Porn Almost Killed Their Relationship Before It Started 

Author's note: I have written numerous love stories for CatholicMatch, but Kevin and Krista are the first couple willing to discuss the problem of porn. I applaud Kevin for his courage to talk about this issue and Krista for having the backbone to broach the subject. We know that the porn plague runs rampant and that church-goers are not immune.

The relationship started with a crucial question...

Krista wasn’t shy about asking difficult questions. June of 2016, on their third date, she asked Kevin, “Do you view porn?”

Pin drop.

“I had to honestly and seriously admit that I had struggled with it for a very long time and was still in what felt like a losing battle,” Kevin, 20, replied. “It was six years of pent-up guilt and failure that I had to admit to. And by admitting it, I knew that I was probably sabotaging the first real chance I'd had at love—Krista was my first girlfriend.”

Though ashamed at having to admit his addiction, Kevin believed that Krista deserved to know. He knew that looking at porn was wrong, but he just couldn’t stop.

Why did she ask?

Krista had made a habit of asking every man she'd dated this pointed question because she had heard a statistic that 70 percent of men watch porn, and Matt Fradd, Catholic author, speaker, and apologist, advised women not to date someone addicted to pornography.

She also felt scarred by one ex-boyfriend who denied a porn problem. “He had kept this a secret from me and lied to me about it when I asked him, and I ended up being devastated once I found out. From that moment on, I made sure to ask every single man I dated point blank before it got serious.”

It was a relationship-killer for Krista.

“Up until that point, I was so excited about Kevin," shares Krista, 21.

She found so much to like about him. “He was sweet, a devout Catholic, liked chemistry and science, and he didn’t care that I was planning on being a doctor.”

Krista hadn’t been this excited about a guy in a long while. “So, when Kevin answered me honestly and told me that he watched porn, I remember at that moment everything stopped. I froze.”

Krista quickly ended that date and went home. In her heart, she knew that she had to end things because porn had no place in an authentic Catholic relationship.

“My Catholic friends agreed with my assessment,” she shares.

Kevin was upset, but he respected Krista’s decision. She eventually cut all ties with him, starting medical school, and moving on with her life.

Kevin needed help. So he turned to Our Lady.

In January of 2017, Kevin reached out to Krista on Facebook, hoping that she would give him another chance after he shared what had happened to him. After Krista had broken things off, he spent the next six months praying more and going to confession frequently—though this hardly tamed his urge to look at porn.

However, things took a turn for the better after he received a miraculous medal of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a Christmas gift. “The next week, the medal was blessed, and I started wearing it. From that moment on, I was completely free from the chains of pornography. The temptations just disappeared!” he shares.

Although, for most people, it's not quite that easy. Kevin advises to do these things...

However, Kevin knew that he would have to do his part to ensure that he wasn't shackled with those heavy chains again. He continued to frequent the sacraments and he made tangible changes in his life. One was leaving his bedroom door open. “I have roommates who come in and out of the apartment randomly; thus leaving the door open means that if I were to start watching, I would never know if someone would see.”

For him, this was better than using a porn filter for his browser, which was too site-specific. “There's just way too much porn to ever be able to block every single site. Also, it only takes a few clicks to turn off,” he says.

Popular chastity speaker, Jason Evert, shares other ways to battle the porn problem (using a little reverse psychology).

Turning Kevin down was discouraging for Krista, even though she knew it was the right thing.

Around the same time, Kevin was having success in avoiding porn, Krista was feeling extremely discouraged and alone. “From the time, I was six years old, I had always wanted to meet my future husband when I was 21 and marry him when I was 23, because that’s what my parents did, and they have the most wonderful marriage ever,” Krista explains.

While in Adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, she realized that she had to stop trying to meet someone by a certain date and to relinquish this desire to God.

“I prayed so sincerely that day. I told God that if he wanted me to wait until I was 27 or 30 to find my future husband that I would wait. I wouldn’t chase after guys anymore.”

Neither had stopped thinking about the other.

Thirty minutes after Krista left Adoration, she received a message from Kevin saying he’d been porn-free for a month and that he’d never stopped thinking about her. “I had also been thinking the whole time how much I wanted to come back to her clean,” he says.

Kevin and Krista felt overjoyed to resume their relationship, and they quickly fell in love. “Kevin told me he loved me after the second date this time around and told me he wanted to marry me after one month!”

She continues, “I thought that was crazy at first, but as I kept dating him, I realized how kind, selfless, and supportive he was. He saw past my flaws and completely accepted me for who I am.”

And now, free from all chains, they were ready for each other!

After just a month of dating, Kevin told Krista he wanted to marry her. After four months, Krista let him know she was ready. “The proposal didn’t come as a surprise or anything, but I appreciated that he still put in a lot of effort.”

First, Kevin scheduled a salon appointment for Krista—she had hinted this would make her happy—where she got a French shellac manicure, her makeup done, and a haircut.

Then he proposed at Saint Gertrude Catholic Church in the Mary Garden on the side of the rectory. “He had convinced me we had to go to the Saturday vigil Mass because he pretended he had to go to work on Sunday. He tricked me by telling me Saturday vigil Mass was at 4:00 p.m. instead of 4:30 pm.”

When they got to the church, they walked up to the statue of Mary, and Krista noticed Kevin’s guitar was on a stand right next to it, surrounded by beautiful flowers. Unbeknownst to Krista, her two friends were hiding in the bushes taking pictures.

“Kevin wrote me a song and sang it while playing his guitar for a proposal,” she shares.

The couple plans to get married in June of 2018 when Krista is 23-years-old—the same age her mother was when she married Krista’s father.