Porn and Marriage

[vagabondprince]

It has been a long time since i've been active on this forum, but i've been drawn back in search for opinions to a moral dilemma I've been faced with. The basis for this moral dilemma coming to a head is that my wife recently discovered my porn stash, and in trying to change my ways, i've been fighting a mental battle pertaining to the ethics of porn and the married man. It's summed up best, albeit longwindedly in a post on another forum i posted on, so i'm just going to copy and paste. forgive me if it doesn't quite flow:

...

My motivation to beat my [porn] addiction has come solely for the love of my wife. If it wasn't for her, i don't know if i'd even know i had a problem, and would have lived at least another good chunk of my life in a blissfuly ignorant fog about my addiction. it has been a major struggle to overcome my principles up to this point that told me it was okay. I saw nothing majorly wrong with what i was doing except for the amount of time wasted with it. and that wasn't even that bad, because i easily would have spent that time zoned out in front of the television or playing video games. But i fell in love, and got married, so what had been a seemingly harmless pastime became an infringement on the vows of faithfulness i took in marrying my wife.

I love my wife. Before falling in love with her, i was a very selfish person, looking out for number one and doing what made me happy. But after falling in love, my sole purpose in life became making her happy, doing anything possible to make her feel like the best, most important person in the world. I focused on every little detail that I could to please her. In bed, this translated to giving her as much pleasure as a person can take each time we made love. The feeling I got from giving her such pleasure was a more satisfying, glowing feeling than even orgasming. in fact, i would have been happy not climaxing if she didn't care about it, but she also wanted me to feel the extacy she was feeling, meaning that my orgasming was an important part of the love making process. When directly in her presence, my addiction seemed to disappear; that primal urge for sexual gratification wasn't there. It was like two different worlds.

But while that primal urge seemed to disappear while I was with her - physically in the same space - that urge still remained while i was alone. it was like there were two separate people living in my head, one who was madly in love with my wife, and one who was a horn dog that lusted for the sight of women and for sexual gratification. Somehow, i had myself convinced that lusting for women, and satisfying that lust through masturbating was not cheating, and was not a violation of my marriage pact, because i did not fulfill that lust by sleeping with other women, and did not devote a lick of emotion beyond lust toward any woman, live or pixelated. It was hard to wrap my head around the wrongness of looking at porn when i was confronted with it when my wife discovered that i looked at it. from my foggy point of view, i did not see how my looking at porn was an infringement of my marriage, and thought only that she was somewhat misguided in thinking that my looking at porn meant that she was not good enough for me, and didn't fulfill that sexual satisfaction part of things for me. In truth, because of the separation between love and lust i felt, i did not want her to fulfill that lust side of things for me, as i saw it as a base feeling, and that if she did fulfill it, it would somehow ruin my perfect image of her. So i went on using porn to satisfy my lust, thinking as long as she didn't know what i was doing, i could go on giving her all the attention and love she deserved, and that would be enough.

It's not enough though. And this is still something I'm having to work to rewire in my brain, that satisfying that primal urge by looking at porn is inherently wrong, and is an infringement on my marriage pact, and not just that as long as she doesn't know i'm doing it things will be fine. I am trying to figure out how to do this, because so far it's been a vicious battle in my mind trying to figure out what i can tell myself, how i can convince myself that it is not right to think of other women in a sexual way, to give the love side of my brain some fodder when it's trying to convince my lust side to chill out. I'm open for thoughts and discussion. Please provide your $0.02.

[EvilEvilKitten]

You and your wife have serious issues, buddy. Has she given up romance novels yet? Does she watch love movies? Is she getting her "emotional fulfillment" in other ways than in your arms? If so - then yes, she's cheating just in the same way as you are with your pornography.

News flash: pornography is NOT real. Every pixel of those women has been 'toastered' into perfection. Need longer legs? Hey presto! Pornography is completely fictitious.

Lust debases nothing and no one. Lust is there to help women put up with men and men with women. The human species would have died out long ago if not for lust. Yes, we like to color it up in romantic pastels by calling it making love, la la la, but face it - lust is GREAT!! Hence the institution of marriage to keep men from stealing eachother's wives and fathering children left and right - society trying to keep life orderly. If anything lust draws people together into a harmonious, if short, relationship.

As a stop gap to 'curing your addiction' - only have pornography that depicts your wife. The more absurd the position or the outfit the more she'll lighten up and realise 1. you are not addicted, and 2. pornography is silly. Then, you might realise the same things.

P.S. I have been married to the same man for 30 years. Does he look at pornography? I neither know nor care. He is mine as I am his - and for all time. Pixels on paper will not change that.

[Mr. Saint]

Here is a very good research paper on the subject. It is a bit long but was published in a peer reviewed journal. I suggest you read it. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/m...38/ai_84866946

[EvilEvilKitten]

Getting back to basics, you should also read this: http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/sexualit.htm
since people do as they believe.