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Rebuild Your Marriage 10 minute read

Straight Talk to Husbands Who Watch Porn

Last Updated: February 29, 2024

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 Internet 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.”

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  1. Val

    I know my husband watches porn, he has since he was like 12, which it’s fine. Him watching porn is not my issue, I watch it too occasionally. Lately we have gone through a very rough patch, we are still going through it. What I have realized is that since we have been working to save our marriage, it’s like the only time he wants to have sex with me it’s because we were just talking about a porn star. I don’t arouse him anymore. I don’t turn him anymore. This is when I feel like our marriage is over. If I, your wife who’s ok with you watching porn, even talking about it, trying to try out new things to spice up our sex life, but clearly I my self can’t turn you on anymore, even if you say I’m beautiful and sexy and you love my body, but you only get aroused after a porn star was talked about, I feel like that we are done. There’s nothing else left between us and it hurts like hell. I feel like a complete worthless loser because I can’t turn him on anymore. What than? All I want to do is give up

    • Kay Bruner

      Hi Val, it sounds to me like the emotional side of your relationship has eroded. Here’s an article from The Gottman Institute that you might be interested in reading.

  2. Unknown

    So I have read alot of your comments here. Most of us can relay some disagree.
    Im here to venge just like you.
    Im angry hurt loss confused sad depress unattractive my self esteem is 0%. Everything you feel I feel in so many words.
    When I got married to my husband 2012 i already knew his flaws. We have had so many rough patches begining of our marriage but fought for many years to be where we are at now. Porn was an addiction for him. Even if i went to the extreme to do everything he watched i felt i was never enough. It led to other things as breaking our vowels Cheating not just once or twice or three times it was numurous times because i allowed myself to go ahead and be open and compermise to his needs. Yes i tryed the watching porn phase. It didnt last. It was boring to me. Cause he never did anything like that to me on porns but he expected me to do those kinda of things. Suppose to be 50 50 right. Well i didnt feel then i needed to put out anymore effort in out marriage we seperated id say 13 times the very last time was a very long time away from eachother he ended up in prison. Cause we fought over women that it domestically hurt us. Dramatically. He then promised never will he hurt me again were now in 2017. When he got out of prison he went straight to the women he cheated with me for years. Then he called me said he wanted to come home. Its veen a year he hasnt cheated. Im supposed to be healed from all this. Im not allowed to feel i cant trust him. Im not allowed to feel his variety addiction is 100% vanished. Im supposed to now feel im all he needs that god healed his sickness and his main focus and priority is just me.
    NO! Church dose not help paying a counsler dose not help. Having your one best friend who is your husband is only suppose to make you feel safe secure sexy appriciated. I loss my self. I gained weight we dont go out we dont have fun we dont have the amount of sex we use to now im bored.
    Did i ask for it? He oftwn tells me if i act right maybe we can have more sex or go on dates am i being punished now. I am suppose to be able to feel i can come to my husband say hey were not doing so well in this dept etc etc. Not keep it in tell that bomb explodes cause im too scare to speak cause im at fault often.
    I believe hes been faithful this year. But the one slightest change makes me feel jumpy. He says im the only wife on this earth that acts bipolar cause he knows i worry. Well i was molded and no im not healed nor feel secure safe yet i dont know when i will. So i got upset with him yesterday asked if i cant be open with out it all being my fault then tell me Why are you still in this marriage?
    He said he sometimes ask himself that!
    I told him do remember you said that. I didnt speak to him for the rest of the day night. He left his phone home yes i went through it yes i went through call logs emails etc i didnt find anything to track him cheating. I did find porn though. I then lost it. Cause with him my experience before leads to other things as it did drasticly before. I asked him about it he said cause i did not give him sex last night. Right ummm we rarely ever have sex so that makes it ok now to watch porn. Rather then promiseing to move foward keeping our marriage strong he opened old doors and taking steps back again. Now no i can not teust him once again. He xant last no more then year. He says this is how marriages are its hard we work through it. Being deceitful looking at other womens goods then me. You dont even do those things to me how is that right?
    My 17 year ole told me he may change for a bitt but it wont last very long she dont want to continue to see me hurt anymore so she chose to move away. I have made tremendous sacrifices for my marriage fought for it xause that is what your suppose to do. But im tired now. I feel he didnt change the bandaid came off hes back to his same ole habits and if not now it will ve here. No im not claiming it. Its just from experience yes porn destroys marriages compermiseing destroys marriages. Feeling hurt is more then words express by your husband that thinks your crazy now and you only allow what you make your self feel. No your husband is suppose to make you feel secure safe happy that there is no worries or am i just asking for too much cause now he says i am. Asking to be loved on emotionally attached mentally physically should not lead to porn. Your number priority is to make your wife feel she is the only one for you.
    And i dont feel that no more.

  3. Sadlyaware

    Hi Luke, many thanks for this article and for all of the other comment for which I’m deeply moved. I’m myself dealing with my husband’s porn adiction and getting nowhere. I’ve done so much research and observation of him trying to find out where he exactly comes from and why porn is something he seemingly “needs” in his life. My husband adiction is not a sex adiction. Is a fantasy adiction and I can see similarities with your own experience. He turns to porn because he has made associations with “porn and feeling better” his fantasies are not “sexual” let’s to speak. Are fantasies about being “better than” “more than” “winning” “being more dominant” “more assertive” etc… And the porn offers an excellent platform to live up to this fantasies instead of working in the real deeper issues that are bringing him down. So at this stage he turns to porn and masturbation for mostly everything. If he is not feeling good so he can feel good, if he is feeling good so he can feel better, if he is horny for quick release… Everything. I’ve confronted him about it and he denies it. He’s nowhere in a place where he will accept not even that he looks at it. I know it’s not sexual and overall fantasy because when he can’t masturbate to it, he will only look at it which in my opinion is pretty uncommon. Through his fantasies, my husband has built and builds an image of himself that doesn’t match the reality and allows him to get by in his “alternative” reality without having to deal with the deeper issues that have turned him to poem in the first place. I’ve been married for a year and a half and love my husband but how long can I keep going without him being ready to accept there are issues we need to work at? Our sexual life is deprive of intimacy and he doesn’t connect with me (or anyone really) at an emotional level. I’ve read “your husband and porn” as well as “hope after porn” but I’m not able to get my husband to move on from the denial even though he is accessing porn in the office if he knows I’m going to be home in the evening :-( otherwise he would look at it at home connecting his iPad to a massive to screen in the living room….I believe is the personality that drives him to the porn and not the porn itself. Porn is only a conducive mean and extension of his fantasy world. My husband is 40, I’m 36, we are both educated people and attractive (by this society standards) I feel he desperately looks to make connections with the real world and he is constantly looking at other women (no matter how they really look like) in the street in order to bring them into his fantasies to make it all seem more real for him. I’m deeply sadden and don’t know what to do…

    • Kay Bruner

      Hey there. Well, it sounds like you’ve done a lot of thinking about this already. Your final sentence here is so, so important: you have deep emotions to process, and you have decisions to make. I would encourage you to find a good, mature therapist who can help you process those emotions and work toward healthy boundaries in this situation.

      It sounds like you’ve already tried reaching out to him through normal means, and he doesn’t recognize the problem. The fact that he is unable to connect emotionally is especially important, and I think calls for you to carefully consider your boundaries. Here and here are a couple of articles, as well as Luke’s article on when divorce becomes a reasonable option. I’m not saying that you need to divorce your husband, but that there are instances where divorce becomes the last sad choice, and it’s good to consider what boundaries really are appropriate or not in your particular case. Those are such difficult things to process, which is why I think counseling could be helpful. You might also appreciate the online group Bloom, which has private forums and classes you can take.

      If you have not read any of John Gottman’s research on marriage, I’d encourage you to look at The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. And in reference to porn in particular, this Gottman Institute article. Gottman will tell you that the ability to connect emotionally is the most basic building block of a relationship. (Here’s a short video.)

      I hope some of that is helpful as you process through these hard things. Peace, Kay

  4. MsDisappointed

    So I am not the only one with this big problem. By reading of these commnets, I saw myself in them. My husband and I married for almost 12 years now, we have been together for almost 15 years. Our second marriage, both of us. We got 5 kids together, two of each from previous marriage then one daughter together. I have known about his porn addiction for long time, maybe about 10 years now. We tried counseling, we talked a lot about it and he tried to go to S anon, because he said he want to keep our marriage. All those things did not help him to stop.he constantly lying to me. I always see towels every where in our house that he used when he masturbate. Our sex life is so bad, takes months before we have sex. He is having problem with erection when we are having sex but no problem if he masturbate, watching porn. His reason is we are getting old and he is bigger, always tired. I caught him cheating with girls from another country, promising them to bring to america. Telling them he is divorced. I am the primary provider family for a while, now he has a decent job, helping me a little bit with the bills. We have separate account and he just giving me some money, not all his paycheck because I want him to be responsible for his own bills. Lately we are having fights about money, addition to our sucks sex life,, I feel like we grown apart. I have been thinking about separation but our daughter is not old enough to fully understand our problem. He also said that he is not leaving this house as long as our daughter is living here, means until she turns 18. I still love my husband despite of our problem but I am getting tired of our cycle. I am tired of getting mad that is what I told to my daughter then she said “if you are tired why don’t you separate?”. I want him to leave but he doesn’t want to and I don’t know the real reason for that. He still doing porn on his ipad and desk top when I am not around, I know it. I don’t know what to do anymore. Any suggestion?

    • Kay Bruner

      Hey there.

      I would say, find yourself a counselor who can help you process your emotions and consider what healthy boundaries will look like for you in this situation.

      You might appreciate two articles about boundaries, here and here. Also, an article from Luke Gilkerson about when divorce becomes a reality.

      I’m so sorry for the pain of this marriage, and for your husband’s ongoing problems. Whatever he chooses, I hope you will choose health and healing for YOU. Blessings, Kay

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