At the start of the fall semester of my senior year of college, I was receiving the Eucharist every day. The problem was, I was not Catholic. I had begun attending daily Mass four months before, drawn less by the Catholic faith than by the soothing regularity of the liturgy. Whenever the host was administered, I went up with the rest of the parish and received it without a second thought. I did not think there was a difference between Protestant communion and the Catholic Eucharist other than that one was administered more frequently than the other.

But by September, I could no longer plead ignorance. I had begun to participate in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults and was learning about church doctrine and the theology of the sacraments, including how the Eucharist is the “source and summit of the Christian life.” I also learned that people were not supposed to take the Eucharist unless they had received first Communion. How could I live with this contradiction: breaking the rules of the very church I wanted to join?

At the start of my senior year of college, I was taking the Eucharist every day. The problem was, I was not Catholic.

Around that time, I posed the question in my journal: “Maybe I should stop taking the Eucharist until I’m confirmed, but could I bear that?” I had developed a burning desire for the body and blood of Christ. And when I went to Mass, that was the only thing that mattered: fulfilling this personal desire to commune with God through the Blessed Sacrament.

But by fulfilling this desire, I was isolating myself from others. By continuing to receive Communion I was taking myself out of the adult initiation process and creating division between myself and the other catechumens and candidates, who were patiently waiting for their first Communion. I was also distancing myself from the greater Catholic community by ignoring the stages that the church in her wisdom has laid out for catechumens and candidates prior to full reception into the church. But the thought of waiting for the Eucharist seemed too much to bear. My faith was growing, yes, but it was also becoming increasingly individualistic.  

How could I live with this contradiction: breaking the rules of the very church I wanted to join?

There was another problem. In addition to my daily Eucharist habit, I was watching pornography nearly every other day.

People often worry that pornography encourages men to view women as expendable and interchangeable sex partners, that it prioritizes sexual “intimacy” over emotional intimacy. I am sure that is true for some users. But I had been viewing pornography since middle school, and it was not leading me to have casual sex with all kinds of women. Instead, it led me to completely isolate myself, both sexually and emotionally.

In college, I developed a fear of sex. It seemed so risky. The potential for awkwardness, rejection and pain hung over me whenever I thought about sexual intimacy with another person. Watching pornography was much better, I felt, because it was safe. There was no potential for hurt because I was alone with a screen. This fear seeped into my friendships, too. It was much easier for me to fence myself off from others and not let anyone get too close because the potential for pain was more than I could bear.

My decision to refrain from Communion also forced me to reconsider how I thought about sex.

Deep down, however, I wanted more. I wanted to experience intimacy with others. I started by giving up Communion. In the week following my September journal entry, I decided to abstain from the Blessed Sacrament until my first Communion. Abstaining meant abandoning a certain “cave mentality” of living my faith on my own. It invited me to share my budding faith with others who were walking with me on the journey.

But my decision to refrain from Communion also forced me to reconsider how I thought about sex. The parallels were all too real. If abstaining from my strong urge to have the body and blood would allow me greater communion in the end, could the same be true of giving up porn?  

I started taking seriously the prospect of marriage and how watching pornography might inhibit my ability to be intimate with my future spouse. I acknowledged its disconnecting properties—that it ultimately separates me from others. I asked, how could I share in the beautiful gift of sex with my future spouse if I kept teaching myself, through every porn clip, that sex was a solitary activity? How could I possibly survive the intimacy and vulnerability of marriage when I was fencing myself off from those exact things by using pornography?

These were the kinds of questions that changed things for me.

I saw that I had to expel pornography from my life in order to free myself from its narcissism. Ultimately, I had to free myself to pursue something greater. And it was the end goal itself—experiencing intimacy in marriage—that made pornography less and less appealing to me. Through the grace of God, I stopped a decade-long habit of giving in to the safe, self-gratifying act of watching porn.

Sex was never meant to be a solitary activity, but for 10 years that was all sex was for me. In a similar way, the way of the Christian was never meant to be solitary. The process of Christian initiation illuminated these truths and taught me that immediate passions must give way in order for us to experience true communion.  

Four weeks before Easter Sunday, the members of my R.C.I.A. cohort were asked to examine our lives in preparation for receiving the sacraments. After a moment of reflection, we went around in a circle and shared our reflections. I was shocked to hear another candidate speak about the struggle she had with a self-gratifying sexual practice. When this person finished, I jumped in to talk about my own similar experience. She thanked me for sharing, and for a moment, I felt the solidarity that is our true end. We were two Christians, yearning for more.

This article appears in July 9 2018.