Husband Addicted to Porn

My husband is addicted to porn – the Current State of the Union
Your husband is addicted to porn. You’ve been crushed by your his behavior, and rightly so. Where do you go from here? Do you stay with him? Punish him? Dump him? All you know is that you cannot and will not compete with the stuff he’s filling his mind with.

Mandy said she always believed her husband when he told her he simply didn’t have much sexual desire—until the day she happened to open a package that came in the mail. Inside were two DVDs of naked women, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, a Fredrick’s of Hollywood catalog, a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and a Howard Stern tape.

She was devastated, saying, “Most men want to have sex all the time. Mine now says he totally hates sex, but that he likes to look at nude women and fantasize, and he’s been masturbating two or three times a day and has nothing left for me! I feel completely rejected by my own husband. Do you understand that? Do you understand that I love my husband and I want him to love me? I have no one to talk to about this. I know I should pour myself out before the Lord, but I hurt too much. Is there any earthly help for me?”¹

My husband is addicted to porn – Is it normal to feel the way I do?
If your husband is addicted to porn, he is not leading a disciplined life. He is robbing you, so you naturally feel crushed. What other feelings will surge over you in the wake of his porn and the masturbation that follows? Anger, for one. It’s normal to be angry when you’ve been robbed, and so it’s normal to be angry at your husband’s sexual sin. You needn’t apologize for that.

Don’t be surprised if you’re feeling like an outright fool too. What could be more normal? When you find out that your husband has been secretly looking at another’s bare body and masturbating, you’ll feel utterly blindsided. You may even be kicking yourself for not having seen it coming, especially if your female intuition sent out early warning signals. . . signals that you, in your faithfulness to him, laughed off as paranoid or even out-and-out silly.

If you’ve ignored such clues, you feel like a fool, another common emotion swamping wives in the wake. But that feeling becomes an overwhelming flood if you’ve beat yourself up over his lack of sexual desire over the past few years, figuring that your “home cooking” should have kept him coming back for more if it tasted any good.

Out of guilt you may have shouldered the whole load of responsibility for his lack of desire -- maybe dieting hard to lose weight and pouring out sweat in heavy workouts to draw out the desires of your one and only. Perhaps you’ve stopped by Victoria’s Secret in order to drape yourself in something visually tantalizing to spark his attentions, even though wearing it made you feel uncomfortable. And often, when you bravely initiated a passionate encounter, your vulnerability was flung back in your face.

And now? You’ve found out it was never your fault at all. While you were sacrificing juicy burgers for limp salads and running treadmills like a gerbil on a wheel, he was masturbating away his sex drive on others. On your darker days you now even suspect that he conveniently led you to believe that you were to blame, intentionally and artfully using your guilt, fear, and disciplined regimens to cover the tracks of his undisciplined life. How stupid you feel! How conned!²

My husband is addicted to porn – What do I do now?
Face it. Because of his sexual sin, your marriage was compromised. Sure, you’re hurt and very angry. You’ve lost that warm, cozy image of your marriage, and that naturally wounds you deeply. But in another sense, you haven’t lost as much as you think, because your marriage wasn’t what it appeared to be. My point? There is a bright silver lining to this dark, billowing cloud. Think about it: you have been living in a false world, and had it not been for this revelation of your husband’s sin, you might have blindly and tragically gone through your whole life without ever experiencing the richness God intends for your marriage. But God is faithful, and He loves you too much to leave you where you are now. Of course, it’s my odds-on guess that this hasn’t felt much like love to you, and perhaps you’ve been as mad at God as you have been at your husband. But that anger is misplaced. Though the revelation hurt, the Lord has proven His undying love for you by exposing your husband’s sexual sin, and he stands ready to help you get through this.

While you may not feel good about what has happened, this event could bring about one of the most hopeful times of your life. The discovery of your husband’s secret sin has revealed the true state of your marital union, and now you have the opportunity to experience something real with him. Marriage doesn’t have to be a big, fat lie....Whatever it’s been up until now, it doesn’t have to stay there.

It will be helpful if you view the discovery of your husband’s sin as God’s grace in your life. His sexual impropriety has been like a huge life-sucking tumor silently attacking your marriage. But now that you’ve found the cancer, there’s hope. Now you can pray for healing, begin treatment, and seek a marital life restored and brimming with health. Best of all, this is your chance to live out the truth that all things work together for the good of those who love Him.

God has set you free to pursue your personal healing. And He aches to see the same thing for your marriage. Here’s your chance to live like a real Christian, to truly sacrifice, and to truly align your thinking with Christ regarding your marriage.³

My husband is addicted to porn – Moving on
You now have a choice. So what will you focus on—the pain or the hope? Probably both at first, and I don’t blame you. There will be days when the pain of your husband’s betrayal will overwhelm you, and your anger will drive hope far away. That’s okay. God understands, and He won’t bop you over the head for your lack of faith. He’d rather hug you and draw you near, if you’ll let him. You’re His child, remember?

Still, thanking God for the revelation and choosing hope for the future is the first step to your freedom. Yes, even if your husband hasn’t fully repented yet. Sure, your first faltering steps in this direction will be like crossing a stream by jumping from rock to slippery rock, which means it won’t be easy. Being thankful in the midst of chaos is always a challenge. Sometimes it’ll feel as if you’re thanking Him for your pain, which may seem comical and even hypocritical in your eyes. And it may take daily discipline, even moment-by-moment discipline, to maintain a grateful outlook.

But as you discipline your heart to the truth and choose to be thankful for what He has done in opening your eyes, your obedience will kick up a breeze of the Spirit’s breath in your life that’ll begin to dissipate your pain. That’s what we’re after.

Not that “thank you, Lord” is some magical phrase that will instantly make everything better. Until your husband commits his whole heart to winning the battle, until God can get your husband’s full attention, things will still go roughly for you.

But even in that case, a thankful heart is your best first step, a step that begins to give you your sanity back as you wait for God’s work to be done in your husband’s life. Everything is in the light now. You’re no longer guessing what’s going on, and you know the score regarding your marriage. Sure, you may have to wait awhile for victory, but even so, all is not lost. This time can serve you well, as you still have plenty of work to do in your own life if you expect to answer God’s call as your husband’s helpmate, a work that’ll serve to focus your husband’s attention on God.⁴

Remember, [t]his is ultimately between your husband and the King. You needn’t jump him every time he blows it. Trust God. When you aren’t speaking, you can be certain that God is.⁵