Hi Jake,
Thank you for your honest and heartfelt post.
I can only speak for myself, but yes, I believe porn of all types is equally harmful, whether a picture, on a screen, or in a book because, as you said, it incites lust, as well as covetousness.
As for marrying someone and fighting giants... I know we all have giants in our lives. Something I didn't know however, was how another person's giants would affect my own giants personally.
I only had a few long-term relationships in my life, one of them being my ex-husband which I've talked about often, as he left and went on to remarry.
Long after that ended, I dated a man whose giant was alcohol. He also had 3 boys, 2 of whom were very young and lived with him. I should have never dated him, as I was worried I wouldn't be able to handle an instant family, but my co-workers were mostly all single moms and told me I was being a snob for not giving a single dad a chance. At the time, he worked a full-time job, was going to AA, and would gladly to to church with me when he had Sundays off, so I thought things were headed in a good direction.
What I didn't understand was how his demons would only inflame my own. Long story short, he started relying on my for everything, and instead of getting better, my presence became a crutch. Over 3 years, he stopped working and I was doing most everything. It didn't matter when I told him I had something going on -- he dropped his kids off as my house because it got to a point where he drank from the time he woke up to the time he passed out in the evening. His babysitter was calling me telling me to come get the kids because he couldn't. I found myself paying for his childcare and then court cases because he stopped working to drink. He also saw nothing wrong with viewing and printing porn on his computer (this was before smart phones,) and I would walk into his room and see stacks of pictures of adult material.
One of my giants is depression, and so all of these things set off my own demons in a major way. I couldn't see any way out because any time I tried to break up with him, he would just drop the kids off at my house saying, "They need you." They would run to me because he would forget to feed them. In the rare times I now had to myself, I would crumble into a ball, rocking and crying and asking God how I could get out of this without damaging the kids in any way.
And my even bigger giants started to resurface. I fell back into self-harm, and if anyone noticed at work, I dismissed it as cat scratches (even though no one I knew owned a cat.) Others might act out their anxiety and stress through drugs, drinking, and porn, but for me, when it spills over into something I just can't handle, I start to think about self-destructing in various ways.
After 3 very long years and nearly having to get the police involved, I finally got out. The kids went to a loving, safe environment with family (their mother had died long before they met me,) and I slowly became 100 times better on my own.
And so I have found that for my own self, I have to be very, very careful about how someone else's demons are going to affect my own. This is part of why I stay single, and something I think many cannot admit to themselves -- that in many cases, their own demons might be better worked out as a single than in a marriage, at least for a time.
Now I know this isn't very encouraging, but I'm sure God has built people who, unlike me, could handle and even work through those situations. The ironic thing for me is that I feel part my calling is to reach out to people who have gone through extreme things. But the difference is that in those cases, my life was separate from theirs and as long as I could get away, I could handle it in measured doses.
I could not survive in a marriage that was constantly setting off my own issues. Knowing he was regularly looking at porn would definitely set me off, because I would feel ugly and unworthy, and this would lead to me hurting myself (especially in a union that is supposed to be based on mutual trust and love.) Alcohol and drugs would likely means I'd have to start working extra jobs to try to keep up with the bills if/when he could no longer work, dumping all the responsibility into my lap, which would also push me over the edge, because there was no way out.
I don't want to discourage anyone here who is fighting these kinds of giants. I don't want anyone to think they can't get married or will never find someone who will marry them. We are all different and my triggers might work much differently than others. God may have someone out there whose giants might actually work with yours to get better -- only He knows.
However, I have to be honest about my own self. My depression has not fallen to that extreme (it still comes and goes, but not to those levels) since I got away from feeling trapped in those situations, and I will not knowingly subject myself to them in a relationship if I can help it.
Now of course, if God wanted me to marry someone with those issues, I'd have to be willing to obey. But right now, my feeling is that God would have to somehow convey to me in a big way that things would somehow be different, because I try to be realistic about myself and I know how I react to those situations.
Alcoholics know they shouldn't enter a bar. Porn addicts know they shouldn't enter a store selling adult products.
Likewise, as someone who knows what triggers her most extreme bouts of depression, I can't offer anything but a friendship in certain situations as a means of my own self-preservation.