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The purpose of today’s episode is simply to act as an eye-opener. In our online counseling agency, we help a lot of men break their pornography addiction. One common theme is that many of them are surprised by how devastated their wife is by their pornography use. It’s like they really don’t anticipate the impact: most think she’ll be mad, but the hurt often surprises them. So the goal with discussing this topic is to educate husbands so that they can be better prepared to understand and respond to their wife’s distress.
Pornography Use is Common
Let’s start on the more general end of things. Porn use continues to increase: a 2018 article in the Journal of Sex Research indicated that half of men are exposed to pornography prior to the age of 13, nearly all men use it occasionally for masturbation, and roughly 46% use pornography weekly. In contrast, only 16–31% of women report regularly using pornography.[1]
Pornography Use Affects Your View of Sex
When people view pornography, they may not really realize it, but they are learning about sex. So the viewing impacts how they think and what they believe about the human sexual experience. Pornography is a very intense medium where you are generally seeing people with unrealistic and uncommon physical attributes, and videography or photoshopping of images to idealize and intensify the sexual experience. The consequence of this is that you will start to feel the romantic and sexual aspects of your marriage are just inadequate. This means that your marriage relationship is going to deteriorate. This is through no fault of the marriage itself or your wife.
Pornography is Highly Addictive
It seems like something you could figure out, but it isn’t. It’s like when you go into a major fast food chain and you see that juicy burger with a perfect, fluffy bun, and the lettuce and sauce all decked out in a pristine form — you know that the burger you get is going to look nothing like that. But you still buy the burger. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way in marriage — probably because the brain circuitry and addictive components are far more powerful in human sexuality and relationships than they are with how you relate to fast food.
The idea that a little porn use doesn’t hurt anybody is unrealistic. Another study that took a nationally representative sample (in the USA) of over 20,000 married people found that “those who reported seeing an X-rated movie in the last year were 12% less likely to have a happy marriage, 25% more likely to be previously divorced, and 10% more likely to have had an extramarital affair.” Another interesting stat is that a survey of attorneys found that 56% of divorce cases involved heightened use of internet pornography by one partner.[2] Research shows that pornography use definitely poses a threat to a happy, healthy marriage.
Pornography Decreases Intimacy
The act of secretly using pornography, hiding it, and feeling guilty about it, may make the other partner feel inadequate and that the user is emotionally withdrawn from his or her partner even if the partner is not aware of the addiction. This can also lead to sexual dysfunction and deteriorated emotional intimacy.[3]
Negative Effects of a Husband’s Pornography Use on Wives
First of all, a lot of men are likely to expect that their wife will be angry when she discovers he has been using porn. Very angry. But many men have not really thought about how traumatic it will be for her.
Upon discovering their husband’s porn use, women often experience symptoms of relational trauma, including fear and/or anxiety, outbursts of anger, intrusive thoughts of the trauma, feelings of self-blame or responsibility, feelings of panic or feeling out of control, sadness or depression, feelings of detachment, feelings of worthlessness or being broken, preoccupation with body image, difficulty falling or staying asleep, hyper-vigilance (being constantly on the alert for signs that your husband is viewing pornography or otherwise unfaithful to the marriage), and feelings of helplessness.[4]
Now, you may be agreeing and thinking you can see how she may experience one or two of those symptoms. But, in reality she may experience nearly all of them. She may experience them for a number of days, more likely for weeks, and sometimes even for months. The discovery of infidelity, even digital infidelity, is traumatizing.
She may also feel disgusted with you and with how she believes you perceive her. She may think poorly of herself. She will likely feel that the dreams you shared together are completely shattered. And she will have a period of time where she believes that she will never be able to trust you again.[5]
Discovery of a porn addiction is a devastating, disorienting experience. Your wife typically wonders why she was not enough for you and why you felt you had to go elsewhere for sexual pleasure. That may be feeling not thin enough, not sexy enough, not interesting enough, not loving enough. Or she may believe she is enough of all of those things and feel an utter contempt that you would not see her as enough.[6]
Write a Letter of Clarification
This guide is something that we recommend where there are severe symptoms of betrayal trauma. It is an exercise for the betraying spouse. You’ll write a letter to your wife — it’s a fairly labour-intensive exercise as it involved 8 different sections where you will detail out how you are taking responsibility for your actions and the impact that this addiction has had on your wife. It’s a difficult but very useful exercise to go through.
The Impact of Lying on Wives
Making you more aware of the devastating impact discovering your porn use can have on your wife may prompt an initial reaction or response to want to cover things up or to minimize or even lie about the extent of the addiction. Well, the bad news is that most wives report that the lying and secrecy is even more devastating than the pornography use itself.
Most addicts go to great lengths to keep their addiction hidden: watching it when they can’t be discovered, locking doors, deleting Internet history, or hiding things with passwords or by other means.
When your wife finds out you have been using porn, she is shocked and feels betrayed by the porn use, but on top of that she is also floored by the fact that you have kept it secret and hidden from her for so long. On top of that, most guys, when found out, are not fully honest about how often and how long they have used pornography for.[7]
Porn use really rattles the foundation of a wife’s self-esteem and physical confidence, but the lying shatters trust. Trust is foundational for a close, intimate relationship. So even though telling your wife about your porn addiction may really hurt her, it is better to be honest with her so that she does not feel that in addition to feeling hurt that you used porn, you have further betrayed her by lying about it.
It is so absolutely imperative that if you do have a pornography addiction and tell your wife about it, that you be fully honest about it. It would be easy — with all those consequences of telling your wife about your porn addiction—to think that you will just take this secret to the grave. Well, that rarely works out and when you perpetuate the secrecy or attempt to cover your addiction with lies you end up shattering your wife even more. Early, honest, complete disclosure is almost always the best option.
Unfortunately, disclosure is rarely done well, which heightens the impact of the addiction. And yet, guys are often quite baffled by their wife’s reaction to their disclosure. Often, on some level they are committed to the marriage. And most porn addicts buy into the lie that their porn use is not really a big deal, so they often don’t consider how significant the impact of the lying and secrecy really is.
So hopefully this helps you as a husband to pause and empathically consider the impact of porn use on your wife. Hopefully it gives you compassion for her healing journey as you go through your own recovery from porn addiction.
A Note from BCACC: As podcasts can be subscribed to and accessed all over the world, psycho-educational podcasts should include a disclaimer to the effect that they are a self-help tool and do not replace individual counselling or represent an attempt to solicit clients from jurisdictions where the RCC does not have the legal ability to practice. Further, they are not intended for those experiencing severe symptoms such as suicidal thoughts, for which emergency help should be sought.
References
[1] Megan K. Maas, Sara A. Vasilenko, and Brian J. Willoughby, “A Dyadic Approach to Pornography Use and Relationship Satisfaction Among Heterosexual Couples: The Role of Pornography Acceptance and Anxious Attachment,” The Journal of Sex Research 55, no. 6 (July 24, 2018): 772–82, https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2018.1440281.
[2] Maas, Vasilenko, and Willoughby.
[3] Maas, Vasilenko, and Willoughby.
[4] Sheila Wray Gregoire, “The Trauma of Your Husband’s Porn Use: 8 Steps to Dealing With It,” 2014, https://tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2014/10/trauma-husbands-porn-use-8-steps-dealing/.
[5] Brenda Stoeker, “4 Ways to Respond to Your Husband’s Porn Addiction,” Charisma, n.d., https://www.charismamag.com/life/women/10025-4-ways-to-respond-to-your-husband-s-porn-addiction.
[6] Gregoire, “The Trauma of Your Husband’s Porn Use: 8 Steps to Dealing With It.”
[7] “How Pornography Affects Marriage,” n.d., https://www.thedatingdivas.com/pornography-affects-marriage/.
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