Can Trust be Restored after Porn?

We’ve probably all heard sermons and marriage  seminars talk about the respect and love passage in Ephesians 5:33, but the quandary is how to live by those words when a husband is involved in the unrespectable behaviors of sexual addiction and, because of them, his wife feels anything but loved?  And . . . why is it so important anyway?

The core emotional needs of men and women are . . . surprise, surprise . . . RESPECT for the man and for the woman . . . SECURITY (I would call it “love”, but that word has come to mean so many different things that it is easy to misinterpret).

“How can I respect him?” is, without a doubt, the most common question we hear from wives of sex addicts. The one we hear most often from their husbands has got to be “Why is my pornography use such a big deal to my wife ?. . . It’s not like I’m having an affair or anything . . . it’s just some pictures. “

Well, as we mentioned earlier, security is a wife’s core emotional need.  Security (which feels like love to a woman) is needed in two specific areas: financial and relational. Even if she has her own income, financially she needs to feel like she is being taken care of—someone is watching her back and she won’t have to worry about whether she and her children will have a safe home and enough of the things they need to live and thrive.

The other security component, however is even more important than tangible comforts. She needs to feel like she is “special”—she wants assurance  that she is chosen above all others—that she is seen, heard, pursued, and irreplaceable.  She yearns to hear “you can count on me” from her husband.

When her husband forgets to take out the garbage like he promised, it shakes her confidence in the fact that she can actually count on him for bigger, more important things. Even though the actual “offense” is miniscule, it makes her wonder whether she should trust him at all.

But . . . when her husband is staring at women on the street, or looking at pornography, it’s not him she is doubting, it is herself. Most wives come to the conclusion that if he needs to look at someone else,  SHE must not be good enough.  She certainly doesn’t feel chosen or irreplaceable any longer. Even though the women may only be pictures on a page or a computer screen, they are competition. They are the ones that have captured her husband’s attention,  instead of her. It feels very personal and very life-shaking.  It hurts in the deepest parts of her soul. She no longer feels the security of being the object of his love and protection.

Even though I cognitively knew that sexual addiction was not about lust or wanting another woman  over me, I felt those same doubts about myself every time Bruce had a slip. I felt so rejected and vulnerable. My first reaction was always to find a way to protect myself since I wasn’t sure I could count on Bruce at that moment. That protection sometimes looked like anger, other times like emotional or physical distancing—whatever helped me feel safe again. Unfortunately, my responses seldom looked like I was believing in him, which made him feel disrespected and pull away from me as well.

Over time, Bruce and I learned that we, like so many couples, made way too many assumptions about what the other person was needing or thinking. The only way we could get to the truth and stop hurting each other more was to turn toward each other in these difficult times. Reaching out to the one that feels like an enemy goes against all our survival instincts, but it is only as we took that risk and began to talk about what we were feeling and fearing that we were able to start rebuilding the trust we had lost.

“However each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.” – Ephesians 5:33