I didn’t expect to be writing about homemade porn twice in one month, but such is the life of a dating and relationship coach. 

A Nashville man was just charged with eight counts of unlawful photography. He secretly recorded women during sex, saving thousands of videos to the cloud.

Here’s the story if you want some more details. 

I find it notable that he gave his ex-girlfriend his computer password while he was in Europe, she was housesitting, and the computer had videos of her saved in a folder with her name on it.

It’s almost like he wanted to get caught.

But here’s the interesting part that didn’t make the headlines: 

6 months earlier, Matthew started attending church. He was even volunteering there. 

This spicy detail came in through my network and paints this story in a whole other light. 

I’ve seen this pattern before. A man carries deep shame about something – his sexuality, his desires, his past – and tries to compensate for it in increasingly extreme ways.

Sometimes it’s through constant validation-seeking, telling everyone about your conquests (even the ones that didn’t happen).

Sometimes it’s through surface-level fixes, like going to church or reading self-help books, while the core issue festers underneath.

And sometimes… it’s through secretly recording women during intimate moments, desperate to capture and possess something you don’t feel worthy of experiencing authentically.

My honest take? 

I feel bad for him. He obviously has some deep inner pain that he didn’t know how to reconcile. While he committed a crime and betrayed these women’s trust, he clearly didn’t know how to resolve his issues. 

If he hadn’t been watching the videos remotely from Europe, maybe we could have made the case that he was turning to church to look for some form of healing. 

We’ll never know all the details. 

But my read is that he started to use religion and spirituality to make him feel like a better person, while still degrading himself. 

Our hidden camera friend is facing criminal charges and a $1.8 million lawsuit. But the real cost is the deep shame he must feel. Something was broken inside of him and his way of compensating has ruined his life and brought on even more shame. 

It was bound to happen at some point. I’ve seen it before. The compensatory behaviors get more extreme. Until eventually, something breaks.

You should feel sympathy towards him. He never figured out how to resolve his issues, and that led him deeper and deeper into this mess. 

I’m assuming no one reading this has a similar perverted habit. But the smaller compensating behaviors, like bragging about conquests, getting addicted to hookups, or even porn addictions… all lead down the same path.

The solution isn’t more compensation. It’s not another technique or trick or way to avoid feeling what you’re feeling.

The solution is understanding why that shame exists in the first place. And then transforming it into something else entirely.

I help men do exactly that.

When you’re ready to stop compensating and start transforming (before it blows up your life)…