#92 - Sexual Imprinting
Because we grow up in different types of environments, we have varying understanding or comprehension of the world through our senses and experiences. Our upbringing and the environment and community in which we were raised play a big role in shaping our lives, attitude, and personality as we interact and live from childhood to adulthood.
A child adopts or follows the actions of the people around them without the ability to distinguish between what is right or wrong. This is also when they start to build impressions. Just like children, when someone is exposed to porn, they start to build a concept in their minds of what sexuality is without having an idea of what it portrays or means. Porn will try to create a sexual template inside someone’s mind that causes them to have the wrong idea and appreciation of sexuality and relationships.
In this episode, Andrew and Benjy talk about the importance of imprinting and how it affects your impression of what relationships should and shouldn't be. They share how porn creates the wrong interpretation and expectations of people in relationships.
If you want to recondition yourself to start to imprint more with the good people around you, this episode will lead you to a vision for your sexuality, relationships, and what your sex is connected to. You’ll also get to know about the importance of clearing yourself up spiritually, mentally, physically, and emotionally before getting married. Listen to Episode 92 to learn more!
The nature of pornography
Definition of sexual imprinting
How sexual imprinting affects the idea of marriage
How to balance a God-centered approach to sexuality
Pornography is not sexual in nature
Definition of sexuality
What High Noon is all about
Choosing what you imprint to
Episode Transcript:
Andrew Love
Welcome back to Love, Life and Legacy, a podcast dedicated to helping you navigate these hypersexualized times. And in today's episode, Benjy and I are unpacking the conversation of sexual imprinting. This is a really important conversation because everything you do, everything that you watch and listen to, everything that you connect with is forming a blueprint in your mind and in your heart, and in your spirit. And if you're not careful, it can impact you in negative ways. So we want to talk about how to willfully create a blueprint by imprinting on healthy things emotionally rather than wasting valuable time and energy imprinting on the wrong things. So let's get into it.
Welcome, everybody.
Benjy Uyama
Welcome, everybody.
Andrew Love
Andrew here, and Benjy. Today, we're going to get into a very interesting topic that I used to be really obsessed about. I let it go for a little bit so that it can have some space, this idea, and I could have a little bit of breathing room. And I want to revisit it together with my compatriots here, Benjy Uyama. The topic is imprinting. Here's why it's so important because before we are even in any type of romantic relationship, we get so many impressions imprinted into our psyche about what romance is, what relationships should and shouldn't be. We have so many concepts that guide our expectations, and even our emotions, to some degree. But what porn has done is created this sexual template for people that is getting really increasingly intense and crappy for relationships. And I wanted to get into that a little bit today. We're not going to do a long episode. We're going to do a concise, expedient episode. So Benjy, how are you feeling today? That's the main question.
Benjy Uyama
Well, okay. We just moved to a new house and are excited to talk about this topic.
Andrew Love
Yes. I guess that's a good metaphor that we could start with, when you move into a new house, you don't know the lay of the land. You don't know how to get to shops as quickly. It's not as clear. Everything's new when you're in a new area. And it feels new. I think everybody who's listening could remember a time when you were new to a school or to a place, and everything was confusing. You didn't know where to go for food or for fun. And then little by little, it became familiar. And then all of a sudden, it became second nature and you could just go to the store without thinking about where to go. Now, that's a good thing, I suppose. But what about in the area of sex? When you are becoming more familiar with new content watching porn online, it's new and scary. You don't know what's going on. But then you become very familiarized with it. You're the perfect example because you just moved in. Do you see that metaphor?
Benjy Uyama
Yes. It reminds me of, I guess my experience, we're talking about sexual imprinting. When I was first exposed to porn back when I was, I think, 10 or 9 years old. At first, it was very disturbing. And it's a typical experience that people have, which is disturbing. It's even disgusting. And you can't really get it out of your mind for days or weeks even. It is confusing, actually, more than anything like, what is going on? Because in the nature of pornography, typically when people stumble on it, it's not sexual. It's not just sexual. It's not just nudity. It's explicit. It's designed to be addictive, first of all. So it has you wondering and wanting to go back to it. And that kind of novelty wears off more and more. I compare it in my group because a lot of the guys I'm working with are into video games. They use the same type of brain of addiction. And at first, when you first started gaming back in the day, it was Super Mario, Nintendo games, and Street Fighter. And then over time, it just becomes novel. And the novelty wears off, and then you become more and more addicted to more hardcore things that are desensitizing your ability to just enjoy simple games like getting from point A to point B and defeating the boss, and the game's over.
Now, a video game is just an endless black hole of constantly leveling up and upgrading and spending money even. And so to think of that, in terms of like video games, I think imprinting is very important. If that analogy makes sense with gaming, when we're young, kids are seven or eight years old, which is typically received by kids, boys, and girls watching pornography. If they're being exposed to that level of pornography from such a young age, and the video games at such a young age, it's like the novelty is very quickly running off and it's just a very abrupt interruption or abrupt introduction to sexuality.
Andrew Love
I think it's a good time to define imprinting. This exists in all species, I suppose. But in the animal kingdom, it's really prevalent in certain species like ducks. I don't know if you've ever seen shows where a dog is raised with a cat, where the cat was there first and then the dog was born, it just assumes that the cat is part of its family. But if you have a dog living in one house and a cat living in another house, they naturally are enemies in a sense. So when you're firstborn, you have this imprinting that you're exposed to with your parents and all this stuff. But they made a movie that Uncle David really loves, I forget what it's called, but it's like, these ducks imprint on people. And the ducks think that this guy is their mom. Even though he's a human and they're ducks, they have no idea because they look like, oh, you must be our parent. So they follow this guy around, and he teaches them how to fly. I don't know the plot. It's either the dad or the daughter, and they end up getting in a plane and flying so that the ducks can follow and learn how to fly.
It's so strong that the ducks think that a human is their parents. So in us, you can imagine that sexuality when you are exposed to pornography, it's imprinting in your mind, but also in your heart. As you said, there's a lot of confusion when you first see porn because emotionally, it's etched in these feelings that this is scary, but yet it feels good in my body. I don't know what's happening. It's very confusing but I like it, and I hate it at the same time. And because of that, these feelings end up being embedded in a lot of people's experiences throughout their formative years. Sex becomes something very stimulating and scary, exciting and petrifying. So it's this weird, unnatural dichotomy that sex is never meant to have negative emotions affiliated with it. That's just because of the world that we live in. But imagine what kind of imagery you're creating this template of what's normal. So let's say you see porn, and there are all sorts of behavior that is not conducive to creating a happy family. But that's your normal because that's what you've seen not only once, and created this emotional bond with it. But you've seen it again and again and again. And it's hard to get that out of your mind.
Growing up, you grew up in religion, but you were also exposed to pornography. So did that mess you up in your formative years having these imprinting? Because you had the imprint of your parents seeing what marriage looks like, but then your first exposure to sex was not married people. There are porn stars. So how did that imprinting affect this weird contradiction of marriages, ideally, making a nice happy family and then porn is paid people having crazy sex with each other?
Benjy Uyama
I would say more than anything, it's just a lot of guilt and a lot of shame. In many ways, a one-sided battle. It's like an unwinnable battle, almost, at least in my case. And I think very typical in a more faith-based home is that sex is actually not talked about as much as we would have hoped ideally. And even in a faith community, we have ideals, we have standards, but it's not something that we go around talking about. And it's definitely not something where a situation where we're being educated in the right way more than we are in a negative impact way. So by far was always more exposure to oversexualized content, whether through TV or through porn.
God bless my parents. They grew up in a generation where they didn't know that I could find porn in the hotel room. And they were just going to leave me at the hotel. Not like pornographic, but like sexual content. When I was like, 8,9, or 7 years old even, they didn't know that. They didn't know I could find stuff on mainstream television and cable TV at home. So that's really confusing. The education you receive through years and years of finding really just stumbling upon this stuff like, wow. I didn't know this existed. It's just a one-sided argument, a one-sided battle that this is what sexuality is. And the more family-centered faith-based approach of sexuality or health, I would say, God-centered approach to sexuality and what sexuality is designed to be like, like we talked about in our book, Core of the Universe. So it's just confusing. I guess to answer your question shortly. It's hard. It's just so much guilt. Especially now, with all that people in our groups, they were struggling with this very same question, is how do we balance the idea we have versus the reality which is that we're just constantly being exposed in a culture, in a society where it's normal and it's acceptable, and it's just fine to watch porn?
Andrew Love
What's crazy is you can imagine that. I knew I had a good friend who had grown up with his parents, his dad was physically abusive to his mom. And later in life, he actually became physically abusive to his own mom. This became part of the template of acceptable behavior. Even though it frightened him, he didn't like doing it. But it became part of his nervous system response to anger, and he emulated what he saw in his dad. It's like his dad cleared the path for this type of behavior. And if you can imagine what porn then does to sex, it's like when you think about where people get fetishes and very specific fetishes, it's like it doesn't really emerge from the natural world. It's partly due to sexualizing something. It could be people like when women have a whip or something like that because they're actually craving a powerful strong woman. And they're just sexualizing it and creating this interpretation. So that's emotional and childhood stuff. But at the same time, when you're re-exposed to the same stuff, you start to develop a familiarity and longing for that, because it's bringing you a certain type of joy.
Let's say you like a powerful type of person, so you watch a subservient person be dominated by it. That's what porn usually is. So you're watching these scenarios play out again and again, and you're forming an emotional relationship with the outcome, the feeling that it gives you watching this type of porn. And then you're associating meaning to it so you're like, oh, I like this. This is the thing that I like. It's not the activity, it's the feeling that it's giving you. But it's the vessel, and you fall in love with the vessel. And then it becomes a part of your identity. That's the crazy part. And the world is really messed up because they don't understand this stuff. And they're promoting, well, I like this so I should be justified. Even have in mainstream scenarios now, this idea is that pedophilia is okay. It's just men-boy love, they call it. Because usually 90% of pedophiles are men to other boys or girls, but it's not like older women. And so it's called, man-boy love trying to justify it. Rather than looking at, why is this happening?
And so, if you really want to look deeper at this, even like the things that you think, oh, it's just what I like. How did you come to the conclusion that you like that? How many times did you see that growing up? And what's that connected to in this scenario, is it because you like watching people who have power dominate people who don't? Whatever the reason, I don't know. I don't want to psychoanalyze it. But it's so much deeper, and it's a part of this imprinting again that that's just what you think is normal because you've been exposed to it enough, and you've created an emotional bond to it. So that's like almost what you expect is normal. So there are new normals being forged all the time because of porn. There's more violence in porn. And I've read a bunch of surveys where sex is becoming more violent for young people. Especially young ladies, they're experiencing more aggressive sexual behavior perpetrated upon them. And a lot of this is just the guys emulating what they see. Even little kids in the school reported cases of kids being sexually aggressive to other little kids. I'm talking third or fourth grade. The numbers are insanely on the rise. And where are they learning this behavior?
It's not just in the air. We're breathing in this sexually aggressive air all of a sudden. Because we're drinking too much water from plastic bottles. It's because monkey-see, monkey-do.
Benjy Uyama
Man, that breaks my heart, and honestly. As you said, people do make statements that this is just who I am, this is what I like. But if you look at their browser history, it's very clear that they've been led down. And essentially, in some ways brainwashed because of the nature of pornography is a business, is an industry and it's designed to keep people coming back. Like you say, if I started watching, or if someone started watching porn, and all the porn videos were of somebody holding a water bottle. I'm holding a water bottle right now. Then, of course, without a doubt, every time you see this water bottle, you're going to associate it with sexual content. It's undeniable. And especially on top of that, it's sexuality. The sexual nature of masturbation, especially that imprints it so strongly into your habitual habit, into your behavior. It's really sad. It's really unfortunate.
For me, when I hear you talking, Andrew, I really feel like what's really clear to me is that's what makes it clear that pornography is not sexual in nature. It is not a sexual thing. Sexual as in, of course, people say, oh, it's completely sexual. It's not sexual. It's not sexual in the sense that sexuality is defined as an intimate relationship between two people. If it's defined as a connection. Is if it's defined as the intimate experience of holding and looking someone in the eyes, and having your imprint being on a human being rather than pixels on a screen, then that sense, pornography itself is just pixels on a screen. It has nothing sexual about it. But we found a way to somehow associate strongly with a sexual act of masturbation that makes it so imprint strongly.
So for me, the positive of this, at least from what I'm seeing because I'd like to put a positive spin on things. Especially for our listeners, many times in the trenches with a porn habit is that this is our opportunity to realize that this is all BS. It's not a sexual thing that we've developed. We've somehow rewired our brains to sexualize into hypersexualized it. But real sexual intimacy comes in connection with people, with human beings. Not just sexual connection with a person but emotional intimacy, connection with human beings, with people. And the more we have of that, and the less we have of just isolation and isolation acting out on our own, then the more we feel just alive and more connected. And that's really, to me, is what High Noon is all about.
Andrew Love
Yes. That's a great point. And don't worry, Bro, I was leading us towards a happier place. But honestly, real imprinting, the way it's designed and it is a design is to bring us closer together. So the more that you imprint with a person, the closer you feel to them. The more you trust them, the more you're connected. Your pheromones, like your chemicals, are geared towards reacting to their chemicals then you're becoming a symbiotic being. The more that you make love with somebody, the more that you love that person. It's exactly like from the Divine Principle, the more you love something, the more beautiful it becomes.
So in the very same way, sex does that exactly. But the problem is that, now, society is interjected pornography into the equation. So you're imprinting to scenarios and emotionally connecting to fantasy rather than reality. And so, I think the action step is this. It's a very clear action step. It's something that we've really ramped up lately, which is an imprint to a vision for your life. Imprint a vision for your sexuality, for your marriage, and what your sex is connected to. That it'd be connected to virtuous things, that would be connected to love, connection, to meaning, to growth, to family. These things formulate that vision so that when you think of sex, it never be disassociated from those other things that I just mentioned as a way to get through some of these hormonal things that pop up. They say, no, I'm committed to making sure that my sexuality is connected to meaning, God, the important things in my life.
And then when you do get into a relationship, when you do get married, when you do start to engage in sexuality, you reserve that imprinting for that one person. And that's really, really important. And also there's good news because we do understand that neuroplasticity is a real thing. And in practice, practically speaking, you can recondition yourself to start to imprint more with an actual human being even if you've been exposed to porn in the past. I've been through that myself. Growing up in this world with no standards of what sex should be, and taking a few years before getting married to just really get clear spiritually, mentally, physically, emotionally, so that I could then be a clear vessel to then imprint with my wife when the time was right.
So it is possible, but it's a lot harder. I'm telling you, it's a lot harder if you do get into porn. Especially at an earlier age, because your brain is still forming and the imprinting goes deeper into you. But it is possible. Your brain is malleable, so you can change things. But it's not like I don't still have porn images in my mind. They're there. They pop up every once in a while from stuff I saw when I was 13 or whatever, which is now a long, long time ago. So it's still there but it's not at the forefront of my mind. It's way back in the recesses of my mind. Does that make sense?
Benjy Uyama
Yes.
Andrew Love
So there's definitely hope. And there's definitely a way to imprint on the things you choose. And that's what this is all about, is like choosing what you imprint to. If you want to get a little bit wider, you're forming an emotional imprint of the world when you listen to music. If you listen to a lot of music that's really angry and dark, then it's very easy to see this world as a negative place. And I'm sure you remember those songs that really stimulated you as a kid. And you probably still have an emotional reaction every time you hear certain songs from when you're a kid. That's imprinting. It's all very similar. So in terms of sexuality, I really advise everybody to use that as an incentive to not imprint with some fake stuff that you wouldn't want a part of your life. But instead, to imprint on a vision for your life. Whether you're single or whether you're in a marriage, if you do have a spouse, then you're imprinting on them like one of our facilitators. I don't want to mention his name. When he was cutting porn out of his life, he created one of those cork boards with just pictures of his wife. And you just stare at it all day and like, I'm going to fall in love like crazy with her. And he did this for months until he really, he said he felt so much more in love with his wife because instead of looking at other women all the time, you just stare at the pictures of his wife and be like, I love this. He's brainwashing himself. One way or another, you're brainwashing yourself. But it's either willingly based on your spouse or your future spouse, in which case, it's just that you're not thinking of a person, it's just the feeling that you get. Or you're doing it like everybody else by watching porn, which is a losing battle. Any last words, Benjy?
Benjy Uyama
No, I get that. I'm going to make a corkboard of my wife. But I'm going to have to hide it from her because she's going to freak out.
Andrew Love
She's a very humble lady.
Benjy Uyama
That's a good point. Even in our case, I went through a process of having to rewire what I find beautiful in my wife, because I've been so exposed especially in today's culture. I think there's a lot of hypersexualization going around in our country, in our world. And yes, I had to take a step back and realize like, I had a lot of misconceptions about what beauty is in women, and expectations about how I thought women should dress and look and act and will do their hair and all these things that I didn't realize until I got married. And I had to rewire to my wife. Now, I can honestly look at my wife just fully clothed, and just wearing what she wants to wear and find beauty in that and be attracted and turned on by that. And I think that's a hard thing to do. But it's worth doing, for sure.
Andrew Love
Yes, that's strength. That's power. That's freedom because you're choosing who is beautiful to you by investing time and effort into finding the beauty in that person. That's character, whereas weakness is what we're taught which is when somebody gets ugly, throw them away like a phone. And then get a new one, and find somebody prettier or whatever. It runs both ways for men and women. That's why aging is known as a disease in our culture. Because when you get old it means you're going to get thrown away, so people pretend. I saw a 50-year old woman in the store, Forever 21, and the irony was just too much. It's so sad. I was like, why don't you go into a different store. You don't have to try to look young. It's fine to be whatever age you are. Just celebrate that. There's so much more freedom in that, instead of pretending that you're something you're not. It's like if I started going around wearing crazy painted-on skinny jeans and wearing them below my butt, it would just be sad. I would hope my friends would do an intervention and be like, bro, you're almost 40. Just chill.
So anyway, it's not about judgment. It's just about freedom. True freedom is choosing what you're attracted to, how you feel about stuff, and that's all on the table if you choose to go the High Noon way. So we welcome you into the new world which is channel got the land of freedom, the land of the High Noon era where you get to choose to be happy. So Benjy, we got to wrap it up. But any last words of wisdom from the bearded wonder?
Benjy Uyama
No, I just want to really encourage everyone to check out the book, Core of the Universe, or join a group, or do whatever you need to do. Do whatever you need to do today to get you on track. Start doing. Make a structure for your day, make it happen, and you'll be good.
Andrew Love
Thank you, everybody. If you have any questions, as always, reach out to us. Hardly anybody ever does have the guts to ask us the hard questions. We love them. We love you. Adios!
Benjy Uyama
Adios!
Andrew Love
Hey. Before you go, I wanted you to consider checking out High Noon Connect. So if you go to our website, highnoon.org, you'll notice, first of all, we have a brand new website which is beautiful. And also, you'll notice that there's the opportunity to join High Noon Connect. The essence of what High Noon is morphing into is a community. We are better together. And sexual integrity involves other people. If you're struggling with pornography, you need the help of brothers and sisters, of people in a community dedicated to helping lift you up. And even if you're not, if you're in a relationship and you just want more intimacy, more love, more joy. Or if you're single, and you just want to be a person that can live according to their values in the area of sexuality, and you want to be around a group of people who are fighting in the same way then please go to highnoon.org and sign up for High Noon Connect. There's a free version and a paid version. We want to make this as accessible as possible. And we're nonprofit, so we're not trying to make a buck here. We're just trying to create a community off of Facebook that gives a focused conversation, focused energy, focused attention on building sexual integrity as a cultural intention. So go to highnoon.org, we'll see you there.