If you’ve read Waging War, you’ll know our marriage has battled pornography. Even from the beginning, I never felt at fault for my husband’s decision to view porn. It was his choice.
However, the very first porn revelation led me to pursue the ‘what’s’ of porn.
What makes porn fantasy so alluring?
Youthful taut bodies, unlimited sexual availability, unlimited sexual variety, and unending sexual enthusiasm.
My role as wife could either insulate him from or expose him to the temptation. I wanted to insulate him.
I started working on my response to the ‘what’s’ of porn within the framework of reality because this real woman doesn’t have unending anything.
Working on the “what’s.”
I began to regularly exercise to at least be toned (taut youth is history).
We discussed and came to an agreement on sexual frequency (availability/variety).
I searched ways to improve my libido (enthusiasm).
(Continuing to do these things, I’ve found there are just as many benefits for my health as for his insulation.)
He tried harder to avoid temptation with the help of porn filtering software. He plunged into God’s word and learning new habits.
We came to see porn as our marriage’s S.O.S. because addressing porn pointed us to several other holes sinking our ship. I was responsible for just as many holes as he was.
God led us to resources to patch our leaks. Patched and with a new management of porn we sailed into a much brighter day.
Until, we found porn lurking again and drug it by the collar back into the light.
Porn’s first discovery left me deflated, punctured by betrayal. Finding other leaks in our marriage due to my flaws were humbling.
Porn’s second discovery left me raw, but mostly confused.
Are there more ‘what’s’ I could improve?
No, there aren’t more what’s. Porn’s second visit revealed the core issues that Satan hopes you’ll never uncover. pornography’s allure isn’t about the wife (or the ‘what’s.’) It’s about the why’s.
Our marriage leaped toward healing when we quit looking at the “what’s” of porn and started focusing on the “why’s.”
Why is porn addicting?
In an uncertain, high stress life, porn is predictable and soothing.
Porn is a comfortable old friend that cures isolation for lonely souls.
Porn carries you away from anxiety.
Porn is an escape from inadequacy and shame.
If anyone knew how out of control he feels, or how inadequate he feels, or how fearful and dirty he feels, he’d be ridiculed for his weakness. He wonders how God could even love him. He’s so thoroughly useless and disgusting.
The true battle of pornography is spiritual and rests in the “why’s.” The why’s are a shame factory.
Porn addiction is often times just the bobber floating on the surface. There’s a private shame anchored deeper. Molested, seduced, or maybe even the pursuer, his core is marked.
There’s a difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is what you do, your actions. Shame melds into who you are, an ache of being wrong/bad at your very core. Shame leads to despair and hopelessness.
Shame is Satan’s trap. Shame casts a shadow on our relationship with God, with others and with ourselves. Even after we confess and turn from our temptation shame often continues to imprison us in a dark place.
Satan would have us forget the gospel’s full meaning.
Jesus didn’t only come to take the blame for our guilt but also to recreate our cores. Jesus doesn’t just reset who we are to a time before shame. According to 2 Corinthians 5:17, our cores are brand new, renewed daily, completely unashamed.
I think we can learn even more about the gospel’s redemption of sexual shame by looking at Jesus’ interaction with sexual sinners.
He revealed his divinity to a Samaritan outcast who had 5 husbands and was currently living with a man who wasn’t her husband. (John 4:1-26)
He accepted anointing from a sinning woman (traditionally thought to be a prostitute) who loved him much. (Luke 7:36-50)
He saved an adulterous woman from being stoned by challenging the throng with a profound statement, ‘He who is without sin, may cast the first stone.’ (John 8:1-11)
In each of these instances, he forgave the sexual sin and told them to sin no more. That was it. He didn’t hang a big “A” for adultery sign on them, shave their heads, and post it on facebook. He didn’t heap shame and recrimination on them. Jesus doesn’t use shame because he knows all about it.
“Keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne,” Hebrews 12:2.
John Michael Cusick says in Surfing for God, “Following Jesus is not about not sinning; it’s about releasing his life from within. Like turning on the faucet. The goal is not to turn off the faucet of lust (by self-control and behavior modification), but to turn on the faucet of trust to overcome the lust. Trusting that God has restored my heart and that my heart is good…….The pipes in my soul were getting unclogged, and something was starting to flow that I didn’t know was there. I began experiencing what Jesus described as “a spring of water welling up to eternal life,” (John 4:14).
How to find an unashamed reality
Working on the ‘what’s’ of porn are an important part of the healing journey. It’s in the ‘what’s’ where love is a verb and insulation from temptation is created.
Working on the ‘why’s of porn is a more intimate journey. It’s where the spiritual consequences of sexual choices and sexual victimization are reconciled with Christ.
It’s where you learn that the Holy Spirit makes you whole and holy (Romans 15:16). You were made right with God through the name of Jesus and the Spirit of God. (1 Cor. 6:11)
God gave you the keys to your prison cell of shame when you became a follower of Christ. It’s up to you to give yourself permission to unlock the door and walk away from shame.
When you leave shame behind, you are trusting Jesus, listening and believing that you are not an outcast, but have been given the flowing river of life.
When you leave shame behind, you are leaving fear behind and anointing Jesus with your trust.
When you leave shame behind, you are loving yourself and fulfilling a command.
Porn plagued us until we understood long term protection against temptation comes from asking, “How are we going to leave shame behind and live out our trust in Jesus?”
How does this look in everyday life? I’ll be discussing that very soon.
If this is your first time visiting OysterBed7, Welcome! Please stay awhile, peruse the archives and don’t forget to follow me via facebook fanpage or twitter (@oysterbed7)
I love this. The what’s are important as you try to learn about the problem, yet it is the why’s that will bring freedom.
It’s like following stepping stones. Maybe you can’t get to the why’s without first going through the what’s. Thx, Stu.
Great stuff here. Really great. Thanks for such a powerful post – full of grace and truth.
I’m so thankful for the grace of Jesus who showed us the way. Thank you, Scott.
What a painful experience you’ve endured. But your strength and writing are helping so many that just don’t know what to say…so Thank You!
Love the term SOS…lol!
God uses our messes to become His message through us. I’m grateful our mess had a purpose, to help shine a light of hope for other marriages. Thank you for your kind words, Deana. 🙂
Very well done post, Bonnie. My ex husband was into porn when we met and I was naive enough to let him draw me into it too. Although abuse was ultimate destruction in that marriage, the porn only caused further damage by creeping into our bedroom. Sadly, I have read lately on a few newer supposedly Christian marriage blogs how porn could actually be used to strengthen a marriage when viewed by both spouses and how a wife could learn some things from it as you addressed at the beginning of your blog. All I want to do is NO! It never strengthens anything, it is destructive and a woman should never have to view porn to learn how to sexually please her husband.
Thank you for taking on this tough subject and sharing your story of redemption from it.
Should have said, “All I want to do is YELL NO!” 😉
I completely agree. A wife should never be sucked into viewing pornography. Porn steals precious emotional intimacy. Satan would like us to consider it a form of education, but it’s nothing but a fake form of intimacy, not the real deal. It’s sooooo far from the beauty of God’s divine plan of sexual intimacy. Thanks for your words, Amy.
Excellent on guilt and shame (especially shame :D), and everything after that. Quite a resource in fact. Will have to reread.
David
May God lead you to the resources he wishes you to see.
I cannot wait to read the next installment. We have been walking for 3 1/2 years now after the revelation of his porn addiction. He had gone to many counselors, been to many groups, and it has gotten better but it is still a hold in his life. We were told this was a 3-5 year process but each time there is a “slip” it is so hard.
Hang in there, Katie. I have prayed over you and your husband.
While I appreciate the honesty of this post, I find the “what’s” lesson somewhat lacking. In a circumstance like this, where there is a willing WIFE (not a girlfriend or fiance but a wife) it is never up to her to “change” in order to lessen the temptation of porn. The fact is that he made a vow to YOU, you as an entire person–and I’m guessing that vow did not include stipulations about physical appearance. Changing the way you look physically or behave sexually in a response to a spouse’s porn addiction is, at some level, letting porn win. You’ve acknowledged that it is “better ” than you (frequency/variation/etc.), and so in order to keep your husband’s attention you adapted a similar approach. You basically said, “You want porn, so I’ll be more like porn.”
Having read many of your other posts, I am not trying to shame you in regards to this topic. I understand the benefits of the exercise, for health and other reasons. And on the subject of a low libido–yes, do whatever works to increase it! However, pornography addictions are a deep and complicated issue, and what you’ve written here gives the impression that you believed, at least for a time, that changing yourself would improve his addiction. Other women in similar situations often believe the same thing. I simply wish this article had put some emphasis on the fact that (low libido or not) a woman should never feel pressured to change herself in order to stop her husband’s pornography addiction.
I respect what you have to say here, KV. In order to adequately address your concerns, I will write a post about it. Thank you for your insight.
But, until then I will say I must have failed a bit, because the ‘what’s’ weren’t where the healing began. The healing began in the why’s. This post is about my journey of understanding. So, it began with the what’s and evolved into maturity. Yes, pornography is a deep and complicated issue and that’s what finally brought us to the WHYS. What is the underlying issue that drives my husband to seek this superficial fix? It’s not really about sex. Although, a husband who is starving in the marriage bed is going to be more weak toward the devil’s schemes.
No, it is not up to me to keep my husband from sinning. And it may look like I was letting porn win, but in reality I was doing everything I could to save my marriage. If I had given up early on we never would have evolved to the next phase. Life is all about learning. Like you said, this is a transparent message.
However, I believe when we get married we have an expectation that our spouses will continue to take care of themselves. I expect my husband to not have a big old gut and he expects me to stay healthy, as well. If having an attractive spouse is important to someone, they place a great deal of value on their spouse’s appearance. That isn’t shallow, it’s just the way it is. See Willard Harley (http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi5502_qa.html) Not everyone has this need, but some do and it is valid.