Infidelity: Protecting Your Marriage, PornographySample

SPOUSE IS INVOLVED IN PORN BUT HAS NO DESIRE FOR SEX

If you and your spouse are working your way through the aftermath of an addiction to pornography, you may have already made a painful discovery: many porn addicts are sexually anorexic when it comes to normal marital relations. That’s because, through habit and practice, their sexual impulses have been alienated from their natural context — i.e., a healthy, committed personal relationship — and re-oriented around impersonal objects or illicit lusts or fetishes. The good news is that, with time, patience, and appropriate treatment, these pathological patterns can be reversed and rehabilitated.

Bottom line: a sexless marriage is an unacceptable state of affairs. If this is your situation, and if you really want to save your relationship, you’re going to have to change your circumstances. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to do this alone. If your spouse really wants to leave the past behind, he’s going to have to join forces with you in an effort to secure some outside help.

If the two of you are Christians, you need to sit down with your pastor and discuss the spiritual aspects of the marital troubles you’re experiencing. The Bible has some very definite things to say about marriage as the one and only appropriate context for sexual activity. Even more to the point in this particular case, it states clearly that husbands and wives are not to “deprive one another” sexually, “except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control” (1 Corinthians 7:5). There is a very simple and very important principle underlying this specific instruction; namely, “The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise, the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does” (1 Corinthians 7:4).

In addition to spiritual counseling, it is crucial that you seek out the help of a licensed marriage therapist, a trained psychologist who can hold you and your spouse accountable and guide you through the difficult process of breaking old patterns and healing past addictions. You should also find some way to introduce a measure of accountability into your spouse’s interactions with the Web — for example, by taking advantage of an Internet control software program. Software programs are not the ultimate answer to problems of this nature, but they can play an important role in helping you keep tabs on the entire family’s online activities.