How To Deal With Porn In A Marriage, In A Healthy Way

Got a question from a wife about her husband's porn addiction.

In general, the platitude is to stay away from porn. For a variety of reasons.

But I'm going to give a grounded answer she (and hopefully others) can actually use:

1. Don't shame him.

It's counterintuitive, I know. But understand something: If it is truly an addiction as you allege, then he can't just "drop it."

Meanwhile, when it comes to *anyone*'s sexuality, shame has never and will never accomplish anything tangible besides repression, which will manifest in a variety of different horrific forms in other ways later.

Instead, view the porn as an opportunity, while treating it as a holistic psychoanalytical engineering problem:

2. Assess what kind of porn he's looking at, and whether there is any resemblance in the subjects of the images or videos of you.

Assuming it's even women he's looking at, do they vaguely look, sound, etc. like you?

They either do or they don't.

If they do, good news: Your husband is certainly attracted to you, which means the porn situation is totally fixable. He merely has unrequited desires he would like to explore with you, and you need to have more sex.

His porn addiction will dissipate the moment you address it at this source. He won't have the "ammo" to even care about porn if he's "spending" it all in *you*.

So, simply have more sex. *Learn* something about his unrequited desires and fantasies about you in such a way as to use the porn to catapult your sex life.

And I'll be real and vulnerable here: I work at a computer all day. I talk about women. Just by the sheer nature of my own work will I see a porn image or video every once in a while in my feeds. And, trust and believe, coming from a military background like I do? Virtually *everybody* in the military watches porn (women included). What else do we do on deployments to prevent breaking laws, catching STDs, and committing war crimes?

I *confirm* I'm not spending anything on OnlyFans or anything like that, *but* every once in a blue moon I might fall weak with the free porn (just being real) just through the sheer unavoidable vicinity of it as the nature of the Internet itself.

And whenever that happens, I don't hide it from my wife or anything like that (which is why I can write about this openly). I apply exactly what I'm saying to do in this post: I don't condone porn morally; I simply have realistic compassion for the shortcomings of mortal human beings. Don't watch porn, but if/when you fall weak, don't crucify yourself, either.

Learn something about yourself from it and evolve your real life accordingly. Get back on the horse. It's not the end of the world.

On the *rare* occasion I give in, you can be sure it's never anyone who doesn't remind me or resemble my wife in some way, shape, or form. In fact, that's actually what does it: I'll see some hot European chick wearing some lingerie, or some office fantasy (because my wife is my secretary), that catches my eye.

I'll click away for a long time, but eventually fall weak after enough subliminal exposure in the off-corner of my screen or right when a page loads or something, or when I'm browsing Substack or something.

But then what happens? I end up *buying* that same (or similar) lingerie for my actual wife and actually living out what I liked about that fantasy...in reality.

...which then simply leads to me taking charge in initiating more sex with my wife. (And trust me... *she doesn't mind* lololol)

And there it is. Problem hollistically solved. An authentic aspect of my shadow, healthily, well-integrated. I'll end up having so much actual sex that I legitimately won't even *think* about porn. For a long time. Because I'd be *drained* at that point, it becomes easy to just click away or something.

A man becomes hyper-efficient with strong conscious reasoning if his woman keeps him in a state of suspended post-nut clarity.

However, if they do *not* look like you...that opens a whole other can of psychoanalytical worms: A man should be attracted to his wife.

If there is no resemblance whatsoever, it *immediately* begs the question why. Where was his self-esteem, where were his personal standards, in committing himself to a woman who doesn't really do it for him?

Do with that what you will.

But, in summation, every problem is secretly an opportunity *if* you choose to look at it that way. Don't shame. Don't repress.

...*understand* and healthily integrate. That's the cure.

Because it's actually the shame-based platitudes that keep Jungian shadows unindividuated, which keeps the demand for such content in existence, which keeps the porn industry alive.

It only exists because there is demand there for it; so the solution is to eliminate the demand.

If all the world took this stance, the entire porn industry would virtually disappear.