We receive lots of letters from wives who discover their husbands are secretly watching porn. They tell us how devastating their discovery is and, sometimes, how offended they are. Some wives sincerely believe they are “not good enough” while others blame their husbands and can’t get past the hurt from the betrayal.
For many wives, their husbands might as well have been having a secret affair. They are angry and focus on how upset they are. Some say, “how can he do this to me”, or, “I thought my husband was a decent man!”
Still, others call their husbands a narcissist, mostly because of all the articles and latest trendy psyche-theories they read by irresponsible therapists who won’t recognize, not even mention, their husband’s point of view; they just call the husband a name and that’s that. So, instead of helping women see the big picture, showing them that they can become a more loving and happy wife, and help them have a successful marriage, they call the husbands names and suggest therapy and divorce. Is that the answer, divorce? NO!
- Labeling your husband will only hurt your marriage.
Labeling anyone, based on certain attributes they have or you notice, has become the thing to do. It won’t help him, you, or your marriage.
Instead of noting his flaws, including his current attraction to porn, it is best to apply the standard of love to your view of him and how you treat him.
Do you want to be labeled according to your flaws? Of course not. You are not your flaws and neither is your husband. Blaming your husband won’t bring either of you happiness.
The narcissist label is used these days as a way of avoiding an honest self-appraisal. Suggesting your husband is 100% to blame is simply pretending that you are a great wife and your behaviors with him were great, that there was no outer reason for him to use porn as an escape. Your husband is a good man who, just like all of us, has some flaws. If you didn’t think so, in your heart of hearts, you would not be looking for solutions. You would be looking for a divorce lawyer.
Your husband using porn is not your fault
Let me be perfectly clear about that. But, rather than lament, I want you to see his porn use as a symptom.
If you choose to avoid seeing yourself as his, or the porn’s victim you can put your attention and your focus, which is what this takes, to change the very dynamic of your marriage back to the basics of love and happiness.
When was the last time you consciously acted out of love and to make him happy? Isn’t that what marriage is for, to open your heart?
Some wives don’t truly want a solution that includes them changing how they behave in their marriages because they either believe that their husband is “bad” and not worthy, or their marriage is so off track that they see no hope. Some are so mad and disappointed that they can’t see straight. Others hope and pray we can offer ways they can get their husband to change.
Let’s take a closer more compassionate look at this porn thing so you start thinking like a loving wife who recognizes his pain and suffering. Rather than just see his flaws, see his suffering. Rather than be a lonely victim recognize him as a victim, too.
Remember why you got married
I founded TMF back in 2009 after developing an accurate way of looking at and thus helping marriage. I was a divorce mediator until 2001 but switched my profession when I saw how poorly the day’s “common knowledge” served us.
I began with the question we should all have asked ourselves; why do we get married in the first place?
I discovered the obvious. There are two simple yet profound reasons to get and be married.
To be happy.
Marital happiness is for me and the clients of our course for women nothing short of an expectation. That your marriage will be better every day of your lives.
To experience real love.
The therapists who sent me clients to get a divorce are so afraid of the word spiritual that they missed the point that marriage IS spiritual because love is spiritual, we are spiritual, and when we learn how our marriages will produce ever-expanding love for the rest of our lives marriage is amazing.
What will help you and your husband and your marriage are positive, realistic changes in how you view your husband, yourself, and your marriage (which takes some education). Then you can take the lead in changing your marriage into what you want, and always wanted.
If you follow what I tell you eventually he will eliminate porn from his life completely, but not because of laying morality on him, threats to him, cajoling, or you acting like some kind of a porn star (yes, some idiot therapists actually think that is a solution!). I don’t want you to do anything other than what you promised you would do and what you looked forward to doing when you got to be married, which is to be a loving wife who wants her king to be happy. The problems are not your fault. We, collectively, had no idea. Now, you can know. Begin with something you know but forget to know. This is a universal truth
We do not have the ability to change another
Only ourselves!
But, by changing ourselves we can positively, lovingly, inspire others, your husband, for instance, to become more considerate and loving. This is your key to happiness for yourself and your marriage. This is not something to read and just move on to the next paragraph. You have the ability to change everything so you must not overlook this. It is actually a human obligation to self-improve. It is called evolution and we can be so happy when we acknowledge this and take it on.
Is Your Husband Really A Porn Addict?
Let’s get this out of the way. The term “porn addiction” is misleading, condescending to your beloved husband, and separates you from both him and the real problem. The real problem is that your marriage is not creating love and happiness to where you are both floating in marital bliss.
A legitimate clinical addiction (not something offered by a psychotherapist who has no medical background) refers to physiological dependence, as is the case with opiate-based drugs, nicotine, or alcohol. Those are difficult to treat and when it is treated it requires the patient to be fully committed to changing. The psychological tendencies in those cases which lead to physiological dependence are deep-seated.
So realistically, pornography does not have the same kind of power over its users as opiates or alcohol which have the added physiological component. Your husband isn’t “addicted”.
He is “choosing” and before you judge him for that choice read further. Keep in mind we want your marriage to be what it is meant to be, filled with ever-increasing happiness and ever-increasing love.
His use of porn is an escape, plain and simple
Be honest with yourself. Have you behaved in your marriage in a way that will achieve the two promises of marriage for yourself and your husband? Or, have you been “going with the flow” and leaving him “on his own” in his marriage?
So-called “sex addiction” is no more about sex than an eating disorder is about food or pathological gambling is about money,” according to Rory Reid, PhD, LCSW, research psychologist at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. It is rooted in a form of desperation.
I prefer that as his wife, you open your heart and rebuild your marriage the way it should be rather than get into this too much intellectually.
Regular masturbation, with or without using porn, we are told is common for many men because societal misguided “experts” and Hollywood types (so persuasive) consider sexual release and recreation to be normal. I cannot tell you that “everybody” masturbates or uses porn and I don’t trust the studies but I can tell you that it is not healthy. We are human beings, a very special creation, and we are above using sex mostly for recreation. Sex for humans should be used mostly and primarily for soul connecting in marriage.
For a human being who is essentially a soul. The truth is your husband is misguided yes, and is running away from his marriage, but he is not “addicted” to porn. And, what about you? Are you having sex with your husband as a way of expressing your love and loyalty? Or are you having sex only when you feel like it, ignoring his needs?
As his wife, is it appropriate to shame the man you chose to love unconditionally because of this? Would it not be better to heal your marriage? To write him off rather than feel sorry for him is betrayal. To try to understand his needs so as his wife so you can be there for him as you promised in your vows is more like it.
Porn Use & Masturbation Is A Wakeup Call
When you found out that your husband was looking at porn, your first reaction was probably condemnation, perhaps you felt overwhelmed by the effects you thought it has on you. But, we know that we are not supposed to judge others, and especially your husband. So, let’s put those thoughts aside.
Sure, you could focus on your hurt feelings and express that through negative reactions. You could also use that perceived offense to justify condemning and criticizing him. However, this sort of behavior will definitely and inevitably push him further away from you than he already is. Is that what you want? I hope not!
Recognize him not being fulfilled in your marriage so you can rationally acknowledge that the underlying dynamic in your marriage is the real problem and furthermore that you have the power to take positive action to heal your relationship with him.
It is your choice. Do you focus on errors on his part and your part and make both of you even more miserable and frustrated? Or do you start today to redesign your marriage and relationship so you can methodically achieve the happiness and love that you got married to achieve when you said: “I do”?
Any hurt feelings will block both your heart from opening up, which is what he needs from you as well as your ability to be objective and loving.
Instead of loving your husband unconditionally, it seems easier to deride and shame him for being an “addict” and pretend that you are an ideal wife but your husband is bad. That is because of the trap of emotions and all the disinformation we get about what emotions are. In my books and courses, I explain what emotions are so you are not whipped by them but learn how to master them.
Is it right for your husband to resort to porn? You can argue either way but I am not here to quote the bible or tell you what the filthy adult film community would say. Nobody is perfect so I don’t judge but marriage IS perfect and when you know how to be married you will not have these kinds of destructive things happening, at all.
Your husband is definitely not looking at other women, using porn, or masturbating for the purpose of intentionally hurting you. In all my years of working with couples and individuals, I only met one man who was so messed up with anger that he masturbated on his wife while she slept. Everyone else who took the porn route was incredibly frustrated by their wives not loving them, and I was able to help them learn how to love their wives in ways that re-started their marriage. When men come to us we help them and when women come to us we help women.
Normal men prefer unconditional love
Men would much rather experience the unconditional love he anticipated when he sought your hand in marriage. The primary ingredient of a healthy marriage, unconditional love, is lacking. That is the real problem.
Think about it in this context. Would a loving spouse think about how hurt she feels by her partner’s behavior. No. She puts the needs of her husband ahead of her own. She will think of how she can be there for him. She will recognize that poor choices like infidelity, porn use, or constant arguing, are symptoms and wakeup calls of a deeper problem, which they have both contributed to.
The highest rewards are achieved through unconditional love, nothing else. If you put your perceived offense ahead of his need for love you will not win; he will not win; your marriage will not win.
A happily married man finds porn distasteful and, frankly, childish when he is fulfilled by his wife, and I’m not talking about sexual fulfillment. He will not be stimulated by watching other humans romping. To those who have lifted their sights and experience love, watching porn is like watching animals mating.
Porn use or masturbation never ever creates an ‘unrecoverable’ marriage, but they are a huge red flag indicating that there are core problems in your marriage that need to be addressed. If they are not, destructive symptoms will continue to manifest in the way you both behave. Then the end will come,
If not replaced with intimacy based in unconditional love men may use porn/masturbation as an outlet for coping with an unfulfilling marriage. They resign themselves to carrying on as best as they can.
Other men move on to truly marriage-destroying behavior like meeting other women who they hope will provide that need.
The cycle is not caused by porn. It’s just a signpost on the road that you’ve been on for some time.
You can turn this around and go the other way at any time. You can start making sweeping changes. You have the capability to dramatically shift your marriage by yourself. We hear that “marriage takes two” but healing a marriage takes only one.
Marriage is an individual path that two take together but it is like hiking where you travel and enjoy together but your efforts are individual.
You need to be very careful with the steps you start to take to bring about this recovery. Your “natural” inclinations, like condemnation or having more sex, are likely to be destructive. So, let’s start with what you most definitely do not want to do.
Don’t Do What Doesn’t Work
We have a lot of experience in this area, as an organization and me personally, from working with countless individuals and couples. What I share with you is not just “my opinion”, these are the experiences of thousands of people we have worked with.
Commonly used remedies do not work at all.
I have seen them all from calling him out on it; criticizing, condemning, or judging him; dragging him to marriage counseling; forcing him to get individual, professional help; dressing sexier or being more sexual to compete; using your children; crying, yelling, belittling, shaming and more.
Don’t do any of those things if you want success. We already know exactly what will happen:
- Competing with webcam girls and porn stars is missing the point of what he needs. he needs your love, If you are withholding sex it isn’t good but that isn’t the real problem, either. You need to learn to be the heart.
- Criticism, threats, and condemnation will push him into hiding, lying, or more discretion.
- Forced “help” from a therapist will end your marriage. I was a divorce mediator before I changed in 2001 to helping marriages and I assure you therapists are not marriage healers.
- “Rewarding” him with increased sex just fills in for porn/masturbation, but having missed the point, the outcome is still empty.
No solution will work unless it addresses the one and only thing that WILL fulfill him, which is your husband’s need for unconditional love from his wife!
I am not putting the blame for your husband’s porn use on you, but you hold the keys to the solution. Nor would I blame you for any infidelity that might have taken place. Nor am I placing the responsibility for healing your marriage solely on you.
As a woman, you have a unique power and a far greater ability to heal your marriage than he does and it would be foolish to not take advantage of it. Just as if you were moving, it would be foolish to have you do all the heavy lifting while your husband tapes boxes.
Do you want to heal your marriage?
Many wives subconsciously react to a straying man by pulling back, which is one of the worst things you can do. He will feel even less loved and things will spiral down even further; sometimes losing all sense of reality.
Marriage is in some ways a cause-and-effect relationship. Can you see how the actions of the one affect the other, which in turn impacts the first spouse again, creating either a terrible or wonderful cycle?
You will need to break all the destructive cycles and implant beautiful cycles of love.
Sex Is Not Intimacy; Real Intimacy Is Transcendent
Wives who try to compete with webcam girls and porn stars through more or kinkier sex are going down the wrong path. I know that this needs some explanation.
Sex is portrayed by society as the “ultimate” recreational experience. Sex is also used as a reward (or punishment by withholding it).
Animals are 100% driven and controlled by instinct, which includes the desire rooted in the body’s innate drive to survive and procreate. This is primal and we have that primal drive in our biological body.
As human beings, though, we are souls first. We are a consciousness inhabiting a body, and thus have the ability and responsibility to control our bodies and master our minds. This offers us a unique and amazing opportunity to identify as the soul, which is love itself.
As a soul you have free-will; animals don’t. You are aware of being conscious, which animals are not. They do not experience love the way we do. They have reactive “love” not discriminating love. They can’t give love in the form of forgiveness, for instance. We can. We can love those who hate us, they can’t. The differences are cool, but the best is that we can choose to love or not love. We can choose to act from our body, mind, or soul-consciousness. Everything is a choice for us. Free will is amazing!
As souls, we can also connect at the soul level through love. We can use our free will, which no other animal has, to love another, even when we are not feeling loved. We can also use sex as a means to express our love, which no animal can do, lifting it up from the primal to the transcendental.
Expressing real love does not come naturally because of the mental interference from our animal bodies. So, we need to be deliberate, purposeful, and conscious in our actions. We MUST control our emotions, anger, and so forth.
Sex can be just sex, or it can be a vehicle through which you express love by elevating it from a physical connection to a heart or a soul connection. That is intimacy.
This is what is really meant by a soul mate or making love. You’ve chosen to connect with someone at the heart level, not just during your wedding ceremony, but throughout your daily life together. You should be striving to connect your hearts, in and out of the bedroom, so you can build a joyous marriage on the foundation of love.
As a woman, you probably think a lot of this is obvious that we should nurture a spiritual view of sex whereby the purpose is to express love. But men are not “designed” by nature to have an open heart as you are so it is not obvious to them. Even when they try to understand this, they often have a hard time grasping this idea. That is why you are so important to your husband in this area. You must show the way.
There is no getting around the fact that men who are not shown true love by their wives have shallow sex. This is not intended to put a “burden” on wives, it is just the way it is.
Men who do not experience their wife’s heart, seek false replacements in the only way they know: sex, and failing that, masturbation. “Good men” do their best to maintain their vows and keep their family intact, even while living in an unhappy twilight zone marriage their whole lives. Porn/masturbation might be an outlet that will help them to continue coping in this environment. Others are not as strong and slowly seek the soul love demanded by their higher nature from unsavory alternatives like other women.
The Root Cause Of Your Marriage Problems
The real cause for the lack of love you are both experiencing is that you each individually lack foundational marriage skills.
You weren’t taught them in school or by your parents; not that either would have provided useful instruction anyway. You didn’t learn enough relationship skills while dating or being engaged. This isn’t a judgment on you or your life; it’s just a basic fact of the situation.
When your husband feels unloved he may turn to porn/masturbation for an outlet. When you feel unloved you may withdraw, share with your friends (never do that), or get upset. The problem is the same, you just manifest it differently. Because of this, you both perceive each other’s behavior as a personal attack. Then you react negatively and the downward cycle has begun.
It’s very difficult to get out of this situation because it’s nearly impossible to be objective and see what is really happening. I hope that you are now starting to see things more clearly.
If so, take this as just one small example showing you that in order to have a happy marriage you need to be shown how to achieve that – and that is by a serious marital education and knowing which efforts will move your marriage in the right direction. Just a little understanding can make your efforts tremendously more effective at bringing back the love and vitality into your marriage.
Over the decades, I have seen that most women can rise above their current pain and resuscitate their marriage. I hope to inspire you to heal your whole marriage, not just address this one issue.
Contrary to popular belief, it only takes one person to turn a marriage around.
Even a man who has progressed to an affair can still be reeled back in by a wife who has decided she wants to recover the marriage and who has been shown what works.
Moving In The Right Direction
You may think that you can improvise, but that is likely how you got into this situation in the first place. You will almost always go through all the commonly used “remedies” I listed above that we already know do not work at all. You’ll end up cycling through condemnation, demanding, pleading, trying to be sexier, and so on until you’ve decided you’ve “tried everything” and given him enough “unconditional love” without getting anything in return.
Don’t waste your time or energy on things that do not work and will just make matters worse.
The first essential step is to change your mindset, your very thinking. View your husband’s outlet as a manifestation of his unhappiness in your marriage, rather than an intentional offense towards you. Pay more attention to your husband’s needs and make him first in your life again, as you did when you were dating and trying to win him.
Do you remember those days? Make a conscious effort to express your love in all kinds of big and little ways, while at the same time erasing all the negative actions you are doing now. But don’t stop there.
The reason you got married is the same reason why you now want to preserve your marriage. Everyone wants to be happy. And everyone is happy when they experience unconditional love. Everyone! The highest purpose in marriage is to learn to love each other unconditionally. But…
How you experience unconditional love is by giving it, not by receiving it.
Looking at your husband’s choices with judgment is not being loving. Condemning him is not being loving. Seeing how his problem affects you (“doesn’t he know what this is doing to me?”) is the same as condemning him for not walking faster if he had a broken leg. Unconditional love doesn’t judge, it is compassionate.
Instead, employ a marriage-building stance through understanding and using the right tools. Commit to helping your husband extricate himself from the grip porn/masturbation has on him without even bringing it up. If he is “straying” it means your marriage is no fun for you, either, so by doing this for him, you are doing it for yourself and your family. It is a win-win-win.
He doesn’t need to be humiliated. He is unconsciously using porn/masturbation to replace the joy that should be found in marital love. But the overriding physical desire for sex artificially fills in for his true need for intimate, unconditional love.
Blaming or condemning a porn-using husband is, in almost every case, counterproductive and a distraction that prevents you from discovering and dealing with the underlying problems, or realizing how you too are also missing out on the joy and beauty available in unconditional, marital love.
Learning to love unconditionally is going to change everything. Burst through your barriers of judgment and self-pity that are preventing you from feeling unimaginable joy and marital bliss.
The Permanent Solution
The only solution that works to help your husband stop using pornography or masturbating is to overhaul your marriage with methods that have been proven to satisfy both of you on every level: physical, psychological, and spiritual.
Marriage is one of the greatest gifts we have. With the right knowledge, it opens up greater opportunities for love than you can imagine.
To reiterate one more time, the “burden” of saving your marriage is not being placed on you. You don’t have to put out the effort. You are welcome to keep reacting negatively to his unsavory behavior and keep fueling the downward spiral. But if you see it as a burden, you have the wrong mindset.
Shift.
If you want to have a happy marriage, then you have a unique opportunity. You have recognized there is a problem. You’ve searched for a solution, and you’ve found it. Let’s summarize the steps I’ve shared with you in this article:
- Stop seeing your husband’s porn use as a personal attack on you.
- Start seeing it as an outlet he is using to cope with the lack of unconditional, intimate love in your marriage.
- Look for big and small ways to express your love.
- Eliminate all negative behavior, including condemnation, judgment, criticism, complaining, and other negative reactions.
- Behave how you did when you were dating and trying to win him over.
- Don’t use sex as a reward or punishment or to compete. Use it as a means to connect your hearts. Help him elevate the connection.
- Learn how to love him unconditionally.
You won’t attract him back through manipulation or anger. If anything will, it is love.
It’s probable that you have built up years of reactive, judgmental thoughts and habits that need to be unraveled. Many women find that reorienting themselves is a huge undertaking.
If that’s you and you’d like some help, then I encourage you to look at my Complete Marriage System. It’s an online, 12-week course that will walk you through every step.
In the course, I will teach you techniques I’ve developed that will help you start to control your mind and emotions so you can eliminate your negative reactions. I’ll teach you a technique for breaking down old, bad habits.
In the first couple of weeks, you’ll focus exclusively on practicing these techniques daily until they become second nature. Then you will continue to use them for the rest of your life, as negative, reactive behavior is always destructive.
After that, we’ll help you lay down a solid foundation for a healthy marriage. You’ll finally understand which behaviors are beneficial and which are destructive and why. We’ll start restructuring your habits so all of your actions are marriage-building and none are detrimental.
Finally, in the third phase, we’ll build on that solid foundation and show you how to elevate your marriage to a truly joyous marriage. We’ll talk about achieving unconditional love in the Sacred Space of Marriage™ and where your children fit into your new marriage.
Will making all of these changes by yourself make your husband stop using porn and start worshiping you again? Probably, but who knows? He has free will and we have to respect his choices. But he chose to marry you because of the amazing person you were and still are underneath potentially years of judgment and criticism. If you become that person again, he will likely fall in love with you all over again. Nothing else you attempt can possibly work.
But far more importantly, regardless of what he does, when you make these changes and start truly loving him unconditionally, you will become happier and will get everything out of your marriage you’ve been seeking.
And when you’re around someone who is happy all of the time, isn’t it difficult to be negative and unhappy yourself? It’s hard to imagine that your joy won’t have an impact on him. We are shifting your mindset from the tragic, self-destructive thought so many women express “my mood depends on how you treat me,” to you becoming a goddess of love and joy regardless of the other’s behavior or immaturity. This is the ultimate women’s empowerment. And this is the only path we’ve seen that has any chance of success in marriage.
Our women’s course can help you turn your marriage around by yourself.
If your husband is interested in taking action on improving your marriage as well, we have a men’s course for him. With both of you individually working on your courses, it’s virtually impossible to fail.
It’s fine to share this article with him or to suggest you are interested in taking the women’s course and inviting him to check out the men’s. But don’t suggest he needs to fix the problem by himself or try forcing him to do anything.
I hope you keep building on the positive steps you’ve already taken. Take advantage of the positive space you’re in and learn more about my Complete Marriage System, including the free trial and money-back guarantee. I invite you to watch this video in which I explain more about my system. (YouTube, 42min).
If you’d like to ask a question, we’re here for you.
Blessings to you and your husband and family
