I have a good friend whose family has been fractured and devastated by her husband’s porn usage.
She is a very strong Christian and has gone to great lengths to work on her marriage and keep her family together and safe, knowing that God can perform miracles.
However, about 10 years ago it got so bad that she needed to take her youngest children and flee. That flight took her to another state, which was her only option at the time as they had a family friend who opened her doors to the emotionally wounded mother and children.
The older children actually turned on her, to varying degrees, or she would have taken them too.
During this time she stayed in touch with her husband, all the while REFUSING to divorce but instead to wait on God to move on her husband’s heart to get clean from porn.
Six and a half years after she left they reconciled! Praise God!
It has not been an easy three and a half years since the reconciliation but God is very much at the center of their marriage. I wish every one of you could see the faith and strength in God my friend has, and the patience and grace she has as she walks with her husband.
I do a lot of research for my blogs and I periodically send her links to videos and articles and ask if she feels the advice given is accurate for her situation. Recently I shared just such an article and she shared it with her husband.
The article is entitled How Porn Creates Angry Men by Gary Thomas.
After reading it, her husband said:
“In all these years of struggling with porn I have never read anything that more accurately reflects how I have felt and how I have struggled than that article.
Tell Sheri that she MUST share that article on her website!”
I’d say that’s quite an endorsement, wouldn’t you?!
Before we get to the article I’d like to make a note here. I have another friend whose husband is angry all the time. I was going to share this article with her so I asked her if her husband showed any signs of sexual addiction and PRAISE GOD she did not feel that he did! Now maybe he does secretly but as a wife of many years she is not personally affected if he does. Maybe there is something else going on.
Please pray for both of these families after you read this article. There are many children involved.
If your husband is chronically angry and you’re not sure the cause, perhaps porn may be the culprit and is worth exploring.
And, if he IS battling a spirit of lust and is not ready to repent and turn from that sin, YOU can be actively covering your husband in prayer, pursuing a deeper relationship with God yourself, researching porn and how it affects men, and seeking wise council for yourself.
Below is the article I shared with my friend and her husband. Mr. Thomas has graciously allowed me to use his entire article here on my website, and for that I am grateful.
His website is www.garythomas.com/
The original article can be found at http://www.garythomas.com/how-porn-creates-angry-men/
Quote From My Friend
Before we visit Mr. Thomas’ article, I want to share a photograph my friend took of a lone tree and what she said about it:
“I love the isolation of the tree as men often feel very isolated and trapped in porn addiction. And all too often their family feels the same isolation.”
Gary Thomas’s Article
How Porn Creates Angry Men by Gary Thomas
Plenty of research has come out about porn’s effects on men—erectile dysfunction, making your brain less attracted to your wife, distorting a man’s view of women overall, etc. One I haven’t seen listed, though, is anger.
Men who regularly give in to porn often have a lot of anger toward their wives.
I’m not a therapist or a neuro-scientist. I’m writing from the perspective of one who does pastoral counseling. And in that context I have witnessed the effects of porn leading to anger with men and couples with whom I’ve met. Plenty of other researchers are far more qualified and perhaps more interested in writing about this, but I’ve gotten so many questions from the last blog post (where I mention porn’s connection to anger casually) that I thought I should follow up with this. I need to thank the men who have shared their struggles with me as well as those who have written in with specific insights for this particular post. I had thought of one or two reasons why porn might lead to anger, but the shared personal experiences of these men has opened my eyes to several more.
As a caveat, I am fully aware that a growing number of women use porn. I’m not mentioning women in this post because I haven’t personally worked with a single woman who has struggled with porn. I’m not sure if the neurological effect is the same, and I’m not qualified to say.
First, when a man acts with anger out of proportion to the situation at hand, it might simply be a fruit of the lack of self-control. Obedience and sin both shape us. Our choices ultimately shape our character, for good or for ill. If we demonstrate a lack of control in one area, it will manifest itself in all other areas. If we can’t control lustful desires, we won’t be able to control inappropriate expressions of anger.
Second, as one man who struggles in this area described it to me, “Porn is idolatry at its core. False gods of every kind disappoint.” When we’re disappointed, we get angry. Healthy marital sex leaves us with such a satisfied soul—not just immediately, but in the hours and even days that follow. Porn does the opposite—it over-promises and under-delivers, and leaves a man depleted and unsatisfied and therefore angry that he’s been “cheated” (even though he’s the one doing the cheating). It’s one of the most confounding spiritual things you’ll ever see—men truly hate the thing they’ve just done, but then they keep going back and doing it.
Third, particularly among spiritually sensitive men who are trying to walk in obedience, porn leads to spiritual anguish. God, in his kindness, isn’t likely to let a man become numb to the offense of porn unless that man makes himself callous over repeated and unrepentant use. At first, the man feels shame, guilt, remorse, and perhaps even self-loathing. That’s for a day or so. A little later, Satan comes in to make a bad situation worse, and, as the chief accuser says, “If only your wife were a little more affectionate…” “If only your wife were a little more available…” “If only your wife were a little more understanding…”
What this temptation does is give men something to blame their wives for. Now, in this twisted version, the spiritual anguish the man feels isn’t his fault for failing, it’s the wife’s fault for setting him up to fail. When a man finds himself getting angry all out of proportion for something the wife did, it might be because he is letting off steam from the spiritual anguish of falling several days before. He hates what he has done and become, and it’s his wife’s fault. Or so he thinks.
A fourth reason is really ugly, but it’s the sad truth: your husband is angry because he has learned to enjoy porn more than real sexual intimacy, and when you’re around, he can’t indulge. He has to hide from you, which makes him resent your very presence. This is the true assault on marriage: you become an impediment to his sexual satisfaction, not an expression of it. You’re “standing in the way” and that makes him angry.
A fifth reason porn causes anger is because of jealousy, but perhaps not like you think. Most women loathe the notion of their husband being physically attracted to the women in these videos, but I don’t think it’s primarily about physical attraction. Wives, let me assure you, porn has little to do with your appearance or value. I recently finished the autobiography of a famous 70s-era singer. On one occasion, he was regularly cheating on his wife while on tour with a steady girlfriend. His wife was a former model, and his girlfriend was a current model. Then he met an actress. While his wife was at home, he left his mistress in the hotel suite, saying he had a business meeting, and proceeded to cheat on his mistress with the actress. He managed to cheat on two women at once!
At one season in his life, he admitted that his driver would drop off one young woman at the airport, drive to another terminal, and pick up a new one to bring home. These were all stunningly beautiful women (according to popular stereotype).
That’s why I tell wives this behavior isn’t about you. It was never about you. This is behavior that even the most glamorous of women couldn’t affect. When your husband is addicted to the “new,” which is what porn does to his brain (research the “Coolidge effect”) no woman in the world can be beautiful enough to keep a man faithful because once she’s familiar, she’s no longer so alluring.
I hate even typing these words, because it represents a direct assault on God’s design for marriage—cherishing and being enthralled with one woman for life. And that’s the problem with the anger that comes from jealousy. The best kind of sex in marriage is when a husband is cherishing his wife and the wife is cherishing her husband. Sex affirms each other’s beauty, worth and desirability. Neurologically, the more you have sex with each other, the more you desire each other and the less attractive other women become. This is basic brain chemistry.
The jealousy that comes from watching porn reverses this. I think men get jealous that another woman is pleasing another man—the voyeur is getting sexually excited, but he’s not the one being touched or pleasured. He’s watching another man be pleasured so he has to take care of himself. How can that not make a man a little angry? It’s like he’s being teased.
And here’s the thing: while anger can fuel lust, it empties love. The same thing that might create sexual excitement in the face of lust can make sexual performance wilt in a situation when you are called to cherish. I can’t cherish a woman I’m angry at, can I? So the continued use of porn will change what I value in sex, turning me away from cherishing and making porn seem “necessary” to get sexually excited, even if I have a willing wife, because I have to engender lust in order to sexually perform. So even when you do have sex with your wife, it’s a different kind of sex, an inferior kind, sometimes even a destructive kind. It may even seem like sex is something you’re doing to your wife rather than experiencing with your wife.
This explains why porn can temporarily seem to revive a man’s sexual interest before it eventually depletes it. It’s two entirely different kinds of sexual interest, though. And the negative kind is one that will destroy future sexual fulfillment in marriage.
So, wives, why are your porn-using husbands angry?
- They are angry because they are suffering the consequences of a lack of self-control.
- They are angry because they are being disappointed by a false idol.
- They are angry because of the spiritual anguish they feel fighting it, and they’ve found a way to blame you for the struggle.
- They are angry because your very presence inhibits acting out their preferred sexual desires.
- They are angry because another woman is teasing them and they’re taking it out on you. Since you’re a woman, you’re guilty by association.
I have zero desire to become a “specialist” on this; it’s taken enough out of me just to write this post, so let me point you to Dr. Harry Schaumburg’s ministry (www.stonegateresources.org), or the well-known ministries of Covenant Eyes or XXX Church for remedial care. These ministries have far better understanding and resources to help deal with this on a more comprehensive level. I’m just adding the spiritual effects to the negative impact of porn—as if we needed any more warnings than we’re already getting.
A Quick Word to the Wives
Before I end an already long blog post, please let me say something to the wives: speaking as a pastor, most thoughtful men I know who struggle with this hate doing it and they hate themselves for giving in. I grieve for these men. Many have been targeted from an early age and lacked the spiritual sophistication to fight it when they were first confronted with it. By the time they realized what was going on, they had developed minds that will be vulnerable for perhaps the rest of their lives. If you use this post against them rather than trying to understand them, it won’t be helpful. I do believe that the habitual, frequent use of porn that obliterates sexual intimacy in marriage can be considered an affair. A man has essentially replaced his wife and is denying her the fulfillment of being sexually desired, celebrated, and fulfilled. If that’s not an affair, I don’t know what is.
But I also know some very earnest and I would say even godly men who fight this with all their might and still occasionally struggle. The brain just won’t let it go. The last thing I want this post to do is make their struggle even worse and increase their shame.
I fully understand that it’s much, much easier for me to be objective as a pastor, as I’m not the one being deprived or hurt, so I also understand if you think I’m letting your man off the hook. I just hope you’ll use this post for understanding, not to attack. Men already know a lot of reasons not to give in, and yet many still do.
Finally—angry husbands existed long before the Internet. While porn can certainly increase a man’s anger, there are many other reasons some men are angry and other issues that need to be addressed. Chip Ingram’s book Overcoming the Emotions that Destroy is a helpful primer for couples working through anger.
A Quick Word to the Husbands
If you’re struggling with this, yet another post with five additional reasons to avoid porn won’t help you on its own. But perhaps this can give you another reason to keep fighting, and to stay faithful in recovery, however imperfect that recovery might be.
It is so much better to cherish your wife than to be angry with her. A marriage in which you cherish your wife is one of the highest pleasures in life. The very highest pleasure is to have our satisfaction fulfilled by our relationship with God—to daily receive his grace, acceptance, affirmation, and love. I am a firm believer that the best defense is a good offense. If you are addicted, though, offense alone won’t be enough—you’ve got to rebuild the defense. Grow deep in your understanding of grace. Spend the time you used to spend indulging in fantasy and use it to build or rebuild a creative, intimate life with your wife. Pursue your God and your wife. Fight for the good life of joy and intimacy and truth.
If you do that, you will never be on your own. Even if your wife doesn’t understand, your God does. And if you need a little spiritual shot in the arm, just listen to this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=722zPX1npcA
Finally, if you’re curious to understand why I’m talking so much about building a cherishing heart in marriage, you can pre-order the new book now by clicking HERE.
Video Linked At The End Of The Article
Matt Redman ~ Never Once (Live) posted by OfficialMattRedman:
