If you feel like you’re losing your man to porn addiction and just can’t compete against 18-year-old bodies with breasts that defy gravity, this is for you.
“We haven’t had sex in 15 years…” she complained.
I could hear the anger (and hint of sadness) in her voice.
“He just sneaks off to the study every day, locks himself away and masturbates to porn instead.”
Sally told me that she lost Tom to porn when they installed DSL internet in their home 15 years ago.
“I’m 55 and after two kids, my body isn’t what it used to be. Tom’s replaced me with teenage bodies with breasts that defy gravity. He’s making a mockery of our marriage!”
Sally was participating in one of my online coaching programs (Tom wouldn’t join her) and reached out for help…
WARNING: What follows is candid, edgy and certainly not right for everyone.
“HOW DO I STOP HIM WATCHING PORN AND START HAVING SEX WITH ME?”
Sally had tried everything she could think of…
She had tried seducing him… dressing up in sexy lingerie. As a last resort, she guilt-tripped him for watching porn instead of being with her.
She was at her wit’s end and had almost left her marriage several times.
Nothing she tried worked – and it was obvious why.
Although it appeared (from the outside) that Sally was a loving wife trying to fix her marriage, she was going about it in a far from loving fashion.
Sally was making her husband wrong, making porn wrong, making porn actresses wrong and making her body wrong – to name a few.
There’s a wise teaching from Carl Jung…
“What you resist, will persist.”
- Carl Jung
I knew that the first thing I had to do was to get Sally to stop resisting porn and stop blaming her husband. By doing so she was playing the victim role, which kept her feeling helpless and him feeling ashamed.
I needed to change her perspective to a more empowering one – to see porn as a blessing and her husband as her hero instead.
I know… quite a tall order.
PORN AS A BLESSING - HIM AS THE HERO
ME: “Has Tom ever cheated on you?”
SALLY: “No. He’s a good man and can’t keep secrets. I’d know if he had cheated.”
ME: “So you mean to tell me that your husband has gone 15 years without sex and hasn’t had an affair or even a one-night-stand?”
SALLY: “That’s right”
ME: “He sounds like a SAINT to me!”
SALLY: “Uh, I guess…”
ME: “And why do you think he didn’t cheat?”
SALLY: “Because he was getting his sexual needs met with porn! Duh!”
ME: “Exactly. My point exactly.”
SALLY: “What do you mean?”
ME: “Sounds to me like porn kept Tom at home and prevented him from having an affair. Porn might just have saved your marriage…”
SALLY: (long silence) “I never looked at it that way before…”
ME: “So perhaps you could consider being grateful for those 18-year-old actresses that saved your marriage from an affair year after year for 15 years…”
SALLY: (more silence) “That’s a mind-f#ck, but you’re right. I can see it that way…”
Sally was coachable and got it. Phase 1 complete.
The next thing I needed her to do was join forces with Tom – to get on his team instead of relating to him as the perpetrator.
The only way Tom was going to go to Sally for sex (instead of his laptop) was if he felt safe and accepted by her… unconditionally accepted, warts and all – and that meant porn and all too.
By shaming his use of porn, Sally had been unintentionally pushing Tom further and further away – re-enforcing his feeling that she did not accept him.
I needed Tom to see Sally as a source of safety, fun, and feminine sexiness, not as a source of shame and blame.
So I asked Sally to take responsibility for her part in keeping Tom’s porn habit in place.
I asked her to apologize. Something like this:
“Honey, I’m sorry for pushing you away and forcing you to hide your sexuality from me.
I’m sorry for having shamed you and blamed you. I want you to feel safe to be ALL of who you are around me. I want you to know that I love and accept ALL of you – including your attraction to porn.
I’m want us to have a fulfilling sex life where we both get out needs met…”
You get the idea. Sally needed to make the first move, because Tom clearly wasn’t going to.
REMOVING SHAME
I once dated a woman who was a recovering bulimic.
One night she confessed that for weeks she had been throwing up her food after dinner and had been hiding it from me.
My heart ached to see her squirm with shame as she told me.
I wanted her to know that I loved and accepted her, bulimic or not.
So I asked her to teach me how to be bulimic like her.
I was prepared to go to the bathroom and stick my finger down my throat with her while she purged.
I figured that making her bulimia acceptable would remove her shame around it.
I was right.
My willingness to be bulimic with her made her feel safe and accepted and bonded us.
I recommended the same thing to Sally:
BRINGING PORN TO THE BEDROOM
I asked Sally if she would be willing to watch porn with Tom.
Done with finesse, I hoped that this move would demonstrate Sally’s acceptance and help Tom let go of his shame around watching porn.
I instructed Sally to be curious about what kind of porn he likes – to ask him why he likes it. Then, I recommended she get him aroused using porn and seduce him from his world, rather than trying to seduce him from her world.
My thinking was that after a while, Tom would begin to associate Sally with being sexually aroused.
Sally was excited by this idea.
She could see how she had shamed Tom and how she had forced him to hide his sexuality from her.
She could also see how she might actually enjoy watching porn with Tom.
Her only concern was that she was no longer attractive to Tom:
“But what about my body? I’m not 18 years old and my breasts have fed two kids?”
HOW TO BE A PORN STAR IN BED, WITHOUT DEGRADING YOURSELF
You don’t need to be an 18 year old porn star to be sexy, seductive and turn your man on.
You have everything you need to create sexual intimacy in a way no computer image ever can:
A real body, a real heart and a real mind.
Tom’s challenge was that his fantasy was more attractive to him than the reality of Sally…
…not because Sally is unattractive, but because Tom had trained himself (for 15 years) to get off to a flickering image on a screen…
If Tom is like most masculine men, then the thing that “gets him off” about porn is not just watching sex, but watching a woman surrender.
Think about it…
What does most heterosexual porn have in common?
Usually, it involves a dominant man taking a woman, claiming her, owning her, leading her.
The woman, on the other hand, is surrendering, spread open to receive him.
This is the sexual dance of masculine and feminine energy i.e. masculine penetrating and feminine surrendering.
NOTE: Of course, there are thousands of ways to express love sexually. I’m not saying this is the best way. I’m just pointing out that masculine men get turned on by feminine women surrendering.
When I use the term surrender, I am referring to the act of surrendering one’s need to lead, guide or control a sexual experience and handing it over to a trustworthy man.
You can learn more about harnessing masculine and feminine energy in my marriage repair program.
So I told Sally, “Check with Tom first, but my hunch is that Tom is turned on when you surrender to him and allow him to lead in bed. He doesn’t want to feel you strong and independent in the bedroom. Save that for work.
In bed, he wants to feel you soft, radiant and surrendering to him.
He wants you to let him take the lead and allow him to pleasure you. Your surrender makes him feel like a man, a warrior, your hero. Do that, and he’ll keep coming back for more…”
WHAT EVER HAPPENED WITH SALLY & TOM?
Nine months later, I called Sally out of the blue and tentatively asked her how things were going, hoping she would open up to me about her sex life.
She sounded surprised to hear from me and then went straight into:
“OMG! We’ve been having sex like bunnies! I did exactly what you said to do and it worked. I’ve been practicing being more feminine in the bedroom and leaving my masculine energy at work.
We are both loving it. I treat Tom like a king. It wasn’t easy, though. I had to give up being right and change myself without expecting him to change.
Your program really saved our marriage… even though Tom didn’t participate at all!”
My face hurt from grinning so much. My clients’ turnaround stories are what makes my work so fulfilling for me.
SIDE NOTE:
Porn is neither inherently good nor bad. I’ve seen porn used to improve sexual relationships and I’ve seen it destroy them.
Porn addiction was not the problem for Sally and Tom, but the symptom of a greater problem – the lack of sexual attraction between them which drove Tom to porn and Sally to despair.
By fixing the root cause of the problem (lack of attraction) rather than the symptoms (porn) Sally and Tom started had sex for the first time in 15 years and have created a healthy, fulfilling sex life.
If like Sally, you know that you need help fixing your relationship, join the next online relationship coaching program. Even if you’re the only one trying, this program will turn your relationship (and sex life) around.
If you only take one thing away from reading this post, my hope is that you find the courage to let go of being right and make the first move to fix your relationship.
I’ve been in a sexless marriage myself. At the time I justified it by telling myself that sex was not all that important.
Boy was I wrong… and it cost me my happiness, my health, my peace of mind and my marriage.
If you’re in a sexless marriage and you’re telling yourself that sex just isn’t all that important, STOP.
Don’t settle.
The spin-offs of fun, loving sex life are so far-reaching that you’ll wonder how you ever survived without one once you have it.
Here are some helpful questions you can ask yourself to take the first step in fixing your relationship from a porn addiction or any other issue:
- What am I resisting?
- Where am I not accepting my partner exactly as they are and as they are not?
- How can I demonstrate to my partner that I accept them?
- If I wasn’t waiting for my partner to go first, what is the most loving action I might take next?
Let me know which ideas stood out for you.
