Pornography. We don’t talk much about it in Christian circles. It’s that dirty little secret hiding behind closed doors and computer screens quietly destroying marriages. The world’s number one site, Pornhub, estimates sixty-four million people click on its link EVERY DAY. Forty million Americans are regular users, and one in three are women.

Most find breaking free from the compulsion extremely difficult. Pornography use isn’t mainly about sex – when someone views arousing material, even unintentionally, pleasure receptors flood with the hormone dopamine, eventually altering the brain’s chemical pathways. Patterns can be changed, but the process requires much more than just good intentions and willpower.

Pastor and author Nick Stumbo serves as Executive Director of Pure Desire Ministries, the non-profit that helped him find victory over his decades-long struggle with pornography addiction and helps thousands of couples become sexually healthy.

“Promoting recovery from sexual brokenness is now my life calling and passion,” he writes. “I’ve seen God lead many people caught in pornography’s trap through a healing journey that involves honesty, community and the hard work of addressing wounds, growing new relational skills and renewing the mind.”

Pure Desire is based on solid physiological evidence about the human brain and the addictive process. Pornography offers a quick fix to meet emotional needs similar to the one an addict finds through a drug. Pure Desire helped Nick understand how he was trying to meet his human needs with a pseudo solution of pornography and learn how to cope in a healthier way. The two-fold approach of counseling and connection with peers in group support helps people find freedom and wholeness – not just by trying to stop the behavior, but by changing the way a person reacts to pain and medicates negative emotions.

Pure Desire offers healing for both spouses – one from the effects of unwanted sexual behavior and the other from betrayal trauma.

Like many, Nick’s journey started with exposure to sexualized material as a pre-teen. “I knew it felt wrong, but part of me wanted to see more,” he said. Shame and secrecy became part of his sexuality from the beginning. A third-generation pastor who grew up in a Christian home, Nick would purchase Playboy behind his parents back then throw it away. Once access to pornography on the internet became available, the binge/purge cycle drew deeper. Even while he was in Bible college preparing to be a pastor, Nick struggled, feeling remorseful when he’d succumb to temptation.

Yes, porn is evil and viewing it is sinful. But it meets a need, and it feels really good because it produces brain chemicals that feel good, he added. The brain was designed by God to use those chemicals in a positive way. But pornography is an unhealthy way to get a very real need met. It’s like a hungry person binging on donuts.

Ten years into his marriage, Nick’s wife, Michelle, was emotionally spent. His pattern of fall and confession left her exhausted, frustrated, and thinking of separating.

“Every time was going to be the last time,” he said. “It had become addictive. In spite of a strong marriage with a regular physical connection, I couldn’t just choose to stop.”

But this time was different. Nick found help at Pure Desire. The wall of silence was broken at a pastors’ conference he attended in 2010. Pure Desire founder Dr. Ted Roberts encouraged the attendees to see how they had abandoned God’s love for the false promises of sexual sin and pornography. District leaders then offered a plan to help pastors struggling in this area. They wanted to help them break free from pornography and keep their jobs, as long as they hadn’t done anything illegal or crossed physical boundaries. “This was an amazing, grace-filled offer which provided a thoroughly structured and redemptive opportunity for transformation,” Nick said.

He realized through counseling that he had grown up believing his value, worth and identity were tied to how well he performed. Pornography is an artificial and sinful way to answer the need for love. “We are all wounded. No one was raised by Jesus, which means we all had sinners as parents. Imperfect people have ways of creating imperfect people,” he said. “I had a resume of accomplishments because I learned to perform really well to be loved. But no matter how much I achieved it was not enough. The lure of pornography is not just that it makes you feel something. It made me feel I was good enough and wanted. That is the false solution that answers that need in an unhealthy way, which is followed by an avalanche of guilt and shame.”

Nick admits he was trapped in shame because, “I felt like I was a horrible person. I’d do whatever I could to keep the big, bad world away, but it was all external. Nothing touched the heart. I was always just a moment away from being in the wrong place with the wrong access,” he said.

Healing from addiction doesn’t happen overnight. Pure Desire’s program stretches for at least a year.  “It takes much longer than many people would expect,” Nick said. “You need to not just stop the behavior but create new patterns as you work through the process and material. The first 60 days you’ll see massive change.” But like fresh cement is still malleable, it’s easy to gravitate back to old patterns. People need to stay in the program, work the tools, until new, healthy patterns get fixed in the brain.

Nick explained the value of counseling. “Sitting with a trained professional helps us understand the pattern, the triggers and the blind spots,” he said. ‘We learn how our behavior impacts our spouse. We learn empathy, how to value their wants and needs and how to communicate that we are learning to see relationships differently.” Pure Desire counselors also can help if the pornography addiction has led to an affair. It’s difficult to break decades of patterns. Professionals will guide participants through the process.

Pure Desire fields a team of 17 counselors couples who work remotely through secure Zoom. Counselors work two-on-two so both the husband and wife have an advocate, which amplifies the comfort level, he said.

In addition to counseling, Pure Desire’s foundational starting point is its group structure. “Without a group, someone’s possibility of healing is almost zero,” Nick said. “It’s not just about accountability – encouraging everyone to ‘go home and try harder.’ It’s very intentional about walking through a process of change. Understanding what breaking the brain chemical dopamine cycle means allows us to work in a different direction much sooner.”

Groups also help address unhealthy sexual behavior from life experiences — things people might have been exposed to when younger, like sleeping around in college. “If you have any kind of unaddressed sexual brokenness in your story, the group process could be an important part of your transformation,” Nick said.

Biblically based workbooks help participants hear God’s word and apply truth in a new way. “The key to stopping current behavior is to know where it started. To identify where the lies about value, worth and identity began and learn new messages in a safe, loving community so God’s truth can settle in your heart.

“I know the Bible says God loves me, but when someone has acted in a way that’s unloving, the head knowledge can’t penetrate the heart. We can expose that message in community with others to move that past experience out of the way so the light of God’s love can really move in,” he added.

Pure Desire’s curriculum aligns well with the ideas in the book, The Soul of Shame, by Christian psychologist Dr. Curt Thompson, which explains every human being at birth has the needs of being safe, seen, soothed and secure. This revelation helped Nick “connect the dots in a way that was lifechanging.” He learned new behaviors. “As a Christian man of integrity, I should never be sitting alone at a computer late at night. I can look ahead and make choices to have a healthy relationship and not numb out on a computer.”

Pure Desire also provides counseling and support groups for the betrayed spouse. “If you are only treating this as a man’s problem, you are providing 50% of the solution,” he said. “It would be like an ambulance taking the one who called in to the hospital, leaving the injured person behind. In every marriage relationship there are two people who are impacted.”

A husband’s struggle is actually a bigger burden for their wives, he continued. “I was confessing to my wife, but it was my secret. She couldn’t tell anyone. She got locked into the secrecy. It was traumatic.” Pure Desire provides groups especially for women where they can speak up and find their footing (and separate from groups for other women who themselves struggle with pornography use.) Wives learn how to discern whether their husbands are really changing and create boundaries to regain trust.

“Our desire is that the marriage will survive,” he added.

At the end of the Stumbos’ year working with Pure Desire, Nick shared his journey publicly with the church he was pastoring.  “I wanted to deal with this privately, but I understood if I am the pastor, with all my advantages, and I’m struggling, how much more are men struggling in my church. My being open about my story might open the door to others.”

After asking for forgiveness for failing them as a leader, Nick sought the congregation’s help to start a ministry for others who had battled in the same way.

“Some friends had warned me that people would leave when I went to this level of honesty with my church. My experience was the exact opposite. When the pastor was able to stand up in a redemptive way and say, ‘I have sinned, but God has brought truth, transformation and freedom,’ the revelation gave people in the congregation permission to face their own struggles. Rather than allowing sexually compulsive behavior to stay hidden as the great taboo of the church, we brought it to the surface and began to deal honestly with its effect on people’s lives and marriages,” he wrote.

“I was expecting shame and rejection, because that’s what I told myself,” he said. Instead, their love did something to communicate Christ’s love in a way he’d never felt. “It was a watershed moment in our church. It created safety, and I watched groups flourish. 

“It was the most significant discipleship tool our church ever had,” Nick added. “It became what our church was defined by.”

During this time of openness and growth, Nick wrote Setting Us Free: An Unexpected Journey of Grace, followed by Safe: Creating a culture of grace in a climate of shame. He began speaking at some Pure Desire weekend conferences and in late 2015, the leadership team at Pure Desire approached him about taking on the role of Executive Director after Ted Roberts’ retirement, a position Nick assumed in 2016.

Now Pure Desire counsels 300 couples annually. 93% of couples who complete the program say it made a significant impact on their marriage and recovery, Nick reported.

Couples testify that practices they’ve developed to rebuild trust and communicate differently have made the journey worthwhile. In fact, one couple recently told him that they wouldn’t go back and change anything in their past because they didn’t know any other way they could have arrived at the place they are now. “The struggle and the pain spurred the growth,” he said. “They are so grateful for what God did in their marriage.

“We are living in an era where we know more about the brain than ever before. Sin and Satan try to hijack God’s design and use it for evil, but the genius of God’s design is that we were made for monogamy.” Pure Desires helps couples bridge the divide of sexual brokenness and create emotional oneness with true Biblical intimacy, where they feel fully known and fully loved.

“The level of safety grows by leaps and bounds.”