Is your husband addicted to porn? If you know—or suspect—he is watching porn, how can you tell if it’s an occasional past-time or a full-on addiction? It can be traumatizing to find out that your husband is entrenched in this habit—and deeply confusing as well. Someone addicted to porn may genuinely desire to quit but feel unable to break free. Here’s some information to help you better understand if your husband is addicted to porn.
So, Is My Husband Addicted to Porn?
Discovering that your husband watches porn can be very painful for wives. But understanding the situation can help you address it. Not everyone who watches porn is addicted to it. While men (and women too) may watch porn for many reasons, a few characteristics usually distinguish an addiction.
Early Childhood Exposure
When someone sees porn as a child—even unintentionally—it can leave a lasting neurological impression. Many people who struggle with pornography addiction as adults can trace it back to an early formative experience. For more, see The Common Reality of Early Porn Exposure.
Children who undergo trauma or abuse are especially vulnerable. Pornography often becomes a means of coping. An adult who struggles with addiction often acts out when experiencing stress, frustration, or other negative emotions.
Long-Term Habitual Use
The more often a person turns to porn, the more it trains their brain to respond to porn and crave it. See our article on Brain Chemicals and Porn: How Porn Affects Your Brain.
Urges or Out of Control Impulses
As someone’s brain is conditioned to turn to porn, they may experience powerful cravings. Many porn addicts describe their urges as something powerful beyond their control—like an itch that must be scratched.
An addict is still responsible for their actions, but they feel helpless to resist. This feeling of helplessness often brings a deep sense of shame and self-reproach. In some cases, a husband may be as upset with himself as his wife is, but he still feels unable to change.
Escalating Behaviors Related to Porn
As porn use changes from a habit to an addiction, it often escalates in extremity. Sometimes, this manifests in the type of porn being consumed. Addicts often seek out increasingly bizarre or deviant forms of pornography. At other times, the escalation occurs in the frequency and occasion of their binges—such as watching porn at work.
Signs Your Husband May Be Addicted to Porn
If he’s struggling with an addiction, it means recovery will be a journey—for both of you. Here are some key signs that your husband’s pornography use might be an addiction.
1. Your husband has lost interest in sex.
Many porn addicts want lots of sex (see #3), but as the addiction escalates, they often begin to lose interest in their partner. Porn addicts become desensitized to other forms of pleasure—even sexual intercourse—preferring the buzz they get from porn. Not only is their sexual energy tapped, but they begin to prefer the “safe” realm of fantasy over the “risky” real world of intimacy.
2. Your otherwise healthy husband is unable to maintain an erection during sex.
Porn addicts commonly experience porn-induced erectile dysfunction. While there are several medical reasons for ED, for the porn addict the problem is not in the organ, but in the brain. They have conditioned their mind to be turned on only by self-sex and porn images. It is common for addicts to blame their partners for their inability to perform.
In his book The Porn Circuit, Sam Black writes:
“When preparing for real sex, the pornified brain fails to get its dopamine surge and the signal to the penis is too weak to achieve erection. But turn on an Internet device with unlimited pages of novelty, and boom, the plumbing works.”
3. Your husband’s sexual tastes have changed.
On the other end of the spectrum, some men entrenched in porn want to act out their fantasies in the real world. Porn films often pair physical and verbal aggression with sex. This might mean that your husband makes surprising demands during sex—even getting frustrated when you don’t perform to his exact specifications. Some men show a sudden interest in “rough” sex or sexual activities you haven’t discussed and agreed to. Others will begin to show an interest in bondage, fetishes, sadomasochism, group sex, or activities that make you feel belittled and used. These are huge red flags and one of the clear signs of porn addiction.
4. Your husband spends an excessive amount of time online.
A porn user almost always has a dysfunctional relationship with technology—many hours spent online alone, often at odd hours or at times when they should be spending time with their families and friends. He may demand to be left alone with his computer or become irritable if he can’t get online.
5. Your devices’ internet histories are empty.
Check your husband’s web browsers on his phone, laptop, home computer, or tablet. If the internet histories are constantly empty, he may be clearing his history to cover his tracks. The late psychologist Al Cooper wrote that three factors often contribute to an internet porn addiction: affordability (most porn is cheap or free), accessibility (it can be accessed nearly anywhere), and anonymity (no one has to know what you’re doing). He called this the “Triple-A Engine.” The last factor, anonymity, is key. A man’s belief that no one knows where he is going online gives a false sense of security: “What I’m doing online is my own business, and it isn’t hurting anyone else.”
6. Your husband seems emotionally “distant” or withdrawn.
The more a man becomes entrenched in porn, the more he begins to lose interest in real-world relationships, especially with his wife and children. Many men describe it as feeling “numb.”
7. Your husband seems more antisocial.
Like any addict, a porn addict will begin to revolve his life around the next buzz. This means reordering his life so that he can spend time online and away from others. Other antisocial behaviors might include a lack of remorse for his actions, aggression, outbursts of anger, frequent lying, indifference to actions that harm others, or an easy use of flattery or charm to manipulate others.
8. Your husband’s financial patterns have changed.
Are there unexplained charges on your credit card statement or bank statement? Have you noticed new credit cards opened in your husband’s name? Since there is an abundance of free porn online, addicts can indulge without paying, but often, when the addiction escalates, they resort to paying for online material or even physical items (like DVDs). Charges to these accounts may not look obviously pornographic since these companies usually work hard to ensure the anonymity of their patrons. If your husband refuses to talk about unexplained charges, this is a sign he is hiding his behavior.
9. Your husband has become secretive, evasive, or defensive.
When you walk into the room where your husband sits at the computer, does he suddenly get nervous or make knee-jerk reactions? When you ask what he has been doing online, does he become defensive or easily irritated? When your presence suddenly threatens to invade an addict’s secret world, this can be very jarring for him, and often his nervousness will be obvious.
10. Your husband has become critical of your appearance.
Has your husband started to criticize your looks, your weight, your bust size, or your sexual performance? The more a man spends time with porn, the more his mind becomes conditioned to the novelty, variety, and convenience that porn provides. Many studies have shown that the more a man watches porn, the more he devalues the attractiveness of “average people.”
Next Steps to Take if Your Husband Is Addicted to Porn
Many wives are devastated when they discover their husbands are watching pornography. If you believe your husband has a porn addiction, what can you do? Here are some important next steps to take, for your own benefit as well as your husband’s.
1. Remember that his addiction is not about you.
When a husband is caught in pornography addiction, he will often lash out and blame his wife for his behavior. However, he is not addicted to porn because of something wrong with you. It is simply not true that if you looked different or acted differently during sex that he would not struggle with porn. A porn addiction means that he’s been conditioned to prefer that to real sex.
2. Get help and support for yourself.
Regardless of whether your husband is seeking help for his recovery, you need to make sure you seek help and support for yourself. Find other women who can come alongside you and provide encouragement and community.
3. Establish boundaries.
Boundaries don’t mean that you can control your husband’s behavior. As we say in our series for couples, Restored Vows, “A boundary defines what is your responsibility (your feelings, attitudes, choices, and behaviors) and what is your spouse’s responsibility.”
4. Learn more.
We have more free resources available, both for you and for your husband as starts the recovery journey.
I have been married for almost 4 years. We have a 3 year old daughter. My husband is possessive with his phone and gets irritated when I need to use it. I needed it last weekend to pay bills. I entered the letter our bank starts with and discovered “Lana’s pussy” had been searched. I felt a warm rush come over me. I typed a different letter and found another name. It was almost every letter of the alphabet. My husband was sitting across from me and I just started quoting the things he has searched. He immediately became sweaty and was breathing hard. He lied several times to cover up. He eventually told the truth and confirmed that basically our entire marriage he had been looking at porn. I felt and still feel inadequate, dirty, filthy, and used. On Monday he called a counselor at church. We met with him that day. He explained that neither of us were living a life centered on God and that anything can happen when you aren’t doing God’s will. I keep trying to tell myself this is how we have been brought back to God but it doesn’t take the pain away. My husband said he felt dead inside every time he watched porn. I explained that he didn’t return to porn for at least 4 years for the dead feeling. We also rarely have sex. I initially left and went to my parents with our daughter. I came back home after about 3 nights but he sleeps on the couch at my request. I’ve battled on making him leave. I have no interest in saving our marriage but I know God would want that. I am trying hard and praying for God to heal my heart and soften my heart. I can’t help but think that my husband looks at every woman he sees and imagines sexually explicit behaviors with her. I’ve never felt less beautiful or inadequate in all my life. My husband swears it’s not me and that he made the decision. He swears he’s never seen anything in me but a beautiful mother and wife and that I’m the prettiest woman he has ever seen. How does he expect me to believe any of that after 4 years of deceit.
I was really glad to find the covenant eyes website. I don’t feel so alone and it seems there is hope.
Hey Stacy. I am so, so sorry for the pain of this discovery.
I would suggest that your husband needs to find a counselor who is accustomed to dealing with sexual addiction, like a Certified Sex Addiction Therapist (CSAT).
It sounds like this pastor is NOT well-acquainted with sexual addiction or the recovery process.
It sounds like he’s saying it’s partly your fault that your husband looks at porn because you’re somehow both out of God’s will? NO. This is just plain wrong. You are not responsible for your hsuband’s choices.
I would suggest that, whatever your husband chooses, you find a counselor for YOU. Many, many women in your situation will meet the criteria for PTSD, and many will never get help, because all the energy goes into getting the husband into recovery. He does need to recover! BUT–you need help too. So whatever he does, YOU find a good counselor who is just for YOU. A support group for you would be great, too.
There is hope! And getting good, qualified help is part of that hope for both of you. Peace, Kay
Hello,
Please check out these workshops. One is for you Women in the Battle
http://newlife.com/women-in-the-battle-workshop
And this is for the men…
http://newlife.com/emb/first-steps/
God hates divorce, but porn is already a form of cheating so restoration and transparency is crucial if you are to survive in marriage. God is in the business of restoration, but only when the person is committed to change his ways. It may be hard but its possible. However, nothing will change unless the porn is addressed. Lust (porn) takes, while love gives.
a bunch of horrible stories here, horrible men… or, are they normal men caught in a horrible situation? if a majority of men do something, is it really abnormal? in the first place, we admit sexual desire is theoretically not evil (though we are trained to be disgusted by it anyway) but, hey, keep some VERY strict boundaries on it, woman-made boundaries, which seem best for the family, woman, man, everyone, but which are a challenge for men. then this horrid new invention of free, virtual sex comes around and men in government legalize it, and the boundaries go out the window, and… oh, no, sexual desire is really not that good to us anymore, because we see it in its full, grotesque, male form, an insatiable hunger, and it does not match what we have always seen or believed in our largely woman-controlled sexual culture. yet this is men’s natural psychology in action, perverted not by their desire for perversion, but by the sick technology and its merchants. our men have enough problems, but porn addiction does not mean they are broken. they are made to respond like this, and will always be like this if the same situation arises. men can fight and manage this IF they can really open their eyes to the many hurts coming from the problem. if not, if they’re just always on the defensive, toss them, they’re incurably selfish or brain-dead. but even if they want to change, they need infinitely more support and understanding and less judgment and revulsion than many of them can ever hope to get, from our formerly anti-sex culture that has now turned schizophrenic, anti- and pro-, missing the sober middle, and gone to war on itself. there is only one solution: limiting the contagion of porn, and one individual prerequisite to the solution: getting the user to understand the need to limit it. if he’s not on board with that, it’s going to be a short, miserable dance. Kay Bruner knows more than I and has excellent advice here, thank her for helping. though I feel sure if we have been hurt by our husband’s porn, his choices are not our fault, but except where he has actually done something tangible to violate us or another person, needlessly much of our injury can be from our own shattered expectations, our impossible assumptions about ideal, non-existent men who are immune to porn, and those self-hurts are within our realm of control.
I love what you said here, that anyone who wants to change will “need infinitely more support and understanding and less judgment and revulsion.”
YES. Love is the only thing I have found that really motivates and sustains true change and healing–whether for the husband who’s addicted to porn, or the wife who’s been devastated.
None of us are ideal, perfect people, but all of us are completely valuable, loved, and precious human beings. There’s nothing more healing that agreeing with God about our belovedness, and living within that reality.
Peace to you! Kay
This may be a long story but I will try to shorten it & hopefully it will make sense. Last year was the worst year of my life seems like. I fell and was injured & have been experiencing the worst pain for almost a year. Two months after being injured I lost my best friend to suicide. Her death was one of the hardest things to get through and I’m still coping with it. It has gotten a little better but I haven’t had much time to think about it the last couple of months. I became a recluse other than the days I had to work. I was in constant pain and not sleeping much at all. I was at the lowest I have ever been in my life. I was depressed & have never experienced depression until then. I have always been an active person socially and physically until a year ago. My husband and I got to the point of any communication was only arguments. He was staying away from home more, no sexual advances towards me, which he says he knew I was in pain so he didn’t even ask. He started deleting part of his call log on his cell phone. I accidentally came across a porn site on his phone when I used his phone to look up another website. It came up when I opened Safari. I didn’t think much of it and never asked him about it. I have found it on there a couple more times since. He asked me to look on his cell phone account a couple months before Christmas to see if anyone had been making calls on one of his lines that he provides for employees because it had been stolen. As I looked I noticed calls to someone that he said he hadn’t talked to in months and again, I didn’t say anything. Christmas Day he accidentally washed his phone so he asked me to look on his account and I did and saw that he had been talking to this woman but in the past he would get defensive about it. In January of this year I confronted him about watching porn and after he denied it I told him that it was that or he has been seeing someone so he admitting to watching the porn and admitted to talking to her when he should have been here for me instead. We talked and he promised to never watch it again. I have found it twice on the DVR history since then, he says he done that to see if I was trying to catch him doing something wrong. He deletes all his internet history on his phone now. A month after learning this I just looked at his cell account more closely and noticed a pattern on certain days. I just felt like something wasn’t right. I discovered he has been having an affair and it had been going on way before I was injured and going through the depression. He will not to admit to that and told me to drop that subject or we would divorce. He basically gave me an ultimatum. We talked and he admits that we have drifted apart and we agreed to work on our marriage. We have been married 19 years last month. It’s hard to throw that away! I am trying to get use to sex again because we had sex maybe 4 times last year. I know how he likes sex and how often he liked it so that was a red flag to me. In the past, I could make eye contact with him during sex and while making love with no problem. The 2nd or 3rd time we were having sex, after we had the long talk, I looked into his eyes & he asked me to not look at his face. It shocked me because he has never said that. It hurt me a little bit because my self esteem was already the lowest it has ever been. During the next 2 weeks after that we had more sex than we did in the last 2 years combined. However, he did have a problem with keeping it up during sex a couple of times during that time and he was asking me to do things that I never had to do in the past to help him keep it up. He was on medicine for a cold and he blamed it on the medicine and I know that some medicines can cause erectile dysfunction in some men. He has been showing me more attention and even touches me more than he has in 2 years. The eye contact is bothering me a little bit though. The other night during sex I looked at him again and he said don’t look at my face and actually turned my head to the side and swept my hair over the side of my face like he was trying to cover my face. I have so many mixed emotions that I can’t keep up seems like. I know that my world was already tilted from everything that happened last year and then finding out all of this the first 2 months of this year it feels like my world has shattered around me. I am trying to take this day by day and I know that it will not get better over night but I notice the little things that have never been an issue before so it bothers me. Just any input or advise will help. I have been support and it has helped tremendously! I just feel like I am still in the whirl wind of emotions. I know that some of the signs of watching porn and cheating are the same and I am trying to work out both here. It’s hard to tell one from the other at times. It has been 3 months since he admitted to watching porn sometimes and a month and a half since I discovered that he has cheated on me. Why is he still not wanting me to look him in the eye? Is this a sign that he is still doing either or both?
Hey Heather. I am so, so sorry for all the traumatic things that you’ve been through this last year. And then to have this difficulty in your marriage relationship on top of that–wow.
I hope you’ve been able to find a therapist to help you process through everything? If not, that’s the first step I’d recommend: personal support for you. There are directories at the American Association of Christian Counselors, and also at Psychology Today, where you can read a bit about individual counselors, and find someone who looks like a good fit for you.
The eye-contact issue is a troubling sign to me. I don’t know what’s going on with him, but not wanting eye contact is problematic. While of course we do want behavioral trust to be restored in the relationship (where he’s being open and honest so you can trust he’s not still having an affair) even more critical is building emotional trust (where he cares about your emotions and is able to attend to you, not just use you for sex). I wrote an article about that a while back, which you can find here.
I would say, be wise and observant. It’s good to try to work on the marriage, but you can’t restore it by yourself. He has to work on his own issues, PLUS he has to figure out how to engage in the marriage.
So, find a therapist, process your emotions, have healthy boundaries, and continue to let yourself see what’s going on as time goes by.
Peace to you! Kay
Its heartbreaking to hear each testimony. The human spirit is can be so strong even in despair. I dont know if my testimony will help someone but i pray that it will. Im a young woman who is a little addicted to porn. I dont struggle with it everyday and so i am thankful i still have some self control. I was raped at a young age and it seemed like a dream bc i didnt know what was happening. It wasnt traumatic for me and i dont think anyone knew since i didnt feel comfotable telling anyone. I think afterwards was when i started to notice my body and i learned to masterbate. At about 13 yrs old i started to watch sex scenes in movies and when we got our first computer, i started searching for porn. I dont think anyone today knows about my problem, not even my husband. I usually watched porn once a week and it would be 30min to an hr each time. Sometimes sex doesnt satisfy me or make me orgasm so i watch porn while my husband sleeps. Im attracted to women too. Now that i have a 1 year old im so glad that things are better and im spending my time and thoughts on her well being. This problem is so hard to talk about but i have been able to talk about it a little with two friends. I made my husband tell me about how he started watching porn and its pretty funny but when he asks me, i deny it and he believes me lol. I thought he stopped watching porn after we started sleeping together (6 yrs now) until i randomly checked his browser history when i was 6months preg. Im glad hes not that addicted and i understand why he watches porn. My pregnancy changed my vaginal bacteria which made him itchy after sex. It was funny and embarassing to ask him but he admitted it so i wasnt mad. One time he had a spiritual high and confessed and apologized more about his little addiction and he even told me some of his porn star names. I would make fun of him even more but im relieved that he was honest and sorry. One sad thing now is that i usually have to initiate sex bc if i dont then we would go for a week or two wo sex. Its a turn off when he doesnt want it and start it off with foreplay. I understand that hes been working a lot of overtime, my vaginal bacteria is still weird at times, and we both have gained weight (sex is more exhausive). I dont think he knows about my addiction bc i dont think im ready to tell him. Im so thankful that we are still trying. I will say a prayer for everyone here and for all those couples around me. This is an unseen sin that grows and destroys. Thank you for addressing this issue and for providing solutions.
Hey there Anita. I appreciate you sharing your story here. I think every situation is unique, and I know that there’s healing for us all. One thing I would say to you is this: as you pursue solutions, I think you will need to address the issue of your childhood sexual trauma. You may not cognitively remember it as trauma, but your body remembers it as trauma. I would encourage you to find a therapist in your area who is experienced in treating childhood sexual trauma, and begin working on that issue. I don’t think you’re going to be able to process through to a healthy sexual relationship with your husband unless you address that piece. There are counselor directories at the American Association of Christian Counselors, and at Psychology Today. I would also encourage you to be honest with your husband about your own porn use. Ultimately, your sexual relationship is an extension of your emotional relationship, and neither of those can be healthy when they aren’t fundamentally honest. I wish you all the best in your healing, Kay
Hello, I will be married as of 10 years this year. Over the past 3 years or so, I have noticed a change in my husband’s behavior and routines. It has been a real struggle for me emotionally and so painful. It started with one day while I was sitting down at my desk in my home office and noticed in the history of my PC various porn sites. I confronted my husband, but I did not get a apology or really a straight answer- more or less I was told he would delete them and remove them from the computer. This really did not solve anything about the situation other than to offer me assurance that they would be “removed”. My husband and I always had a loving, fun, and healthy relationship- we were “that couple”- the couple that would survive. I am 11 years younger than my husband and as many other women in this forum have mentioned- I take care of myself- I am educated, workout- believe in a healthy sex/intimate relationship- that my husband and I once shared. I realized that the day I caught the porn sites on the computer- the problem never went away. It seems to have only escalated and have changed patterns to a point where I do feel emotionally abandoned and have thus reached out for counseling as I do love my husband and I want our marriage to withstand- I believe in our marital vows but at the same time, It is so heart wrenching to see this addiction become a wedge in what would have been a beautiful relationship.
In my case, it is so confusing as my husband is so loving in other ways- but then it is the late nights on the couch after I have gone to bed- this is a pattern that is just a continual cycle. It is also the hidden tablet I found in the basement- of course with deleted history searches- its the guarding of the cell phone, with again, deleted search results- and its the behavior change- the wanting to be alone and the mood shifts and defense mechanisms. Its a hurt that runs very deep- its an addiction – stemming far beyond perhaps one can imagine. Hence, the reason I am seeking counseling- I am the one suffering- just as much, if not more so than my husband. I am the one dealing with the anxiety, lonesome feelings, and depression. It the midst of all this, I refuse to give up and refuse to fall ill over this – I have worked very hard in life to be where I am. I am hoping that counseling if it cant help his addiction (if and when he decides to partake in the counseling) that the counseling at least provides me with resources and can help me to validate my feelings are real and deserve the attention I need to help me through this. I don’t know if I will ever discover the answer to any of this and my days of playing detective are just too much- I am putting this in the Higher One’s hands and counseling. God bless to the women who shared their situation, may we all find healing.
I’m so sorry, Carrie. It’s just heart breaking to see a wonderful relationship destroyed by porn. It sounds to me like you’re dealing with this really well–you’ve already done exactly what I always tell women to do: get help and support for yourself so that you can make healthy choices, no matter what your husband chooses. So many times I hear stories about how all the energy and resources have gone toward the husband’s recovery, and the wife has had little or no help with emotional processing and boundary-setting. I’m really glad to hear that you’re taking care of yourself so well. I hope your husband will be able to recognize what he’s losing and put his efforts toward his recovery. Blessings on your healing journey, Kay
My story is long, I’ll shorten it drastically. When we married I was young and innocent and I thought he was as well. We were both Christian and deeply active in church activities. Less than 2 years after being married he changed. Almost overnight he became irritable, condescending and critical seemingly out of nowhere. We’d fight, make up, a few days would go by seemingly fine, then the anger would return out of nowhere. Shortly after, he stopped all religious activities. Fast forward almost 16 years. Finally in the midst of another argument about sex (him feeling he’s not getting enough, me feeling there’s no intimacy to go with it) he blurts out that he’s been viewing and masturbating to porn since before we were even married. The light flicked on and everything…everything suddenly made sense. Now, here’s my problem. While I am grateful I understand, now, where the irrational behavior was coming from and that it isn’t my fault in the least, I am left wondering what in the world to do about it. Everything I read seems to have couples working on the problem together, or women simply divorcing. My husband admits he views porn. He will not admit it is causing any problems and seems entirely numb to the fact that it hurts me to the core. What help or answer is there for a woman that is trying to deal with this on her own rather than working as a couple? Or is the only answer divorce? I’m not ready to give up on him…yet… but after 4 years of knowing about the problem my patience and love feels like it’s running out.
Hey Eden. Isn’t it amazing how knowing the truth just turns the lights on everywhere?
This is such a tough issue, especially when your husband isn’t able to admit to the problems his choices have caused. I think this is very common; he’s simply verbalizing the defense mechanisms he’s created that help him to keep doing what he’s doing.
I’m sure that after four years you’ve already learned that you can’t force him to make healthy choices. And that leaves you in a difficult position.
When you’re working through this on your own, I think the best thing you can do is find a counselor who can help you process through the emotions you’re experiencing and who can help you think about healthy boundaries. Groups can be a great source of support as well.
Some women choose a period of separation to give the husband time to work on his own choices. If you haven’t read Hope After Porn, you might appreciate the stories those women share. Separation can be part of recovery, as it might help him to see that there are consequences to the choices he’s making. It can also be the first step toward divorce; it really just depends on the choices he makes. I wish I knew how to guarantee recovery, but the truth is: free will. We’ve all got it, and we don’t always make good choices with it.
Whatever he chooses, I hope you’ll find good support for yourself in the days ahead. Blessings, Kay
Is there a way of fixing your marriage. My husband shows no interest in me and i really have no interest for him as he put me off after wanting to try bondage stuff.. Felt total pressure. He lies and has facebook and twitter full of naked women and now ive found downloaded files on computer showing hes downloaded a fast amount of porn and the internet history is deleted when im at work and he ships children off to my mam. Priorities???
Hi Claire. Well, a “fixed” marriage requires both people to participate. You can’t fix it on your own. It sounds like you’ve already been able to identify some boundaries for yourself: you’re not interested in bondage, and you’ve been able to tell him that. I think that’s really healthy. We should always be able to say what we’re comfortable or not comfortable with sexually–and I think it’s up to each of us to decide for ourselves. I would say, continue to think about what is healthy for you in this relationship. What do you want from this marriage? Is the current situation one you want to live with for the rest of your life?
I don’t know what your converstations have been like so far, but I’d say ask him for a time to talk about the state of your marriage. Try making what Dr. John Gottman calls a “soft approach”–calm, courteous, and focused on the problem, not the person. (“This behavior is a problem” rather than “You are a disgusting human being”) Tell him how the porn use is impacting you, and what you see happening to the marriage. Ask him what his goals are for the relationship. Tell him what your hopes are for the relationship. See if you can come to any agreement on how the two of you together would like the relationship to be.
If you can’t agree, then I think you’ve got to consider what a healthy way forward will look like.
Here and here are some articles about boundaries that might help you think through what works for you.
Let me know if that helps, and if you have further questions. Blessings, Kay
My husband is constantly on porn sites.. I have become paranoid. I check his phone, I have taken his laptop away as he used it for web cam stuff.
He hasn’t lied or said he isnt looking he just has told me
I found a message the other day to another woman… I can’t look at him the same way any more I don’t know what to do
Hi Amanda.
Well, it’s probably time to think about what healthy boundaries need to look like for you now. Here and here are a couple of articles with ideas. And here’s a link to Hope After Porn, our free download where several women tell their stories and include their experiences with boundaries.
I would also suggest going to a counselor to work through your emotions and think about what’s healthy for you in this situation. I don’t mean a couples’ counselor; I mean someone just for you. And if you can find a group in your area, that might be helpful to you as well. S Anon, Celebrate Recovery, Pure Desire, xxxChurch. Those are all places you can check.
I think you’re already experiencing that you can’t be in charge of your husband’s sexual sobriety. He has to choose that for himself and do that work for himself.
What you CAN be in charge of is your own boundaries, your own emotional processing, and your own healthy choices. I encourage you to take some steps toward that today!
Blessings, Kay
So when my husband and i moved in together,i constantly saw porn on his phone.after alot of arguing,he told me he stopped.Promised that he doesn’t look at it at all….The day we got married,two years back.I thought our porn problems ended.A month after we got married,i found out he was still using porn.Even on the day of our wedding and it was a dialy thing.I got so pissed off,i confronted him and he told me it wasn’t my fault,he has a problem and felt ashamed…I couldn’t het over it up until now.He says he hasn’t view porn since i caught him out.But somewhere deep in my mind,i still feel like he is.Although i have no concrete proof i just have a gut feeling.The saddest part is i am always available sexually and even feel worse that i want to have sex,and he is tpo tired,or too stressed out to have with me…we went from having sex every night to having sex 1ns a week or not at all.we have only been married two years,but i still feel like it is draining.I am a very sexual person,and weirdly love having sex.Which i often thought i would end up cheating if rhings don’t change.I do not know what to do or how to handle my deep thought of him still using porn.
You’ve been married 2 years, and you’re not having sex because he’s too tired or too stressed out? That’s some pretty concrete proof of some kind of a problem. Given his patterns in the past, I think you’re just putting two and two together and coming up with four.
If you can try to have a conversation with him about it when you’re not upset, that might be helpful. Dr. John Gottman talks about “soft approaches” to difficult topics. I know it’s hard to do that, but if you can, then you might have a better chance at the conversation. (Here’s a link to Gottman’s Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work–best marriage book out there.) Here’s an article I wrote a while back with some of Gottman’s ideas about trust.
It’s not weird for you to love having sex. That’s normal. We’re supposed to enjoy a healthy sex life together in marriage. If something is preventing that, it’s a cause for real concern about the long-term future of the relationship. I’d ask him what he’s looking for long-term in the marriage. Is this the best of what he hopes for? Or would he like to try working on the underlying causes of the surface issue of “no sex”–and see if you can grow this relationship into something that nurtures and sustains both of you over a lifetime.
Blessings, Kay
I looked at porn in one form of another for over 30 years. I’ve recently (8weeks+) stopped. I see now that it is absolutely the single root cause of my being a total antisocial screw up for much of my adult life.
It was the real reason my marriage falied, and two longer term relationships ended as well. I have been blessed to be able to attract friendships with interesting, smart, beautiful women. But my porn use(addiction) ultimately killed my ability to reliably have good sex. I could mask it by using pills and doing other things well to please my partner but eventually I’d build up a tolerance to the pills and, like any normal woman, my unreliable erections became a source of silent but real tension in the relationships.
And deep down, I knew WHY my body was ‘not working’, but because it was such a shameful act I couldn’t truly explain it.
And that shame carried over _completely_ to my everyday life. At work, with friends, just any social interactions anywhere. Every face to face conversation would be a source of stress for me. I quit every job I ever had not once because I was a bad employee, in fact I was/am an excellent worker. But I’d always built up some stressful ‘thing’ between me and someone else, most of the time it only existed in my head. Maintaining eye contact was, in hindsight, nearly impossible. Casual conversations were always something to endure, not participate in. I figured it was just ‘me’.
Which it was, but it stemmed from the crap I was looking at every day, sometimes for hours and hours.
I only realize this now because I finally stopped for purely selfish reasons. I was so sick and tired of failing in bed, failing my lovers. I knew they were feeling confusion and frustration. And I was exhausting their quite merciful patience with me. That only made me more ashamed of myself and my actions.
Only my ex-wife truly knew what I was up to. We were together for over 15 years so, she managed to figure it out. I do wish she would have totally-overtly addressed it right out in the open. NOT AT ALL saying this was her fault. It is truly mine. But at the very least even if I continued in my self indulgent behaviors she could have saved herself years of pain and left me to wallow, you know? I say that because honestly it is the years of her pain and sadness that I cannot fix nor replace.
That’s the only thing left that I feel so bad about.
In the 8 weeks since I’ve stopped looking at/pleasing myself to the garbage, I have felt a very VERY real and remarkable change. Eye contact. Easy(!) conversations with everyone I see and deal with. The grocery store, the bank, everyone at work that I used to try to avoid (simply because they wanted to chat with me!). It is nearly unbelievable even to me to experience this. I used to feel like I had to do something to please a person in order to gain their acceptance, to make them like me. Now I feel such a RELAXED carefree attitude (no more subconscious shame) about myself. Its not that I feel I can do simply anything, I just don’t care any longer if it doesn’t work out or I fail. I mean, I’m not going to take my car apart because I didn’t just acquire a newfound mechanical ability, but I’m not afraid to ask a guy a question about something, and if I’m confused, I ask another question. I would have been too insecure to do that 3 months ago. And 20 yrs ago…
Another very small but astounding (to me) example: I was at the deli, I asked for a pound of something, some kind of salad. The kid serving me was your typical grump, and plopped in a pound and a half. Not having much money with me I knew I couldn’t swing that extra half. Normally I would’ve tightened up, maybe went to the ATM and got more money, or maybe put something else back and hated myself for not saying anything. This time I simply asked him to take some out. He said, “what?” so I asked him again. I didn’t do it as a ‘challenge’, I just asked for what I wanted. The words actually came out of my mouth before I could even think about it. I walked away thinking “did that really just happen?”,. But yeah, it did.
Plus, my interactions with women in general are 180 degrees from what they were. I used to be the type that would ‘flirt’ pretty strongly with my eyes, yet not be able to carry on a decent conversation. It was kind pathetic, and would make future interactions with those same women awkward. Now, I’m talking to people (not just simply females) and listening and responding because I’m interested in what they are saying. Not worrying about some aspect of myself. Again, no shame. But in a good way.
I totally get that many people might disregard my experiences as purely imagined psychobabble. That’s fine. In fact, if someone were to say, “it’s all in my head” I’d respond by saying YES! Yes indeed it is all in my head. A thousand times yes. My anxieties were all in my head and now my peaceful state is definitely “all in my head”. There was never really anything wrong with the parts downstairs, it was the control unit UPstairs that I screwed up for 30 years.
Do I know for sure if my body parts work? Well, I know that things in the morning are back, which I now appreciate because that went away. I know that in the past another crappy side affect from looking at porn all the time was the ability to use my mind (and nothing else) to create an erection. I can do that now if I want to. And, when I decide to date again, I’ll eventually find out for sure if my mind/body connection is back to what normal is. But I’m not worried.
Porn is crap. Porn is death. I’m a human again.