By: Allie Joy Hudson
4 min read
“I Just Like Sex More Than Her”
According to sex-addiction therapist Dr. Linda Hatch, many men justify seeking out porn or an affair because they claim to “want more sex than my wife.”
This perspective makes it easy for men to take the blame off of themselves and place it on their wives instead. This isn’t a new perspective, in fact it goes back before antiquity:
An Ancient Denial
When Adam and Eve commit humanity’s first sin, they discovered the weight of choosing between good and evil. Consequently, they want no part in the deep shame and guilt that they feel.
We are told in the biblical account (Genesis 3), that Eve ate of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the only tree God had declared forbidden. Eve gave Adam, who was with her, the fruit to eat, and he joined her in disobedience to God.
When God confronts them, their first reactions are to blame someone else. Look at Adam’s words: “‘The woman whom You gave to be with me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate.’” Adam accuses his wife rather than taking responsibility for what happened at the tree. It’s not his fault, he claims, it’s hers.
“If Only She were Prettier”
As humans with a will bent towards satisfying our own pleasures and lusts, we often seek them out. Though sin feels good in the moment, we are quickly left feeling empty and worse off than we were before. We try to avoid the consequences that our behavior inevitably brings.
So, often when we are confronted with our sin, one of our first reactions is to shift the blame off of ourselves as soon as possible.
The same goes for men who watch pornography. (A similar pattern may be true in female pornography users, but this article solely focuses on male users.) Let’s look at Dr. Hatch’s quote again: Many men justify seeking out porn because they claim to “want more sex than my wife.”
When men internalize this way of thinking, it becomes easy to justify shifting the guilt of their unfaithfulness onto their wives. If only my wife were prettier or skinnier or more attentive to my sexual needs, then I would have no need to look elsewhere.
Her: “I’m not Enough”
This is an extremely dangerous way to think in that it takes the weight of a husband’s actions and then places his wife at fault. This can have traumatic effects on a marriage. This impacts both husbands and wives:
Many women struggle with wondering if they are beautiful enough, or to put it more succinctly, if they are enough. Comparison to other women is a daily battle. The thoughts of a woman’s worth are almost always present in her subconscious, and they creep into her conscious thoughts at least daily.
When a wife discovers that her husband is going to porn rather than to her to meet his desires, these fears and insecurities that she is already struggling with rise to the surface and can take years to finally go away. The lingering worry that she isn’t enough becomes a belief.
[In the way of a disclaimer, whether or not a woman is truly as sexually attentive as she should be does not make it okay for pornography to enter into a marriage. One sin never excuses another.]
Related: Does Porn Affect Our Real Lives
Him: “Sex My Way”
As far as men go, shifting blame for their porn obsessions off of themselves warps their mindsets too. While sexual fidelity to one’s spouse requires work and sacrifice, it builds an intimacy that lasts. It’s one of the most beautiful aspects of marriage.
However, when a man turns to porn, he trains his mind to seek “novelty” and “convenience” instead of actual human intimacy.
Mental:
Matt Fradd writes, “The porn lover has trained himself to believe that sex should be something on tap and made-to-order. He has bought into Burger King sex: he prefers it his way, right away. The problem is with him, not with his wife.”
In addition to changing the way that he views and seeks out sex, porn physically rewires a man’s mind and body.
According to Dr. Norman Doidge, humans have two pleasure systems: exciting pleasure and satisfying pleasure. When watching porn, a man’s brain produces higher and higher levels of dopamine because of the anticipation of consuming a wide variety of porn, satisfying his excitement-pleasure system. But, his satisfying-pleasure system needs the real act of sex and is thus left unfulfilled (Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself).
Physical:
A man’s body also responds negatively to porn usage. As the brain comes to need more and more to feel satisfied, the body responds in the same way. It becomes increasingly difficult for a man to reach climax when he actually engages in sex because of the way that porn has re-trained his brain.
We’re made to experience longing for and to find sexual satisfaction in our spouse. But when we depend on consumeristic sexual excitement, we damage our ability to know real sex. This phenomenon can be seen in the high number of cases of ED (erectile dysfunction) related to porn viewership.
Finding Real Worth and Real Justification
We see here that pornography rewires a man’s mind and body to become dependent on artificial, empty stimulation rather than true sexual intimacy and love. When he gets caught up in a porn addiction, it can be easy to justify a guy’s behavior by blaming his wife for not satisfying him properly. This behavior also causes the fears and doubts women already experience about their own beauty and value to make a haunted-home in the forefront of their minds.
Overall, porn usage leads to self-justification and blame on one partner’s side and self-doubt and feelings of worthlessness on the other. This creates a mutual isolation that is toxic to a flourishing sex life within marriage.
This is a very real scenario that needs to be discussed. But remember that we are not without hope. Through Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf, we died to sin. Our lust and feelings of worthlessness do not have to be master over us anymore. Jesus rewires our minds in healthy ways, restores our relationships, and aligns our desires with His.
And ultimately, Jesus’ death makes us pure before God. We no longer have to hide behind fruitlessly justifying our own sin and blaming others for it. And, His death shows us just how deeply loved and extremely valuable we are in the eyes of God. We are unable to justify ourselves before a holy God. So turn to Him. He is the only One who sets us free.
Porn destroys marriages, relationships, and it destroys identities. But we cannot serve two masters, and porn is no master worth serving. In Jesus, we find the dignity we’ve always longed for and the justification we’ve never been able to give ourselves.
Subscribe and Receive Our Weekly Blogs
Allie Joy Hudson is first and foremost a daughter of the King. She has been with Proven Men for over a year and serves in the position of Content Manager. Allie graduated from Liberty University with a Bachelor of Arts in English and minors in Spanish and Psychology. She completed her Senior Honors Thesis on the presentation of postmodern sexuality in short fiction. She enjoys reading, writing, playing the viola, singing, theatre, and photography. Allie is passionate about her ever-growing C.S. Lewis collection, cultivating relationships, and proclaiming truth in the twisted arena of postmodern sexuality. Allie lives in Pennsylvania and is overjoyed to be married to the love of her life.