Porn is often misunderstood. Many people think porn is just like any other habit or behavior. That belief leads to the worst advice anyone can give about porn.
Porn is a lot more complex than most people think. In my comprehensive blog post called 5 Porn Facts You Need to Know to Quit Porn, I present 5 key finding from many years of research to provide a thorough understanding about porn compulsion.
In this article, I reveal the most common approaches couples take to help the husband quit porn.
#1 - What Wives Often Tell Their Husbands
I hear it from wives. Their husbands are watching porn, and they tell their husband to:
Just Stop!
Just stop - doesn't work.
The reason it doesn't work is because it assumes porn is easy to stop. Read my article and you'll get a very different understanding about porn. Quitting porn cold-turkey rarely, if ever, works.
Porn is as complex as any serious drug addiction.
If anyone had trouble quitting smoking, they know how hard it is to just stop. There are physical urges. There are environmental, site, and physiological triggers that bring on an intense desire to smoke.
The same is true with porn. Instead of an addicting drug called nicotine, porn involves at least six (6) powerful brain chemicals including Oxytocin, Vasopressin, Norepinephrine, and Dopamine.
#2 - When Urges Come, Think About Something Different
The second most common advice is that you have to think your way through it and consciously replace the porn habit with another habit. Most advice from coaches, counselors, therapists, and pastors are ineffective against porn. Most do not understand how complex porn is. The high recidivism rate proves that.
In professional terms, porn is a compulsion. According to Dictionary.com, a compulsion is "a strong, usually irresistible impulse to perform an act, especially one that is irrational or contrary to one's will."
Any advice or program that suggests when you get an urge or trigger for porn to think about something different is misleading and futile!
You cannot think your way out of a pornography compulsion. By it's very definition it is nearly impossible.
You have to defeat porn before it reaches your conscious thoughts.
"Porn Kept Coming Back"
"My husband, the sweet guy who made me weak in the knees, would come back when the porn left. But the porn kept coming back, each time things would get worse rapidly. Thousands of dollars and countless hours on therapy and support groups, and this pattern of clean for a few months followed by a relapse lasting twice as long, for years."
- Fight the New Drug
The best way to successfully quit porn once and for all is to defeat it before it reaches your conscious thoughts. It takes a skilled professional to coach you how to do this. The good news is that the methodology to do this is not new and in use by trained professionals to help clients recover from phobias and other addictions.
The Challenge to Quit Porn
There are really three problems regarding porn in marriage.
Stopping the husband's compulsion to porn is just the first problem to overcome.
The second problem is the marriage itself. Porn watching is a serious breach of a marital boundary. Trust is lost. The wife is hurt. The marriage is full of tension. Neither partner is satisfied. Porn is cited as a major reason in 56% of divorces. Even if the husband manages to quit porn, the wife is still hurting and the marriage foundation is crumbling.
The third and most often overlooked problem with porn is the emotional damage done to the wife. When a wife discovers her husband watching porn, it is a serious blow to her self-esteem, dignity, and need for certainty. Even when he stops his porn addiction, the wife is often left to deal with her emotions all by herself. That doesn't work. Her anger can come out at any time, and her sour feelings towards her husband can last many years after he recovers, if left untreated.
The bottom line is that the husband has to quit porn, the marriage must rebuild, and the wife needs a healing. If any of these three are not handled properly, the marriage could be looking at divorce. The consequences of porn are emotionally draining and costly.
The 3rd and final article in this series is How to Quit Porn and Rebuild Your Marriage. Please read this article now.
Or, if you are really ready to start a program that can get REAL results,
I invite you to apply:
Quit Porn
and Rebuild Your Marriage!
The Break Free from Porn Coaching Program is by application only. If you are ready to finally quit porn for good and rebuild your marriage, I invite you to apply and schedule your FREE 45-minute strategy session.