Wendy Maltz > Quotes

“When it comes to your health, a time-and energy-consuming porn habit can really interfere with important self-care activities such as exercising, eating well, getting enough sleep, and even bathing and grooming. Sleep”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“She was interviewing one of my favorite television actors, Don Johnson of Miami Vice. As he reclined on a couch in his lovely home, Don told Barbara about the joys and difficulties in his life. He talked of past struggles with drug and alcohol abuse and work addiction. Then he spoke of his relationships with women—how exciting and attractive he found them. I could see his energy rise and his breath quicken as he spoke. An air of intoxication seemed to fill the room. Don said his problem was he liked women too much and found it hard to be with one special partner over a long period. He would develop a deep friendship and intimacy, but then his eyes would wander. I thought to myself, this man has been sexually abused! His problems sounded identical to those of adult survivors I counsel in my practice. But then I reconsidered: Maybe I’ve been working too hard. Perhaps I’m imagining a sexual abuse history that isn’t really there. Then it happened. Barbara leaned forward and, with a smile, asked, “Don, is it true that you had your first sexual relationship when you were quite young, about twelve years old, with your seventeen-year-old baby-sitter?” My jaw dropped. Don grinned back at Barbara. He cocked his head to the side; a twinkle came into his blue eyes. “Yeah,” he said, “and I still get excited just thinking about her today.” Barbara showed no alarm. The next day I wrote Barbara Walters a letter, hoping to enlighten her about the sexual abuse of boys. Had Don been a twelve-year-old girl and the baby-sitter a seventeen-year-old boy, we wouldn’t hesitate to call what had happened rape. It would make no difference how cooperative or seemingly “willing” the victim had been. The sexual contact was exploitive and premature, and would have been whether the twelve-year-old was a boy or a girl. This past experience and perhaps others like it may very well be at the root of the troubles Don Johnson has had with long-term intimacy. Don wasn’t “lucky to get a piece of it early,” as some people might think. He was sexually abused and hadn’t yet realized it.   Acknowledging past sexual abuse is an important step in sexual healing. It helps us make a connection between our present sexual issues and their original source. Some survivors have little difficulty with this step: They already see themselves as survivors and their sexual issues as having stemmed directly from sexual abuse. A woman who is raped sees an obvious connection if she suddenly goes from having a pleasurable sex life to being terrified of sex. For many survivors, however, acknowledging sexual abuse is a difficult step. We may recall events, but through lack of understanding about sexual abuse may never have labeled those experiences as sexual abuse. We may have dismissed experiences we had as insignificant. We may have little or no memory of past abuse. And we may have difficulty fully acknowledging to ourselves and to others that we were victims. It took me years to realize and admit that I had been raped on a date, even though I knew what had happened and how I felt about it. I needed to understand this was in fact rape and that I had been a victim. I needed to remember more and to stop blaming myself before I was able to acknowledge my experience as sexual abuse.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“Some porn users tell us they feel too ashamed to go to church or express their spirituality in the ways that were once meaningful to them.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you learn to let go? —JACK KORNFIELD, BUDDHIST TEACHER”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“Top Ten Sexual Problems from Using Porn 1. Avoiding or lacking interest in sex with a real partner 2. Experiencing difficulty becoming sexually aroused with a real partner 3. Experiencing difficulty getting or maintaining erections with a real partner 4. Having trouble reaching orgasm with a real partner 5. Experiencing intrusive thoughts and images of porn during sex 6. Being demanding or rough with a sexual partner 7. Feeling emotionally distant and not present during sex 8. Feeling dissatisfied following an encounter with a real partner 9. Having difficulty establishing or maintaining an intimate relationship 10. Engaging in out-of-control or risky sexual behaviors”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“As we’ve seen, serious problems with porn often have their roots in early exposure to porn in childhood. And a child’s view of their parent can be negatively impacted if that parent’s porn use is discovered or revealed.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“The girls on the computer are so hot. Their bodies are perfect. I’ve spent many hours fantasizing about being with them. But lately, it seems like I can’t accept imperfection in the women I meet. I’ll start talking with a really nice girl at a bar. She’s cute and has a great sense of humor, but my interest only goes so far. She’s not a ‘ten.’ She has flaws. Her boobs are too small, her waist too thick, or her thighs too wide. I know it’s wrong to be rejecting women because they don’t look like the image of the supermodel girls I find sexy. Porn has created a huge gap between the kind of woman I enjoy being with and the kind of woman I actually desire sexually.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“There is no doubt that porn has many attractive and powerful properties—from sexually arousing and fulfilling you, to giving you an easy escape from your real life, to helping you feel powerful and desirable. But using porn also creates problems, many of which evolve so slowly that you don’t see them coming or feel them happening until they are quite serious. As we’ll discuss more in upcoming chapters, porn can: conflict with your values, beliefs, and life goals, compromise your ability to be honest and open in a relationship, upset and compete with an intimate partner, harm your mental and physical health, make you less attractive as a sexual partner, cause sexual desire and functioning difficulties, shape your sexual interests in destructive ways, and cause a variety of family, work, legal, and spiritual problems.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“Numerous studies show that as the number of hours spent doing porn increase, the more likely porn users report that they are having a serious problem with it.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“Finding time alone with porn and searching out porn that “does the trick” drains time, attention, and energy that might otherwise be spent in social activities or with an intimate partner. Simon,”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“Failure is doing nothing about a problem that bothers us. If our efforts don’t go as we hoped, we still learn and can take a new approach next time.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“Sexual healing involves a great deal of unlearning. Along the way, we learn a new way to think, feel, and behave sexually. We need to create goals that respect the time it might take us to integrate smaller changes.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“Sexual healing and general recovery need to work together in the same way that music and lyrics work together to make a song: They alternate and blend together at different times. They are complementary, not isolated, experiences.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“Pornography can be harmful to sexual healing in many ways. It conveys the idea of unlimited sexual access to women, children, and men. Pornography exploits the people who act in it as well as the public who buys it. It uses sexual stimulation to make money, reinforcing the commodity view of sex. Pornography evokes strong emotions, such as fear and shame, and encourages sexual arousal to abusive ideas and images. Pornography often depicts sex from the perspective of someone who has unsafe, impulsive, compulsive, and extreme sexual interests. It frequently perpetuates destructive and false impressions about sex. People are reduced to objects that are used for stimulation and that can be controlled by other people. Staged scenes in porn can make sexual violence and humiliation appear pleasurable, increasing our tolerance of coercion in sexual relationships. The sex in porn is typically devoid of genuine affection, respect, responsibility, and connection. And without these pillars of healthy sex, it tends to reinforce a type of sex that can never fully satisfy.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“COSA”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“Identifying”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography

“In sexual healing, we can replace “hard-core” sex with “heart-core” sex.”
― Wendy Maltz, The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse

“Tell someone else about your porn problem Get involved in a treatment program Create a porn-free environment Establish twenty-four-hour support and accountability”
― Wendy Maltz, The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography