Moving on after porn

[Burt_Macklin]

Also, I’d like to ask OP a respectful question, particularly given that you’ve cried, given husband ultimatums, etc.: what do you want him to do? My question is a serious one, because, when all the “venting,” “commiserating,” looking backward, etc., is done, what do you want to happen?

I’m curious about that as well. As many people as have said this shouldn’t be brushed aside or forgiven I haven’t seen anyone suggest what needs to be done. Does he need to give up internet access for a year or perform Yubitsume or Seppuku? What are people suggesting?

 

[LongingSoul]

If Mr so-and-so belongs to a community where drinking is considered really bad and someone finds out that he’s been having a few beers a week the last 4 weeks, and everyone tells him that he’s a drunkard now and will die of delirium tremens, then Mr So-and-so might say “C’mon having a few beers isn’t that bad, lots of nice healthy people drink beer” even if he actually feels horrible about what he’s done.
(I’m not trying to equate or compare drinking to pornography, that’s not my point here. I’m not a relativist.)
On the other hand some addicts love to go on about what horrible people they are and how sorry they are, and what do you know, the next weekend they’re selling the kid’s bicycle to buy whatever it is they’re addicted to.

The OPs situation was that he was found out using porn before the marriage. He knew it hurt her and was unacceptable to her as a girlfriend and prospective spouse so he gave it up. (We hope)

He is now saying there is nothing wrong with it and in fact went to the bother of finding information that said it is good for marriage.

Being Catholic, he knows it is an offense against God.
He knows very certainly that it is an offense against his wife.
There is plenty of medical and ethical material in circulation demonstrating that it is destructive to the brain, mind and spirit…

and yet he justifies it. What other explanation to you have for this attitude?

 

[PolarGuy]

One possible other justification: he’s embarrassed; knows he did wrong; and is trying to spare his wife’s feelings (albeit not in a good way)?

Part of why I lean toward this, candidly, is because of OP’s reactions - which include ultimatums; threats to take the kids and sell the farm; complete loss of all trust beyond what might be expected; and basically actions which might be perceived as going way over the top. I dunno - I think a husband faced with that might basically “say or do anything to make the situation pass,” including what husband actually did.

 

[Farmerswife27]

I’m curious about that as well. As many people as have said this shouldn’t be brushed aside or forgiven I haven’t seen anyone suggest what needs to be done. Does he need to give up internet access for a year or perform Yubitsume or Seppuku? What are people suggesting?

Really? This is a serious situation to me, the OP, I’d appreciate it if people could be serious or helpful but not to mock me. It’s uncalled for and I’m not crazy. You can bash me elsewhere along with other wives who’s hearts are broken by this sin.

What would help me move on? Obviously stopping use, of both porn and excessive drinking, which I’m hopoing has been accomplished. Second, admitting its wrong without defending or rationalizing or blaming me. Point blank, its his mess to clean up. Lastly, I need to see some effort from him-- confession, retrouville, therapy, support groups, anything proactive really, to show me he’s taking some initiative. So far his tactic is " I’ll ignore it and it will go away.". When our children are of the age to understand, I expect him to help teach them and steer them so these habits don’t plague their future marriages too.

 

[Burt_Macklin]

What other explanation to you have for this attitude?

Well the OP explained it by saying it could be because she brings up his past porn use all the time and boils over and loses her temper with him. She is closer to the situation so I would tend to go with her explanation.

 

[LongingSoul]

One possible other justification: he’s embarrassed; knows he did wrong; and is trying to spare his wife’s feelings (albeit not in a good way)?

Part of why I lean toward this, candidly, is because of OP’s reactions - which include ultimatums; threats to take the kids and sell the farm; complete loss of all trust beyond what might be expected; and basically actions which might be perceived as going way over the top. I dunno - I think a husband faced with that might basically “say or do anything to make the situation pass,” including what husband actually did.

If he is embarrassed about it and knows he did wrong but still does it… doesn’t that sound like addiction to you?

 

[Farmerswife27]

One possible other justification: he’s embarrassed; knows he did wrong; and is trying to spare his wife’s feelings (albeit not in a good way)?

Part of why I lean toward this, candidly, is because of OP’s reactions - which include ultimatums; threats to take the kids and sell the farm; complete loss of all trust beyond what might be expected; and basically actions which might be perceived as going way over the top. I dunno - I think a husband faced with that might basically “say or do anything to make the situation pass,” including what husband actually did.

Yes I did overreact as most wives would… But I said my peace and let it rest. I did apologize for flipping out like i was batpoop craxy but I did not and will not withdraw my ultimatums, as both issues have gone on long enough. I would most likely seperate rather than divorce and see if he would miss his family enough to change his life choices.

 

[Boccherini]

The OPs situation was that he was found out using porn before the marriage. He knew it hurt her and was unacceptable to her as a girlfriend and prospective spouse so he gave it up. (We hope)

He is now saying there is nothing wrong with it and in fact went to the bother of finding information that said it is good for marriage.

Being Catholic, he knows it is an offense against God.
He knows very certainly that it is an offense against his wife.
There is plenty of medical and ethical material in circulation demonstrating that it is destructive to the brain, mind and spirit…

and yet he justifies it. What other explanation to you have for this attitude?

What other explanation besides what?
How can I explain his attitude when I don’t know him?
But one possibility is that he’s embarrassed and feels that he’s being unfairly attacked, like in the the case of Mr So-and-so.
Look, I’m not saying he isn’t wrong, but it’s no good to give his wife the impression that probably he’s trapped in an insidious porn addiction that will be extremely difficult to get out of, when actually we don’t know.

 

[Rico_S]

What other explanation to you have for this attitude?

Well I think the cry “addiction!! addiction!!” is a leap. From piecing together the story, my guess is that he isn’t addicted, just doesn’t see what this as nearly as big a deal as his wife does. When she’s screaming at him and threatening him he will respond with saying what she wants to hear (frankly probably a normal reaction for most guys)…but in the more rational conversations, the message he is saying is it’s not that big of a deal. My guess is that he hears his wife complaints and doesn’t want her to leave and all, but at the same time thinks, “sheeeeesh…I can’t believe she’s wigging out over this” So he’s sort of caught in between.

 

[UbiCaritas]

1. Al-Anon is a program nearly identical to AA (it was founded by the wives of AA’s founders) in its action, but it’s geared towards the families and friends of alcoholics rather than the alcoholics themselves. It’s a very useful program when dealing with dysfunction in general and addiction of any kind specifically.
2. One can be an alcoholic without drinking every day/month/year, without living in a box on skid row, and without many of one’s friends and family suspecting anything. That having been said, the issue isn’t whether he is or isn’t an alcoholic or a porn addict, because if he is, there’s nothing you can do about it on his end. That’s at once a very freeing and terrifying prospect. If you’re bothered by his drinking, no matter the frequency, then Al-Anon is the place for you. Ditto the porn use.

I understand that 12-step programs like AA have sprung up in recent years for sex addicts. I don’t know if they have an equivalent like Al-Anon, though. Al-Anon tends to be a bit more all-encompassing than the programs directed at those who have substance abuse problems, as while the problems can be rather specific in terms of what substance, be it alcohol, narcotics, or sex, that is being used, how those of us with an addict in our family behave is pretty much the same regardless of the substance, with very minor differences.

What you can do is talk to other people who have dealt with dysfunction and hear what they have to say. They won’t tell you “do X, Y, and Z and your husband will be perfectly behaved.” They will tell you that if you follow their program and in doing so learn to treat both yourself and those around you with courtesy and respect, in learning to set, keep, and follow appropriate boundaries, you will be a happier person. Sometimes that results in the other person reforming their behavior. Sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, you’re a happier and more functional person overall, and one who can deal with problems like these when they crop up in a rational fashion. Please understand, however, that I am not saying that any failure on your part could have “made” him drink or look at porn! He’s an adult, and he made those choices of his own free will.

 

[LongingSoul]

What other explanation besides what?
How can I explain his attitude when I don’t know him?
But one possibility is that he’s embarrassed and feels that he’s being unfairly attacked, like in the the case of Mr So-and-so.
Look, I’m not saying he isn’t wrong, but it’s no good to give his wife the impression that probably he’s trapped in an insidious porn addiction that will be extremely difficult to get out of, when actually we don’t know.

It really seems to me that the recent male contributions to this thread are agenda driven. There is offense taken at a womans sense of hurt and offense by her husbands porn use. Instead of researching the real effect of a husbands porn use on his marriage and his wife, there is intense focus on making a wife feel guilty and disordered in some way for her feelings.

It would help you all to read this article so you can understand a womans point of view.

covenanteyes.com/2010/07/06/the-effects-of-pornography-on-wives-and-marriages/

 

[Rico_S]

It really seems to me that the recent male contributions to this thread are agenda driven.

b/c they don’t conclude he is addicted? What agenda are the males pushing?

There is offense taken at a womans sense of hurt and offense by her husbands porn use

Where?

Instead of researching the real effect of a husbands porn use on his marriage and his wife, there is intense focus on making a wife feel guilty and disordered in some way for her feelings.

Nope. Most of the guys are just saying that continuing to vent in this thread against her husband with other’s assisting in stirring the pot, is probably not the best course of action for her.

 

[PolarGuy]

I think Rico S’s explanation makes a lot of sense…

…And underscores why this situation is persisting.

OP clearly wants a lot of things to happen - therapy; support groups; admission that what he did was wrong, I.e., a lot of prostration and public acknowledgement of how badly he messed up. That is a tall order; asks a lot of any man; can be very embarrassing; and also assumes that his use was a LOT worse than anyone has any evidence of. Even OP only admits to seeing him look at porn twice in a 10 year (!) span!

In the meantime, while husband is being embarrassed and prostrating himself…his wife says she “won’t withdraw her ultimatums,” seems to be boiling over with some frequency; comes here to “vent” and “commiserate” with women, none of whom have professional backgrounds in counseling or the like and some of whom admit to their own hurts by men. In other words…he changes everything; and her feelings and actions are all 100% justified (and even if he changes, trust is broken anyway).

I have to say: that is an impossible set of one-sided demands to place on the husband in my opinion.

I’m no one with any kind of expertise in this field and people can ignore me as they see fit. But so too are all the other people here, particularly those diagnosing addictions! Further, I’ve been saying this for a few Pages and it’s getting old: OP needs to take steps to get past this, including counseling and including some acknowledgement that she needs to perhaps tone things down and be even handed, particularly given that husbands use of porn was twice in 10 years. Otherwise this really will be on the OP…

 

[Burt_Macklin]

1. One can be an alcoholic without drinking every day/month/year, without living in a box on skid row, and without many of one’s friends and family suspecting anything. That having been said, the issue isn’t whether he is or isn’t an alcoholic or a porn addict, because if he is, there’s nothing you can do about it on his end. That’s at once a very freeing and terrifying prospect. If you’re bothered by his drinking, no matter the frequency, then Al-Anon is the place for you. Ditto the porn use.

That’s more of a AA truthism than anything grounded on evidence.

We once thought about drinking problems in binary terms—you either had control or you didn’t; you were an alcoholic or you weren’t—but experts now describe a spectrum. An estimated 18 million Americans suffer from alcohol-use disorder, as the DSM-5, the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual, calls it. (The new term replaces the older alcohol abuse and the much more dated alcoholism, which has been out of favor with researchers for decades.) Only about 15 percent of those with alcohol-use disorder are at the severe end of the spectrum. The rest fall somewhere in the mild-to-moderate range, but they have been largely ignored by researchers and clinicians. Both groups—the hard-core abusers and the more moderate overdrinkers—need more-individualized treatment options.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/#disqus_thread

There is no reason to think of the problem as “you’re either an alcoholic or you’re not” or “you’re either a porn addict or you’re not.” The OP’s husband might need nothing more than confession and repentance and not AA treatment or sexaholics anonymous, which are really not treatment programs based on any evidence and might do more harm than good.

 

[LongingSoul]

b/c they don’t conclude he is addicted? What agenda are the males pushing?

The agenda that porn isn’t all that bad. That’s it’s a males entitlement. A right. If he is limited by having to appease a females feelings, he is less than a man. You don’t think that attitude exists in society?

Instead of researching the real effect of a husbands porn use on his marriage and his wife, there is intense focus on making a wife feel guilty and disordered in some way for her feelings.

Nope. Most of the guys are just saying that continuing to vent in this thread against her husband with other’s assisting in stirring the pot, is probably not the best course of action for her.

There are a million threads in the section that are women discussing, venting, supporting, comforting other women. Why is this one specifically targeted by some?

 

[UbiCaritas]

That’s more of a AA truthism than anything grounded on evidence.

theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/04/the-irrationality-of-alcoholics-anonymous/386255/#disqus_thread

There is no reason to think of the problem as “you’re either an alcoholic or you’re not” or “you’re either a porn addict or you’re not.” The OP’s husband might need nothing more than confession and repentance and not AA treatment or sexaholics anonymous, which are really not treatment programs based on any evidence and might do more harm than good.

I’m not saying he’s an alcoholic. I have no idea if he is or isn’t.

I am saying that alcoholic behavior varies wildly, but that the main point is this: she’s bothered by it. She can’t make him do anything, but she can work on her own reactions to his behavior. She can sit around being wounded and hurt and angry and lashing out, or she can say “I’m hurt and angry, but I want to respond well in this situation and not just on my (understandable) feelings, so how can I go about doing that?” Which is what Al-Anon is all about.

Her asking him to go to AA or a SA meeting will be pointless, even self-defeating, which is why I didn’t suggest that. If he decides he has a problem, he can choose to go; he’s an adult.

So’s she, so if she’d like to find one way to learn better reactions and to accept without necessarily acting immediately upon her (again, understandable) feelings, Al-Anon might be a very good fit.

ETA: and much of the above is true also of porn use, too. Occasional use doesn’t mean someone’s an addict, though of course, in Catholic theology, a drink or two, barring unusual circumstances, isn’t itself a sin, while deliberately searching for and looking at porn is. With porn, though, the same thing about reactions holds true: whether or not he’s addicted, she can’t control whether he’ll use it; she can only control how she reacts to his usage of it. (Naturally, she shouldn’t be buying him gift cards to his favorite sites, either, but that goes without saying.)

 

[PolarGuy]

It is claptrap to claim “males are saying porn is an entitlement!”

No males have said anything like this.

 

[LongingSoul]

I think Rico S’s explanation makes a lot of sense…

…And underscores why this situation is persisting.

OP clearly wants a lot of things to happen - therapy; support groups; admission that what he did was wrong, I.e., a lot of prostration and public acknowledgement of how badly he messed up. That is a tall order; asks a lot of any man; can be very embarrassing; and also assumes that his use was a LOT worse than anyone has any evidence of. Even OP only admits to seeing him look at porn twice in a 10 year (!) span!

In the meantime, while husband is being embarrassed and prostrating himself…his wife says she “won’t withdraw her ultimatums,” seems to be boiling over with some frequency; comes here to “vent” and “commiserate” with women, none of whom have professional backgrounds in counseling or the like and some of whom admit to their own hurts by men. In other words…he changes everything; and her feelings and actions are all 100% justified (and even if he changes, trust is broken anyway).

I have to say: that is an impossible set of one-sided demands to place on the husband in my opinion.

I’m no one with any kind of expertise in this field and people can ignore me as they see fit. But so too are all the other people here, particularly those diagnosing addictions! Further, I’ve been saying this for a few Pages and it’s getting old: OP needs to take steps to get past this, including counseling and including some acknowledgement that she needs to perhaps tone things down and be even handed, particularly given that husbands use of porn was twice in 10 years. Otherwise this really will be on the OP…

Prostration? Public acknowledgement of messing up? He only looked at porn twice in 10 years! ?

Sounds a bit ‘screechingly’ over the top to me.

I’m not a counsellor but worked in a Catholic family counselling organisation for 10 years, assisting and supporting counsellors and clients. Human relationships have always interested me and there are some patterns that are so predictable and common in most relationship breakdowns.

From a females point of view, the most precious thing a husband has is his wifes respect. Men can be as ordinary as mud but to a wife, he is a prince. (In an archetypical way). A lot of men don’t get this. There’s lots of things that can chip away at that sacred dynamic over the years, but the use of porn is pretty much a guarantee to destroy your status in your wifes eyes. Once that is lost it can never be the same again.

A lot of males don’t like the whole concept of remorse. They think it makes them weak or a doormat or something and persist in defending their behaviour as an entitlement for being a man. Ironically, in any relationship, true remorse and genuine care for a spouses experience is almost miraculously restorative. Many relationships are actually better than they ever were.

If this man isn’t addicted to porn but feels genuinely entitled to use it, and unfairly limited by his ‘screeching’ wife… I can’t see that marriage ever healing. A woman can’t fake respect for a husband. It either exists or it doesn’t.

 

[Rico_S]

The agenda that porn isn’t all that bad. That’s it’s a males entitlement. A right. If he is limited by having to appease a females feelings, he is less than a man.

You believe that this is the agenda the few male posters in this thread are pushing? Wow. I guess my reading comprehension skills are in far worse shape than I imagined.

You don’t think that attitude exists in society?

Sure. The acceptability of porn is prevalent in society, which I believe is a primary factor in her husbands reaction. However, its an unbelievable stretch (and a most uncharitable twisting of words) to accuse male posters in this thread of pushing this agenda.

There are a million threads in the section that are women discussing, venting, supporting, comforting other women. Why is this one specifically targeted by some?

I don’t know. Threads have a life of their own…but there is often a pattern -which I pointed out early in the thread:

Farmerswife, I am so sorry you are going through this and I sincerely hope your husband sees how his actions hurt you and decides to remove porn from his life forever.

With that being said…does anyone else feel that sometimes these threads end up as dog piles on the husband? Accusations of addiction…pushing wives to lay down the ultimatum of breaking up the family…all based on just a bit of info. (not saying that these aren’t valid sometimes, but everyone is so quick to go there.) I honestly feel that she would likely get much better balanced counsel from a priest and that the piling on of the husband can actually be counterproductive to the wife finding healing and path forward.

 

[PolarGuy]

I don’t think it is accurate to say, “males don’t like the concept of remorse.”

I think it is fair to say, “people don’t like the concept of remorse.”

I also think what OP has done is say, “I want my husband to be publicly remorseful by going to counseling and admitting his awful deeds to me and others, but in the meantime – and maybe if he does anyway - I will keep laying down ultimatums; ‘reacting as all wives would,’ and venting with other women about how he has lost my trust forever and saying how I could have done so much better.”