Infidelity: Protecting Your Marriage, PornographySample

WOMAN DATING OR ENGAGED TO MAN ADDICTED TO PORN

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

Nowhere, perhaps, are these popular proverbs more applicable than in the realm of selecting a marriage partner. If you want a vital, healthy marriage, choose only individuals of integrity and godly character as potential mates. If, on the other hand, you’re relatively unconcerned about issues like infidelity, feel free to lower the bar. But remember that here, as in so many other areas of life, you tend to get what you bargain for.

To be more specific: if, as a young woman who is anxious to tie the knot, you’re tempted to minimize or disregard your potential mate’s struggles with pornography, think again. A situation like this is marital misery in the making. Unless your boyfriend is ready to get serious about dealing with his problem, it’s time to put on the brakes. Both of you need to understand that pornography is as physically addictive as any drug. The addiction is based on neurochemical changes that occur in the brain as a result of prolonged exposure to stimulating sexual imagery. Because of its neuro-chemical basis, it’s tenacious, progressive and destructive in nature.

If you decide to marry this man “as is,” don’t expect his addiction to go away on its own once you’ve said your wedding vows. In particular, don’t assume that normal marital sexual relations will take the place of porn in his life. No living, breathing, thinking woman can possibly fill that role without doing untold damage to herself as a person. That’s because pornography addiction, in the final analysis, is not about sex. It’s a symptom of an intimacy disorder — a comprehensive psychological illness that compels an individual to avoid deep, meaningful interaction with another flesh-and-blood human being and to replace it with impersonal sensual imagery. Unless this disorder is addressed and rectified, your relationship cannot move forward on a healthy footing. Marriage will not fix the problem. It will only complicate matters and increase your pain.

At this point in your relationship — before you’ve made a formal commitment to each other by buying rings and reserving the church — you’re in a much better position to take an in-depth, candid look at this issue. If your boyfriend really cares about you and sincerely wants to spend his life with you, he has a powerful motivation to make the necessary changes at this stage of the game. Once you’ve tied the knot, that motivation will no longer exist in quite the same way.

The best thing you can do is to get professional counseling before there is any further talk of marriage. You and your boyfriend should do this together. Look for a Christian counselor who is specially trained in the field of sexual addiction — someone with whom you can pray about the problem and talk about God’s design for a healthy marriage. An intensive counseling model, consisting of a limited and concentrated series of sessions focusing specifically on the addiction problem, is the best way to address this issue. Your boyfriend should also find some way to introduce a measure of accountability into his interactions with the Web — for example, by taking advantage of an Internet control software program.

For more help, visit Focus on the Family’s website, or call the ministry’s Counseling Department for a free consultation at 855-771-HELP (4357).