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Lowering Our Expectations

Can someone who watched porn in the past and is getting married now, be helped to lower their expectations?

the.guard Wednesday, 17 March 2021
Part 3/5 (to see other parts of the article, click on the pages at the bottom)

Another helpful way to let go of unrealistic expectations is to realize how far porn is from real love. Here are some of the lies that porn teaches us:

* Porn teaches that each partner always wants what the other person wants.

* Porn teaches that sex is "on demand", i.e. when one wants it the other person will too.

* Porn teaches that women have perfect bodies.

In real life, the human body is constantly changing. Actually, the closer a couple get over a lifetime of building a family and sharing the more their bodies age. Real love must replace the childish love of "body parts". Rabbi Twerski used to say that the word “Love” has lost all its meaning in today’s world. If someone says he loves steak, why does he go ahead and eat it? Obviously he means that he loves himself, and the steak just makes him feel good. Porn treats love like steak. In porn there is no other person. There’s no partnership or what chazal call “zivug”, each is just a toy of the other, doing something to the other. Each is alone, using the other person. This is the farthest thing possible to real love, which is the central ingredient of a healthy marriage. Even for non-Jews it doesn't work, and if this is all they have the marriage will quickly fall apart.

If our focus is lust then our expectations will never met... Our job in life is to learn how to change our motivations and switch over from selfish inward thinking to outward thinking. We need to learn to develop a real love and concern for the other person, a love built on giving.

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