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Manhood often feels like navigating through uncharted territory, but you don't have to walk alone. Join us as we guide a conversation about how to live intentionally so that we can join God in reclaiming the masculine restorative presence he designed us to live out. Laugh, cry, and wonder with us as we explore the ins and outs of manhood together.
Story and Fantasy with Drew Boa
00:00
Hey guys, welcome back to the podcast. This is Chris Bruno and I'm here with my cohost. Jesse French. Great to be with you guys today. Hey, so good to be here. And today we are joined by our friend Drew Boa from Husband Material. And so we're super excited to have Drew on the show. Drew, welcome to the podcast. Thanks Chris and Jesse. Here we go. Yeah, here we go. So you guys, if you've kind of listened to Drew's podcast,
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you may have heard that I have been the honor of being a guest on his show. And so of course, as we're launching in this year, we wanted to have him on the podcast as well. So Drew, why don't you share a little bit about, you know, like what you do, what you're up to and where people can kind of find you. And then we'll dive into the deeper conversation. Yeah. I help men become sexually and emotionally mature, particularly through outgrowing pornography and dealing with
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the underlying needs and the roots of our attachment to porn and other unwanted sexual behavior. Yeah. Awesome. And you are at Husband Material. That's where people can find you, right? HusbandMaterial.com. We've got our weekly show as well as a free private community for Christian men to be on this journey together. Yeah. Awesome. Well, love what you do. Love what you do. Love who you are. And so today, especially as we talk about...
01:27
men and sexuality and how we are shaped and forged. I would love for us to talk about some of the things that happened for us specifically when we're boys that contribute to who we are as men, specifically in the area of sexuality. And so like when you think, Drew, about what happens for a boy that is a sexually shaping moment, narrative issue, whatever you want to call it,
01:57
What comes to mind? Where do we even go with that conversation? The first one is early exposure to pornography. The average age at which boys encounter porn is getting younger and younger in this increasingly digital world. So even before puberty, porn is exploiting us. It's not just exploiting its performers, it's also exploiting
02:26
boys and girls as consumers and hooking us from a young age. So men don't get hooked on porn primarily. Boys do. That's why we need to heal the boy. Yeah. What a statement. Men don't get hooked on porn. Boys do. And that is, I'm just sitting with that for a second. Like that's a big statement. Yeah. Like maybe, maybe that statement is, is one that
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listeners maybe you're hearing for the first time or trying to digest. Like even just unpack that a little bit, Drew, like probably a ton of, of avenues to take that. But just like, what are the implications of, of what you just said? Well, the implication is that it's not the mature adult self who has an attachment to porn. It's a much younger part of me. It's this emotional, vulnerable part of me who was often especially set up.
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to sexually struggle based on the landscape of my life back then. And one of the major forces is silence and toxic shame about sexuality. So many of us had our very first sexual experience, sexual education, even hearing sexual words for the first time through our peers and through porn, rather than through loving, nurturing parents who could introduce us to this in a healthy way.
03:51
So a lot of us grew up in an evangelical purity culture where we were taught to shut down our sexual feelings, shut down our sexual thoughts, rather than really learn about ourselves and our bodies and to be able to accept ourselves and talk about this stuff. So a lot of us were sexually stunted in our development and then porn comes along and you've got a perfect match right there. Yeah.
04:19
So those are two things that I think are really important for us to just pause on real quick. So first is the sexual stunting, and then partnered with that, you know, kind of evil is partnering together with that. Then the introduction of hypersexualization through pornography. So we have the sexual stunting and the hypersexual kind of combining together to be a one-two punch in the lives of many men, and especially us as boys, that
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then lives on, I think, and we're talking about here is as we are, as we are forged in that kind of space, what else should we expect to be the result, the net result? I'll tell you what happened to me. 13 years old, right when I was hitting puberty, my family moved from Toronto, Ontario, Canada to Dallas, Texas, and I lost my world. I lost my friends.
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I lost my sports. People don't play hockey in Texas and they do play hockey. It's more like football. It's completely different. And I lost my culture. I lost so much. I'm still grieving. And in that move, I was so alone. And at this school in Texas, instead of an all-boys school, it's an all-girls, sorry, it's a co-ed school where boys and girls are together. Instead of uniforms.
05:43
They're wearing short shorts. And during this massive traumatic move in my life, I'm beginning to experience a flood of these sexual feelings in a family where we never talked about sex, never talked about sexuality other than don't have sex before marriage. And so there was a lot of fear and shame in me there while all of this attraction and desire is coming up while being so alienated and inhibited. And so in that forge, in that most devastating
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time of life for me. Middle school is a hell for everybody, but especially with all this going on. It's the worst, it is the worst, yeah. I became very attached to images and videos of girls with graces, which was very common during that middle school period. And that didn't change, that stayed with me for years and years. And I never understood why, what is going on? Why am I aroused by this? I don't even like the fact that I like this, but it has a magnetic.
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hole on me. And so together with the way that porn can provide a sexualized solution for our pain, I think it also provides a very particular type of pleasure. And for me, it was that experience that was totally interrupted for me. And so I got stuck, fixated on girls with braces and also older women with braces too. And that was really the core of what kept me coming back to porn.
07:11
porn provides a sexualized solution to our pain. Like again, I'm sitting with that right now as feels really true and important. And like, can you just unpack that a little bit because I think there's so much even to that statement right there. As adults who are pursuing growth and maturity, we perceive porn as a problem, which it is, but it didn't start that way. It started as a solution. It started as this savior.
07:38
Basically, you know, it's not just a sin. It's a false savior
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I so I just am listening to this through the ears of some of the guys listening to this and kind of the recognition that even just what you just said is potentially mind-blowing to think about it as porn didn't start as a problem, it started as a solution. And it was a sexualized solution to an emotional experience that
08:06
You know, as you just mentioned that there is a 13 year old boy now living in Texas and there's things happening for him that are emotional, not sexual. And the sexualization of it is what We're Porn steps in. Yeah. And during that move, my parents just unilaterally informed me one day while I was strapped in my seatbelt in the back of a car that we were moving to Texas. No dialogue.
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no conversation, no face-to-face intimacy. I'm literally looking at their backs while they're telling me this. And so strapped and trapped is how I felt. Powerless is how I felt. And that helps me understand why, in my particular fantasies, I would be aroused by being in a power position. For example, oral sex gave me a way of feeling powerful. And it's not primarily about
09:04
the sex, it's about the emotional experience of feeling like I have a voice, I have a choice, I'm the one who gets to decide what happens here. Which is a sexualized version of what I needed back then. I needed a voice, I needed a choice, I needed intimacy, I needed something that I wasn't getting. And Chris, I love how you talk about how sometimes the atmosphere of our childhood can feel like a drought or it can feel like a fire.
09:30
And for me, this was a huge drought and porn was a polluted stream that was better than the desert I was in. Wow. Yeah. Jesse, I know that our listeners can't see your face, but I see you contemplating things. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I like thanks Drew for just your honesty around this and just sharing on this. I think there's, as I'm, what I'm trying to like ponder,
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as you speak is it feels really significant that you're articulating, look, again, what pornography is offering, it is the solution that is ultimately not about the sex. That to me feels like, whoa, this is a huge paradigm. It feels so easy to view pornography just primarily through that lens of lust and desire and sexuality, but what you're actually saying is, no, pornography offered what
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What I was really after was a sense of a voice, was a sense of need that I had that I was not receiving other places. And so it really feels like you're saying, look, there is a deeper layer beneath our engagement of pornography or sexuality that has to be understood and has to be engaged with a level of awareness and curiosity if we're actually gonna understand it in a healthy way, is that right? Yes, it has to be engaged for deeper lasting freedom.
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There are lots of surface level strategies and other tactics you can use for short term gains and maybe winning a battle. But long term freedom does not come from battling our sexuality. It comes from befriending our sexuality and befriending that little boy who's underneath it all. Yeah. Can you keep like at the risk of oversimplifying a very complex process and a long process,
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But just for maybe someone who's even hearing this idea for the first time, like what does some of that entail? Like an awareness of the younger pieces of us, like continue to unpack that a little bit. Well, the first step is just becoming aware of your story. Maybe then you have a story and what's going on in your brain and body. And I think ReStory has a great course on that, which you can take to get to some of those deeper layers. It starts with awareness for sure.
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How can I change something I'm not aware of? We need to notice the times when that story is showing up in the present. And then, that's the step that I call locate the boy. Just figure out, okay, if I'm feeling rejected, when have I felt this way before? What is this heart getting back to? And then after you locate the boy, love the boy. So I need to give myself what I didn't get. I need to invite Jesus to engage with him. I need to invite other men to know me.
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in these places and through connection with God, others and myself, there can be a satisfaction of the longings underneath the arousal, underneath the attractions, because sexual arousal is just the surface layer. And then when we get down to these emotions and desires, that's at the soul level. And so being able to locate the boy, love the boy, and then after you have done some of that work, then you have the right to lead the boy and say, hey, that solution.
12:53
It's a souvenir from adolescence and we don't need it anymore. Let's go after a redemptive life and take this pain and do something different with it. Doesn't that sound good? It totally does. And I'm smiling because I love that word souvenir because what instantly just comes to mind is just the worst tchotchke like hearing, you know, that you see at the like tourist trap place and no like that's such a good word because it's like.
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Yes. Is this a gift? Yes. And no, this is, it's total garbage that you're going to lose and it's going to break in three months. So I love that, that description in that way, Drew. Thanks. Drew, I think some of what you're bringing is like when we talk about where, where men are made, I think so much of who we were first made to be in these early adolescent childhood experiences was that we were forged to be something that were not designed to be.
13:52
And that those two things of, right, the sexual stunting and then the hypersexualization and all that they were aimed at was to make us less than the man that God designed us to be. And the opportunity, and I think you've done some significant work in your life. I think just the way that you're able to articulate this, the way that you're able to name this, even going to the backseat of that car and having some identification of how the powerlessness that you felt
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in the backseat of that car is mirrored then in some of the sexual fantasies that you have with regard to finding power and those kinds of things. That is the result of some significant work. So if you, you know, the invitation I think right now is, as you just said, is can we become aware of where some of these things first got forged?
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where some of these things first got blended, where some of these things first started happening and just slow this, slow the roll, like stop the train and allow for there to be more space of curiosity with regard to like, okay, so what was happening for me when I first discovered pornography, when I first discovered sexuality, if it wasn't pornography, then what was it? Just this level of awareness and curiosity
15:16
And I love what you just said, Drew. And that is, you know, we can't work on something if we're not first aware of what we're trying to work on. So we have to, we actually have to start there. So thank you again, also for the generosity of sharing some of your story with us and all that. Can you tell us some of like, when you were that 13 year old boy, where did pornography first rear its ugly?
15:45
How did that happen for you? Interestingly, it happened on Facebook and MySpace. Some people might remember MySpace. I was so afraid of these middle school girls and yet I worshiped them at the same time. So my first version of porn was actually the pictures that they would upload to their social media profiles. Okay.
16:13
And so I would be masturbating to those. That was my first porn. It was the closest thing to a real relationship. And that's what I, I mean, that's what I wanted. It was coming out of this all boys school and desiring like to even just hang out with them, but that feeling. So, so unable to do that. Yeah. Well, so that's where it started for me. And I think another big shaping force for me.
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was this toxic shame from purity culture that taught me that the looking at female genitalia is evil. And so I actually didn't need them to take their clothes off because that actually had a repulsion for me due to some of that distorted sexual formation from feeling like, oh, the body is bad. And so, yeah. So I think that's another reason why I fixated on braces and mouse because that was not seen as evil or nasty. That wasn't cloaked in shame.
17:13
Yeah. I even hear for some guys that in a similar fashion, they developed an aversion to girls and women altogether because they did not want to become a monster like the men that they would read about in every man's battle. Right. Yeah. And what I was going to say still applies. So for those listening, I want you to hear the particularities that Drew is inviting us to.
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is a category. Okay, it's not sexuality as this overarching category. It is sexuality into the particularity of it shows up in this unique way, in this unique time, in this unique space that is unique to Drew based on what was happening uniquely in Drew's life at that time. And that takes some awareness on our part, on your part.
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to just, like I said a moment ago, to slow the roll enough to just be curious and have a sense of like, what? If I were to really have a generous curiosity in this moment, what would it be? What would it look like? Where would it lead me? Because I feel like that actually is what leads us into places of transformation and change. Yeah. Porn is never generic. There is no such thing as normal porn. It's always particular and specific. Yeah, yeah.
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Well, Drew, I feel like we could keep talking and keep talking and keep talking about this, and we do want to have you back on the show. So we're going to go ahead and like abruptly pause here just because you've already been so generous and already led us into some good questions and curiosities. I think, and especially as we think about the men that God designed us to be, the restorative man that he's continually longing to forge inside of us, it's important for us to look back and go, where are some of the forces?
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that have forged us in the ways that are not honoring to the Lord and not honoring to us, not dignifying to us either, but to not do so with judgment, but instead to do so with a level of kindness. And I hear that kindness in your voice. So thank you so much for leading us. You guys, please check out husbandmaterial.com and some of the things that Drew is doing because he is all about helping guys walk in spaces of life and freedom when it comes to their sexuality as the men of God. So.
19:37
Drew, thank you so much for being with us today. Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Jesse. Thanks, Drew.