The Plank in Your Eye

What’s on Megan’s Mind?

Ladies–you are also watching porn. 

Some of you just clutched your chest like a Southern Baptist grandma reading the obituaries, but I need you to stay with me.

But Megan! you exclaim, I have never once logged on to one of those awful sites! Or looked at a dirty magazine! Yeah girl, I know. But I need you to conjure up your mental bookshelves and streaming libraries and take inventory. Ask yourself the following– have you ever consumed:

• Erotic literature?

• Sensual YouTube clips?

• Romantic TV series or movies (even the clean ones)?

• Secular romance novels?

• Christian romance novels?

If you’ve answered ‘yes,’ to the above, you’ve likely consumed a form of pornography. If I’ve made you angry by suggesting that, I should stop and tell you that I have consumed all of the things I listed above at various points in my life. During some particularly dark seasons, I consumed all of those things heavily. I read stacks of Christian romance novels as a child, starting when I was in elementary school and working my way through my grandmother’s entire library before I reached high school. Believe me, I’ve fallen in love with every Amish/Native American/Pioneer/Cowboy/Intellectual Lumberjack male protagonist you could imagine. I’ve watched hundreds of romantic comedies, and plenty of the “bonnet movies” (read: movies based on regency novels written by Austen or Brontë). 

But Megan– those things don’t have sex in them?

No, honey– they don’t have explicit depictions of sex generated by the author or filmmaker, but they do have sex. And even more than sex, they have self-gratification in the form of a constant stimulation of our dopamine and oxytocin pathways. Nevermind that my addiction to those materials led me to seek out much more graphic texts as I got older; the “clean” books were problematic enough.

Allow me to talk nerdy to you for a moment: pornography is an addictive stimulus because it provides the user with a mechanism for triggering a consistent, predictable physical and neurobiological response. Like the laboratory rats whose brains were implanted with probes, which would trigger a dopamine and endorphin cascade each time the rat pushed a button in their enclosure, pornography provides a reliable ‘button’ to generate a wave of neurotransmitters. These natural chemicals are part of our design– in their naturally occurring contexts they are produced to mask pain and create temporary feelings of ecstasy and well-being. God built human brains to produce those chemicals for good reasons, but pornography co-opts those mechanisms for dark ends.

We know how harmful pornography is, especially because pornography addiction is rarely something that users can maintain without consistently needing to ratchet up the intensity of the stimulus (by watching more pornography, or watching material that is more intense or more taboo) over time in order to generate the same effect in the brain. Like the rats who will push the dopamine button until they die of starvation or heart failure, pornography addicts martyr themselves for their neurochemical addictions. Heavy users often progress their addiction into extremely harmful forms of the material, incurring devastating financial and relational impacts, and sometimes resulting in criminal behaviors. As you read this, you can probably think of a handful of people you know who have been caught in sting operations or otherwise charged with offenses related to that vice.

It’s easy for women to develop a deep disdain for men who fall into regular pornography use. If we’ve never looked it up ourselves, we can develop a sense of superiority about our ability to remain pure of such vile pursuits, although plenty of women can and do become addicted to mainstream pornography– I’ll harp on that another day. In the meantime, I’ll just say that it’s very common for me to hear a resounding “no” from female clients when I ask if they’re open to dating someone who once struggled with pornography use, even if that use was minimal, or is far in their past.

But girlfriend–we’re doing the same thing when we read an endless stream of Christian romance. The only difference is that the sex happens in our imaginations, and there’s nothing taboo about carrying a christian romance book around at Ladies’ Conference. 

Romance movies, TV, and books create a similarly predictable impact on our brain’s pleasure centers, but use a slightly different mechanism to do it. Immersing ourselves in the experiences of a fictional character allows us to form deep empathetic connections to their emotional state–a type of vicarious emotional tension which, when resolved, produces a temporary ecstasy. Our feelings rise and fall along with their love story, and when there is a critical moment in the plot (a confession of love, a first kiss, a proposal) we experience a spike of dopamine, followed by a cascade of oxytocin. The latter is the hormone that bonds mothers with their infants and that permeates the brains of long-term, committed partners. As pornography creates a neural response that mimics the mental and emotional sensations of physical intimacy, romantic plotlines create a response that mimics the sensations of emotional intimacy. Both are cheap copies of experiences that God designed for us to have only in the context of sacred relationships with our spouses. In our addiction, we trigger this false bonding over, and over, and over again with hundreds of different characters, forming brief, but deep attachments that leave us feeling empty once we turn the last page and have to say goodbye. 

I’m not here to point fingers of judgment, and I’m not telling you to go burn your books. I still struggle with this issue. When I am stressed or exhausted or drained by life, my first instinct is to run into a new K-drama or “clean” fantasy novel and find an escape. Maybe I do that because I taught my brain that those false romances were a safe place to hide from my emotions, beginning when I was very young. Old habits die hard. 

I also don’t want you to read this as me saying that pornography is not wrong, and not something to be concerned about. Please, be concerned! Our young men are especially at risk for addiction, and because of the stigma and disdain associated with it, are struggling silently, working to prevent anyone from knowing how badly it’s hurting them. Pray for your children, make sure you have the passcode to their cell phones, and set up as many protections for them as you can. 

But in the meantime– get the 2x4 out of your own eye, Sis. We’ve been curling our noses up at the men who fall prey to these sexual stumbling blocks while feeding our pet addiction to a slightly more palatable version of the same thing. As Jesus said in Matthew 5:28– “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” Let’s rephrase this with a slightly less King Jamesian patriarchal vocabulary, and contextualize it in our present struggle: “She who imagines a man and lusts after him has already committed emotional adultery in her heart.” Yikes.

Fun fact: pornography already existed during the time of Jesus’s 1st century sermons. Our word for it is derived from a Greek word meaning "images of prostitutes." However, scripture doesn’t explicitly say “Don’t look at pornographic images.” Instead, it tells us not to lust. It doesn’t specify whether lust is permissible if the person is carved into a marble column, or if the person is imaginary, or if the person is behind a screen, or if the person never knows that you lusted after them– because those are all equally detrimental to the spiritual being within you. I assume that the Lord, in His infinite wisdom and forethought, knew that a time would come where explicit stone carvings would be the least of our worries, and where even books marketed to Christian women carry the potential to become addictive. He speaks to the root cause of the issue, rather than the symptom. Lust–not the specific form of media that excites it–is the problem to tackle. 

My hope here is just that we as women develop some empathy for our brothers, many of whom are going to great lengths to build bonds of accountability and defeat lust in their daily lives. We should do more of the same. 

Sincerely, and with love,

Megan

Resources

I recently read the book Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence, by Stanford Medical School Psychologist Dr. Anna Lembke, an expert in addiction. If any of this newsletter has resonated with something you’ve struggled with, then I suggest you give it a read.

Announcements

We only have a few days left for ladies to sign up for 2026 matchmaking slots! We’ve had 41 ladies purchase consultations, so I still have room for more consultation bookings before the end of the year. Once 9/1 rolls around, we’ll re-create the ladies’ waiting list and begin collecting inquiries for the next time we re-open (likely in the spring). Book your consultation here. 

Congratulations to the newly-minted Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Smith! Phillip and Alysia celebrated their wedding this past weekend, and we could not be happier for them. 

Pipeline Profile

By the numbers: 

• Available men: 40
• Available ladies: 164
• Matches in progress: 8 (16 people total)

Confession: I’m very behind on sending out date polls for the matches I have in progress. If you’re reading this, and you’ve been waiting on that, I apologize! You’re probably beginning to see that these things happen in waves– a wave of new consultations, a wave of matches, a wave of dates, lather, rinse, repeat. 

Hey Single Friend, 

Welcome to Love Notes! I’m so excited that you’re here. If you’re new: Love Notes are weekly updates from Megan, designed to give you a boost of encouragement and keep you looped in on all of the happenings at The Synchrony Project. These are always written straight from my heart, never with AI.