An ancient wisdom proverb says, “How good is a timely word!” When you’re seeking answers to life’s problems, you know there’s someone who has walked a similar path before you. And you’d like to pick their brain and garner their insights. When you do find that ONE word — timely advice — that truly helps you find your way, there’s a profound sense of relief and gratitude.
That’s the power of a good book! Each of these books on porn recovery or the affects of porn on this list has a 4 star review or higher on Amazon. Even better, they’ve come highly recommended from reliable sources. Some of our team, including our “top dogs” have read at least one of the books on this list, too, if not more.
We’re sharing our best picks, hoping you will find the help and hope that is just what you need at this time in your life.
Books On Porn From A Secular Perspective
Your Brain On Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction by the late best-selling author Gary Wilson is almost the “ anti-porn bible” on the internet. Written from a non-religious viewpoint, the book tackles tough issues such as a growing trend of early onset erectile dysfunction or a low desire for partnered sex. Wilson shares his research from the perspective of science and the experiences of many.
Besides reading a book that has garnered well over a thousand 4.7 star reviews on Amazon, you can visit Wilson’s popular, helpful website to access more resources. If you’re wondering what porn does to your brain, you need to read this book. We also share a summary of important facts about porn and your brain here. Knowledge is powerful!
“…as high profile criticisms of pornography often come from religious and socially conservative organizations, it’s easy for liberally minded people to dismiss them without examination. But for the last nine years I have been paying attention to what people say about their experiences with pornography. For even longer, I’ve been studying what scientists are saying about how our brains work. I’m here to tell you this isn’t about liberals and conservatives. It isn’t about religious shame or sexual freedom. This is about the nature of our brains and how they respond to cues from a radically changed environment.” — Gary Wilson
The Porn Trap: The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography, originally published in 2010, is written by Wendy and Larry Maltz, both licensed and experienced sex/ relationship therapists. Naturally, porn use and its effects on people and relationships is something they encounter in their work regularly.
Here’s one vital fact they share in their book about porn use: “Powerful human bonding hormones, such as oxytocin and vasopressin, are released with orgasm. They contribute to establishing a lasting emotional attachment with whomever, or whatever, you happen to be with or thinking about at the time. The more orgasms you have with porn, the more sexually and emotionally attached to it you’ll become.”
Amazon states that this book on pornography, “…will help you to:
- Decide whether it’s time to quit using porn
- Learn how to stop using porn and deal with cravings
- Improve self-esteem and personal integrity
- Heal an intimate relationship harmed by porn use
- Develop a healthy sex life….”
The Porn Myth: Exposing the Reality Behind the Fantasy of Pornography by Matt Fradd, founder of The Porn Effect. Mr. Fradd is a popular speaker as well as writer on pornography. He specifically wrote this book on porn in a non-religious way, using arguments from research and science. He debunks the statement that only religious people oppose pornography. Since he received 4.7 out of 5 stars and many well-thought out reviews, we thought this book was worth including on our list.
Here’s how his book is described on Amazon: “Matt Fradd provides insightful arguments, including the latest scientific research, on nearly every relevant subject imaginable, exposing the negative impact pornography has on our minds, our relationships, and our culture.”
“If you want something to flourish, you need to use it in accordance with its nature. Don’t plant tomatoes in a dark closet and water them with soda and expect to have vibrant tomato plants. To do so would be to act contrary to the nature of tomatoes. Similarly, don’t rip sex out of its obvious relational context, turn it into a commodity and then expect individuals, families and society to flourish.” — Matt Fradd in Charisma News
Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality by Gail Dines, PhD, founder of Culture Reframed — an organization dedicated to educating people about porn’s harmful effects. Dr. Dines has been researching and writing articles and books about porn and its effects for over 20 years now. As a result, Culture Reframed is a rich resource for anyone who takes the challenges of our hypersexualized culture seriously. Whether you struggle personally with pornography, or you want to protect and nurture your loved ones, Dr. Dines has insights for you.
Books On Porn From A Religious Perspective
We really want to help people from every walk of life and every background to quit porn. This section is for our valued customers who are especially tuned into Christian books on porn. However, you’ll notice these authors also tap into great psychology and studies of how the human brain operates.
The Freedom Fight: The New Drug and the Truths That Set Us Free by Ted Shimer combines both good research and a Christian approach to quitting porn. The icing on the cake is that Shimer approaches the topic with compassion and care for men and women. He understands that for some from a Christian background, talking about their struggle with porn might feel impossible due to the shame.
Shimer stretches out a helping hand without shaming you. You’re far from alone — many in the church also struggle with porn silently. Or, if their porn problem surfaces, they feel like outcasts in the Body of Christ.
Shimer helps you address legitimate underlying reasons why your struggle with porn is so fierce. Once you have this self knowledge, you can understand and take more specific steps towards freedom from porn based on your personal challenges.
Clean: A Proven Plan for Men Committed to Sexual Integrity by Douglas Weiss, PhD, is a faith-based battle plan for defeating porn, sexual addiction, and “intimacy anorexia”. Dr. Weiss, a self-proclaimed recovered sex addict, can speak with true empathy for anyone stuck in these patterns. He offers great hope, too, having been “clean” for 30 years. Notably, Dr. Weiss has been featured on Oprah and Dr. Phil. He currently runs a counseling center and offers intensive training sessions.
Books About Porn Written By Women for Women
Restored: A Woman’s Guide To Overcoming Pornography by Alice Taylor is a Christian book on porn and women with helpful information for all women who struggle with porn. She doesn’t endorse a “just pray the porn away” approach, however.
In chapter 7 of her book, Ms. Taylor addresses the role of therapy in overcoming porn:
“You may have once thought, ‘I can do this alone’! Or perhaps you hoped you could keep this little secret just between you and one other person in the world. Having one great friend or mentor to support you is amazing, and you may reach a healthy level of freedom. However, the saying, ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ can easily be substituted into recovery. It takes a village to support a healing woman. It’s more than likely you need professional therapy or counseling.”
Dirty Girls Come Clean by Crystal Renaud not only charts Crystal’s journey to freedom from pornography, but it also shares the success stories of other women who struggled to quit porn from a faith-based perspective.
Crystal says about her own experience with porn, “Pornography use took me places I never thought I would go. It kept me there longer than I intended to stay. And it cost me more than I wanted to pay.”
Both encouraging and forthright, Crystal’s book offers practical tips aligned with the acronym SCARS. She also hosts a website with more resources for overcoming pornography especially for women. She’s passionate about breaking the silence about the growing trend of women’s pornography use and the isolation many women feel.
Crystal shares her inner struggles transparently.
“I was too ashamed to tell anyone about what I was doing. It was bad enough that I was struggling with this, but adding on the fact that I was a girl? No way would I let anyone in on that. In my mind, I was the only girl who ever struggled with a pornography and sexual addiction.”
If you’re feeling alone in your struggle, Crystal has a way of encouraging you like a new-found friend.
Getting Off: One Woman’s Journey Through Sex and Porn Addiction by Erica Garza.
A purely secular perspective of a woman’s personal struggle with porn, this book gets 4.2 stars on Amazon. After reading the reviews, we included it with this caveat: you may either hate or love it, but several people noted that this was a helpful, honest, raw story about one woman’s struggle with porn.
Don’t read this if you’re in recovery, perhaps, and might be triggered by details.
“Getting Off offers a brave and necessary voice to our evolving conversations about addiction and the impact that internet culture has had on us all— ‘a profoundly genuine, gripping story that any reader can appreciate (Vice)’.”
What can we learn from Garza’s personal story? According to Amazon, “In these remarkable pages, Garza draws an evocative, studied portrait of the anxiety that fuels her obsessions, as well as the exhilaration and hope she begins to feel when she suspects she might be free of them.”
Books On Porn For The “Other” Partner
Betrayal trauma is a real fruit of compulsive porn use in marriage. It’s time we listen to and help both people in the relationship, not just the person using porn. That’s why we’re sharing this list.
The Trust Solution: A couple’s guide to healing intimate betrayal by Merry Frons, PhD is not specifically limited to porn but deals with the betrayal factor in relationships.
Dr. Merry Frons writes from a secular perspective drawing on her wealth of experience as a psychotherapist.
“Dr. Merry Frons is a psychotherapist in private practice in New York. She has specialized in treating individuals and couples with relationship and sexuality issues for over 30 years. She received advanced training in psychotherapy from New York University’s Post Doctoral Institute and her MSW and PhD from New York University and the American Academy of Clinical Sexologists.” — About Merry Frons on Amazon.com
Fight for Love: How to Take Your Marriage Back from Porn by Rosie Makinny, published in 2020 with a timely, pandemic message. She shares her faith-based story of betrayal trauma and what it took to experience healing in her marriage. Amazingly today her husband Mark, after battling porn use for many years, is now a certified sexual addiction counselor and works together with Rosie in their ministry to wives called Fight For Love.
Rosie shared in a recent webinar, “Two things really devastate wives, the betrayal and the deception… (wives) … say, ‘I don’t know who I’m living with. He’s lied to me again’.”
Her husband Mark states, “Certain things need to happen so you can heal.”
A safety plan for wives is part of his strategy when he counsels couples. If feelings of betrayal, anger, confusion, and hurt are where you’re at in your marriage due to a spouse’s repeated porn use, this book is a must-read!
Though not a book on porn specifically, we’ll give an “honorable mention” to The Great Sex Rescue: The Lies You’ve Been Taught and How to Recover What God Intended by Sheila Wray Gregoire, Rebecca Gregoire Lindenbach, and Joanna Sawatsky.
In chapter 6 called, “Your Spouse Is Not Your Methadone” the book dives into both female and male pornography use especially in the context of marriage.
“Porn in and of itself steals great sex from couples,” state the authors, “But what if the way we’re handling porn use is actually making things worse? Wives of male porn addicts have been told, ‘Give him sex so he won’t be tempted!’ and women porn users? They’ve been overlooked entirely. Both of these responses have hurt our sex lives.”
Books About Porn For Parents
Good Pictures, Bad Pictures: Porn-Proofing Today’s Young Kids by Kristen A. Jenson, MA, is a great place to start talking about porn with children ages 7 and up. In fact, Protect Young Minds has created a junior version of this same book on porn for even younger children. Since kids as young as 8 are being exposed to porn, these books help you to be fore-warned and prepared ahead of time.
Under Jenson’s “Tips For Parents and Caregivers” she notes:
“Although I designed this book so it can be read before the “sex talks,” I highly recommend beginning layered conversations from a young age. The earlier you start, the more comfortable these conversations will be! Today’s parents are competing with the porn industry for influence over the sexual templates of their children.”
Treading Boldly through a Pornographic World: A Field Guide for Parents by Daniel Weiss and Joshua Glaser
Published in June of 2021, this relevant faith-based book is both current and needed. Noting that today’s parents are the first to face rearing kids in such a porn-saturated, digitally connected world, Weiss and Glaser offer a warmly compassionate, Biblical, and practical guide. The authors note: “You want your children to see you as a trail guide, not a prison guard!”
In Chapter 5 “Casting a Vision” Weiss and Glaser share:
“As much as we can, our task is to promote God’s vision of sexuality in relationships — a vision that appeals to the deepest desires of our kids’ hearts for the good, true, and beautiful — because that is what they’re made for… we are God’s beloved, made by love for love.”
No matter where you are in your journey, religious or not, you can’t argue with encouraging our children that they are “made by love for love”. That’s simply beautiful.
Sexpectations: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Healthy Relationships by Barb Winters. (2023)
More than ever Gen Z and millennials are reporting being hooked on porn as early as age 8. It’s hurting them now and hijacking their future plans. No one adequately prepared a whole generation of parents for the challenges of digital parenting!
So what can a parent do right now? What should you NOT do if you find out your child is watching porn?
Barb Winters, a Christian mom blogger at Hopeful Mom speaks from her personal experience, research, and a caring heart. She thought her son had come clean. However, her heart was broken again when she discovered her teen son was addicted to porn.
She breaks the silence and shame, so that no parent needs to feel alone walking the journey of sexual addiction recovery with their teen son or daughter.
Even better, Barb teaches parents how lay a foundation for healthy relationships and sexuality.
Hope and healing are possible as Barb and her family discovered along the way. She’s left a roadmap of helpful tips for other parents that are both realistic and encouraging.
Miraculous: my journey from hell to heaven by Lena Cebula reminds us that porn actors and sex workers are very often trapped in a life they hate. But today’s teens often think “OnlyFans” is a glamorous, easy path to riches.
Today parents need to warn their children of the dangerous links between porn and sex trafficking.
Sadly, porn feeds the demand. If you need more motivation to protect children from porn, read Lena’s true-life story. She was a Ukrainian teen trafficked twice in a foreign country.
Yes, she signed up sex for work. However, sexual abuse and poverty made Lena feel like she had no other choice.
Books On Porn -- A Few Team Takeaways
Caring and helping people quit porn are part of our key core values here at Ever Accountable. We each bring something different to the table. So a few of our team stepped up to the plate to share a book that has helped them understand the effects of porn.
Patrick Carnes, PhD, best selling author, therapist, and speaker, has been working in the field of sexual addictions for many years. In fact the Chicago Sun Times calls him a “founding father of sexual addiction therapy.” Currently Carnes has published at least 20 books.
His 2001 book Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction is still rocking 4.7 stars on Amazon with many powerful reviews.
But more importantly, this book was a guidepost for one of our staff who said, “The big takeaway for me was the tremendous power that sexual addiction can have on someone if they try to hide it instead of getting help.”
Unwanted: How Sexual Brokenness Reveals Our Way To Healing by Jay Stringer was recommended by another staff member “especially for parents”. At the time of writing this article, I’m only part-way through this read. And I heartily agree with his insight. In fact, after that recommendation, I pushed “rewind” on Audible and started over. I wanted to view this book through the lens of becoming a better parent.
Here are a couple of my personal takeaways so far. Don’t put your child in the position of triangulation — feeling married to their parents’ wishes and desires. Jay Stringer links this immense pressure to pornography use.
Because our parents shape us in many ways, Jay sees triangulation as a common underlying reason for a lack of connection in a dating relationship or marriage.
“Porn is way easier than connection. There’s no expectations,” says Stringer — quoting one of his patients.
My second takeaway was Stringer’s reiteration of the clear link of past unaddressed trauma to porn use. This was a familiar theme I’ve noted from other authors such as Shimer in The Freedom Fight. We’ve addressed this topic, too.
Stringer says, “Trauma shapes arousal. Pornography is particularly devastating to those suffering from unaddressed trauma. Many of the themes of pornography often mirror the impact of trauma — the misuse of power, deception, humiliation, and sexual gain.”
Jay Stringer has a Masters in Counseling Psychology from the Seattle School of Theology and Psychology with post-graduate training under Dr. Dan Allender. He also served as a Senior Fellow at the Allender Center.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the study of the human psyche is kind of like studying the bottom of the ocean. There are many depths yet to explore. No two people are exactly alike. Understanding ourselves better is indeed a step in the right direction.
However, there are many common threads that tie humanity together. We hope you will find just the right thread of information to help you wherever you are struggling on your journey. These books are just “footprints in the sands of time”.
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