99: Self-Inflicted Sexual Trauma of Porn Addiction and Masturbation | Learning to Love Yourself Again So You Can Have a Healthy Sexual Relationship with Your Wife

Do you feel sexually broken from years of porn addiction and compulsive masturbation? Like you've damaged your body, your mind, and your marriage—and there’s no way back?

In this episode of the No More Desire podcast, Jake Kastleman explores the reality of self-inflicted sexual trauma and what it truly takes to overcome porn addiction. You’ll learn how to stop watching porn, confront your shame, and begin the process to stop for good.

We talk honestly about how masturbation addiction rewires your brain, damages intimacy, and leaves men feeling spiritually and emotionally numb. You’ll discover how to rebuild sexual intimacy after porn, heal your relationship, and reconnect with your body and your wife.

Using the lens of Internal Family Systems, neuroscience, and spiritual truth, Jake helps you reclaim healthy masculinity and take responsibility without self-condemnation. This is about emotional healing for men, the kind that leads to deep, lasting men’s sexual healing and the freedom to love with integrity.

Whether you're navigating porn and marriage issues, seeking Christian porn recovery, or trying to restore intimacy after sobriety, this episode offers the tools and encouragement to take your next step.

Because healing isn't just about quitting behaviors—it's about becoming whole again.

Free Resources:

FREE WORKSHOP

FREE EBOOK

Recommended Articles:

Why She’s Pissed Off and Turned Off—and How to Fix It

How to Rebuild Trust After Porn Addiction and Betrayal Trauma: 8 Tools

How Do I Stop My Husband From Watching Porn?

My Wife Ignores My Progress With Porn Addiction

What Do I Do When My Wife is Triggered?

Transcript

Jake Kastleman (00:08.846)
Do you sometimes feel sexually broken? Do you wonder how you could have spent so many years abusing your mind and body through porn addiction and masturbation while knowing it was hurting you and your wife? Does even saying the word masturbation cause you to feel nervous or to smile awkwardly? Do you feel isolated, embarrassed, or overwhelmed by sexuality? Is your sex life with your wife strained? And do you suspect that porn is playing a part in this?

Do you only have sex with your wife once a month at best and does this make you feel like less of a man? Do you feel like you're the only one who struggles with these things or that others may struggle but you're the worst of any of them? Underneath it all, do you feel like you're not allowed to acknowledge this pain and shame because after all, it's your fault that you built this addiction to porn and masturbation. And so,

The fact that it's been your actions that have led you here makes you feel like there's no room for self-compassion. You believe you deserve the opposite. I'm here to tell you that I know all these feelings intimately, my friend, and I know them because they were mine. I remember them like they happened yesterday. For years, I felt sexually destroyed. I felt broken. I felt unforgivable. I hid my pain from the world and from God.

felt that I was unworthy of compassion or even pity because I had been the one who had hurt myself. I still carry some of these feelings, just to a much lesser degree, after a decade of sobriety. I get you, brother. You're not alone. In fact, there are a ton of men that feel exactly the way that you do, and I know that from my experience working with them. And today, we are going to talk about how to understand your sexual trauma that has come from your addiction.

and masturbation, which, make no mistake, is real and legitimate. Being addicted, feeling unable to stop, and hurting yourself over and over causes trauma. It's as if you've been abused or neglected, and you've been the one doing these things to yourself. You deserve compassion, your pain is real, and it can be healed.

Jake Kastleman (02:30.574)
Before we dive into the episode, want to remind you my friend to follow this podcast so you can get updated every time I send out a new episode. Hit that notification bell and shoot me a rating so that others can find this podcast. Also, check out my free workshop and my free ebook at nomordesire.com. With that, let's dive

Jake Kastleman (02:56.61)
When you chronically use porn and masturbation to numb pain, to avoid connection, and to chase temporary relief, you're harming your body, and you're harming your brain. That's trauma, right? Your nervous system starts to believe that intimacy equals secrecy, and your body gets trained to associate arousal with isolation and with anxiety.

And you may not even realize that this has happened to you because it's very unconscious, it happens very slowly. It may even be a given to you psychologically that this is just how it feels, how sex feels. Your brain gets overloaded with dopamine spikes from pornography use and crashes from those spikes until normal healthy touch feels boring or it feels stressful.

Just because the pain is self-inflicted doesn't mean it's not real. I remember for me, I had a lot of experiences, many years of isolation and embarrassing experiences. I had family members walk in on me when I was using porn, okay, and masturbating. Look, that is, that's embarrassment. You wanna talk about embarrassment, okay?

Also growing up in a religious home where that was seen as something that was sinful and evil, right? That really overloads that with a whole nother layer. I also was someone who, I lost my virginity when I was 16. And that was something that went directly against my values and morals that I had been taught growing up in a Christian home. It was very traditional. And,

Because of that, essentially when I had pursued that, it was to gain the acceptance of my buddies, to be the cool guy. I thought that I had to do that in order to be accepted, to be liked. That was probably the main driving force behind me doing that, unfortunately. And that experience was extremely awkward. It was anxiety provoking. As someone who was 16, I'd been using

Jake Kastleman (05:19.05)
and masturbating for three years at that point, three or four years. And I had porn-induced erectile dysfunction. This is something that's extremely common these days. And so to be frank, in that experience, I couldn't get it up, right? And that's a tough challenge that a lot of men face now. And at that time, I did not understand any of this.

I didn't know that porn had led to that. I was just some kid that was trying to gain the acceptance of my friends and doing what I thought would make me cool. And so I built this understanding of sex as something that involves status. Sex is something that is anxiety provoking. It's rebellious. It's sinful. It's...

Well, it wasn't something that I did for love's sake, right? Nor within a committed relationship, obviously. It wasn't something that was special, that was sacred, it wasn't positive, it was extremely, it was an extremely negative experience. You know, part of me felt like, wow, look how cool I am, you I did this and certainly bragged about it in my teenage years, unfortunately.

And I hurt a lot of people in the process. In fact, I totally destroyed my friend group. So I also learned that sex is something that destroys relationships at that time. I didn't understand that I took that on, but I did. And then in my later years, when I was working to get sober from pornography and to recover, I had this inherent belief that sex is evil, bad, sinful, destroys relationships.

It's anxiety provoking. And so I essentially wanted to avoid it at all costs. And that would be called sexual anorexia, right? To be completely transparent, I got married with this belief inside. I'd worked so hard to get sober from pornography and I was blessed enough to have done that previous to marriage. And then in my marriage, I had this...

Jake Kastleman (07:42.242)
this unconscious belief that sex is sinful, evil, dangerous, it causes pain, it's associated with the secrecy and this isolation. That was really difficult to uncouple that link. It hasn't been fully decoupled, right? But I've done a great deal of work to remove what has been isolation secrecy.

dangerous, sinful, evil, etc. All those beliefs surrounding sex to remove that and instead to see it as something that is it's blessed, it's beautiful, it's connecting, it's intimate, it's positive, it's something shared between my wife and I that is it's a blessing to us and to our relationship. Our sexuality is one of the deepest parts of us. The two deepest parts of us as my friend Dean Sincere says,

our two deepest parts are our spiritual side and our sexual side. And I thought that was so strange when I heard that, but it really makes sense. What two things do we feel more sensitive about than spirituality and sexuality? And when we are actually healed and healthy in those ways, what more important things are there for us to be healed and healthy with? And then when we're damaged, what two more...

life-destroying kind of damages can we face than a spiritual wound or a sexual

So porn use and pornography addiction, it fractures you. There's the you that wants sobriety, you want connection, you want integrity, you want a meaningful relationship, you want to connect with someone in a loving way, you want to give love and feel love. And then there's the other you, quote unquote, that indulges in fantasies and sexual behaviors that harm you and the people around you. And the part of you who watches porn

Jake Kastleman (09:47.47)
can be perceived as, we could say, a younger, more reactive part of you. this part of you values pleasure, it values a peak experience, it values risk taking, it values excitement. And when I say risk taking, you might be like, well, what does that mean? Think about it. How many risks have you taken in your addiction? And how many times have you pushed the boundaries, pushed the limits just to get fixed?

Alright, so this is a younger, more reactive part of you that's seeking out that pleasure, it's risk-taking, and it's actually, as strange as sounds, a courageous part of you that's just been twisted to act in a way that isn't helping you, it's actually harming you. And so this parts into excitement, it's into the thrill, right, of experience, and although that's all positive, it's risk-taking, courageous, excitement, it's into the thrill, but it's been twisted for something that has caused you pain.

So this is also a part that aims to protect you by helping you escape discomfort and painful feelings using porn. And you may not perceive that in your life, but ultimately porn, just like food or drugs or alcohol or TV, video games, social media, all these things can be an escape. They can be a coping mechanism, something we can turn to in order to feel.

Relief from discomfort in our lives, suffering, insecurity, fear, shame, grief. Porn can become that. So this part essentially tries to protect you by helping you escape from all those feelings in your life that you will inevitably face as a human being. And the more that you actually hide from them, the more you try to escape from them, especially if you're someone who has suffered abuse or neglect in the past, which so many people who have been porn users or addicted to porn have suffered these things.

Those feelings just go on backlog inside of you and they just mount up and mount up and mount up and you're never dealing with them. You're always turning to your addiction again and again and again to try to, instead of self-regulating emotions and processing through them, you're having something external regulate your emotions for you. And that never works because then you've just got this backlog of all these emotions and it's like you're on overflow. you're just, you have this liquid just bubbling on the, you know, the.

Jake Kastleman (12:10.274)
rim of your glass and any little thing can just make it overflow over the edges, right? Or it's like a volcano that's just ready to erupt of your emotion. It's just all bubbling under the surface, ready to go. So you also have a part of you that dissociates during sex because the dissonance between what sex should be, beautiful, connected, expressive, uplifting. There's this part of you that dissociates

during sex because of that dissonance between what it should be and what it feels like for you. That dissonance is so great that you feel like you must disconnect from it. This part of you is afraid of sex. I want it to be understood that that part of you deeply cares. A very selfless, loving, sensitive, kind part of you that has been stifled and it disassociates from sex. These parts of you, they're not evil.

They're misdirected, they're wounded, right? You have that misdirected young kind of reactive part that engages in the addiction, tries to protect you by helping you escape discomfort and painful feelings. And then you've got this part of you that's wounded, that fears sex, that feels shame about sex. I'm not good enough, right? And you have this subsequent desire to perform in the bedroom rather than it actually being something that's enjoyable, that's filled with love, that's a connecting experience. It's about performance and that's anxiety provoking.

It's pressure. So the true self in you is capable of love, though. The real you, the real you when it comes to sexual intimacy, you're capable of love. You're capable of presence. You're capable of self-control. And that self hasn't left you. Okay, this might get a little, for some people, little spiritual, little woo-woo, so to speak. But I'm serious. Okay, you have that innate capacity and ability. You have that...

Consciousness inside of you this essence if you will if you don't believe in this that's okay. Everyone's got it It's been shown in clinical research and work with patients in the psychology field We've all got this that self hasn't left you That core you it's just buried under these years of shame and repetition, right? So you're still a good person You just have a hard time seeing it underneath all of those self sabotaging and self punishing behaviors

Jake Kastleman (14:35.586)
And these behaviors and beliefs can change. We could talk about that for a long, long time about how that works psychologically, how it works spiritually, but in a basic sense, there's kind of that bearing that's happened. I love the work I get to do as a one-on-one porn addiction recovery coach with men across the world.

My clients feel seen and heard and that they are receiving the tailored help they need with clear, structured exercises and tools to get sober long term. I wanted to share a couple of the stories from these men. The first story is from my client John. He said, I spent many years in denial about my problem, blind to how my actions and behavior hurt myself and those around me.

had tried traditional therapists in the past, but none provided the solutions or tools I needed to overcome my addiction on a day-to-day basis. Jake, however, directly relates to what I'm going through, and it gave me comfort to know that I am not alone in my struggles and that I can overcome my addiction. He has given me the tools and support I needed to get through some of the most difficult times of my life. It has truly been life-changing.

I have been sober seven months now. I have strengthened my relationships with my spouse, children, and friends, and I am more present with those around me, more mindful of my own emotions, and am beginning to take control of my life. The second story is from my client Chris, who said, I found out about Jake through his podcast and was intrigued. The experience working with him has been great to date.

I've worked with many therapists and coaches over the years. Jake stands out partly because he cares so deeply and is so eager to help. He sees my problems and is almost as excited as I am to solve them. I hear him furiously typing notes on his keyboard when we're talking and I hear, am deeply invested in your success in every keystroke. I love his enthusiasm to continually find new ways to help his clients. I'm a big fan of Jake.

Jake Kastleman (16:50.112)
If you or your loved one are struggling with the incredible challenge of porn addiction, and it is getting in the way of your love, your success, your motivation, and your joy, then apply for my one-on-one intensive porn addiction recovery program at nomordesire.com. A structured program with personalized help.

Jake Kastleman (17:15.662)
So I want to talk about the impact on marriage, this scar tissue in the bedroom, so to speak. Porn doesn't just harm your mind, right? It scars your marriage and you feel this. If you feel disconnected during sex, you struggle to stay present, you avoid emotional vulnerability or need everything to go a certain way in the bedroom or else it doesn't work. That's not random.

That's porn programming. You may be experiencing performance anxiety, experiencing low libido or erectile dysfunction, not because you're broken as a human being, but because your nervous system is trained for secrecy and for speed, not for safety and for slowness, right? For an actual intimate experience. And so, yeah, you can't keep it up in the bedroom.

You're experiencing erectile dysfunction because your nervous system is trained for that speed. It's trained for high stimulation, dopamine spikes, and the bedroom, what happens in the bedroom between you and your partner just cannot match that. You're not failing as a husband, my friend. You were trained by your pornography addiction to expect something entirely different than what real intimacy is. So I want to clarify, you may be failing in this area.

That does not make you a failure. Failing is a... It's a sign, okay, a change needs to happen. I need to learn something. I need to overcome this. It's a sign to you. Okay, but that does not define who you are.

So because you caused the pain, you feel like you can't grieve it. It causes pain in your marriage, you've caused it to yourself, right? A lot of people say you chose your addiction. But look, that's a trap. Compassion isn't just for victims of others' abuse, it's for all pain. All pain deserves compassion. Even if self-inflicted, if a child kept hitting himself in the face out of fear, right? My little toddler does this sometimes.

Jake Kastleman (19:25.688)
Would you withhold kindness from that child? Maybe, maybe you would, but that doesn't show perfect love. Okay, you'd want to help that child and maybe a deeper part of you, even if you feel that like, geez, back off, this kid's crazy, he's hitting himself in the face, which is sometimes what you might do to yourself. There's a deeper part of you that feels compassion and your self-inflicted wounds deserve that same gentleness that that little child deserves.

You're allowed to be heartbroken over what you did to yourself. That heartbreak, it can be a holy thing. Okay, it can open up the door to healing, but only if you're willing to be present with it, to write about it, to meditate upon it, to pray about it, to actually get deep into the trenches of understanding it. You have to face the pain head on, learn about it, and seek to understand it at the deepest level. Journaling, writing, meditating, praying.

Focusing in on it and understanding yourself at the deepest level What has it felt like for you? Be a witness to your thoughts and to your feelings You deserve that compassion Okay, and I'm gonna give you some exercises at the end of this episode to help you in that process to get you started So I want to talk about the role of repetition and healing you didn't get here overnight and you won't heal overnight your brain became addicted through repetition

and you heal the exact same way. Okay, neuroplasticity is real. Every time you choose presence over performance, stillness over speed, connection over control, I want you to pay attention to each of those, because those are so crucial when it comes to sexual recovery. Performance, speed, control. These are the things that we get.

Addicted to attached to we built we build repetition of in the bedroom and in our sexuality porn trains us to do this Okay, so every time you choose presence stillness and connection instead of that performance speed and control you're retraining your arousal system and again this has to occur through a lot of introspection self-reflection on your part and then practicing in the bedroom showing up differently Okay healing

Jake Kastleman (21:52.418)
this sexual part of you. You don't have to be perfect at this. You just begin practicing. Let your wife know that you're trying to heal this sexual trauma and ask if she is up for making it a more connective experience. She may not be, and that's okay if she's not there yet. So start small.

30 seconds of breath and gratitude before intimacy, even if that's just holding hands or cuddling on the couch, something small that you're doing between you guys physically. One moment of eye contact during sexual intimacy, one conversation with your wife during sexual intimacy, that can sound so strange to a lot of men, especially when we've suffered so much secrecy and isolation in sex.

But yes, you should actually talk with your wife when it comes to sex.

Jake Kastleman (22:54.734)
I'm sorry, Russell's not going down the stairs. need you to...

Jake Kastleman (23:01.55)
So now let's talk about loving yourself to love her.

Okay, here's the truth. You can't fully love your wife if you hate yourself. In fact, I would say that your love for yourself is a direct mirror of your love for the people around you. Your love for the people around you is a direct mirror of your love for yourself. And both of those are a direct mirror for your love for God and vice versa. It's all the same thing. Shame will always build walls in the bedroom.

Your wife might feel like you're there physically, but not emotionally. That's because part of you is still hiding. Right? When you start honoring your body, you start honoring your story and your sexual energy as something good and worth healing, you're to make space for love and your wife will feel this shift. So real masculinity is present. It's grounded. It's gentle.

And you need to learn how to welcome the painful emotions that you feel surrounding sex, as strange as this sounds. You need to be willing to welcome these painful emotions into your life. You need to become a witness to them. You need to allow them to be there. And you can actually hold space for them in your body to practice emotional embodiment.

which gives a lot more space for emotion rather than we can get so caught up in modern Western culture, especially with how Descartes separated mind and body back in the 1600s and then how we've subsequently essentially understood so much through neuroscience and through studies in psychology where we think it all happens in the brain, but emotion takes place throughout our body, our whole body. If I can hold space,

Jake Kastleman (24:59.022)
you know, in my chest, my stomach, my shoulders, my arms for emotion.

then I can hold a lot more emotion and I can actually hold space for these painful emotions so I can feel them. I can lean into the discomfort. And then if I'm able to do that and allow the painful motion to be there, and that may not be easy, it's not easy ever, but I can get more used to it. I can actually practice it. Then I can show it better for my wife with my whole self. I can't.

If I deny painful emotions, I can't fully feel joyful emotions and vice versa.

So then I want to talk a bit about God's view of your sexuality. Okay, for those of us who are religious or were spiritual, God's not disgusted by your sexuality, my friend. He created it. He grieves your wounds, not because they make you dirty, but because they have kept you from love.

They've kept you from feeling his love for you and your wife's love for you.

Jake Kastleman (26:12.332)
And this quote, right, we often hear your body is a temple if you're Christian. What does that mean? That's not just a commandment, it's a promise. You were meant to be a vessel of joy, of connection, of strength. Your body's holy. It's a good place.

That's not just a commandment, it's a promise. There is no part of your past that God cannot use. He does not just forgive, He restores you, and your sexual healing can become part of your ministry to others around you.

Jake Kastleman (26:53.708)
So if you've taken a big step just by listening today, I hope this has been helpful for you so far. I've got some really excellent bonuses, some exercise. I wouldn't say bonuses. I'd say some things for you to actually apply what you've learned today. This is extremely important. Listening to this episode is great, but implement what you've learned today. And I want you to do these three small things this upcoming week and perhaps beyond. Number one, I want you to journal about

what your body has endured because of your addiction. And I have some reflection questions that I'm going to give you to take this much deeper.

Number two, I want you to speak a compassionate truth to yourself daily, every day. Something perhaps of the nature of, I hurt myself sexually, yes, but I'm choosing to care for myself now.

Number three, I want you to connect with a coach, a brother or a support group and let yourself be seen in this journey. This is so important to get that support in whatever form it might come. You don't have to fix everything today. But you do need to start loving yourself again because you're not beyond healing, you're not too far gone and you just need to open up and understand your pain so that you can find compassion for yourself. That will empower you.

to show up for your wife in the bedroom and for just your general relationships in your life. So now's your moment, my friend. Get help, grow, overcome this. You don't have to suffer the way that you have anymore. I'm rooting for you. I wanna give you these reflection questions. And I mentioned journaling about what your body has endured because of your addiction. And I would add what your mind has endured, both of them. So some reflection questions for you to be able to

Jake Kastleman (28:47.832)
Dig deep into that. I have six of them. One is, when did I first start to feel ashamed of my sexuality? That could take you back into some painful memories. I encourage you to either do this with a professional or really take some compassionate time to do this with God and write about this. It is not pleasant. But if you can, my highest piece of advice in a basic sense is to be a witness for your thoughts and emotions.

Step back and be a witness and welcome the painful emotions in so that you can grow through them. And then number two is in what ways have I used porn and masturbation to numb emotional pain?

Number three, what has my body and soul endured because of my addiction? Number four, can I hold both truths, both truths that I caused harm and that I'm still worthy of healing? And why could this be true? And then number five, what would it look like to reconnect with my wife through presence, not performance? And number six,

Do I believe God wants to restore my sexuality or am I still hiding from him? I hope these questions help you in your journey. Again, implement what you've learned today. God bless and much love, my friend. Thanks for listening to No More Desire. It's a genuine blessing for me to do the work that I do and I wouldn't be able to do it without you, my listeners, so thank you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do me a favor.

follow this podcast, hit the notification bell and shoot me a rating. The more people who do this, the more men this podcast will reach. So take a few minutes of your time and hit those buttons. If you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, the eight keys to lose your desire for porn or my free ebook, the 10 tools to conquer cravings. These are specialized pieces of content that will give you practical exercises and applied solutions to overcome porn addiction.

Jake Kastleman (31:01.314)
And you can find them at nomordesire.com. As a listener of the No More Desire podcast, you are part of a worldwide movement of men who are breaking free of porn to live more impactful, meaningful, and selfless lives. So keep learning, keep growing, and keep building that recovery mindset and lifestyle. God bless.

Jake Kastleman (31:37.078)
Everything expressed on the No More Desire podcast are the opinions of the host and participants and is for informational and educational purposes only. This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of a qualified mental health professional. If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or a desire to harm others,

please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.