I’m a Woman Struggling with Masturbation. How Do I Find Freedom?

The story I hear in my office has some common themes. A woman is feeling isolated, condemned, and stuck. She’s been picking up on messages that masturbation is a man’s struggle. She’s never heard anyone mention it in a women’s gathering, small group, or even among close friends. She concludes, “I guess I’m the only woman struggling with this.” By God’s grace, there are more resources for women struggling with masturbation than ever before. What do women in the church today need to hear about how to find freedom from masturbation for good?

Let’s focus on some practical considerations of this battle for women and how you might intentionally plan to pursue Christ amid temptation.

Struggling with Masturbation: Know and Name Your Suffering

If you’ve had a longstanding pattern or even feel you’re addicted to masturbation, you may endure a period of discomfort when you initially abstain from the behavior. It does get easier. Pray for God’s mercy and help in this. These temporary experiences include things like increased sexual arousal, sexual dreams, mood changes, irritability and sleep problems.^[1]

If masturbation has been a main way to cope with stress, you may experience a period of difficulty as you learn new ways to manage stress.Consider your personal story of suffering and how it has influenced your struggles with masturbation. For the Christian, struggles with sin themselves are a form of suffering that grieves a regenerate heart. Consider these sufferings that can set the stage for temptations toward masturbation:

• Unwanted singleness (through divorce, widowhood, or having never been married)
• Challenges sexually within marriage (illness, medical challenges, extended absence from spouse)
• Pelvic floor pain or dysfunction
• Sexual abuse or early pornography exposure
• Chronic pain and illness

Many women feel that they can no longer access God’s comfort if they’ve pursued sinful escapes through masturbation. They believe the anti-gospel adage from Aesop’s fable Hercules and the Waggoner, “God helps those who help themselves.” As counselor and author Mike Emlet put it in his excellent book, Saints, Sufferers, and Sinners: Loving Others as God Loves Us, “You never hear God say, ‘well too bad. You should have listened to me before you made that foolish choice.’ Rather God remains responsive to the cry of his people in their distress, even distress of their own making (Judges 2:16–18 as well as many Psalms).”

Suffering and temptation are both beautiful opportunities to cry out to God. He wants to be with you, even in your temptation and pain (John 17:24). He is not waiting for you to become righteous so he can comfort you. In fact, if you’re in Christ, it’s his righteousness that now clothes you (Isa. 61:10).

Believe Freedom Is Possible

Sexual arousal is episodic, meaning you can experience it and it will dissipate. You are not bound to pursue sexual release simply because you experience arousal. Over time, some women have trained their brain and body through habitual masturbation that arousal always ends with sexual gratification. This is partially why struggling with masturbation can feel so hopeless; it can feel impossible to resist once you experience bodily sensations and sexual temptation.

You must believe that you can experience sexual desire and bodily arousal and endure it. 1 Corinthians 10:13 says that God offers a way of escape that you may be able to “endure” temptation. Endurance may be difficult! Believing that it’s possible to endure is a significant mental shift that must take place as you resist temptation. If you’re engaging the battle with a mindset that masturbation is an inevitable pattern that you can never be free from, you are telling yourself lies. Jesus said that the truth will set you free (John 8:32); your call is to believe what he has said rather than to cultivate subtle lies that freedom is simply not possible.

Know Your Pattern & Develop a Plan

Since masturbation has such a bodily component to the pattern of temptation for many women, be aware of your menstrual cycle and other hormonal fluctuations that can increase sexual desire and sexual responsiveness to develop a proactive plan. Masturbation often has predictable triggers. In struggling with masturbation, it is wise to learn your patterns so you can fight against them. Consider these questions for when you face temptation and use this guide to help make a proactive plan to address your individual patterns of temptation.

How will you flee or avoid temptation?

Write down every possible strategy for how you will flee or avoid temptation in your life. This may involve fleeing mentally, physically, or emotionally. It may involve avoiding specific apps, people, content, or lifestyle choices (like lying in bed all day on a Saturday).

Where will you flee to?

It’s not enough to simply flee from the sin, you need to flee to something good. What will that be? How will you flee to Christ? What other activities will you purposefully engage in instead of sexual sin at that moment?

What will you do with your body?

What you do with your body has a significant impact on the battle against sin. Consider what you can do in terms of changing your environment, getting outside, some light exercise, or getting out of bed.

Who will you call?

Learning to call out to God in temptation is a vital skill. He is there at all times and in all places. He has said, “And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:20) and “I will never leave you nor forsake you” (Heb. 13:5). Involving others during temptation and certainly after giving in to sin is also wise. Many women don’t do this because they don’t know who to call, or it feels too humbling to ask for help for this temptation. If you don’t know who you’d reach out to, how can you begin praying and cultivating a relationship of help in this area? If you do know someone, speak to them and ask for their help. Decide together, ahead of time, if you can reach out to them in temptation. Discuss what method is best (text, email, call) and their boundaries around time of day (anytime, only during the day, and so on). This does not mean that every temptation should involve someone else. But it’s essential that you have the humility to be willing to contact a friend, even as you pray for discernment about when it’s appropriate to do so. In my experience, women generally don’t lean into the grace of confessing and asking for prayer amid temptation as often as they should.^[2]

What will you remember?

Desires and beliefs converge in the moment of temptation and tell us lies. What I do alone doesn’t matter. I’ll just do it this one time. I will always struggle with this. God will forgive me anyway. I deserve this; it’s been a hard day. You need even more persuasive and powerful truths to combat those lies, and you need to have those truths available in the moment of temptation. One example could be to keep a note in your phone with reminders of God’s love for you (quotes or Bible verses), or a note to yourself about why you don’t want to pursue sin and what it will cost you if you choose sin again.

How will you pray?

You are invited to pour out your heart to God—yes, even in sexual temptation. You don’t have to be cleaned up to do this. Are you willing to express your unmet desires, disappointments, loneliness, false beliefs, circumstances that are tempting you, frustrations, and longings? Jesus wants to minister to you in those places as you pour out your heart to him. He is a gentle shepherd. What might be a go-to Psalm that you can use as a template to cry out to him in your moment of need?

A Note for Women on Sexual Trauma

Sexual arousal is not as context-driven as you may believe; meaning, a memory of sexual harm or abuse can produce sexual arousal. This does not mean that you enjoyed being abused. Bodies are designed to respond to sexual stimuli and may respond even when the context is harmful. Many women have shared with me that they experience deep shame over the ways that temptation in the form of sexual arousal is connected with past abuse. If sexual trauma and flashbacks are common triggers for your struggle with masturbation, it’s wise to seek help and care for the underlying trauma rather than looking only to stop the behavior. Your heart and your suffering are as important to God as your holiness and growth away from masturbation. Wise care should address both of these things.

Think Rightly About Yourself

How do you think about yourself amid this struggle? God’s Word places high priority on how Christians consider themselves in light of what God has done and who they are in Christ (Rom. 6:11). Many women struggling with masturbation think of themselves as fundamentally different. Here are some things I’ve heard while discipling women in this struggle:

I’m a pervert.

I’m more like a man.

I’m disgusting.

I’m a fraud.

I’m the only one.

I’m dirty.

The enemy of our souls, the devil, loves when Christians take on these identities. He prowls around (1 Pet. 5:8) seeking to take our eyes off our “in-Christ-ness.” The enemy wants Christians to identify with their sin and the “old man” (Rom. 6:6) that has been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20). Resist him and his deadly lies by faith! One of the most significant elements of finding freedom from masturbation is to grow in believing that you’re a woman who is loved by God, and that he delights in you because you’re adopted as his beloved child (Rom. 8:15). As you grow in dependence on the one who loves you, the lure of a false refuge like masturbation will “grow dim in the light of his glory and grace.”

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^[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9881655/ accessed Feb. 18, 2026

^[2] For more help on how to involve others in your growth in struggles with masturbation, check out chapter ten of our free curriculum, Sexual Faithfulness, called “Journey Companions” as well as the appendix of the same name.