She is not much to look at, the Venus of Willendorf1. Short, morbidly obese by today’s standards, and with a knit cap completely covering her head, she is a four-inch, naked, stone figurine. But in 30,000 BCE, she may have been Paleolithic man’s porn. My, how times have changed. With the advent of the internet, pornography has flourished and spread across the 21st century. For some men, the images and sounds are too strong to be ignored, and they develop a porn addiction. A sex or porn addiction could be the end of your marriage. What then?

Pornography Addiction

Pornography may not have been invented in America, but we certainly have perfected the “art” form. A 2012 study estimated that roughly 30 percent of all the data transferred on the internet was pornography. What harm can that do?

Experts at Enough is Enough point to correlations between porn watching and higher levels of narcissism. In addition to thinking too much of yourself, your addiction to porn may be making some aberrant concepts a bit more attractive to you:

  • Anal sex
  • Extramarital affairs
  • Violence against women
  • Incest or incestuous fantasies

It may be no surprise that your wife wants to leave you if your addiction to porn has transmogrified you from a sweet, doting husband to the kind of guy you would warn your daughters to avoid.

Getting Help for Your Porn Addiction

If you do not want your wife to leave you, you need to fight as hard for your marriage as you do for the computer mouse. Addiction to porn has several challenges to it, depending on your situation:

  • You lie to your wife — According to Fight the New Drug, partners who routinely lie to their spouses about porn become callous, and their marital partners feel betrayed, abandoned, and ashamed
  • You both use porn — The same experts point out that being open about porn does not guarantee a healthy relationship; you both could become less intimate, less satisfied, and less attracted to each other
  • Porn can be expensive — Even with so many “free” sites, porn is an expensive habit; porn in the workplace costs American businesses roughly $38 a month per employee, says Webroot, with $3,075.64 a second spent on it!

Porn addiction is real, and needs to be treated as an addiction, not a behavioral choice. If you want to keep your wife and lose the porn, begin by being honest. Recognize you are using porn to self-soothe, or to self-stimulate due to depression, anxiety, or stress. Make a list of positives (“more money, happier life, happier wife, closer relationships”) and focus on those as you consciously cut the ties to porn.

And Then, There’s Sex Addiction

In some small way, a sex addiction is less damaging to a marriage than a porn addiction, because at least you seek the company of your spouse to get your “fix.” Most of the time.

A sex addiction often takes you beyond your own home, to other women (and men). Here the problem is not simply a betrayal of confidence. You risk your own and your wife’s health through casual (and dangerous) sex with other partners.

Again, dealing with a sex addiction goes beyond thinking of it as a “character flaw.” Sex addiction is traumatizing not just to your spouse, but to others. According to Rehabcenter.net, paraphilic behaviors can cause you to seek out transvestites, children, sadists, masochists and total strangers on whom you inflict your aberrations. Your spouse becomes just another meaningless encounter against a backdrop of ever-increasing bizarre behavior.

A law firm cannot offer the sort of professional counseling qualified therapists can give, but mental health professionals can recommend strategies for the spouse married to a sex addict:

  • Try to get your spouse to keep you in her life
  • Educate yourself about your addiction, and take responsibility for it
  • Find a support group
  • Take better care of your mind and body
  • Recommit to boundaries

Divorce and Porn or Sex Addiction

A divorce based on your own porn or sex addiction could provide your spouse with a fault ground, according to the Virginia Bar Association. While you may not have gone so far as to commit buggery, you may have committed adultery, committed and been convicted of a felony in your pursuit of self-pleasure, or committed sodomy. You may have provided her with reason to fear bodily harm, or been deliberately cruel to her. Under Code of Virginia § 20-91, the six fault grounds could allow your spouse to move quickly to separate from you and divorce you.

If your wife is only threatening to leave you, and you want your marriage to survive, you may want to seek a divorce lawyer’s help so you know what legal moves are available to her. Better to be educated about the process than caught blindly off guard. Better to admit to and deal with your addiction than pretend she will continue to “look the other way.”

Reach Out to the Divorce Lawyers for Men

Legally speaking, you have important decisions to make, and you should do so with wise counsel, not your bar buddies or a bevy of exotic dancers. Seek substantive help from both a mental health professional and a legal expert. Your path ahead is challenging. You will not likely recover on your own.

We are not therapists. Yet when you call 757-383-9184 to reach the attorneys at The Firm For Men, we will treat you with the same respect and professionalism a mental health therapist would. We have seen just about everything in our practice, so your addiction to porn or sex is not going to raise our eyebrows. Contact us online or stop by our offices to schedule your consultation with divorce lawyers for men. We can help you with the legal woes and encourage you to get help with the mental health solutions you need.

1. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Venus-of-Willendorf