Parents today have about 22 less hoursper weekto spend with their kids than did parents in 1969. Competing interests like work, childcare, and other responsibilities compete for our time, and the more time spent away from our kids, the more likely they are to struggle in life. Of course, we all want our children to succeed, and we understand that the more we work with them, the better they’ll do. Yet, often, we let an hour here or an hour there slip by for things that we really shouldn’t be doing in the first place. While I don’t put “masturbation” in this category, I do put excessive online porn addiction and the growing guilt-ridden drive to stop masturbating into this category. When you stop masturbating as part of an uncontrollable online porn addiction, then you not only build up your own self-esteem and the pride of your family, but you also strengthen your family by spending more time with them.

Here’s what happens to most people. They know they should be doing something, perhaps helping their child with homework or just doing something constructive with them, or with their spouse, or even with a member of their extended family such as a mom or dad. But, instead, they see a window of opportunity that same day, when they know the house will be empty, to get online and access pornography for an hour or two. So access porn instead of taking care of chores, or work, or paying bills, and then when their child comes home from school, they find that they “don’t have time” to spend with that child, because they have wastedone or two hours already that day, masturbating in front of the computer. Who suffers? First and foremost, the child suffers from lost time with the parent. Secondly, the parent suffers, as they find that life seemingly gets harder and harder. But life isn’t getting harder and harder, they are simply not coping with life in a constructive way. They are escaping from life more and more through masturbation and pornography, and doing that day to day instead of keeping up with family, money, friends, and work – the things that help us all succeed in life. By focusing instead on an erosive addiction, they are limited their chances of survival in this complex world, but even more sadly, they are jeopardizing the success of their children.

Do you find yourself in this category? Do you find yourself, perhaps a few times or more a week, sliding something you should be doing aside to grab a window of opportunity to view porn online? This seemingly harmless activity adds up to major chunks of lost time and a major impact on your self-esteem as person, parent, and spouse. Think of it – if you spend an average of 5 hours a week online digging up porn, you are essentially throwing away nearly 11 FULL DAYS of your life a year, masturbating online. That comes to 6.5 work weeks each year, just tossing that time out the window – time you could be working either for an employer or for your own household, and thus making more personal time for yourself. When you look at it like this, you can see clearly that the time wasted impacts your family directly.

Just as important, you are hurting yourself, working against yourself, 11 days a year, actively eroding your self-esteem a few hours at a time, and this erosion of confidence and self further impacts your ability to compete, function, and spend quality time with those that love you. Because the worse you feel, the more you turn to self-abusive activities like masturbation, smoking, drinking, eating, etc.

One of the best ways to start to get a handle on the situation is to keep a tally of the time you spend masturbating to online porn each week. Do something as simple as writing the number of hours spent on each day of a calendar, then adding up the hours weekly for six or more weeks to get a good weekly average that you can then multiply into a yearly sum. Then ask yourself what you could and should be doing in your life that you’re not doing now. Ask yourself what risks you are increasing with online porn addiction, from computer viruses, to getting caught, to risking your job by using a work computer, to just the simple wasted time amplifying your ability to juggle your life’s responsibilities. You will quickly see that any time you can move from the self-destructive practice of online porn addiction to more constructive activities will improve your life. The more time you move, the better your life will be. And then, of course, the better the lives of your children will be.