You Can Overcome Porn!
- Matthew Powers
- Jul 8, 2024
- 3 min read
If you’ve seen how porn hurts your marriage or relationships, here are a few steps you can take toward recovery. And, yes, healing from the negative effects of pornography is possible–not easy–but possible.
1. Start the conversation.
No matter what your relationship status, the first step is talking about it. Whether you’re seriously dating, engaged, recently married, or married for a long time, if you haven’t talked about pornography and what role it has in your relationship, you really should. What we keep in the darkness by remaining silent grows in power.
For spouses: How to Talk to Your Husband About His Porn Use
For strugglers: How to Confess Your Porn Addiction to Your Spouse
2. Realize your spouse controls his or her actions, and you control yours.
If you find out porn use has been a part of your relationship, you now have a healing journey ahead of you. No matter what you discover, remember that we each control our actions and responses to others’ behavior. And no matter whether your spouse chooses to pursue recovery or not, you can get started on individual health.
Setting boundaries will be vital for both of you to recover from porn use or the betrayal of porn use. We have written extensively on this topic before, so check out the following articles to learn more:
3. Do the work to recover and rebuild trust.
The individual struggling with porn use has recovery work to do to quit porn. But sometimes it’s easy to focus solely on sobriety and forget that the marriage relationship needs attention too.
Or betrayed spouses can focus so much on helping their spouse recover that they forget to spend time on their own recovery–betrayal trauma is a real thing and needs attention.
Learn more about how porn use impacts individuals and their spouse:
4. Bring others in to your story.
Support groups—both for the addict and for the spouse—can be a huge help in recovery. More important than the practical tips and accountability they bring, support groups provide a safe place for you to connect with others who are in your similar situation.
Accountability partners, or allies, have also been a key relationship for those who’ve successfully overcome porn addiction. When you have a person you meet with regularly, who’s a phone call or text away during any moment of temptation, who asks you the hard questions and reminds you of who you want to be, it transforms your recovery process.
5. Make honesty an integral part of your marriage.
If you’ve been hiding a porn addiction for years, your spouse may not believe the words you say for a while. You need to fight to make honesty an integral part of your relationship. Many couples have found an accountability software like Covenant Eyes can help bridge this trust gap–it sends a detailed report of your internet activity to the individuals of your choice. This report provides an extra layer of verification and allows you to recruit trusted friends into your recovery journey.
6. Remember that hope exists!
I’d be lying if I said every marriage or relationship impacted by porn is eventually restored. Rebuilding a marriage destroyed by porn is hard work, and it takes commitment from both parties. You need to know this upfront.
But, you also need to know this upfront: HOPE EXISTS for marriages devastated by porn use! We’ve heard from hundreds and hundreds of couples whose marriages have made it through, and they often come out stronger on the other side. You can hear from four of these couples in our free ebook Hope After Porn.
Porn use does not have to mean the end of a marriage. Recovery is possible, and we’re here to help you along the way!
*This is from an article on Covenanteyes.com.
Comments