How One Wife Turned Her Husband’s Porn Addiction into a Ministry of Hope
At the time, Greta Eskridge's world was falling apart when she learned about the addiction that her husband had to pornography. Having grown up in a sheltered environment all of her life, it's not something that she would have ever imagined she would deal with. Looking back, Greta would call her experience of uncovering the dark secret that her husband had a turning point in being able to minister to families all over the world. In Greta's new book, It's Time to Talk to Your Kids About Porn, Greta wants to help parents unlock what God has taught her on the subject and be able to approach the conversation with the spiritual authority that we're all given to tackle the subject with authority and confidence.
Crosswalk Headlines: When did you know that you had to write a book?
Greta Eskridge: I always say that that part of my life doesn't make sense because it was the most difficult thing I had ever experienced or had to walk through - my husband's porn addiction and betrayal through infidelity. I had never felt so lonely and isolated. It was the worst thing I had experienced, but then, at the same time, I experienced a closeness with Jesus that I had never experienced before. I'd known Jesus since I was three years old and asked him into my heart when I was a little girl in the kitchen with my mom. But our relationship changed when I needed him so desperately.
CWH: What did you learn regarding walking through your husband's addiction?
GE: It doesn't make sense. It's spiritual math; something could be so bad, yet to walk with God so intimately like it doesn't add up, but that's how God works. God steps into our darkest moments, and if we can come to him, he meets us there in incredible ways. I can look back at it and have a tenderness for what my husband and I walked through, a tenderness for both of us. We were both hurting and broken in different ways. I'm just grateful that God met us there in an incredible way.
CWH: How did the book come into development?
GE: It was a friend of mine who gave me the idea, and it was only a couple weeks after my husband's disclosure of everything that had gone on, she said to me, I hope you write a book someday about this, who knows what God will do with your story? I was a young mom, and it was the time of blogs. I couldn't really imagine that I'd get to a point where I could do that. But it was like God put this idea in my head through my friend telling me that our story was capable of redemption and that someday he could use it for good. I just held that dream in my heart and that prayer for fifteen years.
CWH: Outside the body of Christ, is there a growing movement around people talking about the dangers of pornography?
GE: There are a lot of reasons that experts and not even people who are in the Christian realm would say that pornography has dangerous side effects. There's one that is happening with young men who are using pornography. They're experiencing the physical effects of consuming pornography, and that's just one reason.
To see these young people suffering and see the dangerous impact that it has on them, they have no idea that it should not be this way. Pornography is not good for them because society tells them porn is harmless. That's absolutely a lie.
CWH: How can parents operate from a place of hope in addressing the issue of pornography with their children?
GE: I have four kids, and walking through the porn addiction in my husband's life, there were times that I wanted to build a wall around my family. I want to keep my kids as safe as possible, but if I am parenting from a place of fear, I'm trying to do all of the protecting myself. I have to let go of the control I think I need and, instead, trust God. For me, what that looked like was being able to talk about how to keep them safe from pornography in a way that felt casual and comfortable and not laced with stress and, anxiety and fear. For example, I would have lots of conversations with them about making good choices, choosing God's best for them instead of what the world was offering, and teaching them to use technology with discernment and wisdom - instead of just saying nothing.
Photo Credit: ©Facebook/Greta Eskridge
Originally published April 01, 2025.
