Why does my husband look at porn?
The most successful marriage-destroying Enemy tactic of our generation.
A number of years ago I (Cliff) was invited to speak at a national gathering of men’s ministry networks. As with many trade shows, there were booths in the lobby of the conference center where each ministry could advertise its specialty.
My buddy and I went around the room multiple times and noticed the same theme over and over, so we decided to conduct an informal survey. After tallying up what we’d seen, we estimated that around 80-90% of the ministries represented at this convention were in some way advertising their ability to help men with a pornography addiction.
These were ministries to men in the church.
This is not an article about how to defeat pornography addiction in a marriage. It is about helping Battle Buddy Wives understand the “why” of the addiction.
Fighting it takes time, as well as attack strategies specific to your relationship, and we will go over those later.
For now, let this be an olive branch of understanding and compassion for both husband and wife.
Women struggle with lust. We affirm that this is a problem affecting both genders. But, for women, it tends to materialize in different forms. Female viewership numbers for pornography show an increase in recent years, but it’s nowhere near as high as male viewership. Browse the grocery store book section and you’ll see where women are being targeted. There are obviously smutty romance novels, yes, but a surprising number of so-called Christian Fiction titles in that same aisle are turning the hearts of women away from the Lord and filling them with envy for the husbands they don’t have.
A woman’s mind usually needs to be engaged to trigger lust. For men, it is usually visual.
While there are certainly exceptions, men, in general, have a stronger sexual appetite than women. It’s obvious everywhere you look. Just notice how advertisements are crafted. It’s also obvious in the Bible, where the vast majority of sins around lust occur because of a man behaving badly.
What happens when a man looks at pornography.
Why are so many men unable to resist clicking on porn?
It’s a sin issue, of course, but it starts with something more subtle.
The part of us that craves sin is referred to as “the flesh” in Scripture. Our fallen physical bodies are consumed with appetites for things that will destroy it.
An example is a saboteur working on a Navy ship. The entire crew might be striving with all their might to fight the enemy on the ocean, but their efforts are hampered by a traitor sneaking around in the ship trying to destroy it from within.
In this life, you have the Enemy (Satan) who is trying to destroy you, and his best weapon is your own self. “I do the very thing that I hate” is how Paul put it.1 You will seek to ruin yourself; if not through lust, then through any number of other flesh cravings.
Men respond to visual sexual stimuli more easily than women do. The visual nature of that stimuli is what causes such a flood of hormonal rush. A seductive image of a woman assaults a man’s brain in the way that the smell of meat cooking arouses your stomach when it has been empty all day. You can’t stop the response; like all temptations, it’s about what you do with it.
Porn sites are designed to arouse users instantly by displaying dozens of thumbnail images on their home pages. It’s like walking up to a buffet that stretches across the room. You can’t help but get excited at all the offerings.
When the user looks at the homepage of a porn site, his eyes and ears are assaulted with intense sexual stimuli. As Louise Perry put it, “This basic drive, as fundamental as hunger or thirst, can’t be resisted through moral reasoning. It is an involuntary response that the porn industry has become very adept at provoking.”2
This is why porn sites display categories. If you want this, go here and immediately be satisfied. We know what your wife is unwilling to do, so come here and find it.
Lest we pretend we are unique in the modern technological world, notice how Proverbs 7 gives us a sexually charged rendering of how a man responds to the ancient world’s version of a pornographic image:
While I was at the window of my house, looking through the curtain, I saw some naive young men, and one in particular who lacked common sense.
He was crossing the street near the house of an immoral woman, strolling down the path by her house.
It was at twilight, in the evening, as deep darkness fell.
The woman approached him, seductively dressed and sly of heart.
She was the brash, rebellious type, never content to stay at home.
She is often in the streets and markets, soliciting at every corner.
She threw her arms around him and kissed him, and with a brazen look she said,
“I’ve just made my peace offerings and fulfilled my vows. You’re the one I was looking for! I came out to find you, and here you are!
My bed is spread with beautiful blankets, with colored sheets of Egyptian linen.
I’ve perfumed my bed with myrrh, aloes, and cinnamon.
Come, let’s drink our fill of love until morning.
Let’s enjoy each other’s caresses, for my husband is not home.
He’s away on a long trip. He has taken a wallet full of money with him and won’t return until later this month.”
So she seduced him with her pretty speech and enticed him with her flattery.
He followed her at once, like an ox going to the slaughter.
He was like a stag caught in a trap, awaiting the arrow that would pierce its heart.
He was like a bird flying into a snare, little knowing it would cost him his life.
So listen to me, my sons, and pay attention to my words.
Don’t let your hearts stray away toward her. Don’t wander down her wayward path.
For she has been the ruin of many; many men have been her victims.
Her house is the road to the grave. Her bedroom is the den of death.
We can all agree that this is a problem. What do we do?
We’ve found the question/answer format to be very helpful in talking about hard subjects.
Like every other man, I have fought the war of sexual temptation myself, and after many years of ministry to other men who fight the war, I have found that complete honesty in the questions and answers is the only way through the valley.
The following four questions are phrased as though the wife is asking them. Perhaps this format will give a voice to her and a voice to him.
Why did he start looking at porn in the first place?
We discussed biological wiring already, but it’s important to emphasize that biological wiring is not an excuse for a man to look at porn. We simply wanted to be honest about a natural disposition toward sexual urges not found to the same degree in women.
It’s also tempting for a woman to believe that her husband looks at porn simply because he is not satisfied with her. In some cases, this is true—but it’s not her fault. It’s because he is trying to get a specific type of self-centered fulfillment, and the porn industry knows how to attack him in that weak spot.
Another reason he got hooked might be from his childhood. When his teenage friends were sharing porn, he looked at it. The images formed were created when he was still developing his biological sexuality and they left lasting, unrealistic impressions of what sex actually is. The addiction might be decades-long.
An even more uncomfortable truth may be that your husband loves you very, very much, he hates that he looks at pornography, and he wants to break free of it, but he decides to give little effort in doing so. Somehow he is able to compartmentalize his lustful feelings and direct them at the women on screen to ‘get it out of his system.’
I call this the Concubine Theory. This is deeply sinful and twisted logic, but it’s important to follow it to make sense of what could be affecting him, so hang in there a moment.
It goes like this: a man looks at his wife, his life companion and the mother of his children, differently than he looks at a “concubine.” In the ancient world a concubine was a woman whose sole purpose was to provide sexual gratification to a king. The king had his official wife to produce his heirs and be his companion of the mind, but he rarely expected her to gratify him sexually. That’s what the concubines were for.
The women he is watching online are, to his mind, a type of concubine. He can exert his most extreme and degrading lusts on them without consequences, because they’re just on a screen. So you, his wife, are kept in proper esteem, and the women on screen bear the brunt of his base sinful instincts.
Do you see how dark that is? That’s what we’re facing—an Enemy who can lie and deceive his way into a man’s heart so effectively that even a Christian man can accept such evil.
Doesn’t he know that he is looking at someone’s daughter?
There are men who feel no shame about watching porn. They’re probably lost. The Holy Spirit convicts the true believer.
So, assuming your husband is a true believer, he does know that he is looking at someone’s daughter. He knows very well, in fact. He thinks about it constantly. He hates himself for it. He sees your scolding eyes and the shame is unbearable. Clearly, being told that this is someone’s daughter is not enough.
Shame-based approaches to catching a sinner in his sin can be effective. God is a righteous judge and He will not be mocked. He will bring all things to light.
However, shame-based approaches to getting true healing are nonexistent.
Why can’t he just stop?
The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that around $600 billion is spent on trying to help people break drug addictions each year. That’s billion with a “b.”
If that many people are trapped by drugs, and so much money is spent on trying to help them, shouldn’t we just tell them to stop? Can we simply inform the heroin addict that he needs to read his Bible more and that will fix it?
Pornography is one of the great dragons of our time. It hunts everyone, including your children.
Your husband’s flesh has been corrupted, just like yours. Pornography is unavoidable unless you entirely renounce the internet and all screens. He is bombarded constantly with it. He always will be. It sends his flesh the coded messages to sabotage his love and commitment to you.
In all of the times I counseled Christian men about this subject, I never encountered a single man who was proud of viewing pornography. I saw the opposite; usually it was suicidal levels of self-loathing.
If your husband loves Jesus, your husband is fighting it. Perhaps poorly, and perhaps without the key ingredients of transparency and repentance with you, but he is fighting it.
It is possible to break these chains, but it will always lurk in the shadows. That’s just the fallen world we live in.
Lord, come quickly.
How can we defeat it?
By even asking that question, there is hope for your marriage. It would shock you to know how many wives in this terrible situation simply renounce their husbands into the pit of shame.
Battle Buddy Wife, please understand: Your anger is justified. Your sense of betrayal is real. You also join a long, long line of other women who have been cheated on but successfully endured this trial by God’s grace.
Remember that this is a sin problem, and not necessarily a “my husband doesn’t love me” problem. You have sins, too. As Jesus commanded us, we need to treat each other as fellow sinners in need of grace. It’s a lot easier to have compassion on the struggles of our spouse when we stay humble by remembering our own ugly offenses against God.
If your husband is unrepentant, there is nothing you can do but pray and approach the church elders for counsel. He is committing adultery by looking at porn. Period.
For the Battle Buddy Husband reading this: watching pornography is a heinous betrayal of your wife. There is no excuse or justification for it. You are an adulterer.
Repent.
After repentance, seek restoration.
At the end of the day, it’s a pretty straightforward path to start the journey of healing together. If the Battle Buddy Husband feels genuine conviction of his sin and needs help, you will be able to fight the war together. He will see you as his Battle Buddy in the most difficult war he will ever fight.
Never, ever forget: it is both of you against the Enemy. It is not you versus him or you versus her. You are a fighting unit ordained by Christ and committed until death. Where there is will, there is a way.
We’ll talk about this again in the future and go into more details about specific steps you can take together to defeat this enemy. Sexual corruption is pervasive in the church. Every Battle Buddy couple needs to be making war against it.
Praise to our God and arrows to the Enemy,
Cliff and Cassandra
Romans 7:15
Louise Perry, “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution.” This is not a Christian book, but it gives an effective description of the damages caused by our culture’s unrestrained approach to sexuality, including the destructive nature of porn.