Porn Addict Or Selfish Jerk? Life's More Complicated Than That
By Dr. Marty Klein. Posted on .
How much of the woman’s pain is really about him masturbating (the actual reason he uses porn, of course)? A lot of women insist that “as long as I’m sexually available to him, he has no reason to masturbate.” When pressed on this, they say he has no RIGHT—“he shouldn’t take his sexuality outside the relationship,” as if they’re jealous of his right hand.
If a woman has complaints about a guy’s behavior—he calls her the wrong name or daydreams during sex, never wants to talk about anything, checks his phone during dinner—those are legitimate grievances that need addressing. Couples therapy is a great place to do that. But if her complaint is simply that he uses porn, which she finds disgusting or confusing, that doesn’t give her the power to ban his hobby, or force him to defend it.
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You can get a guy to promise to give up porn, and some guys actually will. You can even get a guy to promise to give up masturbating. A few actually will. The rest will do what they did when they were 14—they’ll do it in secret, feel bad about it, and hope they won’t get caught. And so a life of lying about sex continues. You can imagine what that will do to the couple’s closeness.
Sadly, some women will continue to blame the porn, rather than examine how they’ve used coercion to undermine intimacy.
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Dr. Marty Klein is a marriage counselor and sex therapist with 30 years experience. His latest book is SEXUAL INTELLIGENCE: What We Really Want From Sex, and How to Get It. Dr. Klein’s blog, newsletter and more at www.MartyKlein.com.
