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Philosophy/religion

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Christian husband and porn

53 replies

RT1111 · 07/11/2018 10:28

Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and saw the light on beneath our en-suite door and DH wasn't in bed. Didn't hear any noise and felt suspicious (past behaviour explained below). Looked at his phone this morning and on the recently accesssed tabs there is a subreddit called something like 'SexyWomenInBoots' Sad. All the pictures had been viewed. I looked at a couple and the were nothing hardcore but definitely nudity and very suggestive.

Myself and DH are Christians and have been married five years. DH was a virgin when we met and we didn't sleep together until our wedding night. I found porn on his computer before we married and twice since. After the last time we put a filter on the internet and put it in my name so only I could lose the filter if that makes sense.

I just feel so disappointed and gutted.

The first time I found it on the PC he told me he was addicted. He was so so sorry and said he would stop blah blah blah. He obviously didn't. I think he tries but I think it is an addiction. However he has not seemed sorry the past times I have found it and more annoyed at me and impatient if I bring it up because I'm meant to have 'forgiven' him.

We have a 9 month old baby and tbh our sex life is OK at the moment. Since we moved DS into his own room it's been easier ut we have not had sex for about three weeks as I am waiting to have a coil fitted so don't want to risk pregnancy.

What do I do next? He tends to get angry if I bring stuff up like this and will turn it round on me e.g. 'why did you look at my phone?' 'we've not had sex for ages because YOU haven't got your coil yet and I needed to' etc. He would probably act all sorry and I forgive him and then he'll just cntinue to do it, trying to cover his tracks.

This is not a loving Christian relationsgip and I know it. He never offers to pray for me. We don't read the Bible together. He absolutely puts himself first before God, DS or me.

There is no way he would share this with a church leader or counsellor. He is embarrassed and ashamed (and rightly so I think) as am I. I have no idea.

Sorry it's so long.

OP posts:
SuperLoudPoppingAction · 07/11/2018 10:31

I don't see how he can expect you to forgive him for something that is ongoing.
That seems unreasonable.

And quite coercive somehow.

SuperLoudPoppingAction · 07/11/2018 10:32

Like...
He's using language linked with your faith to try and get you to go along with something that is against your faith.
The way people who know you well will sometimes use those buttons personal to you to get you to go along with something that makes you feel rubbish.

Bombardier25966 · 07/11/2018 10:33

Christians are allowed to watch porn if they wish to.

Your problem is that you have incompatible beliefs on pornography, not faith.

SuperLoudPoppingAction · 07/11/2018 10:39

I don't know if it's about being 'allowed'.
My view as a Christian is that pornography causes harm and causes inappropriate attitudes towards women in particular so it is not at all compatible with my choices as a feminist nor as a Christian.
I don't view it as a bit of cheeky fun.
I live in a country whose laws frame it as part of violence against women.

I don't personally know any pro-violence Christians.

But what I'm picking up on is essentially gaslighting.
Not nice behaviour whether it's hiding a gambling habit or overspending on fancy socks or illicit trips to the pub to get out of childcare duties.

RT1111 · 07/11/2018 10:52

Thanks for the replies so far. Yes we definitely do have incompatible beliefs about porn. It damages our relationship because he's looking at other women with lust and that makes me feel rubbish as a wife and that I'm not enough.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to handle it when I see him? He obviously thinks he can get away with it because I need to forgive him. Part of me want to take DS and stay at my mum's tonight but there is no cot for DS and my mum would ask Qs.

How do I forgive without being a mug?

OP posts:
Lessstressedhemum · 07/11/2018 11:03

Jesus said that looking at someone else with lust was just the same as adultery, so married Christians should absolutely not be looking at porn.

He is manipulating you by using your faith to coerce you into accepting his behaviour. That is not acceptable. He's also twisting things round about to make himself the "victim". It's quite abusive actually and I say that as someone who has lived in an abusive marriage for over 20years.

Forgiveness requires repentance and an effort on the part of the person seeking it to stop whatever behaviour they require forgiveness for. Your husband is being completely hypocritical and, given the rest of what you say, I would be questioning the strength of his belief. I think I might be going to my mother's, if I was you, if only to try to make him see how strongly you feel. I wish I had done so years ago.

TidyLike · 07/11/2018 11:11

Agree with PP that the issue with porn is not religious, but to do with your incompatible values about what's acceptable in a relationship. If I'm honest, I would be amazed if he really intended to give up porn ... more likely he will try to hide it better. Watching porn doesn't necessarily mean that ones partner is not enough, and some couples watch it together ... but anyway, I digress, and I mention this only as a way of hoping to help you feel better (not as a way of defending him).

What I find by FAR the most concerning thing here is the way he responds by giving meaningless apologies and by blaming you, and also the fact that your trust in him is undermined to such an extent that you are policing his internet activity. None of these behaviours is going to have a happy ending. What about seeking counseling together? I don't mean a church related counselor ... a relationship counselor will be familiar with this sort of issue.

SuperLoudPoppingAction · 07/11/2018 11:34

I don't think you should put any pressure on yourself to forgive at this point.
He's asking you to collude in behaviour that isn't in accordance with your morals.
He doesn't intend to stop.
He's blaming you for his behaviour.

What good would your forgiveness do? Would it be genuine? Could it be?
Why does he need your forgiveness if he doesn't intend to stop?

Do you want a marriage with somebody who uses pornography?

It is possible his reaction (which seems abusive to me) is defensiveness because he is ashamed. How is he in other aspects of your lives? Does he often put pressure on you to go along with things that go against your instincts?

You both have to grow up, together, in this marriage. That's different to some marriages where people have previous experience of the give and take and mutual respect required by a relationship. Not better or worse. Just different.

But if he continues to try to use false representation of concepts of your faith to pressure you to accept things that make you uncomfortable, it will wreck your head.

Either he wants to stop or he doesn't.
You shouldn't feel you have to help or make him stop.
The WiFi block thing reads like you feel you need to protect him from his choices.

You can't control what he chooses to do.
You can choose whether to collude with it.

Try and communicate honestly about your feelings if that feels like a safe thing to do.
Is he in a space where he can listen? Is he still blaming you?

Just remember he's lucky to have you. You are the mother of his child. He's not treating you that way just now. It's up to him to change. It isn't up to you to accept shoddy dishonest treatment.

SuperLoudPoppingAction · 07/11/2018 13:00

www.restoredrelationships.org/news/2017/01/24/forgiveness-faith-and-abuse/
This sums up some of my own thinking around forgiveness.
Forgiveness is to help you rather than to allow somebody to continue to harm you.
It's different from reconciliation.
And it's a process to work towards as part of a bigger process of working through what has happened.
And I don't think that can happen when the harm is ongoing.
Again, I would think this whatever the deception was, but the fact it relates to an action that causes harm to others would bother me a great deal.

RT1111 · 07/11/2018 13:13

SuperLoud thank you very much for your post. Will look at the link properly when DS is napping.

I admit I don't know how genuine my forgiveness would be. I certainly couldn't forget. I've been reading a bit this morning and several blogs/sources suggest that the forgiveness is all to do with me and I need to encourage DH to deepen his own relationship with Christ more and he'll see the error of his ways and it'll just 'fall into place'. However at the moment I (selfishly) want him to tell me how sorry he is and acknowledge the pain this causes. I want to give him a wake up call or ultimatum.

I've suspected our relationship is a bit (emotionally) abusive for a year or so. He scoffs when I say that and tells me that I say horrible things to him sometimes so I'm abusive to him Sad. I do tend to get easily riled up (lack of sleep and endless days with a baby don't help) and say hurtful things in the moment so I need to work on that myself.

DH will be home late about 8.30pm tonight so hardly any time to talk before we need to go to bed and get up again. He'll also be knackered and from past experience I know that always makes him more short-tempered and stubborn.

Lessstressed thank you. I'm sorry to hear about the issues in your own marriage and hope you're safe now?

OP posts:
Alaria4 · 07/11/2018 14:01

OP, you haven't really said how it makes you feel but I assume because you changed the filter and put it in your name, that you did not like it.

IMO, a relationship should be all about compromise and listening to your partners needs. I wouldn't be happy if my partner would continue to do something that clearly causes a problem within the relationship.

The only real advice I could give would be to talk to your partner openly and honestly about how you feel.

RT1111 · 07/11/2018 14:12

Thank you, Alaria4. It makes me feel rubbish as a wife and that I'm not enough. I feel sad that he won't open up to me about things he is obviously struggling with. I sometimes say 'please could you pray for me about X' and he NEVER does that with me. I feel as if we're living a lie as this nice young Christian couple when really at the moment our marriage feels like a joke.

I've spoken to him before about time apart or separating but he thinks I'm joking. I don't think I'd have the confidence to leave. I've had PND and he said to me the other day in an argument that I couldn't look after our DS well. He says that we made vows to one another to be together forever. Typing that I can see the irony!

OP posts:
FloralBunting · 07/11/2018 14:31

Can I ask, gently, what flavour of Christians you are? I don't know any denomination that would be ok with watching porn, tbh, so I'd recommend a disregard to the comment above.

At a very basic relationship level, he is treating you dreadfully because he knows you are unhappy with something, and for the sake of his own sexual jollies, he's ignoring your wishes. Obviously you've mentioned other things are giving you pause, and making you question the relationship, so it seems like this is a manifestation of something wider in your marriage.

The reason I ask what kind of Christians you are is that if you were at the evangelical end of the pool, there certainly are faith based organizations that I know of which could provide some help specifically on the porn aspect. Really, he'd probably need some accountability outside the marriage to break an addiction if it is simply that.

But you sound like you could do with some help in the marriage generally, and there's no shame in that. Did you have any marriage preparation at all?

Don't want to bombard you with questions. Happy to help further if you need it.

RoseMartha · 07/11/2018 14:33

Sometimes you need to take action an walk away for him to realise you are serious. I am in abusive marriage and in process of getting divorced. I am also a Christian and i struggled for years because it is frowned upon to divorce before i finally made the decision to end it. I found that God is with me and it is going in little steps and is taking forever, but He is with me. The decision to end it has to be from you when you are ready.

miffmufferedmoof · 07/11/2018 14:49

Sounds really hard OP, I feel for you. I think if it was me I demand that he spoke to someone about it - maybe a good Christian friend or church leader. Make him understand that he has to do this for the sake of your marriage. If he still won’t then I think you will have to tell someone about it and maybe go stay with your Mum. He needs to realise that losing his wife and child is a worse outcome than the embarrassment of admitting to someone that he has a porn addiction and needs help.
I don’t know what your church is like but hopefully they will be able to support you both as you work through this x

RT1111 · 07/11/2018 15:11

Hi Floral, that's really kind of you, thank you. We attend a 'vibrant' Anglican church Wink however, I'd be interested to hear about the organisations, please PM me when you have a mo.
We did one session of marriage prep (at our old church they weren't running the course properly that year, apparently Hmm) and read a few books but we were so in love we naively thought we wouldn't have problems. We married fairly quickly after meeeting (about 18 months) and had obviously never lived with one another, which was the main eye-opener!

Thank you RoseMartha - what lovely names! Glad you are happier now and God gave you the strength to do that.

You're right that is a worse outcome, miff. He loves to portray a good image though so someone finding out this dirty secret would be his worst nightmare. I don't want to resort to blackmail and I feel he's just spin in round and say 'that's blackmail'.

OP posts:
Walkingdeadfangirl · 07/11/2018 18:53

Maybe he is religious anymore. People change. Could you stay with him if he wasn't a Christian anymore?

I am not sure I would call sexy pictures of women in boots porn. More like newspaper page 3. Does sound like you will have to accept he is just a normal man or start again with someone new. You cant force him to be something he isn't.

ricepolo · 22/11/2018 20:11

thenakedtruthproject.com/

This website might also help.

Swiftwind · 22/11/2018 21:40

I'm surprised that your reason for not having sex for 3 weeks is that you're waiting to have a coil fitted, do you reckon that condoms are too risky? You could also have non-penetrative sex play, like rolling around naked and using your hands on each other.

It's one thing if for whatever reason you don't fancy having sex at the moment, but it seems a bit silly to refrain from all sexual activity while you wait for the coil, if in the meantime both you and him are horny for each other.

I'm in agreement with Walkingdeadfangirl that what he's looking at wouldn't be considered as 'porn' by most people in this day and age. And I think she's right, his Christian faith is no longer the same as yours. He doesn't want to pray, and he doesn't consider looking at naughty pictures to be sinful in the way that you do.

A lot of hardcore porngraphy videos are disgusting and promote abusive attitudes towards women, so I could understand you being upset with your husband for secretly watching porn. However I did a search for the subreddit you mentioned - it turns out it is actually called 'SexyGirlsInBoots' - and as you say, there's nothing hardcore, it's just suggestive photos, women in tight outfits or with mild nudity. They are 'naughty' pictures, but there's naughtier things on page 3 of The Sun, or films or TV shows that are on after 9pm. Or a women's fashion magazine!

You could argue that a good Christian shouldn't be looking at any of those things, but that kind of imagery is considered pretty commonplace to most non-religious people nowadays, and even if it is somewhat sinful, it is very mild compared to the sorts of things he'd be looking at if he were actually addicted to porn.

I think the main point is that he's looking up this stuff as a visual aid for masturbation. Both men and women like to look at sexy things when masturbating, but if he wasn't looking at pornography, he'd simply be imagining the sexy imagery in his head instead.

So I guess the question is, do you have a problem with him masturbating? Do you consider masturbating to be against your faith?

In many marriages, there wouldn't be considered anything unusual about either you or him masturbating if for whatever reason you hadn't had sex for three weeks. I know that some Christians (and people of other faiths) consider masturbation to be wrong, but I'm a Christian, and I've never believed that.

If your husband preferred to masturbate (and look at naughty pictures) rather than have sex with you, THAT would be awful, and is a problem I've seen many times on mumsnet. But it seems to me like he's just horny and frustrated that he can't make love to the woman he loves, and he's relieving that frustration.

My fiance and I have been in an absolutely devoted relationship for 4 years. There was a time when my partner and I ended up in a bit of a long-distance relationship, we had jobs in different cities, and we could only be with each other at the weekend. We missed each other loads, and sometimes during the week we would both masturbate - sometimes we'd do it 'together' while having sexy chats with each other on the phone, but sometimes we'd just do it on our own. And when on our own, sometimes we'd just use imagination, and sometimes we'd look at porn, or read an erotic story.

It didn't mean that either my partner or myself had a 'wandering eye' and was lusting for someone else - we were lusting for each other, and we wanted to relieve those feelings rather than being frustrated all week.

I think that your husband does still have a strong sense of morality, and shame about what he is doing, and that's why he's look up mild naughty pictures of 'SexyGirlsInBoots' rather than explicit pornographic videos.

However, he is wrong to expect you to not call him out on it, simply because you're supposed to have 'forgiven' him. That's not how forgiveness works. If he doesn't think that what he's doing is wrong, then he should argue the case for that, rather than throw your previous forgiveness in your face.

RosieBenenden · 23/11/2018 14:03

@RT1111 I will pray for you and for DH. Porn is evil in all its forms and here is never any justification for seeing it or thinking of it. Intercourse is between married men and women and is there to conceive children. Jesus teaches that explicitly. I so feel for you OP and maybe a re-think is needed in terms of whether it is appropriate to be intimate with DH. Message anytime if you need to chat and pray with me.

SwordToFlamethrower · 23/11/2018 15:50

Does Jesus explicitly state that sex is just for procreation only? I didn't know that.

Knittink · 23/11/2018 15:54

'It's an addiction' is very easy to say, but not necessarily true. It's more likely he just enjoys it, wants to do it and doesn't care if you don't like it (but probably would care if someone at church knew!). Only you can kniw what you are willing to put up with, OP. You can't force him to stop, and you clearly can't trust him to stop voluntarily.

doorhandledog · 23/11/2018 19:09

'When someone shows you who they are, believe them.'

Tbh, even without the porn aspect, it sounds like your marriage is not a happy one. Don't waste years of your life ( like I did) constantly looking for ways to communicate so that DH would understand, or trying to understand him.

However at the moment I (selfishly) want him to tell me how sorry he is and acknowledge the pain this causes

This concerns me. This isn't selfish. This is a normal basic standard in a relationship based on two equals in a partnership together. This is a basic standard for two people who respect each other, and care for each other. if he won't do this, he either doesn't understand your perspective or feelings or doesn't care. Neither of these are acceptable in a relationship.

You matter OP. You matter enough not to waste your life in an unhappy, unequal relationship.

TheJive · 23/11/2018 19:17

Many people claim to be Christian when they aren't.

Any Christian knows that men should love God, then you as himself.

Any Christian should know not to covet.

Any Christian should know he should not be wanking.

He is only interested in YOU being a Christian and forgiving him.

He sounds like he can't keep his marriage vows, he cheated on you. You don't have to remain married because he committed adultery on-line, that is my interpretation of the bible anyway.

Vitalogy · 23/11/2018 19:33

Intercourse is between married men and women and is there to conceive children

Any Christian should know he should not be wanking.

That goes against the way our body is made and functions. It just doesn't make sense.