Podcast 530: When Trust Breaks – Healing the Wounds of Betrayal and Addiction

(Intro)

JOSHUA: 25 years ago, when I was around 20, the rate of erectile dysfunction among guys who were 20 was about 2 to 3%. Now it is anywhere from 20 to 25%. Most of my clients who are young men have experienced erectile dysfunction at some point because they watch so much pornography.

MARTIN: Hey everyone, Martin Pytela here for Life Enthusiast podcast, and today with me is Joshua Shea. Joshua comes with a very important message. Not the message you want to hear, would like to hear, but here we are. Joshua, welcome to Life Enthusiast.

JOSHUA: Thank you for inviting me to the show, Martin. I appreciate it.

MARTIN: You bet. Well, let's start with that. Betrayal happens. It just is so devastating when it does happen. And it happens to many of us, small ones, big ones, life-altering ones. Right?

JOSHUA: Absolutely. And it shocks your world because when you are betrayed, basically that is a way of saying that you had a concrete black and white truth, and it got blown up and you have to kind of reconfigure your mindset around it.

MARTIN: Yeah. When you have a major loss, like a loved one dies, that kills the future or at least ends the future. But when somebody betrays you, that kills both the future and the past.

JOSHUA: Yes, absolutely.

MARTIN: Major major. You now have to re-evaluate the world, you now have to re-evaluate yourself because you now are known to yourself to have no judgment.

JOSHUA: Absolutely. What you knew was true is not true. So how can you trust yourself on any of your judgments?

MARTIN: Right.

JOSHUA: It rocks you to your foundation, and it usually comes because somebody who you trusted implicitly, somebody who you believed told you nothing but the truth, has been found out to be a fraud. And that can really hurt, whether it's a parent, a friend, a spouse, whoever it is that betrays you, is going to probably harm the relationship potentially to the point where it can't come back.

MARTIN: Right. Now, there's the choice, right? The choice is, was it a weakness or was it a character flaw? Well, a weakness is a character flaw, but is it forgivable or unforgivable? Can we live with it or not live with it? Right?

JOSHUA: Right. And when I talk to my clients about this, always the way I put it is, can you forgive but not forget?

MARTIN: Right. I've worked a lot with memories and with NLP, neural linguistic programming, in the sense where we can reframe a situation, right? We can amplify something to the point that it's overwhelming and unforgivable or we can package it in such a way that well, it it is what it is and we're moving on and we decide to well, I guess we should go concrete examples that's probably best to just say, “hey one of the clients that I worked with recently had this situation.” Why don't you try and just illustrate how that process of working with you works. What can a person hear on this end when they call you and say, “Joshua I would like help.” Actually, let me reframe this in the following manner, having a coach is a lot like getting a flashlight on a dark night. It will help you find the stepping stones and get out of where you are. Doing it alone is like doing it by braille. You'll be bumping into walls. Having a coach, you will have a lit path, which is a beautiful thing to have when you feel about as bad as you're ever going to feel in your life.

JOSHUA: Yes, you're absolutely correct. In my line of coaching, I focus a lot on pornography addiction. And what happens with my typical client is that it is more than likely a woman who has been in a relationship with a man for usually years, sometimes many years. And early on in their relationship, they established the rule that pornography would not be part of their relationship. Neither of them would watch individually. They would not watch together. And for whatever their reasons for not liking pornography or being morally opposed, whatever that is, it doesn't really matter. And what usually happens is that the wife or the girlfriend, somewhere along the way discovers that her partner has been watching pornography. And this just shatters her world because first, what she, there's usually three steps with this. First, how did I cause this? What did I do to him? What did I do to him? Am I not pretty enough anymore? Am I not good enough in bed anymore? Whatever. A real sense that they are the problem. Once they move through, they never are the problem. Once they recognize that, they then hit the part where it's the recognition of, “Oh my goodness he lied to me. He lied to me for years. And if he's lied to me for years and I believed it, what else has he lied about?”

MARTIN: Yeah. What else?

JOSHUA: And if he has such a good poker face that he's lied to me for years, how do I know if he's ever telling me the truth in the future?

MARTIN: Right. And if he's doing p***, what else is he doing?

JOSHUA: Exactly. And then the final stage or the third stage of betrayal trauma in my line of work is, what do I do now? Because in many of these cases if you're dating somebody for two weeks and you find out they use p*** and you don't like that, you walk away.

MARTIN: Yeah.

JOSHUA: Yeah. What if you've been married for 10 years? What if you have a mortgage? What if you have two kids? What if you have insurance payments? If your lives are completely enmeshed, Do you break that? Do you work on it? What do you do while you're dealing with this betrayal? You also have to figure out if you're going to try to save the whole thing. And it can be very, very taxing on somebody's emotions.

MARTIN: And you'll be all over the map. One day you'll be okay with it, the next thing you'll be pounding walls, right?

JOSHUA: Yes. Yes. That's the way that I have to deal with the betrayal trauma and the fact that one of the biggest unique parts of what I do is that we have to look at the concept of cheating. Because many, many ladies believe that if their husband is looking at pornography, it's cheating. Some believe it's just as bad as physical cheating or cheating sexually.

MARTIN: Right.

JOSHUA: And a lot of the guys who I coach don't see it that way.

MARTIN: Yeah. Well, there's a spectrum, right? When I see a pretty girl, she's walking on the street and she has all the pretty parts, or well, and it doesn't have to be a girl. It could be whatever it is that I'm finding attractive, right? But anyway, looking at that, well, I'll get stimulated a little bit or quite a bit or aroused, or I start fantasizing or I, well, don't really act on it or try acting on it or actually do something like hugging, kissing, dancing, whatever, or more or more or more, right? There's a whole scale. And for some people that spectrum begins at, you looked.

JOSHUA: Yep.

MARTIN: And for some people, it begins, you touched. And for some people, it begins you joined. And and so on, right? So, it is a spectrum. And from my perspective, it's just a big big mess.

JOSHUA: Well, the way I look at it is if you made the rule in your relationship, That you could not look at p***, and then you do look at p***, you're breaking the rule. And what is breaking a rule other than cheating? Whether it's on a test in school, whether it's you've got some aces up your sleeve playing poker, you've cheated. Just because you didn't sleep with somebody doesn't mean you didn't cheat. If you broke the rule, That's a form of cheating.

MARTIN: So, I guess now we're right back to setting boundaries in relationships, making agreements, being clear about what we mean when we say.

.

JOSHUA: And enforcing those boundaries. Because they don't mean anything if you don't.

MARTIN: Yeah. Once you make the rules, you have to play by the rules. It's just like basketball. If you make five fouls, you're done for the match.

JOSHUA: Yes. Exactly. That's exactly the case. And everybody is a little different with how they react to it. And it's a tough place because many of my clients, when they get to me, they find that they've got through the idea that it was their fault. They recognize it wasn't, but they get to the point of, I would like to trust him again. But how do you do that? How do I ever trust again?

MARTIN: Right. So, do you work with the guy on the other side of it?

JOSHUA: Yes, absolutely. I work with him on the pornography addiction first. Dealing with the actual behavior and curbing that behavior. And then more importantly dealing with the idea of how did you get to this place? Why did you become an addict, which 99% of the time is childhood trauma.

MARTIN: Right.

JOSHUA: And then I work with the addict. I work with the betrayed partner, and then I also am trained as a disclosure specialist. So, I will work with both of them on bridging that gap in trust and to help rebuild it.

MARTIN: How do you actually, nobody wants to tell anybody just how messed up they are, do we?

JOSHUA: No. No. And those are some of the toughest sessions, when I have to sit there and guide a husband and wife or guide a long-term boyfriend and girlfriend through this process, because you're watching, either you're watching a relationship potentially disintegrate in real time.

MARTIN: Oh yeah, right in front.

JOSHUA: And that's tough to watch.

MARTIN: Yeah. No joke. Well, I guess it would be great to establish right at the beginning what our mission is. Are we going to try and save it? Are we going to do our best at saving it? And are we invited, are you invited in saying things that are going to help them save it as opposed to not? Right.

JOSHUA: Yeah, absolutely. The place that I always start is, you're both here. So that must mean you want to save something here. You must mean you want to try to figure this out. And I also drive home the point immediately that in our hearts, when something is over, we know it. When something is not worth fighting for, we know it. When something is done, we know it. They're in front of me today because they know there's still something there. And maybe that flame will be extinguished, but there is still something there, and they want to see if they can build upon it.

MARTIN: Yeah. I'd like to sidebar into statistics, I'd like to find out just how big the problem is. Can you just illuminate the audience just so they get a clear idea just what is out there?

JOSHUA: Yeah, absolutely. As I mentioned, I start with the pornography addict. The statistics of pornography addiction in this world are ridiculous at this point. Among men, 15 to 18% according to most surveys, most studies of men who use pornography use it to the point of it being problematic slash becoming an addiction. 

MARTIN: Okay. So, do you start with, they've watched it once and decided it's not for them, or they watch it now and then, or they watch it and do sex acts with it.

JOSHUA: Usually, what I do is I run through the 11 symptoms with them to determine how many they have, and if that deserves the title of addict because addict is just a word. And it's just a label, and we look at the behaviors, determine if they are an addict. And determine if they want to fix this. Most of the time they want to fix this, it's because they have that partner who they've hurt very much.

MARTIN: Okay.

JOSHUA: And I would say that of addicts who have partners, probably about 75% deal with this betrayal trauma. Deal with this, “I can't believe this is the guy who did this. I can't believe my loved one cheated on me like this.” But I can also proudly say that most of the people who come to me do get through this because they want to. Like you said with the flashlight, they just need that guide. One of the things, the way I actually describe it to people is like, I'm your sherpa. I'm going to help you get up Mount Everest. I know, I've been up and down a million times. I know the way. I know how to pack. I know what to do, but you're still going to do 90 to 95% of it. You have to actually walk the walk. You have to do the heavy lifting.

MARTIN: Yeah. You have to carry your own weight there.

JOSHUA: Yeah. And so as I was saying, and then in women, a lot of people don't recognize this. In women, about 8 to 12% of women who look at pornography, their use rises to the level of addiction. And I have had some boyfriends and husbands who have felt just as betrayed as when you switch the rehearsal around.

MARTIN: Of course, what do you need to dream about when you,

JOSHUA: Yeah. And that's really the problem. And we've seen an explosion of betrayal trauma in this world because about 20 years ago, we got high-speed internet. And when we got high-speed internet, right behind that was giving every kid an iPhone. And when you and I were young, the toughest part of pornography when we were 16 or 17 was getting your hands on it. Now we give every 11year-old kid the greatest p*** computer ever with their iPhone. And they can see the most graphic stuff out there.

And this is where we've seen this has been about 20 years and we're now seeing this problem as these men get older and older. There was a statistic not long ago that 32% of men under the age of 30, so 18 to 30, about one in three said they either had a problem with pornography, they were developing addiction, or they had an addiction.

MARTIN: Okay, that's significant.

JOSHUA: One out of three men under 30, those men are going to be 40. Those men are going to be 50. Those men are going to be in relationships that get destroyed. Women are heading into these relationships without recognizing or asking about pornography.

MARTIN: So, one in three men and one in eight or 10 women. Huh.

JOSHUA: Mhm.

MARTIN: Wow. Okay. Well, it's problematic when somebody who should be in their reproductive age is instead just simply doing it privately with a screen. Somewhere I think I read that about a third of all internet traffic is p***. Do you know the numbers?

JOSHUA: What I usually see is around 30%. So you're pretty much right there. 30% of internet searches are for pornography. 2% of internet searches are for illegal pornography. And perhaps the most illuminating statistic, and this doesn't have to do with addiction, but of men in this world who use the internet, 91.5% will look at pornography at least once a month. Doesn't mean they're addicted, but they will look.

JOSHUA: 60, 60.2% of women who use the internet in this world will look at pornography at least once a month. Doesn't mean they're addicted. Just means they look. So if you're a man, nine out of 10 men are looking.

If you're a woman, three out of five women are looking. In today's day and age, you are more unique if you don't look at pornography on the internet than if you do.

That's how much people are looking at p*** on the internet. But because a lot of it, the time you and I grew up, it's taboo. It's puritan. It's something's wrong with you if you look at this stuff. Despite the fact that the majority of us look at it, we still have to all pretend we don't. So, it's a very secret addiction. And when we get you back to betrayal, a woman whose husband is using this stuff, she often doesn't want to tell her friends. She doesn't want to tell her family. She doesn't want to go to a therapist because it's embarrassing for her. That her husband is using this stuff.

MARTIN: It's taboo. So. I get it. Well, I'm one of the 90. I have looked. 

JOSHUA: I think 8.5% of the men are lying. I don't watch pornography anymore because I was an addict myself for 24 years. But aside from people in recovery, I don't know anybody who doesn't look.

MARTIN: Okay. Is it so typical that it’s just similar to how alcoholics have to go dry once addicted? You have to just say, it does not exist. I will not touch it.

JOSHUA: Yeah. Basically, and I do believe that you have to learn to live in a world that has it. You have to be able to go to a restaurant and see people having wine on their table. You have to be able to go to the grocery store and know that three aisles over there's a bunch of beer.

So, you do have to be able to function in society. I mean, let's be honest, how can you not see depictions of sexuality, depictions of nudity in society? You're going to see some level of it. What you have to do is remove the trigger, remove the urge, and go back and do that trauma work to figure out, why do I have this addiction to p***? When so many other men and women don't. They may look, but they don't have the addiction. It's like the person who drinks one or two beers or the person who goes to a casino, stays there for 30 minutes, and walks away. They don't have the addiction.

MARTIN: Right. Have you come across the addiction or addictive gene?

JOSHUA: I believe that plays a role, but I don't think that's the main role. I believe that it is one-third DNA, the genes. I believe it's one-third the environment that you grew up in. And I believe it's one-third you just making poor decisions.

MARTIN: Okay. Well, I guess it's the happenstance of life. How does one boy discover it at 10, another one at 12, another one at 18, right? Why is it?

JOSHUA: Depends on where they grew up.

MARTIN: I have two little grandsons, presently three and five years old. Well, they're heading for that territory. They are not sexual yet, but come 10 years of age, they will be getting erections, and then what? Right.

JOSHUA: Mhm.

MARTIN: And then they need to channel it somewhere.

JOSHUA: Right. Right. But they can also be taught that pornography is not something you look at until you're older. One of the things that when I speak with parents or I appear on a podcast about parenting, I try to drive home the point that the stay away or be careful of pornography speech is not the birds and the bees speech. That's why so many parents don't want to have it. It's not the birds and the bees speech. It's the speech similar to, here's why you stay away from cigarettes when you're young. Here's why you stay away from alcohol when you're young.

MARTIN: Would you be able to sort of frame a few points that you would want to cover with a little boy?

JOSHUA: Yeah, absolutely. So, let's talk about your five-year-old grandson, Keep it very simple right now. Hey, I just want to remind you or I want to let you know that you should never let anybody ever take a picture of you without your clothes off, and you don't ever take a picture of somebody else without their clothes off. And you leave it at that for right now. 

When he hits kindergarten or first grade, you can then say, "Hey, you may have a friend who has a phone or a tablet and they may have pictures of people without their clothes on. If you see that, make sure you tell us or make sure you tell a teacher because little kids aren't supposed to see that kind of stuff. That's for grown-ups.” 

And then as they become eight or nine years old, you could say, "This is like beer. This is like cigarettes. When you turn 18 or when you turn 21, you can make your own decisions, but in this house, we know this isn't healthy for kids. So, we don't allow this stuff in our house. We don't want you to drink beer. We don't want you to look at these pictures. We don't want you to smoke cigarettes.” And then the thing that I believe works the most is when you get a boy who's 11 or 12, and this works for boys, you start to talk to them about p*** induced erectile dysfunction.

MARTIN: Okay.

JOSHUA: 25 years ago, the rate of erectile dysfunction among 20 year olds was about 2 to 3%. 

MARTIN: Okay, could you just pause. Erectile dysfunction is what, inability to?

JOSHUA: Inability to get an erection, maintain an erection, or be able to reach completion and have an orgasm. So these are the three levels of erectile dysfunction. Porn-induced erectile dysfunction is basically you’ve watched so much porn, you’ve pleasured yourself with so much porn that you can do it with a regular human being, you can’t do it with a partner, you will not be able to perform. 

And 25 years ago, when I was around 20, the rate of erectile dysfunction was about 2 to 3%. Now it is anywhere from 20 to 25%. Most of my clients who are young men have experienced erectile dysfunction at some point because they watch so much pornography. I believe that if we tell 12 and 13 year old boys about this, “hey, I know you want to look at this stuff. I know you want to touch yourself when you're looking at this stuff, but there are guys seven and eight years older than you who watch so much of this stuff, it doesn't work like it's supposed to down there anymore.”

I think that would get a lot of guys to think about their use.

MARTIN: Right. That reminds me of growing up around cigarettes and growing up around alcohol and all of the other silly vices and not really quite getting the message, which I think in my late teens, early 20s, I was like everyone else feeling immortal and bulletproof as in, won't happen to me or why should I worry about that, that's not a thing for me. So we need to somehow, I think somehow find a message to frame it in such a way that yes, this is a thing and yes, it may lead to really bad consequences, and take my word for it because there's no direct evidence, right? When you're 17 the testosterone level is high enough that you will get excited at just looking at somebody walk past.

JOSHUA: Yeah, absolutely. Exactly. Exactly. But it's important to also drive home the point that people who are addicts consume pornography for a different reason than people who are not addicts. It's like somebody who is an alcoholic. They are drinking for a reason and it's not just to go out to a bar and have a good time. It may start that way but that's not it. Same thing with a gambling addict or a food addict or a porn or sex addict, is that it starts out feeling good

and then eventually, the problem that you're running from by using the addiction is even worse than that problem in a lot of cases.

MARTIN: Yeah. And so it's not the what, it's the why that we need to,

JOSHUA: Yeah. And that's what I tell people. We will take care of the behavior of addiction. That's the easy part. The hard part and quitting, that's just quitting. Recovery is going back and saying, "Okay, why did you become this addict? What happened that you found pornography solved your problems? Pornography helped you with your anxiety. Pornography helped you with your stress.” And if you're a 12 year-old boy or girl and you discover this thing, well, it's naked people. They're fun to look at. It's masturbation, that's fun to do.

MARTIN: Sure. 

JOSHUA: But when you become dependent on that to solve your problems, to make you feel better, well, why would you develop proper problem solving skills? You've got this thing over here that you can always use. So, you become 15, you become 20, you become 25. At 25, you don't have the problem-solving skills of a 25 year-old. You have the problem solving skills of a 12-year-old because you're still using pornography to deal with all your problems, to deal with all your stress. And that's what's important, to go back and recognize how did you get this way? How did you become the person you are today? And what happened that you couldn't handle so long ago?

MARTIN: Yeah. So, do you have some sort of set of tools that you help people map down to the beginning to,

JOSHUA: Absolutely. We use a lot of straight ahead cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, a lot of dialectical behavioral therapy techniques, and then just a lot of trauma mapping, a lot of timeline mapping, and just to again, figure out,

MARTIN: Yeah. talk about it.

JOSHUA: Yeah. Figure out how you get to where you are today? Let's go through your life and let's look at where your fears were, where were the problems you had in life? How did you deal with them? How did p*** influence this? And it doesn't mean these are all sexual problems.

Most of the time it's not. Most of the time it's not. It's other types of anxiety, other types.

MARTIN: I can just visualize that it's the social milieu that the terrain of the school or whatever sports teams, and just being less than perfect or less than belonging, right? It's the being on the out of the in, and you decide that being alone is better than trying to suffer the pain of being on the in and getting, I don't know what's the word, put down or made fun of or whatever else happens to a kid out there, right?

JOSHUA: Yeah. But there are things like bullying, which is a big thing that I get. But a lot of times it's parents going through a divorce. A lot of times it's somebody in the family dies. A lot of times it's moving. A lot of times it is feeling ostracized from other people. There are a lot of things that many kids can handle just fine. But a lot of times these kids find p***. It makes them feel better. And p*** can make a bad day okay, and it can make an okay day pretty good. And what ends up happening is that they get it's not that they're addicted to body parts. It's not that they're addicted to watching people have sex. They're addicted to the chemical reaction that happens in their head with the dopamine and the oxytocin and the serotonin. That's what their addiction is about. And that's what I try to focus on with them is, this doesn't make you a bad person. This doesn't make you immoral. This doesn't mean you're a freak. This means that you found something when you were young. And you grabbed on to hold of it because it made you feel safe.

MARTIN: Yep. So, it comes right back to healing the initial hurt. The trauma. Well, it's really interesting that you named your website thatcorncoach.com. I found that interesting. This was new to me to hear that you told me.

JOSHUA: And I didn't  know this until I was on Tik Tok. I wrote a couple books. I started coaching and my daughter who was in her early 20s at the time, you've got to get on Tik Tok. You've got to get on Tik Tok. And I'm that old guy who just dismisses this. I finally got on it. It made my coaching absolutely blow up. But I learned you can't write the word p***. You write the word p*** and they will block you. So on Tik Tok, and I learned this is true for the rest of social media, the code word for pornography is corn.

MARTIN: I'm going to have some corn.

JOSHUA: Yes, I was watching corn. I was pleasuring myself to corn. I have a corn addiction. It doesn't mean you like to go to the store and just eat corn out of the can.  It means you've got a pornography addiction and,

MARTIN: They cannot ban corn because it's too everywhere.

JOSHUA: Exactly. Exactly. Exactly.

MARTIN: Okay. So, it's Thatcorncoach.com

JOSHUA: Yeah. And the other thing is, I've also learned, my first website was called ‘Recovering p*** Addict.’ What I learned the hard way was that a lot of people don't even want to type the word p*** into the browser.

MARTIN: No, they don't.

JOSHUA: So, corn makes everybody feel better.

MARTIN: All right. Yeah. Plus, of course, when you write down ‘Recovering p*** addict.’ I'm labeling myself already.

JOSHUA: Yes.

MARTIN: And I don't want to admit that. That's the last thing I want to say. Oh, yeah.

JOSHUA: Well, and that's what I tell. You don't have to call yourself an addict. Call yourself, say that you've got a hobby that's out of control. Call yourself, you want to call yourself an addict. Call yourself a victim. Call yourself a pretty pretty princess. I don't care what we call you. Let's just deal with the problem

MARTIN: Yeah. Right on. Well, so what's the process like? How long? How much? Group? Probably not group, probably one-on-one.

JOSHUA: One-on-one. One-on-one. And I would say for my average male client to get a handle on the behavior and to start to really understand the trauma part of things, we're probably talking 10 to 20 sessions total. 

MARTIN: Probably a 6 months relationship.

JOSHUA: 6 months yeah, about four to six months but I have some clients who I've had for years who we don't even talk about p*** anymore they just want to check in because they have found that having that outlet is important.

MARTIN: Well having a coach is awesome, and you can hire a business coach, you can hire a help me with my emotional illness coach. 

JOSHUA: Yep. Exactly. Exactly. And to this day, I haven't touched p*** in nearly 11 years. It's been, as we're recording this, it's 10 years and 11 months since I've used p***. I still have a therapist. I still have a coach. I only check in with them about once a month unless something is blowing up in my life. But it's just, I think that having people in your life who are there to help you who are there to root for you, but are not a part of your everyday life. I think that's important to have that independent person you can say anything to who knows a bit about this area.

MARTIN: Right, so if you have a problem with your nutrition, call Martin if you have a problem with your addictions to sexual or pornographic behaviors Joshua Shea.

JOSHUA: Call me.  We can talk about corn all day long.

MARTIN: All right. My left hand corn is much better than my right hand corn. 

JOSHUA: Most people it's the other way around.

MARTIN: I don't know. It's just complicated. It's very sensitive. It's very taboo. Taboo makes it worse. I remember I grew up around alcohol, wine, beer, whatever. It never had a panache for me. I never needed to be doing that. But sex, oh yeah, we needed to explore sex because that was a black curtain. And well, when I was growing up, finding a magazine with a picture was a big deal.

JOSHUA: Oh, yeah. Oh, absolutely. 15 years old, getting my hand on a Playboy. Now, a Playboy magazine only had about 30 pictures total.  And they were all just naked women standing there. Now, an 11 year-old kid who can spell man, woman, and sex, which are pretty easy words to spell. Can watch that in real time on the internet.

MARTIN: Yeah, I'll tell you. 

JOSHUA: It's a much more different world now that we have high-speed internet and now that kids have so many ways to get on the internet.

MARTIN: Do you have a sense that it really skews people's expectation into what their real relationship in the physical world will be?

JOSHUA: Absolutely. One of the most interesting parts of this was prior to the pandemic before I became a coach, I mostly went around speaking about this and I was at a college speaking to a woman's sexuality group and one of these women, woman was probably about 21 raised her hand and said, "Do you know anything about or have you heard about college women not wanting to have sex with with virgin men?" 

And I was like, "No, I haven't been a virgin or a college student in a very long time. Tell me more." And all of these women kind of perked up and we had another hour-long discussion. What's happening on college campuses is that there are a lot of women who do not want to be with a virgin man because a virgin man between 18 and 20 has probably grown up seeing thousands of hours of pornography. That's become their sex ed. 

Well, you want a damning statistic about pornography? There was a study that was done many years ago now where they looked at a hundred of the most popular videos on two adult websites. 94% of these videos had aggression from the man towards the woman, either physically or verbally. So, what happens these days is that a guy and a girl in college hit it off. They, so they end up back in his room or her room and they're getting intimate and the guy realizes they're going to have sex. So, what does he do? He shoves her on the bed. He puts his hand around her neck. He starts to act like a p*** star does because he's watched so much p***.

MARTIN: Yeah. That's how they want it. Right?

JOSHUA: Exactly. And this is not how these women want it. People like you and I who have been in normal sexual situations. We understand that pornography is fiction. We understand it's not a reality show. It's not a documentary. If these guys would learn how p*** is made, and what's ironic is that I've actually helped a lot p*** stars at this point. And if you watch a p*** The 15 minute clip probably took eight hours to film. It's not sexual at all. It's not sexy at all. It's a job.

But it's a job that is fantasy. It's like watching Mission Impossible and thinking this is what police officers do every day. That's not the truth of it. And,

MARTIN: Yeah, sitting in the quad squad car for hours on end. Interspersed with 10 seconds of rapid fire action. Right.

JOSHUA: Exactly. And these women are now getting to a point where they don't want to have to teach these young men how to be with a woman.

MARTIN: Yeah. Because they've been mis-educated.

JOSHUA: Absolutely. And I'll tell you even a perhaps a scarier statistic, and this was also part of this same study. They asked college-age women, "Have you ever been in a consensual sexual experience that got too far?” And 40% of them said, “yes, a guy took liberties with them even though it was consensual to start with.”

MARTIN: Yeah. It started okay and went sideways. Yeah.

JOSHUA: So, this is showing you that these young people with the access they have to pornography now, it is absolutely skewing their views on what healthy sexuality is.

MARTIN: Oh my dear. Okay. So, we have a problem and we need educators and we need this out there with lights shining on it, and we need to talk about it.

JOSHUA: Yes. And much like you and I have done for the last 45 minutes, we can talk about pornography without being graphic. We all know what pornography is. So, we don't have to talk about the content. We just need to talk about the problem behind it.

MARTIN: Yeah. Yeah. Give it to me. 

JOSHUA: Yeah. Everybody has their things they like. When I sit down with a client for the first time and they're like, "Well, I like feet." It's like, "Okay, well, most people don't, but you do. It doesn't matter." And if that's what you like, okay. A lot of my first time clients show up looking like a deer in headlights, just like, "I don't know what to say."

And once they realize, I'm not going to shame them. I'm not going to embarrass them. I was a p*** addict 24 years, I've seen whatever you've seen. So, I have no right to pass judgment on you. Let's talk about this as a problem. I don't care what you looked at, because that's not the main problem. The main problem is, why did you need to look at that? Why did this become your main coping tool in life?

MARTIN: Indeed, how did we get here?  I think based on this, well, if the viewer, if you have someone in your circle or if you are one yourself and would like a different, better outcome, something a little healthier, there's a better way. 

JOSHUA: Absolutely. And it's also important in this day and age for people to recognize anybody can be a p*** addict, just like an alcoholic. I deal with men and women from 18 to 70. I deal with rich people, poor people, white people, black people, Asians, and Latin people. I have clients in eight different time zones across the world. There is no religion, politics, anything that will separate you that allows you to say, "Well, I can't be a p*** addict." Everybody can be a p*** addict. And that's the important thing to recognize. There's no safe demographic. 

MARTIN: Right on. Well, it's the hormones, and it's the trauma. Put those two things together and you got yourself a mix.

JOSHUA: Quite a mix. 

MARTIN: All right. So, it's Thatcorncoach.com. Not this corn coach.

JOSHUA: No, not the other one. Thatcorncoach.com

MARTIN: Joshua Shea, this has been most enlightening. Thank you for spending the time here. We'll share it with the world.

JOSHUA: And thank you so much, Martin. I appreciate you allowing me to talk about this.

MARTIN: Happy to do that. This is life-enthusiast.com. My name is Martin Pytela, and you'll see me here again. Thank you.