|
Coaching Log 1/8/2006
Marital Status: Married
Wife's Age : 17
Husband's : 18
Would you like to learn how to become a Christian? I am a Christian
Is your spouse a Christian? Yes
How many times a month do you go to church? 0
How many years have you been married? 1.
Do you have children? Yes.
How many children living at home? 1.
I
MarriageRomance.com may publish all or parts of this coaching session: Yes
(Excluding names of coach and coachee)
Please describe your situation and problem:
Wife writes:
My husband has been lying to me for almost two years about his porn
addiction he said he never watched porn or even thought of porn. It is a sin we believe.In my mind he has been cheating mentally on me he has told me that he thinks about having sex with the women he sees in the porn and even while we have sex they are on his mind. I love him and I want him to stop watching porn and watch me for a change but I just had a baby and I weigh 200lbs with stretch marks all over me and I dont feel sexy , I have sex with him now sometimes to keep him from going to the porn and I know it is wrong of me but I want him to only be with me Im afraid it will go from porn to reality sex and physicly cheating on me once porn gets boring to him . He has admitted to being addicted to it and he wants help he is also addicted to sex I dont know what to do I cant trust him because he has lied to me for so long now it hurts me to think of what he may have done on our wedding night after I fell asleep.
While I was in the hospital getting ready to have his baby he was home
watching the porn and getting off on it ... he would even do it while I was 5 feet away from him in bed asleep.
I tried to spice up our night life by adding toys and flavored lube one time we was fooling around and he was watching me play with a toy and he just went soft I cried and he said it wasnt me but I said how can you do this to me you get off on other girls doing this but what I make you sick he swears thats not true and I am still sexy but he told me today that he thought they looked sexier then me because they are untouchable to him and that really hurt me deep deep inside I fell out of love a little with him. I dont know what to do , I cant look him in the eyes without thinking what a perverted butt hole he is.
He has had sexual issues all his life he has been abused and abusive
sexualy, but that dont stop the hurt from all the lies and how he did me wrong and hurt me so deep.
How can I stop the hurt , How can I trust him, How can I have sex with a man who wants something from a fantacy that I cant give to him. I love him and I need him But I cant hurt like this and act like Im okay.
He told me he would quit porn because it is ruining our lives . Help me
learn to trust and love this man again please ! I miss him so much he has changed from a sweet person to a devilish freak who hurts me for the fun of it. well I dont know if its for the fun of it but I do know he hurts me 7 days a week with the porn shXt and it makes me sick to my stomach to think that I believed him when he said that I was the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and my nude body was the only one he could ever look at .
Husband Writes:
I am addicted to porn. I've hid it from my wife for years(2). I love her very much, but the porn is destroying our marriage. I've allready quit cold turkey, but questions keep coming up. I try to anwser them as truthfull as possible. My anwsers have really hurt her. One of the Questions was if I thought any of the women I've seen in porn were sexier than her or better than her, My anwser was yes, That's how bad it was. As Im writing this right now I really don't see why I thought that because my wife is beautiful. She is very insecure about her body because she thinks she's over wheight. But I don't see what she see's, I see a very wonderful woman. She is the greastest thing thats ever happened in my life.
My wife is really freaking out beacuse of all this. She threatens to leave me. She hasn't left yet but we feel as if one more thing happens and she's gone.
I need help with the porn addiction and help to keep my marriage togther I love her and she loves me but I can't seem to say anything to make things better. She is really hurt and angery that I did this to her , we are a christion family and porn is a sin in our religion. I told her that while I watched porn I thought about having sex with the women I seen and I told her that while we had sex I thought about porn. I'm sick in the head I have had sexual issues almost all my life , I have done some horrable things in my past that cant be undone that she knows about. How can we make this work? how can I make her feel beautiful again she just had a baby and she has stretch marks all over her belly and arms. I love her alot I know I have done her wrong in so many ways, In a way I cheated on her not physicly but mentaly, I think about there flawless nude bodies and I like it alot. I don't want to make her cry no more , how can I fix this how can I make this better, how can I make her trust me ever again? She said she wants me to
know how she feels and I think I do but she has never done anything to hurt me , she don't look at porn or even check other people out at the store. She is so commited to me and I fxxxed up bad.
I don't want a divorce I cant get a divorce I love her more then she will ever know. I want her to know that its all over and I will never do that again its all in the past but I need help on quiting , porn is killing us. My wife is honest , loyal , and she has stuck to every
word of our vows.Why cant I be that way to her what is wrong with me? She used to ask me if I watched porn or if I thought girls looked better than her and I would lie to her and say no my eyes are to see you only you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life and you always will be. I cant be honest with her because I dont want her to hate me.She is in so much pain... while she was in the hospital getting ready to have my baby I was home watching porn and getting off on it. I would even do it 5 feet away from her while she slept in bed. She knows all that now and she can bearly look me in the eye she feels so sick to her stomach to think the man who was supposed to love and look only at her would do this to her.
I told her it was only on the nights when we didnt have sex that I would turn to porn but that is only half true I have the urge to watch porn all the time even if we do have sex that night. Porn is like a part of my life that I dont think I want but is hard to get rid of. All I know is that I want her back and I want this to be in the past.
Coach Writes: (Names Changed)
Dear Jane and John,
Hello again, the good news is that your marriage can turn our great. You don't have to let this issue destroy your marriage.
Lets back up a bit. I read both of your coaching information descriptions and I can see that Jane is very hurt. I can also see that John was acting as a normal red blooded selfish male and now he wants to do what is right, after he realized how deeply his conduct hurt his wife.
You are both young and I think once you both understand the differences between men and women and you both understand how God can help you meet each others needs, I believe you will end up a happily married couple!
Lets review your situation. Jane is 17 years old and John is 18 years old. You have been married one year and have a baby. Jane you said, “I just had a baby and I weigh 200lbs with stretch marks all over me and I don’t feel sexy”. He has had a problem with porn that he brought into the marriage and it has nearly destroyed your marriage. You both claim to be Christians but you do not go to church.
Jane you are hurt that your husband can get turned on by pictures but sometimes he does not get turned on by you. You said, "I tried to spice up our night life by adding toys and flavored lube one time we was fooling around and he was watching me play with a toy and he just went soft I cried and he said it wasn't me." What you experienced is something that single adults do not seem to understand until they get married. After the honeymoon, the newness of your spouse wears off and a husband and wife are not as sexually turned on by each other as they were before. Of course the longer the amount of time between orgasm the stronger the sexual desire becomes. Since your husband is masturbating with porn, this weakens his sexual desire tremendously. If he had not climaxed since the last time you both had had sex, he probably would have been very turned on by your playing with the sex toys.
So Jane, you have a right to be hurt that your husband is not saving his sexual energy for you! John should commit to saving all his sexual energy for having sex with you.
Unfortunately for some wives, this might seem like sex too often. Young men have a stronger sex drive than young women. I have been told that men reach their sexual peak at age 18 and women reach their sexual peak at age 35. What this means is that men at age 18 have the strongest sexual desire they will ever have in their life. After age 18, their sexual desire slowly decreases over the years. A woman's sexual desire increases up to age 35 and then levels off and slowly decreases over the years.
And when a woman has a child her sexual desire during and after pregnancy is normally weaker than normal.
I have been told that 80 percent of married Christian men struggle with porn and 75 percent of married Christian men masturbate regularly without their wife's knowledge.
If a husband feels sexually fulfilled, he will be much less tempted to look at porn. For a husband to feel sexually fulfilled he needs to feel his wife finds him sexually attractive and that she desires, looks forward to and enjoys having sex with him. Since most young women have a weaker sex drive than young men, sometimes they tend to make up excuses for not having sex, and they may even make comments like, "not again tonight, we just had sex last night," or other negative comments, and the husband eventually believes that his wife does not want to have sex and that she doesn't find him sexually attractive. Once this happens enough times, the husband begins to not feel emotionally sexually fulfilled and so he subconsciously starts expending his sexual energy elsewhere, subconsciously trying to meet that unmet emotional sexual need.
This is why Paul in 1 Corinthians 7:5 very strongly tells married couples to have sex regularly.
Something else that we should note is that men appreciate female beauty far more than women appreciate male beauty. Most men think the female body is beautiful and most women are neutral about the male body. Men like to look at the female body but women are neutral about looking at the male body. For this reason men are tempted to look at other women, but women are not so tempted to look at men who are not their husband. So women are not really better than men because they don't look at porn. The truth is that women are made differently and so they don't have any temptation to look.
I was surprised years ago to learn that 75 percent of all books sold, are sold to women, and are romance novels. Men don't care to read romance novels. Men are not better than women because they don't read romance novels. The truth is that men are made differently than women and so they don't have any temptation to read romance novels.
It is not so much that the wife is a moral person and the husband is a pervert, but rather it is that men are tempted in the area of sex, whereas women are tempted in other areas. For example, women are usually more tempted to covet new clothes and new houses and new furniture. Women might be more tempted to worry or get angry with their husband.
For a marriage to work, first we must not as the Bible says, "esteem ourselves higher" than our spouse. Both the husband and wife should recognize that they are both sinners and one is not really better than the other. The Bible teaches that if you break one law you are guilty of breaking all the laws.
Just because a spouse has a problem with a sin, does not mean the other spouse is better and it does not mean the spouse is justified in divorcing. And Jesus never intended lust to be grounds for divorce, but rather Jesus was pointing out that sin starts in the heart or mind.
In that same Sermon On The Mount, where Jesus said it was adultery to lust after a woman, Jesus also said when someone hits you on one cheek, you should turn and let them hit you on the other cheek; Jesus said, when someone takes your coat, you should give them your shirt too; and Jesus said, love your enemies (not just your spouse); and if someone forces you to walk a mile, Jesus said to walk two miles with them; and Jesus said more. And if we don't follow Jesus advice and you do get angry, Jesus said it is murder (Matthew 5:22).
And so if we are in the business of using Bible laws to condemn each other, if we get angry with our spouse for looking at porn, according to the same passage that we use to convict our spouse, Jesus said we are guilty of murder for being angry.
The good news about being a Christian is that we don't have to live under the law. Jesus died for our sins so that we no longer have to live under the law. And Jesus gives us His Holy Spirit to help us love each other and love God. All we have to do as Christians is believe that Jesus died for our sins and decide which things (1 Cor. 6:12 ) help us love each other and others best; and do those things.
We don't have to condemn our husband for looking at porn, we don't have to condemn our spouse for yelling at us, because Christ died for our sins and we know our spouse is sinning because they are not focused on loving God and loving others. All we have to do is to forgive our spouse pray that God will use us and use our spouse and focus on meeting our spouses needs so that they will not be tempted to sin again.
So before we get started on the solution to your problem, lets review the steps to becoming a Christian just in case you have never really fully believed in Jesus. You each need to recognize that you have sinned in your life. And that God our creator is perfect and that because of your sin, you cannot go live with God after you die, and because of your sin you will go to hell when you die. Then you each need to believe that Jesus is God's Son and that Jesus came down to earth, born of a virgin, and Jesus grew up and never sinned. And because Jesus was perfect he could die as a sinner in your place. Jesus died a sinner's death to take the punishment for your sins.
If you believe this, God will forgive you for your sin and you can begin to talk to God and God will hear you. And the Bible teaches that when you believe in Jesus, God the Holy Spirit comes into your mind and conscience and begins to reshape the way you think. The Holy Spirit begins to mold you into how God would like you to act. As you study the Bible and go to church to learn about God and fellowship with other believers, the Holy Spirit will change your desires and as the Bible says (2 Cor 5:17), "old things will pass away, behold all things will become new."
So what are the key things you need to do? First, admit you both are sinners. Second, believe that Jesus died and has forgiven you for your sins. Third, forgive each other. Fourth, start praying to God to help you. Fifth, start reading the New Testament. Sixth, begin going to church regularly and get involved at church.
Now, for some ideas that will help your marriage. The first thing is for your husband to stop looking at porn. This is a bad habit that hurts you Jane. So John, you need to commit to Jane that you will stop looking at porn.
Now Jane, you are angry with your husband because he looked at porn. You said you feel he is "cheating mentally" on you. You said, "it makes me sick to my stomach to think that I believed him when he said that I was the most beautiful thing he has ever seen and my nude body was the only one he could ever look at." You are 17. At 17 a girl is the most beautiful she will ever be. So I am sure you are beautiful. But please be honest. Why are you angry with your husband? Is it from fear he will leave you? Is it from some other emotion? The only emotion I can think of that would cause anger would be jealously. We all get jealous when our spouse thinks someone else is attractive. We like to think that we are the only one in the world that they think is attractive. You also indicated you are a little afraid he might go out and physically commit adultery. You said, "I'm afraid it will go from porn to reality sex and physically cheating on me once porn gets boring to him." Fear and jealous are normal human instincts of our flesh. God wants you to trust Him and trust your husband. If you could trust God that even though your husband looked at these pictures, he still loves you and wants to make your marriage work, could you forgive him?
Jane, you must believe you are a beautiful woman. But you must admit that there may be other women in the world that are more beautiful than you - even from your husband's eyes. It is vanity, to think we are the most attractive person in the world. The Bible says to "not esteem ourselves higher than others" - this means we should not think we are better than others. So we must humble ourselves and admit to ourself and to your spouse that there may be more beautiful people in the world. My wife is 54 years old and while I think she is beautiful I know she would not win the "Miss America" contest. At some point in our life we all have to admit that it is enough that our spouse loves us, and we can give up our fantasy that we are the most attractive person in the world.
Next, Jane you need to recognize that the anger you have towards your husband is really from jealousy, fear, and feeling bad that you are overweight and have stretch marks, rather than from righteous anger. In the Sermon On The Mount where Jesus said it was adultery to look at a woman with lust, Jesus also said that it was murder to be angry. It doesn't do any good to throw laws around at each other. The Bible is full of laws, enough laws to condemn anyone and everyone. In that same passage (Matthew 5), after Jesus gave many rules people could not keep - as if they were not enough, Jesus said, "Be perfect as God is perfect." So for all those who try to keep the law, Jesus threw in one last law, just to make sure everyone knew that there is no way they could measure up to God's standards by keeping the law.
But towards the beginning of that same "Sermon On The Mount", in Matthew 5:17, Jesus said He came to fulfill the law. Paul tells us in Galatians 3:9 that the law was only there to point us to Christ - to show us we are not perfect and that we need to be forgiven for our sins. And the apostle Paul explains also in the New Testament that when we believe in Jesus we are no longer under the law but under Grace (Romans 6:15 ). Under Grace we simply love God and others. And the primary way we show God we love Him, is by loving others.
Under God's new plan there is no room for us to be angry at each other. Why? Because Jesus has forgiven our spouse for all their sins. And Jesus asks us to do the same. Jesus says if we don’t forgive others (including our spouse), He will not forgive us.
So the primary way a husband and wife show they love God is by loving each other. A husband and wife each have distinct needs. A wife needs to feel loved and appreciated and needed. And a husband needs to feel respected and have his sexual needs met. If both the husband and wife are true Christians and understand God's Grace so they don't judge each other, and they are thankful to God for saving them and they want to please God by acting in ways that please God, then the couple will begin to have self-control and focus on the needs of each other and there won't be many problems in the marriage.
John, you indicate you want to save your marriage and love your wife but you have a strong temptation to look at porn. You said, "I want her to know that it's all over and I will never do that again its all in the past but I need help on quitting, porn is killing us. My wife is honest, loyal, and she has stuck to every word of our vows. Why can't I be that way to her what is wrong with me?"
Freedom from law, brings freedom to live for Christ, freedom to have your needs met and freedom to be honest with your wife.
John, you said, "I can't be honest with her because I don't want her to hate me." You said, "I think about their flawless nude bodies and I like it a lot. I don't want to make her cry no more."
The truth is that you like to look at these beautiful pictures of flawless bodies. But you are afraid to tell your wife because you know the jealousy makes her get angry and hurts her. Her self-confidence is wrapped up in her appearance. And you love her and don't want to hurt her.
Jane, you need to put your self-confidence in God and in trusting that your husband loves you. It may be that the fear of thinking your husband might leave you, this causes you to get angry and try and stop him from looking. But if you trust God that God will help your husband mature, and trust your husband that he truly loves you and will not leave you. Admit that though there are other more beautiful women in the world and that he likes to look at them, even so, he will never leave you.
Love in marriage is earned. If I looked at porn my wife would not be afraid that I would leave her. She would actually let me look at it if I felt it would help me be a better husband. I don't look at porn, not because of a set of rules. I don't look at porn, because it is not profitable in my walk with loving my wife, God others.
But, love in marriage is earned. In a young marriage, the husband and wife have to trust each other more because they don't have a history of 20 or 30 years of faithful marriage to bank on - they don't have much earned love to rest their trust on.
If a husband and wife truly are Christians and understand God's Grace they can trust God in a young marriage, but most Christians don't understand God's Grace and so they their love for each other is not very deep.
So here is what I suggest you both do. First get saved as described above. Second, Jane and John, promise each other that you will try your best to save all your sexual energy for when you are with your spouse. And in return, each of you promise to always enjoy wanting to give your spouse sex and sexual attention, whenever your spouse wants it.
Next, realize that in your marriage bed you can try different things to help each other enjoy sex more. Be willing to try different things to spice up each other's sex lives. Notice whether those things help you better love each other and be more emotionally stable the next day so that you can better serve God and others. A sexually satisfied husband makes a better servant for Christ.
One thing you can do is try reading or listening to our MarriageRomance.com love stories together in bed. They can add spice to your marriage. In the future we plan to have marriage love story videos available on DVD for married couples to use in their bedroom.
I have been told that 80 percent of married Christian men struggle with looking at porn. So Jane, your husband's problem is shared by most other Christian men. The solution is for the husband and wife to realize that they have freedom in the marriage bedroom.
As Christians, the rule we live by is (1 Cor. 6:12) "All things are permissible, but not all things are profitable." If something is not condemned by God in the Bible and it helps us be happier in our marriage, then it is probably ok. God does not condemn nudity in the Bible. Nudity was actually common in Bible times.
So what if you and your spouse thought that watching a video with nudity together in bed, would help John stop looking at porn, and thus be profitable. Would that be Biblical ok? The problem is that that rated R and rated X videos available today are immoral, not because of the nudity, but because of how they were made and because of what they promote.
The Biblical guidelines for erotic material are as follows:
If it took immorality to make it - God hates sin and we should to - so we should not watch it. For example if a video shows an unmarried couple having sex or shows homosexuality or bestiality, then it is immoral and we should hate it.
If the erotic material promotes or condones immoral behavior such as sex before marriage or cheating or sex outside of marriage, then it is promoting sinful activity and God hates sin and so should we. We should not read or watch it.
If the erotic material causes us to covet what we see, so that we no longer love our spouse and we want to go physically cheat on our spouse, then we should not read or watch it.
But if the erotic material is moral, such as love between a husband and wife, and we read or watch it with our spouse in bed, and it helps our marriage love be stronger, then it is "profitable" and it is honoring to God.
So moral marriage love story videos would have romantic background music with lots of romance and moral marriage love between a husband and wife in the video. Most likely both you and your wife would be turned on by watching one in bed together while you caressed each other.
John, if you knew that Jane looked forward on Friday nights to watching a moral erotic marriage loves stories video with you, that had lots of nudity in it, would you loose your desire to look at porn? I would think you would.
Currently I know of no place you can find moral marriage love stories videos to help you in your marriage.
We have a video project in progress, where married couples video tape themselves acting out loves stories from MarriageRomance.com and then they send them to us and we are putting together a DVD of the love stories. When we have enough we will be making available a moral marriage love stories DVD to help Christian marriages.
Until then, John, see if listening or reading the stories with your wife at night is enough incentive to help you kick your habit. Someone said you can't stop habits; you have to replace habits with something else. So replace your habit of looking at porn, by looking forward to having self-control to please your wife and by looking forward to having intimacy with her and reading or listening to stories from MarriageRomance.com together. The stories will most likely excite your wife which will cause you to be excited too.
In review, you both need to get saved and begin praying together and reading the New Testament together and going to church regularly. You John need to have self-control and not look at porn while alone. And decide to save all your sexual energy for your wife - no more masturbating. Your wife needs to admit that it is not adultery for you to look at pictures of other women, any more than it is murder for her to get angry with you. She needs to let you look at pictures with her if you promise to save them for when you are having sex together. She should not get jealous because they are only pictures and you are devoted to her, not to the women in the pictures. It is better if you don't need the pictures at all, and try reading or listening to stories together instead. John, if you want to really enjoy your wife, have the self-control to not masturbate or look at porn until you have sex with her. Then you will really get turned on by her because you waited and your hormones will have had time to build up. If you don't get turned on by her, then wait longer between sex. If you wait about 3 or 4 days you will get very turned on by her. It was only the frequency of masturbating that made you not sensitive to your wife's teasing you.
So couple, decide what works for you as a couple, what is profitable, what will help you both be happy and sexually satisfied with each other. Try to avoid immoral erotic materials because they promote immorality, they sear your conscience they make you feel guilty and because God wants you to be Holy and God hates immoral sinful materials and you should too.
And Jane, remember that in 1 Corinthians 7:5 the apostle Paul said, “Do not deprive each other, except perhaps by mutual consent for a time, to be free for prayer, but then return to one another, so that Satan may not tempt you through your lack of self-control.”
Don't let emotions control your sex drive. This is not "profitable". Paul instructs married couples to not withhold sex from each other. If your emotions are keeping you from having sex regularly with John, you are setting him up for "a lack of self-control". It is better to find a way to bring your emotions in line with God's will for your marriage than it is to cause John to be tempted to go to porn.
I pray God will guide you to a good church and bless your marriage as you both seek Him. You both seem to be devoted to your marriage and so I know God can really bless your marriage as you forgive each other and begin to have self-control and love for each other.
Please write back if you have further questions or comments.
God Bless
|
|