After my initial assessment with Wayne, I was ready to see him with Lori and to help them begin the process of determining how they could live with the fact that his world of fantasy was now out in the open. Lori was adamant that his porn use had to stop. For her, any kind of porn was simply abhorrent, and his fantasies, whether acted out or not, were unacceptable. Feeling shocked and betrayed, she felt she didn't know her husband anymore. The knowledge of what he viewed and fantasized about eclipsed everything else in the relationship for her. She had no interest in participating in any such sexual fantasies.

My goal in this type of couples session is to see what it might take for the partners to listen to each other without being overwhelmed with reactivity. I wanted Wayne to hear Lori's upset and dismay at his behavior and the way she'd discovered it. I also wanted to see whether she could find a way to understand his porn use without taking it so personally. Having spent several sessions with Wayne, I didn't believe that his long-established fetishes and fantasies would shift easily, though Lori hoped that he'd "see the light" and stop his porn use. Instead, I wondered whether this couple could find a way to negotiate their different needs, once an atmosphere of safety was established. Could Wayne be less defensive about his "right" to use porn and instead help Lori understand that his needs were long-standing? Could Lori see his behavior as an expression of troubling early-life experiences and not as a threat to her or to his desire for her?

I knew we had to focus on Lori's feelings of betrayal before anything else. So I coached Lori to talk first about the concerns that underlay her agitation. These were that Wayne preferred the porn over her and that eventually he'd be driven to find a woman to act out his fantasies. "I don't want him cheating on me," she said breaking into tears. I asked her to explore what she meant by cheating. "Has Wayne ever given you any indication of being dissatisfied with you or of wanting another women?" I asked. She acknowledged that he hadn't, but now felt so betrayed by the secrecy of his porn use that she didn't know what to expect from him anymore.

Once I sensed that Lori could begin to hear about what his porn use meant to Wayne, I began to explore with him his fantasies about women dominating him, which had begun in his late teenage years. As Lori began to see his fantasies in the light of his early bond with his mother, her attitude about Wayne's longing for domination softened. We talked about some of the early attempts they'd made to play out some of these fantasies in their sex life. "I did try to engage in some of the fantasies early in the relationship, and I'd have been willing to try more, but it wasn't a turn-on for me and you felt so humiliated" she told Wayne. "I can try again," Lori added, "though it will just be something I'd do for you. It's just not erotic for me." The awkwardness of these enactment experiences is common among porn users and their partners.

What became clear as we went on was that Lori wasn't as judgmental as Wayne had thought she'd be. The shame he felt was his own shame engendered by the revelation of his fantasies, as well as older feelings related to experiences of telling his mother something about his vulnerabilities and having her minimize what he'd said, leaving him feeling dismissed and judged.

"I wouldn't want to play out these fantasies with you Lori," Wayne wound up telling her. "I don't want you to just go through the motions."

As we talked about Wayne's sexual fantasies and their connection to unmet needs in his childhood, the conversation between him and his wife moved into a different gear. "Whenever I try to take care of him, he gives me a hard time, resisting and telling me he can take care of himself," said Lori. "Maybe if I try to be even more active in meeting his needs—both in and out of the bedroom—than maybe he won't need or want to look at the porn." However, Wayne was unwilling to give up looking at porn completely, and Lori was adamant that his porn use wasn't something that she could tolerate.

"You have a problem here that only the two of you can address," I said. "Is Wayne's porn use enough for both of you to call it quits and end the marriage? Or is there a middle ground that can be achieved?"

I then focused on Lori's latent attitude about porn. She acknowledged that she'd always thought of porn as something only single men needed until they found the right partner. She considered porn inherently abusive and misogynistic. But she was challenged when it was pointed out to her that Wayne's porn featured empowered women dominating men—in fact, men were in the "abused" position.

If couples are to face the impact of the disclosure of a partner's porn use, its content must be taken out of the realm of the secret and the forbidden. I asked Wayne and Lori if they'd be willing to watch some of his porn together. This would be a chance for Lori to try to see what her husband's experience was actually about, instead of remaining attached to what she'd always thought, read, or heard about pornography. Wayne was agreeable to this, saying he'd find it odd but strangely erotic. Lori tentatively agreed.

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maryfrancis35   |Registered |2011-02-20 15:04:10 All guys use porn. The real question is - what are they looking at? After spending hours trying to figure out myself I found http://FindHisPorn.com . It's really easy. davew   |Registered |2009-12-11 16:48:45 "Patrick Carnes's research shows that sexual addiction affects three to five percent of adults, suggesting that porn use isn't about to turn us into a country of addicts glued to their computer screens." We all make mistakes in wording but I just want to point out the author's illogical jump here. Carnes estimated sex addiction affects 3-5% of all adults, NOT all adults who use pornography (as implied in this statement). davew   |Registered |2009-12-11 16:40:52 I wonder what the therapist would think if the man got off watching necrophilia, scatophilia or pedophilia porn? Is the guy's choice of porn type more "acceptable" than some other form? Of course, a thought or fantasy is not by itself pathological. Nor is a behavior, except that society prohibits certain kinds of behaviors, such as adults having sex with children (even if this is the natural orientation of the adult). I wonder why the guy thinks it's necessary to get off on dominatrix porn in the first place. He can't sacrifice this behavior to please his wife? Isn't that a bit self-indulgent? There may be a role for pornography other than feeding addictions (e.g., to help a sexually inhibited person) but I don't think this is such an example. It basically comes down to this: is this guy's use of porn strictly recreational and "fun" (like a guy who has 1-2 drinks a night) or is it feeding something in him that's<...

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