored. So guess what? He turned to pornography again to try to feel better, and this habit became a cycle.
In addition, it was easy for him to confuse normally healthy sexual feelings and thoughts and urges with shame and unworthiness, and that pairing doesn’t go well when you’re trying to build a sexual relationship in your marriage. Have you ever heard the expression that sex is Satan’s playground?
I’ve heard my mentor, Dr. Jennifer fin Lafe say that she disagrees with that statement. Sex [00:08:00] is not Satan’s playground. Satan’s playground is deceit. It’s hiding. Shame, cowering, defensiveness, and justification. Keeping pornography use in the dark for whatever reason causes it to stay hidden out of the reach of divine light and healing.
If I were to meet the enemy of my soul one day on the street, I suspect he’d be the type that wants to kick me while I’m down. He’s the type that tells others to hide, tells me to hide, tells me that I’m not worthy, that I’m worthless, and that no matter how hard I try, I will never be good enough. He’s also the master deceiver, liar, and seeks my misery.
Shame is one of his most potent weapons. In contrast, if I were to meet Jesus on the street, I imagine him to be the type that would put his arm around me. Encourage me, lift me up, and coach me. He’d listen with understanding beyond my comprehension, and he would invest in me. He’d encourage me to do my [00:09:00] best to live up to the high ideals he’d set for me, because he knows my potential.
He’ll teach me to be honest, compassionate, patient, and to trust him. I’ll leave the scene feeling like I have value. So if you wanna inspire change in someone, which of these two approaches do you think they would respond to better? Many of us are familiar with Jesus’s teaching on the Sermon on the Mount about how.
A one who looks on a woman to lust after her has already committed adultery in his heart. And I agree 100% with Jesus’s teaching. However, I don’t like it when this verse of scripture is used as a weapon to shame someone. I don’t view Jesus as a God who shames people into living, right. Rather, I see Jesus running to us to encourage, to inspire to sucker, all the while never giving up on us.
And remember, this is the same God that didn’t immediately condemn the woman taken in adultery. Sometimes I worry that we give pornography too much power by listing off [00:10:00] all the evils it creates as a scare tactic. I attended a conference a few years ago in my town called the Utah Coalition Against Pornography, sponsored by organizations like Fight the New Drug.
I think these organizations are well intentioned and many of those that participate in the conference are, the reality is they are in relationships where they see firsthand the hurtful effects of pornography use. However, me sitting in the back after listening to speaker, after speaker, talking about all the problems that pornography creates, I felt very scared as if sex itself was evil, harmful, damaging, and destructive, something that you had to be very, very careful with.
I left that conference feeling so scared for my life and wanted to protect my family. I wanted to hunker down in a bomb shelter, cut off all cables, say goodbye to the internet forever, and live like a hermit. Okay, I’m exaggerating a little bit here, but let’s just say it did not inspire me to want to be intimate with my wife.
Now contrast that [00:11:00] with another conference I put on a year later where the overall theme was healthy intimate relationships. People from the stage shared stories about how learning about investing in a fun sex life with their spouse had led to a strengthened marital bond. Helping them improve communication, helping them parent together better and filling their lives with more giddiness, happiness, joy, and optimism for the future.
Now, couples that walked away from that conference in contrast, walked away, hand in hand, smiling with a bounce in their step. Now that is whole kernel sex, right? It’s the brand plus a starch that is deeply nourishing.
Now if habitual pornography use is creating the metaphoric Betty Betty Disease in your marriage, imagine how much less of a hold its use would have on your marriage if one were to stop minimizing its effects, be more honest and forthright and upfront and clear about his or her struggles and choices to use it.
It’s about inviting more honesty, light, compassion, and understanding. Rather [00:12:00] than shame and fear tactics, perhaps one day we would understand most people’s motivations to use pornography is similar to why others turn to food and overeat when they’re upset, or why others mindlessly scroll social media for hours as a way to avoid unpleasant yet important tasks that take more emotional effort, right?
It’s a temporary solution that maintains a larger problem.
I deeply believe our erotic sexual natures and drive for intimacy are beautiful and God-given. Now, can I offer a nuanced view about sexual imagery that, um, might get me a little bit of hate mail, but I wanna share this perspective. At a recent couples retreat, I hosted a coupled shared with the group that they’ve struggled for years with sexual arousal until one night they were watching a TV show that had a sexy scene in it.
They were not anticipating it anyway. They chose to watch the scene and it woke up the tiger in her, , and she and her [00:13:00] husband had the most passionate lovemaking session ever in their marriage that night, and they wondered then if sexual imagery was wrong for them, if they could use it to build the relationship and help with arousal.
I. Now the answer is going to be different Couple to couple, and you must take into account, the couple’s unique histories, proclivities, tendencies, upbringings, and values. In other words, there is no one size fits all answer, but Jesus on the Sermon on the Mount, gives us a clear standard by which we can judge things like this.
He says. By their fruits, you’ll know them. An evil tree can’t bring forth good fruit, and a good tree can’t bring forth corrupt fruit. So I would challenge you to honestly ask what fruits does using sexual imagery produce in your marriage? I. And I use the term sexual imagery because these can be photos or videos, maybe those that you take of yourselves or together or while you’re apart.
It can be stories or fantasies that you write out together for each other. It can be themes, [00:14:00] concepts or dynamics that speak to your innate erotic nature and draw, you know, the sexy side of you out. All of this, again, is within the context of the relationship, the proverbial brand, together with the starch to strengthen the marriage.
I want to encourage you and your spouse. To be kind and compassionate and fully embrace your sexual natures for all the good that it can provide for yourself and for the marriage. Build a life. And a genuine friendship in your relationship that you’re both excited to be a part of. And this is how you can find that your sexual expression can be truly nourishing for you.
It’s forging a loving bond between the two of you that the world can’t break, and it’s taking the starch and the brand together, taking the whole kernel in to nourish your whole relationship. Now if you and your spouse need more support working through sexual challenges in your marriage, whatever they may be, why not work with me and my team?
You’ll find the details [00:15:00] at Get Your Marriage on.com/program. We also have our private Facebook community, which you can find in the show notes where you can continue this conversation with other couples who might understand better what you’re going through. Anyway, thank you for listening and I hope to catch you soon.
