There was no ‘before porn’ for me to call on when trying to build a healthy sexual relationship with my wife and as I write this I am discovering the depths porn has invaded my life and, very unfairly, my wife’s life.
She had saved herself for me and while she knew I had ‘been around the block’ in my pre Jesus era, though since being saved I had not had sex with anyone, and was a born again virgin… sort of. I was forthcoming in divulging my sexual relationships but not my addiction to pornography and it would be this addiction that would have a greatest negative impact on our relationship.
I cannot remember a time when pornography and masturbation were not part of my life, I think I was about 8 or 9 when I stumbled onto porn so she has been a mistress for many years and because of this I have never had a healthy sexual appetite or understanding. I had to discover what it means to have ‘clean sex’, to have a sexual relationship with my wife that doesn’t let the images, desires and fantasies of the porn years intrude.
It was not long before I turned from the giving husband into a manipulating love maker. There were things I had seen that I wanted to try, there were ways I wanted her to act, there were things I had seen that I wanted her to do and I was now introducing these into my marriage. I am not talking about a healthy ‘discovery’ of love making but a purposeful manipulation to get what I wanted. Just like watching porn I started to treat sex like a show so I could get my enjoyment. It become very selfish even when I was being very caring there was a motive to manipulate, I had made the marriage bed dirty and even more disturbing I had started to corrupt a sexually clean wife.
The challenge has been cleaning up the marriage bed, deconstructing a sexual relationship that was shaped more by my addiction to porn than a loving desire to please my wife. In fact since admitting and dealing with the porn addiction the marriage bed got worse as this was now the only place I could work out my broken sexual fantasies. My challenge has been to redeem the marriage bed, to learn how to have a healthy sexual relationship with my wife that does not allow the atmosphere of porn to intrude and cloud what should be an intimate, clean, giving and natural expression of love.
I do not believe that an addiction to porn can be kept out of the marriage bed, it is not something you can participate in that stops or goes away when you decide to have sex with your wife. It is pervasive, it changes your outlook and in my case caused me to treat the one I love as an object for my gratification. My addiction to porn caused me to ‘dirty’ my marriage bed and for a wife who had done everything right during her youth in the sexual area I believe this is one of the most selfish things I could ever have done.
I am now having fun cleaning up the marriage bed, discovering the joy of sexual relations not clouded by false fantasies and built on love not lust. The difference is night and day, the dark promises of selfish satisfaction supplied through porn do not hold a candle to a loving, healthy and clean sexual relationship. I was ripped off, porn stole from me and I then stole from my wife. No more, and I have to say it’s so much more fun now.