Do you feel like your wife is ignoring your progress with porn addiction? That she doesn’t understand how difficult it is for you to quit porn?
Do you feel like you can get sober for a few weeks, or even a few months, but when you relapse with porn it is devastating for her, and you have to start over from square one?
Do you feel like you can’t do anything right in her eyes because of your pornography addiction? That she sees even your best intentions to be loving and kind as selfish and self-centered?
Do you feel disrespected? That your opinions and needs don’t matter because of what you’ve done? That you don’t have a say.
Do you feel like you’re walking on eggshells, that your spouse is constantly angry and the smallest thing might set her off? Either into anxiety and depression, or into fury and distrust?
Do you question how much of the problems in your relationship are from you or her? Do you wonder if it is all because of your addiction, but also can’t help seeing how controlling, angry, and insecure she is? You think maybe it’s your fault that she’s this way. But it can’t be all your fault, can it?
We talk about this and much more in today’s article.
You Want to Stop Watching Porn. But You Can’t.
You’re trying to stop watching porn. You want to do this for her. Making your wife happy is so important to you. But you just feel like all your reasons for staying sober disappear in that moment behind the screen.
You wonder, “Maybe I am selfish like she says I am. Perhaps I’m so messed up that I’m not even aware of how flawed my perspective and behaviors are.”
You question what you once thought of as good qualities in yourself. Perhaps you’re a hard worker, but she says all you care about is work. Perhaps you’re humorous and fun, but she sees it as shallow and self-serving. Perhaps you thought of yourself as a nice guy, but now she says the only reason you’re nice is to get something from her.
You start feeling like - because of your flaws and your addiction - that you’re less worthy. And because of this, you need to capitulate to everything she says. You don’t get a say, and you think perhaps you deserve that. You feel like maybe it’s her turn to get what she wants. After all, you’ve done a lot of damage, so maybe that’s only fair.
You’re Not Alone
If you feel any of this. You’re not alone. Many men who struggle with porn addiction have found themselves in similar situations. I see it consistently with the men I help. Their wives are negative, complaining, angry, and disrespectful. They’re kind to their friends, but treat their husbands like boys rather than men.
Many of my clients come to believe they deserve this. That they’ve hurt their wives so badly they should just give into whatever she says. They feel like they can’t do anything right.
These men are failing at what they feel is their prime directive: to make their wife happy. And they hate that about themselves and their marriage. They often feel like their relationship is hanging on by a thread.
You Can Quit Porn. There is Hope for Your Marriage
Let me tell you that I know what this is like, both from first-hand and professional experience, and there is hope. You can overcome porn addiction, and you can make your wife happy again.
No, not all of her problems are your fault. She likely came into the marriage with many of her own burdens, and your pornography addiction and other personal challenges have exacerbated those struggles. You’ve hurt her badly, it’s true. But, not all of her struggles are your fault. Even though she may believe, and tell you, that they are.
This doesn’t justify what you’ve done. But it does mean you can stop blaming yourself for everything. That self-flogging and self-hatred is not helping your wife, nor you.
You’re a good man. You’ve just got some behaviors that don’t match your core values. If this weren’t true, why would you feel so guilty and ashamed of your actions? The reason you do is because you are a good man. Otherwise it wouldn’t hurt.
So, what’s the answer? It’s not that you lack moral integrity. Instead, it’s that you have some skills to build. It’s not that you’re not working hard enough, it’s that you’re not working smart enough. You haven’t been taught where to place your efforts and focus to overcome this addiction.
You don’t know how to stop porn addiction yet. You can learn. If you’ve made it a few weeks or a few months sober from porn, you can go a lifetime. You just need the recovery mindset and lifestyle to do it.
Why Your Wife Can Be So Hurtful Sometimes
It is often the case that the spouse of an addict is seen as the victim. And that’s because…she is!
Your wife is experiencing betrayal trauma. The trauma of being married to an addict is no small thing. The feelings of fear, shame, anger, confusion, and distrust can be overwhelming.
If you are going to help your wife and heal your marriage, you must first come to understand exactly what your wife is experiencing. Then, you can offer her compassion, own up to your flaws, hold proper boundaries and respect for yourself, and help your marriage heal.
The Complexities of Betrayal Trauma and Porn Addiction
The effects of betrayal trauma on the spouse of a porn addict are complex. While I do not want you to flog yourself with these realities, it is important that you come to grips with them so that you can begin to feel understanding for your wife. Only in understanding can you find healing.
The effects of betrayal trauma are:
Sexual
Emotional / Psychological
Relational
Sexual Trauma
There are many reasons your porn addiction harms your wife sexually, leading her to feel betrayed and unloved. They include things like:
“If he’s going to porn for sexual gratification, what does that say about me?” - She may feel that you are not attracted to her, that you don’t find her satisfying, and especially for a woman this can feel degrading.
“What has he been watching, and how do I compare?” - She may feel unable to measure up to these perfect virtual bodies with unrealistic proportions. She may question what you have looked at, and what kind of expectations you have.
“How many women has he seen? Will I ever match up?” - This can feel like an impossible bar to reach.
“What is going through his mind when we have sex? Is he thinking of all of those other women? Is he even focused on me?” - Women, especially, want to be wanted. They want to know that you find them beautiful and that they are the most important woman in the world to you. This fundamental desire is dashed to pieces by porn. She may accuse you of thinking about these things during sex, judge you, and try to control you.
She may ask to look through your phone or the history on your device obsessively, attempting to still the feelings of mental chaos and uncertainty she feels.
She may ask for every last detail of your past addictive behavior. Part of her believes, “If I just know everything - every last detail - then I can’t be hurt anymore.”
She may begin over-sexualizing herself. Being overly erotic, telling you to keep sexual pictures and videos of her on your phone, or attempting new, exciting things in the bedroom. She believes that she can turn your addiction from online porn to being addicted to her instead. This doesn’t work unfortunately, and often makes things worse.
She may become sexually anorexic, because it’s too painful and unpredictable. It’s triggering, because she feels fixated on how many other women you’ve looked at and what you might be thinking about while you two are being intimate.
Emotional / Psychological Trauma
When you revealed your porn addiction to your wife, she likely had many heavy emotions that overwhelmed her. She could not fully understand or work through them at the time.
This was then compounded by recurrent relapses, on-going questions and worries that she’s had about your addiction and the relationship (sexual and non-sexual), and the feelings of uncertainty and fear surrounding your addiction.
Questions your wife has dealt with - or is dealing with now - may include the following:
“How did I not see this before?” - Your wife may question her own level of intelligence or awareness, as she was blindsided by something that is so significant, and she didn’t see it coming.
“Can I trust my own feelings or reasoning?” - She may think that if she was wrong about you, what else could she be wrong about? Can she be sure of anything?
“Can I trust anything he says? What will happen to me and our family?” - She may begin to question everything you do, whether you are being truthful or not, and if she can rely on you. This can feel terribly insecure.
“What else isn’t he telling me?” - If you kept this under wraps for so long, she may wonder what else you are hiding from her. This may cause her to feel paranoid, judgmental, and attempt to control multiple aspects of your lives and relationship.
“Am I really so worthless that virtual women mean more to him than me?” - She may suffer with the question of how you keep going back to virtual women, when she is right there. Not just from a sexual perspective, but overall.
“I feel powerless to stop this. What can I do?” - She has no control over whether this continues. She can’t do anything about it. This can lead to feelings of powerlessness, and a subsequent unconscious desire to ascertain control in any area of life she can.
Relational Trauma
Porn addiction devastates the well-being of a relationship. There are many ways this can manifest. These effects of relational trauma include the following:
SELF-WORTH IN THE RELATIONSHIP: When a partner partakes in self-destructive behaviors like porn, we can feel this is a reflection on our own worth. Your spouse may unconsciously believe that if you loved them you would take care of yourself. Because you don’t, it must mean that you’re not happy with them, nor do you care about them.
TRUST IN THE RELATIONSHIP: Your spouse may feel that she cannot depend on you. That your addiction is a sign that you are not trustworthy. This can be an immense burden, leading to feelings of fear, anger, and a desire to control the situation.
SAFETY IN THE RELATIONSHIP: Safety is extremely important, both for relationships and overall well-being. It is directly correlated with trust and self-worth. If your wife cannot feel these in the relationship, then she does not feel safe.
Why Your Wife Can’t See Your Progress to Quit Porn
Perhaps you’ve made progress to overcome your porn addiction. Maybe you’ve gone weeks, months, or even years between uses. And while you feel encouraged by this, your wife does not.
These traumas your wife has suffered cast a long shadow over the relationship. It is highly probable that she is carrying these burdens of sexual, emotional, and relational trauma as if she found out about your porn addiction yesterday.
For her, the pain is still very much present, and it likely will be until both her and you seek professional help.
Your Wife May Use Anger & Control to Cope with Pain
If your wife is constantly angry or complaining, treating you with disrespect or criticism, or attempting to control you, you need to understand why. Understanding the why behind the behavior can help you build compassion for your wife. And that compassion is fundamental to healing your marriage.
When we feel threatened or unsafe, we have a few ways we can respond to the situation:
CONTROL: We may use tactics like criticism, judgment, or anger to manage the situation or person. We do this because inside we feel afraid and inadequate, and we stuff down that fear by puffing up and trying to take control.
ESCAPE: We may check out or self-soothe using substances like food or alcohol or behaviors like TV or social media. This is an attempt to nullify our feelings of fear and grief.
CODEPENDENCE: We may lean into our feelings of insecurity, making ourselves a helpless victim or martyr to the person or situation. This is a fawning tactic to get the sympathy of the other party when we feel they do not care or aren’t here for us.
Each of these coping strategies are unconscious for most people. We don’t use them intentionally. Each of them also makes the problem worse.
Using Acceptance, Compassion, and Empowerment to Heal Your Marriage
An effective way of responding to feelings of lack of safety or trust is to practice acceptance and compassion for ourselves and the other person.
Then, we need to make our needs known while collaborating and incorporating the needs of one another. We need to hold boundaries and take action together to improve the situation and empower the relationship.
This is easier said than done. It’s often messy and none of us are perfect at it. But, we can practice, and a relationship can go from terrible to wonderful with enough time, proactive work, and patient dedication on both ends.
This also often requires professional help for us to learn new skills so we can stop spinning around in circles. You heal a marriage not simply by stopping the negative behaviors, but by replacing them with new, positive ones.
Stopping Codependence and Toxicity in the Relationship
The answer to healing your marriage is not to simply “be nice” or passive in the relationship. All of your efforts to capitulate to your wife’s demands or simply put up with her anger and criticism will not heal your marriage. In fact, it will make things worse.
If your wife has responded to her betrayal trauma by taking control of the relationship and saying, “I’m the captain now!”, that needs to change. The only way for the two of you to overcome the toxicity in your relationship is to be equal partners who are playing on the same team and aiming towards the same goals.
Codependence: Blame and Victim Mentality
There is a good chance that you and your partner are practicing some degree of codependence in your relationship. You look to each other as the source of your own well-being, and if the other person is unhappy you take it personally.
This needs to change if you are ever going to be happy in your marriage and get sober. Addiction thrives on blame and victim mentality. These mindsets drive a wedge between you and your spouse. Blame and victim mentality, ultimately, are a mask for underlying feelings of inadequacy, fear, and grief. They are an ineffective coping mechanism.
To heal your marriage, you must address these underlying feelings of fear, shame, etc. You can only do this when you both stop blaming and playing the victim.
Toxicity: Distrust and Assuming the Worst in Each Other
Your wife may see selfishness in you where there is none. Not just with sexual intimacy, but with everything. You might have really good intentions, but nothing you do is good enough because she doesn’t feel safe. She is filled with fear and on high alert all the time.
This fight or flight mode your wife is in is not conducive to a healthy marriage. It is also likely the same mode you are in. You are both probably unconscious of it to one degree or another.
I, myself, experienced this dynamic of dysfunction in my own relationship for years, and it is a very difficult one to get out of.
So much of what I did was motivated by fear and distrust. I didn’t believe that my wife was on my team. I believed that she was in it for herself, and that I needed to scrape and claw to get mine.
This was a zero sum game. Neither person working together. Constant push-pull. Constant feelings of being unsafe and unloved.
This was the world I believed in, and I perpetuated it through my own selfishness. But it was also perpetuated by my wife’s feelings of fear and distrust, and this came in large part due to my addictions she was the unfortunate victim of.
I had proven I was not there for her, and in order to heal I would need to prove to her that I was. This would take time.
Starting Mutual Respect and Collaboration
Moving from codependency and toxicity in a relationship to mutual respect and collaboration is no small task. Nor is it a quick fix. It takes constant, daily effort. And that effort, ultimately, never ends.
You must do many seemingly contradictory things that require balance and maturity. It’s always messy and neither of you will ever be perfect at it.
You must take ownership of the harm your addiction has caused; apologizing, making amends, and seeking to help where you can. You must also know that your addiction does not make you less worthy as a human being, and that your wife’s pain is not ultimately yours to fix.
You must be kind, respectful, and deeply value your wife’s desires and needs. You must also make your desires and needs known without playing the victim or capitulating to her demands.
You must seek to make your wife happy and serve her, while knowing she will be unhappy at times and it is not your responsibility to fix that.
When it is appropriate, you must be willing to put down what you want in exchange for what your wife needs, and you must be willing to ask the same of her sometimes.
You must both practice trusting each other and fully handing responsibility over for things that the other person needs to own, and you must forgive the other person when they fall short.
You must both speak up when something isn’t going to work for you, refrain from trying to convince the other person of your view, and come to a mutually acceptable solution.
I hope you’ve found this helpful in your journey to stop watching porn. To quit porn for good, check out the resources below.
God bless and much love.
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