Straight Talk to Husbands Who Watch Porn
Last week we published the eighth issue of our e-magazine, Pure Minds Online. My article on husbands who watch porn received some great responses so I thought I would pass along the sources for my data. I reproduced the whole article below, but I’ve also included hyperlinks to the original sources.
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Shelli remembers well the day her husband John called her up to confess his secret obsession with pornography. Years of guilt, shame, and wasted time had finally taken its toll on John, and the emotional dam broke. He knew he needed to tell his wife the truth.
“It took me by complete surprise,” she says, “I didn’t have any clue that it was even an issue.” But after the shock came the hurt. “There was definitely a death of all that I thought was real,” Shelli says. “Everything that we had had prior to that felt artificial…that I was believing a lie, that I didn’t know him, and I didn’t know who he really was, and the way he felt about me was a big lie.”
John and Shelli Mandeville share part of their story on the documentary Somebody’s Daughter: A Journey to Freedom from Pornography. Sadly, John and Shelli’s story of a marriage nearly destroyed by pornography and addiction is all too common. In 2002, at a meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, the divorce attorneys present said over half (56%) of their cases involved one party having “an obsessive interest in pornographic websites.”
Do wives need to lighten up?
In a presentation given at the Witherspoon Institute, Dr. Jill Manning spoke about the impact pornography can have on wives. “It has been troubling and intriguing to me,” reports Dr. Manning, “how many times I encounter derogatory beliefs about this group of women, beliefs that dismiss the magnitude of the issue and the legitimacy of it, by framing them as pathological, overreacting, and frigid women who need to lighten up. ‘After all, he’s just looking?’”
Some women, in fact, have “lightened up.” Not all wives react negatively to their husbands using pornography. Ana Bridges from University of Arkansas’ psychology department says in her own research she has met many women who have justified their husbands’ behavior. “All guys look at porn.” “It’s better than him having an affair.” “At least he’s not always coming to me to get his needs met.”
Bridges labels these rationalizations as “permission-giving beliefs:” things we tell ourselves that make certain behaviors seem normal or healthy. Ironically, it is pornography that often teaches and reinforces these beliefs in the first place. If we receive a steady diet of media that portrays illicit sex as the norm, it is easy to get the impression that “boys will be boys.”
How a woman reacts to her husband using pornography is based in part on what she believes healthy sexuality and relationships should look like in the first place. So, what if, just for a minute, we asked ourselves how our relationships could look if we didn’t live in a pornified culture. What if, for a brief moment, men turned their eyes away from the fantasy images—the airbrushed photos, the clever video editing, the breast enhancements, and the thumbnail images that portray women like dogs in heat—and instead focused on what pornography is really costing them and their wives? Before we quickly label distressed wives as overly conservative prudes, what if we peeled back the layers and instead saw women who were mourning the loss of something they should rightly expect from their husbands: intimacy.
Who says porn is bad for marriages?
John and Shelli certainly understood what porn was costing them. “Accept an impossible appetite and an impossible standard, and it steals from the true beauty of what marriage is supposed to be,” John says. “It’s the perfect theft of growing old together. Who wants to grow old together in a culture where all we honor is what’s young?”
Consider how the research bears this out. Pornography doesn’t teach men to serve, honor, and cherish their wives in a way that fosters romance. Pornography trains men to be consumers, to treat sex as a commodity, to think about sex as something on-tap and made-to-order. As Dr. Mary Anne Layden writes, “It is toxic miseducation about sex and relationships.”
- In Dr. Gary Brooks’ book, The Centerfold Syndrome, he explains how pornography alters the way men think. Because the women in porn are only glossy magazine pictures or pixels on the screen, they have no sexual or relational expectations of their own. This trains men to desire the cheap thrill of fantasy over a committed relationship that requires them to connect to another human being. Pornography essentially trains men to be digital voyeurs: looking at women rather than seeking genuine intimacy.
- According to a study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology, after only a few prolonged exposures to pornographic videos, men and women alike reported less sexual satisfaction with their intimate partners, including their partners’ affection, physical appearance, and sexual performance.
- Another study that appeared in the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy found similar results. When men and women were exposed to pictures of female centerfold models from Playboy and Penthouse, this significantly lowered their judgments about the attractiveness of “average” people.
- Dr. Victor Cline’s research has shown that sexual arousal and excitement diminish with repeated exposure to sexual scenes, leading people to seek out greater variety and novelty in the pornography they view.
- French neuroscientist Serge Stoleru reports on how overexposure to erotic stimuli actually exhausts the sexual responses of healthy young men.
- Dr. Dolf Zillmann reports when young people are repeatedly exposed to pornography, it can have a long-lasting impact on their beliefs and behaviors. Frequently, men who habitually view pornography develop cynical attitudes about love and the need for affection between partners. They begin to view the institution of marriage as sexually confining. Often, men develop a “tolerance” for sexually explicit material, leading them to seek out more novel or bizarre material to achieve the same level of arousal.
Dr. Judith Reisman summarizes it well: Pornography causes impotence—an inability to function with your own sexual power. “If he can’t make love to his beloved,” says Reisman, “If he has to imagine a picture, if he has to imagine a scene, in order to actually reach the heights of completion with this person, then he’s no longer with his own power, is he? He has been stripped. He has been hijacked. He has been emasculated. He has, in effect, been castrated visually.”
We might say the real problem with pornography isn’t that it shows us too much sex, but that it can’t show us enough about what real sex is. Porn treats sex one-dimensionally, packages it in pixels and rips it from its relational context. It titillates with images of sex but cannot offer the experience of real intimacy.
Am I not enough for him?
“It’s not because you’re not enough, not beautiful, and that he doesn’t find you attractive,” Shelli Mandeville says. “It’s so important that women get that.”
Easier said than done. One has only to glance through online forums and blogs on this topic: many women feel his porn use is somehow their fault. They feel they have failed their partners sexually. They feel if they were only more attractive or more available he wouldn’t rush to the porn to get his fix. Researchers have found that wives and girlfriends often feel a loss of self-esteem in these situations.
However, comparing marital intimacy to pornography is like comparing apples to oranges. “The type of pornography that’s available now was never available in human history,” says Dr. William Struthers, author Wired for Intimacy: How Pornography Hijacks the Male Brain. “If you can get on a 50-inch HD television a picture of a woman engaging in a sexual act, the brain’s not wired to expect that kind of thing, because there aren’t women who have 50-inch-HD-TV bodies out there.”
Even the tabloids show us that the so-called picture perfect women can’t possibly compete with fantasy. Why would Tiger Woods cheat on his swimsuit-model-wife Elin Nordegren? Why would Peter Cook spend $3,000 on Internet porn when he could come home to Christie Brinkley? Why would Charlie Sheen be drawn to a digital harem, being married to Denise Richards?
The answer is that a mind trained for fantasy will find reality dull, no matter how supposedly stunning that reality is. Many men have conditioned their brains with this “digital drug” (as Dr. Struthers calls it). Some men train their minds to be turned to viewing sex from certain camera angles. Others train their minds to be turned on by certain physical characteristics. Others train their minds to expect variety: many images, many women, many physical types. And this toxic training begins for most men at a very young age.
Take John and Shelli, for instance. John remembers seeing porn for the first time when he was 10 years old. That’s when his habit began. “So when you’re 12 and 13 and you’re not married, you think when you become married, that this whole habit you’ve created for yourself will just go away because now you’ll have a sex partner,” John says. “But the problem is, it’s not actually a sexual experience, it’s a fantasy experience that your body gets trained for. So now, the reality of the marriage isn’t the fantasy.”
Feminist author Naomi Wolf puts it best. She believes the onslaught of porn doesn’t increase but deadens male libido, leading men to see fewer and fewer women as porn-worthy. “For how can a real woman…possibly compete with a cybervision of perfection, downloadable and extinguishable at will, who comes, so to speak, utterly submissive and tailored to the consumer’s least specification?” No woman can compete with this. “Today,” Wolf writes, “real naked women are just bad porn.”
Steps for Guilty Husbands
John Mandeville offers his words of advice to men: “You’re either going to give in and go for it, and sacrifice everything for pixels on the screen, or you make a commitment to what’s real—what’s a real human sitting next to you, and commit to whatever it takes to make that work.” And turning to Shelli he says, “And we had to make that decision together.”
Where do men start in making that commitment?
Accept responsibility. Men often blame their wives for not being attentive enough. Certainly, an inattentive wife can be frustrating to a man, but using this as an excuse for virtual adultery is nothing but cowardice. Counselor Joe Dallas writes, “The wife who is inattentive, indifferent, or downright abusive is responsible forher sins, not his. No woman, no matter how odious, makes her man commit adultery, so if a wife sins, let her account. But let her account for her sins alone.”
Many times men are putting the cart before the horse when they use this excuse. It may not be her inattentiveness that has been the catalyst, rather it may be a sign of him not initiating real romance and true intimacy in the first place. And, of course, other issues affecting intimacy may require professional counseling.
Talk is cheap. Fred Stoeker, author of Every Man’s Battle, says, “You must give your wife every right to play a role in defining what ‘trustworthiness’ means to her in your marriage.” What does your wife need from you? She needs more than an apology. She needs to see you are making every effort to change. Ask her what she needs to see from you so trust can be rebuilt.
Be patient. Remember guys, your wife may not understand your attraction to or struggle with porn like you do. And if she has just found out about your struggle, she may be dealing with a whirlwind of confusion and hurt. Just as you desire patience from her as you distance yourself from pornography, give her the same patience. Allow her the freedom to express the hurt she rightly feels.
Get accountability. The late psychologist Alvin Cooper believed that there are three main factors that draw people into the Internet porn: Accessibility, Affordability, and Anonymity. He dubbed this the “Triple A Engine” that drives the digital porn market. Like a three-legged stool: kick out one of the legs and it will fall.
The leg of anonymity is the easiest one to remove. When you remove the secrecy of your Internet use, you eliminate much of the temptation. We do this through accountability: we make ourselves willing to account for where we go and what we see online, allowing trusted friends and colleagues hold us to task on our commitment to stay pure. Use accountability software as a tool in your commitment.
Make real intimacy your end goal. The goal is not simply “quitting pornography.” That, of course, is admirable, but it only leaves a void. What pornography attempts to imitate is what, in the end, we really desire: intimacy with another human being. This is what husbands must strive for in their marriages.
Reclaim what pornography has stolen from you. Choose to break the cycle. Choose to stand for intimacy in a culture drowning in illusion. “So we’re drawing a line,” John Mandeville says, “and whatever it takes, the generation that grows up behind us is going to run where we stumble.”
30 Responses to Straight Talk to Husbands Who Watch Porn
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Love this article. It’s really powerful, and it gets straight to the point with the stories. No repeats. Just a solid blow to the conscious of the porn addict. Excellent job, Luke!
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Affirmative!
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A cliche. It takes all sorts to make this world and all sorts will do as they please. My wife and I are half way discussing my mild(whatever the size) use of porn. We have a pretty good relationship from my perspective. As I heard from my wife not in hers. We have a calm relationship so I didn’t feel shame, as always I heard what she said and I have started to tell her what my thoughts are. This is as far we have got.
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THANK YOU!! Thank you or putting into words the things that I feel about pornography and for helping me to feel justified in my hurt. It is killing real relationships and I feel hurt to the core for all relationships with porn in the middle, including my own. May God continue to give us grace.
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@Liz – Thanks! That was the whole goal of this article. Too many times we hear from women who are made to feel unjustified in their hurt, and both husbands and wives need to understand there are legitimate reasons why they should be concerned about pornography.
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Hey I’m a 14 year old guy and I don’t have a lot of money. Is there a way for me to get covenant eyes (or any accountability software) cheap or at no cost?
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@Eric – Yes. We actually have a hardship program for people in your situation. Just give us a call and we can give you more details. 877.479.1119.
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I would just like to say thank you for all the information. My husband and I are on the verge of divorce, because of his porn use. I have caught him over & over. He keeps telling me he is going to quit. It has been five years now and he has not quit. I love him, but I am better off without him. I deserve better. I did not realize there were that many wives going through the same. Thank you. Darla
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I am going through the same thing. I am very sorry you are going through a divorce. I am actually pregnant and expecting our first baby and he is watching pornography, and I threaten to leave him and it doesn’t work. He is very defensive and says I am the only girl in the world that gets offended by this and that I just need to get over it! It’s just not that easy. Especially now when I am extremely moody and sensitive. I just don’t know how to make him stop.
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I’m RIGHT where you are Darla. We’ve been married going on 5 years, and I’m at the point of wanting to just leave. I found out exactly one year later what he was doing. It’s crazy because he’s actually a GOOD husband and great father, but this unresolved pornography issue is killing me and I don’t see how I can stand it anymore.
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Pornography ruined my childhood, the beginning culprit in being molested and further abused. After years of recovery and pain, it now it has re-surfaced in my “happy” marriage.
To ALL THE BLINDED MEN AND WOMEN who believe it is okay, check statistics on how rape and molesting begins. It also dehumanizes, demoralizes and degrades women to the fullest capacity. It ruins lives and souls. It ruins love and trust. It ruins families and children who need a daddy in the home.
Women crave attention and the feeling we are beautiful and loved, how would those same husbands feel if we innocently “clicked” on websites where another man fulfilled those desires, telling me how much he loved and adored me and I interacted and responded back? …… or maybe I shouldn’t speak so clear about that, it will open another money making door for greedy pigs to feed on human desires without consideration of how many lives it ruins.
The bottom line is- if a website for women like that was out there, I wouldn’t go there….EVER- even if I had a deep urge or desire for it- because of the commitment I made to my husband and God. That’s what the problem is- its that “something” that’s missing. And the fact we were fooled into believing they had “it” too. I dont know how my story will end. I’m sick and destroyed.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR WONDERFUL SITE AND ARTICLES, however it begun it helps so much with that burning pain in my chest right now. 3 days of hell needed a comfort and u gave me that.
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Thanks, Janny. I hope you continue to look around and find more information that is helpful to you.
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My husband is addicted to pornogrophy and is an alcoholic. I have been trying to help him in both areas but he has refused everything. He is distant, cold and unloving. I have stuck by his side for the last 22 yrs. but I’m at the end of my rope. Our relationship has been one sided, I take care of the bills, the kids, and of course there’s no intimacy of any kind, not even a kiss when he gets home from work. I am a Christian and have been hoping and praying that he will one day repent and want to change. I am bound to him by our marriage covenant and I want to honor God in it, but I honestly would rather live bymyself for the rest of my life than put up with this for the next 20 yrs. I would appreciate any advice on how to help him to repent, or what I could be doing…I feel like I’ve tried it all…but it’s always me trying…I don’t see any hope for us in the future…
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Hi, Andrea
Your desperation and exhaustion is very evident in your comment. It is something I have encountered often in the past few years. I’m sorry you have struggled so long without any hope.
I normally don’t do this, but you are exactly who I had in mind when I wrote Redemptive Divorce.
After enduring my own struggle with a wayward partner, I found that I was not alone. Many other believers suffer as you do now. Eventually, I found a biblically sound, legally responsible, grace-oriented way to break this cycle of misery once and for all. I gave this process the name “redemptive divorce.” The book explains everything in detail. The advice is theologically sound, remains true to the face-value, straightforward teaching of Scripture, and offers practical counsel on how to use the courts in a grace-oriented, yet responsible manner.
You can find it here.
Give it a look. Pray about it. Then, let us know what you think, either here or at MarkWGaither.com.
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Thank you for the encouragement in this issue and the article! I have almost been married a year. We got married very young but have been together for about 6 years. I found out he watched porn when we were a good four and a half years into our relationship and it bothered me then. It was an unresolved issue because it fell on me that I didn’t “want it” enough for him I guess. He has been enlisted in the military and been away from me for a good six months last year. We got married and I now live with him away from all family and the back home friends. I came home from workearly one day to only catch him in the aftermath. Porn gives me a bad bad feeling in my stomach and grosses me out. I feel degraded as a women because I would never ever do the things he watches. He told me he wont watch it anymore but it was just to make me feel better. He hasn’t quit. He is going to Guam in October for 6months and I know for a fact of will be part of his life there and it not only angers me but makes me feel so so uncomfortable. I’m so thankful that I never have to worry about him cheating but I guess his trained fantasy is more than I can compete with let alone control. I’m at a loss…. any feedback would be appreciated, I’m definitely going to keep searching for more information!
Lane
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Hi Lane. Yes, I encourage you to look around more and see if you can find any other helpful information. I recommend you download the e-book mentioned above for starters. You are right: “his trained fantasy is more than I can compete with let alone control.” He has trained his mind for a fantasy experience custom-tailored to his own desires. But the fact is no one, especially him, should make you feel as if you have to live up to the unrealistic fantasies created by the airbrushed, acted, and edited world of pornographic media. He is the one who needs to escape the fantasy trap and come back to reality.
I don’t say this to make it sound as if reality is somehow a dull experience. Real marital intimacy can and should be passionate, personal, fun, and joyful. Unfortunately, so many men (myself included) have spent years feeding themselves on the fast food of porn. We’ve become “sexually obese.” Conditioned on this, men don’t recognize the pleasure of sitting down to a fine meal of marital intimacy. Their libido is exploited by this kind of media. Porn makes men into terrible lovers.
If this is something that bothers you (and I believe it should), then first talk to him about how you know he hasn’t stopped. If he said he would stop and hasn’t, he needs to be confronted about this. Then I would talk to him about why him watching porn makes you feel the way you do. I highly recommend these two articles by Mark Gaither on our blog. They will offer you some insight about how to talk to him: “What’s wrong with a little porn?” and “Is Porn the Same as Adultery?“
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Great article. Thank you. Very informative. As i have been looking for answers why my partner of 7 years is quiite addicted to porn or anything that has to do with sexy / flirtatious women in their bikinis etc. For years i have been looking for answers…i was under the impression that i am the one with a problem, he told me i had to chill out and stop being so insecure. This is not an issue of insecurity. I told him one day…he should just be on his own so he can do al the things he wanted and make all those fantasies come to reality. He is in his 50s but he like very young women ..those women in the porn/mags etc.
I am ready to move on anytime, just waiting for the right time. If i am destined to be on my own..so be it . rather than be with a man who gets excited or amused by looking at other women porn or not.
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Hi Leigh. Glad you found it informative. I pray your husband comes around soon.
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I am 27 and unfortunately grew up watching porn. I have realized and admitted I have a problem to both myself and my fiancé. I was around the age of 13 when I first discovered the relationship ruining pornography. It has caused so many problem within my relationship/family! The biggest problem being: I love my fiancé T*****y more than anything in this entire world….if only she could see, or believe that. Porn has made her feel our relationship is fake or fraudulent. I know my love for her is strong and real, but she does not. Pornography has indeed ruined my life! I hope and pray there is time to rebuild and fix what porn and I have broken….trust, respect, compassion and love.
I NEED HELP, ADVISE, COUNSILING, ANYTHING….PLS I don’t want to lose her!
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Hi Jacob. Thanks for your comment. I sense your desperation and I challenge you to take big steps to regain your fiancé’s trust. I would ask her specifically what rebuilding trust might even look like. It will probably involve steps taken to cut off your relationship with pornography and steps taken to build intimacy with her. She may not even be able to answer your question easily, and if she doesn’t know what to say, then make an action plan yourself. Cut off all porn access points. Tell her you plan to get to the bottom of your addiction to porn and then take steps to get that help. Tell her you will do this because it is the right thing to do, regardless of if she is ever able to give you her trust again.
I encourage you to listen to this story from a couple I know who nearly lost their marriage over this issue. I think you’ll resonate with Darren’s story. I hope it speaks to you in a fresh way: “Dealing with Porn in a Marriage: Darren and April’s Story.”
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Words are difficult. My thoughts are like leaves blown to and fro, in a blustery wind that doesn’t allow me to focus on one mere leaf, but the swirling myriad …
My daughter told me about Covenant Eyes, which is to say that her father’s addiction to pornography has been a problem for so very long and had such an affect on her that in her own, young, marriage she has asked her husband for more than just promises, but guarantees. He’s made himself accountable to Covenant Eyes then, for her, to help assure her that what happened between her parents won’t ever happen to them. He loves her too much to ever see her so demeaned. I’m grateful to him for that, and for his willingness to understand how her father’s addiction shattered the marriage and the family, as well as her fear of having the same happen to theirs.
The matter of Covenant Eyes wouldn’t have come up – which is to say, she may never have told me, had I not told her that I suspected her father of sexually abusing our youngest and disabled child. He who cannot speak for himself. I made it clear that I have no proof – only suspicions, but that these suspicions, along with her father’s frequent accessing of “teen” porn sites – sometimes twice a day – have prompted me to seek the means to end our 30 year marriage. Counseling is out of the question. We’ve been there and done that. Due to his inability to be honest and assume responsibility for his actions he continued to blame me. Many of you who have posted here know how it goes – “If you were woman enough …” “If you took better care of me …” “There must be something wrong with you…” No counselor could break through. He was raised by a man who taught him well that there’s nothing more to life than sex, and that sex is love and love is sex. Aside from a sexual relationship he knows nothing about relationship, which is why he’s never had a relationship with either his daughter or his sons.
I say this about his father knowing the family dynamic as well as I do. His younger sister, and quite brokenly, confided that her father had sexually assaulted her when she was young. Though I was the wife of his son, he attempted to sexually assault me too. When I slapped him, my husband’s father, for his advances, my husband became angry – at me – insisting that his father was a “harmless” drunk and I should just let it go. I couldn’t, and no longer allowed him into our home, or around the children, alone. It’s been a problem, and it has to end now. Right now.
Tonight, though, I struggle with what to do in the here and now. My first inclination is to take the logs I’ve obtained of all of the porn sites, to include the teen sites, my husband has accessed to the State Attorney. I have more than 20 pages full going back 3-4 years, having only recently happened upon them when a virus came down on all of of the computers (wireless/network) and I had to try to figure out why. Now I know.
I don’t want to access the sites my husband has been frequenting in an effort to determine if the involvement of the State Attorney might be called for, depending upon the age of the teens he’s been watching. I do have the logs of the sites, as aforementioned, printed from his Google account. He accesses the porn now via his android cell phone and cable TV. I wouldn’t know if he could access child pornography via DirectTV. I think not, but am not certain.
Might there be someone at Covenant Eyes to whom I could send some of these logs to see if the teens he’s watching are underage, so I know better how to proceed?
None of this is going to be easy. But, I’m just going to put one foot in front of the other and trust God to see us through.
Thanks for your time. Also, all of you here who have posted know that my greatest of all hopes and prayers are with you.
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Hi Willow. We’ll get in touch with you via e-mail to address this concern. Thanks.
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Been married a little over one year. Found that my husband looked at porn after telling me he had no desire to see other women like that. The women looked nothing like me. He lied at first then said he sid not look to masterbate but looked because he did not feel like I found him attractive. He said when he looked he felt attractive. We have had a very active sex life. He says I don’t have to worry that he will not look again and that he only thinks of me and wants it to only be between us. I can’t seem to let go and afraid that lack of trust will make it worse since he was honest about his feelings. He also said it was extreme ly hard to admit to me why he looked. It is hard for me ro believe that he dis not look for a sexual reason.
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You say your husband looks at porn because the women staring back at him make him feel attractive. Whether or not he classifies that as a “sexual reason” for looking at porn is of little consequence. The real question is whether he is making strides to gain your confidence, to make you believe that he is looking to you for his sexual satisfaction.
It is very common for men to look at porn because the fantasy world makes them feel attractive. That is, I imagine, one of the main reasons men look at porn. The fantasy world is a place where he can feel like he is the center of another’s sexual universe.
It would be good to know what he means by you not finding him attractive. It is great that he has been honest with you so far, but my prayer is that he will really be more honest with himself and find out why, in a sexually active marriage, he enjoys the buzz he gets from watching porn. What about the pornographic fantasy does he like? The attention? His wife gives him attention? Is there something about what the girls in porn say or do or look like that makes the attention so alluring to him?
Speaking as a man who used to be addicted to porn, I know exactly why that fantasy world drew me: I was the center of attention from women that I considered “trophies.” These were women who looked like the cheerleader I could never have in high school, so porn supplied me with a fantasy world that made me feel like a “real man” who could merit the sexual attention of such beautiful women. I am happily married today, and have no doubt in my wife’s attraction to me, but the world of porn will forever be an alluring thing — not because I don’t get attention from my wife, but because the attention I get is not on my terms. Marital sex is wonderful, but focused on mutual giving. Pornographic lust is also pleasurable (and empty), but driven by selfishness. There’s no other person to please. The porn is all about me.
I can’t say whether this is your husband’s experience; this is only where I am coming from.
As for building trust in your marriage, I highly recommend you pick up a copy of an e-book I edited a while back called Hope After Porn. It is written by four women who’ve been in your shoes.
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the first time I learned about my husband’s porn was a year & a half ago three weeks before we got married. As I was leaving him, his parents stopped me, and like a pendeja, I stayed. My husband hasn’t made love to me in over six months. Worse, when he does want it, he treats my body like the BS that he watches on porn. It’s humiliating and I can’t compete with it. I am a beautiful and loving latina. I am a homemaker, which makes it difficult for me to get up and leave because I depend on him financially. I just recently sold my car to help his business from a financial fiasco. He tells me he is too stressed to be intimate.
Instead of being intimate with me, he would rather watch porn. I have had it. I want to leave tomorrow. My problem is that I made a promise to God that for better or for worse…. My husband refuses to stop and has told me to deal with it or leave.
I’m forty. He’s 39. He works, I have MS and minor disabilities.
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Hi milly. So sorry to hear about your abusive husband.
Do you have a support network? Anyone you can talk to about this?