10 Resources for Getting the Porn Out, Healing Betrayal Trauma, and Rebuilding Authentic Intimacy

Before you can effectively to anything else to improve your love life in marriage, you have to get the porn out. But how? And then what? 

Sarah shares 10 resources, programs, and tips to help husbands get free, to help wives heal from betrayal trauma, and to help married couples rebuild their intimate life.

If you wanted to redecorate your living room, but there was a fire in it, you'd have to put out the fire before you start thinking about paint colors and rearranging the furniture. Afterwards, you'd also have to clean up the scorch marks and care for the first- and second-degree burns family members may have incurred. Likewise, in the house of your marital intimacy, you need to get the porn out first in order to establish safety and authentic emotional intimacy. The distortions in beliefs and assumptions about how sex should work then need to be corrected. (Women in porn are paid to act like they're aroused quickly and to act like they're pleasured by a quick encounter, but that's not actually how God created women's longer, slower arousal curves to work!) Emotional wounds from betrayal trauma need to be healed, trust needs to be rebuilt, and the couple needs to establish their intimacy anew from the ground up--with lots of reassurance and lots of being present in the moment. 

Here are the links to resources mentioned in this show:

4 Resources to Help Husbands Get Free from Porn:

1. Sexaholics Anonymous, a 12-step peer support program

2. Programs like  Pure Desires, Naked Truth Project

3. Strive: 21-Day Porn Detox, a Catholic program with Matt Fradd

4. CSAT counseling (Certified Sexual Addiction Therapists)

*BONUS TIP: Install device-protecting software like Covenant Eyes 

3 Resources to Help Wives Heal from Betrayal Trauma

5. Hope's Garden, a Catholic ministry online that includes a coaching option

6. Coaching with Catholic coach Casey Allison 

7. Bloom for Women and Bloom for Catholic Women

3 Tips to Help Post-Porn Couples Restore Authentic Intimacy

1. Talk to each other during lovemaking. This roots both husband and wife's mind in the present moment. Hearing her husband's voice is very connecting for the wife and distracts her from negative thoughts, worries that his mind is going back to memories of porn, etc. 

2. Specifically, the husband should reassure his wife out loud with words during their lovemaking time together that he's thinking only of her, that she is beautiful, her body is perfect and amazing, she is the one he chooses for life, she is the only woman for him, he loves being just with her, etc.  She is likely to need LOTS of reassurance due to extra insecurities and negative internal comparisons about her body and her attractiveness, and about where his mind is.

3. Husbands, tune in to your sense of smell, which porn cannot recreate. Listen to Catholic psychologist

Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)

Transcript

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Before you do anything else to improve. Your love life in marriage. You have to get the porn out. You're not going to make any progress until you take care of that. A huge problem. That is the fire and the house of your marriage that needs to be put out before you can work on growing and delight and true intimacy and really enjoying lovemaking. So in this episode, I am going to share. 10 skills or resources to help you do that. And when I have students join my delay, I tell them like, I'm sorry, you can't really do much until. The porn has stopped. And then you can like, that's the first priority then after that you can work on. You know, improving intimacy marital intimacy with your husband. And imagine if your marriage is a house. And you want to redecorate it, freshen it up, bring new life to it and make it more vibrant and beautiful. But the house is on fire. Like you can't. Work on choosing paint colors. Decorating with you. And the new furniture, what plants to put in what house plants to make it more lush and beautiful and inviting while the fire is raging. You got to put that fire out so that your home is a safe place. And same thing with marriage. This is the fire that needs to be put out the poor news so that your marriage can be a safe place where true intimacy can be a nurtured and flourish. I had a student in my delight. We'll call her Vicky. And she and her husband were about at retirement age and she was having orgasms. No problem. Just fine with that. But she hated lovemaking. She hated sex. She felt like it was just mechanical. There was emotional distance and she just didn't feel like she and her husband were actually connecting. It was just this physical thing. Because she knew that he secretly just has been addicted to porn for decades and secretly still using it. So. She took a break from intimacy and she is working on. A protein him about this, and I have equipped her with a bunch of resources to help support her on that. And that's what I'm going to do in this episode. I'm going to share 10 resources to help you. The first four are going to be resources to help the husband quit porn. Cause I'm assuming a typical. Most common scenario, where it's the husband using porn. And the wife who is the betrayed spouse here. So for resources to help the husband get free from the porn. And that after that, I will share a little bit about what the lingering effects can be. Prem porn. That the couple will then need to address. And then I will share three resources for the wife to help her heal from the betrayal trauma. That she suffered and may still be suffering. From her husband's porn use. Because that is a real thing and needs specialized support and a competent. Then I'm going to share three tips for the married couple too. To use. After the porn has gone to work on rebuilding their love life together that they can use during their love making. Cause think of that after the fire has been put out, say it's in the living room. There's going to be some scorch marks. There's going to be, you know, some mangled. So some things will be destroyed. And you have to get new ones. Some, you might have some stains on the walls. You're going to need to work on that as well. So that is why. And with those three tips. To help the couple of rebuild their love life. So the first section force for resources to help the husband get free from porn and wife. If your husband is using porn. I don't have sex with him. Wait, like just no, no sex until he is sober from the porn. And doesn't have frequent slipups. This protects your heart. It preserves the meaning of love making as true intimacy in your marriage. And it's also what an expert in this father, Sean kill Collie. I shared with me is the practice in couples that have the best outcomes of recovery. After the husband's porn use, there are those couples where the wife has drawn a clear boundary. With this strong consequence of no lovemaking until the porn is out. So the resources that a husband can use to break free from porn range from free to expensive. And the. I'm just going to share them in that order. So, first of all, the free resource number one, this is Sexaholics anonymous. This is a 12 step peer support groups, similar to alcoholics anonymous. And it's free, free to join. Andy. Like 12, like alcoholics anonymous, you know, that you join. You go to meetings and these could be in person. There are meetings all around the country and world. And there's online virtual meetings as well. So all around the clock, you should be able to find a meeting at any given time to help support you. As you are breaking free from this. So essay Sexaholics sex. Holics anonymous. Is it a great resource to help husbands get free from porn? Next up there are programs like the naked truth project out of the UK or peer desires. That are also peer support ministries. But with just some additional elements and not directly based on 12 steps. So I'm going to count those two as one. Resource. But yeah, so pure desires or naked truth project. And by the way, in the show notes, I ain't going to link to every single one of these resources. So they can be available to you. Next you can look to supplemental programs like Matt frat strive, 21. There's a whole whole, you know, unfortunately this is a huge problem right now. This. Pandemic of porn use. But the silver lining to that is there's also a whole host of programs and materials and resources to help support getting free from porn, including the strive 21, which is created by a Catholic for Catholic men. There are lots of others as well. So I have had some women in my class tell me. Um, that their husband got free from porn, just from going through strive 21, but I've had other experts tell me it's really not a complete program. So. I'm just going to share it in case it can be helpful. For many of you. Or your spouses and then, so that's not going to what I'm going to count as number three. And then the fourth resource is working with a certified sexual addiction therapist. These are therapists with specific unique training in sexual addiction. And how to break free from that. They are amazing. And there are Catholic C-SAT as well, but that would be amazing as well. If you can find a Catholic C-SAT, but regardless, this is just like the gold standard for working with sexual addictions, which porn is included under, you know, they can also help with. Other sexual addictions as well. Okay. So that is resource number four, working with a certified sexual addiction therapist. Now I'm going to address what some of the lingering after effects can be. Once the husband is free from porn. They may be physical. He may have some erectile dysfunction and it may be difficult for him to get aroused with real life sex and a real life wife. Not the exaggerated images and actions from porn. Or it might be premature ejaculation. You know, his body may be habituated to how he was masturbating to the porn. And so there can be a transition period of, you know, having to relearn. And rewire the brain's reward centers so that he can, you know, function normally In lovemaking with his wife and. And this is a process that can happen. You. It can be gradual and take a few months. But anyway, I just mentioned those well-documented. Physical effects. Something that I don't know if we have studies on, but just, I think that you can understand intuitively is that porn. Creates a sense. It distorts. Expectations and beliefs about sex. So. If a man is being formed or I should say deformed in his ideas about sexuality and sex and how it should work. From exposure to porn. It's going to be hard for him to understand. What real life sex should be like in a way that pleases. A woman, his wife, because porn is all focused on the male gaze and on catering to the man's shorter arousal curve. And. More visual stimulation. So it really creates a self-centeredness. And a sense of entitlement that the man is going to have to actively work on correcting and specifically it can be hard for a man who's exposed to porn to understand how to work with a real life. Woman's. Slower longer arousal curve. That is part of her design for how God built her. To enjoy lovemaking in marriage. I have. A wife that I just did coating with yesterday. Who's inside my delight now. And she said her husband, who had a longstanding porn addiction that he's now free from. And he had also. Spent he had also. Paid money for prostitutes. He said now that his wife is going through my, my delight course. He feels like he's been duped, he's been lied to all his life. And what he thought was normal for women. And that is correct. That is correct. Porn is built on lies. And it isn't distorted, you know, it presents a distorted. Vision of sexuality and it's not normal. Because those women are literally paid to act like they're super turned on quickly and that, you know, like whatever the guy is doing is really turning her on when, in real life. And there's much more of an art of tenderness and an attunement and attention, and, caring for a woman's the longer slower arousal curve. So all that will need to be corrected. Okay. Now for the wife. Here are three resources to help the wife get support and care and accompaniment for the betrayal trauma that she suffers. When her husband uses porn, it is. A form of infidelity. And it is an attack on her trust and her sense of intimacy and our sense of her feelings of safety with her husband. Which, you know, she thought was there and then realizing that she's been deceived by him, using porn and hiding it. Oh, that is just a really sharp. Personal intimate form of pain. So here are three resources to help. Help her. Get support to process and heal from that. The first is a beautiful Catholic ministry called Hope's garden. There's coaching available through Hope's garden. There's peer support. Educational materials, prayer and spirituality. So this is just a really beautiful ministry. I highly recommend Hope's garden. Secondly, I will recommend the specific Catholic coach Casey Alison. Her website is com awake coach.org. And she has a certification from app stats with the, which is the. Association of partners of sex addicts, trauma specialist. So she has a certification and specialization and helping walk with women and coach them through managing and healing from the betrayal trauma that they suffer. And she's lovely. I've had her as a guest expert inside my delight and really like her. And I'm happy to highly recommend her. So that's my second reason that source for wives. Thirdly, this is also a bonus, like double two resources, but I'm going to categorize them as one. This is To parallel online programs, bloom for women, which I believe also offers coaching that is not necessarily intended for Catholics, but they have a lot of resources there. So bloom for women. Is designed to help women suffering from betrayal trauma. From husband's porn use or infidelity. Or other I think some other things as well, but porn is probably the biggie. And then bloom for Catholic women and Bloomberg Catholic women has some great online talks recordings that you can watch from father Sean, kill Collie, who I mentioned earlier, who's probably one of the biggest Catholic. Voices of. As a Catholic priest speaking out against porn and offering. Education and, and help around that. Okay. So those are my three resources for wives. We're up to seven resources now. And for a wife, the after effects of her husband's porn use are what I see when I work with women in my course, my delight. They can vary. Oh, one thing women often tell me is that when they're making love with their husband, They're thinking about. Kim. They are assuming that he is comparing them and their body to the images he's seen on porn. And they feel really insecure about their body image or just about like how they are in love making, you know, they'd be like, oh, I'm not as sexy as those women, or I could never compete. So this huge feelings of insecurity. Or worry that their husband is reverting in his mind. As they're making love to these memories of images he saw. It could be anger and resentment and hurt. All those can be really common as well. And fear. I mentioned worry about also fear. Like women could feel like, oh my gosh. Okay, well now I'm obligated. I have to have sex with my husband anytime he wants, because he has this past history of porn use. And if I don't. Make myself sexually available to him. Now he's liable to slip back to that. So this sort of pressure motivated by fear that they're the only thing standing between their husband and porn use. And that is a lie that is false. A man could have sex every day with his wife and still be addicted to porn. No, there's no amount of sex you could give. That will be enough to prevent a husband from using porn. And I think we can, look at the case of the, the Duggar fellow whose wife, is from a Christian culture that really highlighted an obligation sex mentality. And he still used terrible porn and child porn. And, you know, he was, he was getting plenty of sex from his wife. We can assume because his mother-in-law and just sort of the circles that they ran in really promoted. Uh, this, this duty sex or obligation sex message for wives. Okay. So what can a couple do once the husband has stopped using porn? To rebuild their intimacy, their spiritual and emotional intimacy and their physical intimacy with each other. And I'll just share a scripture quote and another book of the Bible. And then three specific skills. So the scripture. Quote is from two Corinthians chapter five, verse 17. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. It is possible for us. In marriage to rebuild our love life and new. This does not mean disregarding and ignoring the hurts and harms from the past. But it is an encouragement that it is possible to rebuild a new and that you can draw on the power of the sacrament in your marriage, your sacrament of marriage on the grace. There. And on the strength that God gives to do this work of recreating your love life and new, but it needs to, it needs that intentionality and effort. And then I'll point to reading the song of songs in the Bible. You can draw a lot of inspiration and, and re formation. Of your ideas of lovemaking from that? When you read song of songs, you see the wife uses her voice a lot. There's this beautiful mutuality between husband and wife. Both of them have desire, both of them honor and affirm each other and give each other a tenderness and affection. And it's, it's not about use it's about this, this deep respect and. Respect for the dignity of each others. Personhood and it's very, emphasizing the masculinity and femininity. There's so much good. That can be drawn from that. And of course, as a Catholic, I'll also point to looking at theology, the body and the church's teachings on marriage to help form a correct view of sex. Also look, I guess she would say, look at the church's teachings on sex. And those are in the catechism in two different places. And they're in the context of the church's teaching of the sacrament of marriage. And that section starts at catechism paragraph 1601. And they're also in the church's section on the 10 commandments. Specifically on the commandments relating to adultery and not coveting your neighbor's wife. And I don't remember those paragraphs off the top of my head, but I will put them in the show notes. Okay. So what can a couple do? Practically. To work on rebuilding their intimacy in a way that really honors them cares for the wife's heart. Helps the husband not revert in his mind back to those past memories. So the first tip I will offer is talking, talking during lovemaking. If you can speak aloud to each other, that helps both of you root your attention in the present moment, it can really help reassure the wife that her husband is thinking about her and what they're doing together. Now. Not. Things that he's remembering from passport news. The same goes for, you know, if the husband has had sex with other people in the past before they were married or before they were together and same with the wife as well. This is, this tip works for multiple. Multiple challenges. So talking with each other. Darren lovemaking. The second skill I'm going to share is an elaboration of talking, but it's giving specific reassurance to the wife. Her heart needs to hear that she is beautiful. Just the way she is. She needs to hear her husband say, I'm only thinking of you right now. I love you. You're the one I choose you are the one I give myself to. When she can hear him say those things with his voice and our husbands voices are so grounding and reassuring to us as women. There's just something really powerful about hearing her husband's voice. But if he can say those specific words of reassurance of commitment of devotion, You know, repenting and, and apologizing, like. I am so sorry. You know that I did that in the past that you are the one I choose. That can really help her heart feel safe in her husband's arms in the marital embrace. And then thirdly, you can focus on the senses together in lovemaking that are not present urine porn use. So specifically let's look at the sense of smell. I learned this tip from my friend, Dr. Mario is the Casa when I was a guest on his always hope podcast and we were discussing. These topics together. The, he mentioned that this is something husbands can do to really help them root themselves in the moment of love making with their wives is too. Really breathe in her scent and focus on your sense of smell because that's something that porn can not recreate. And each human being has their own unique smell. Your wife has her own unique smell. So to really breathe her in. And why it's also, you know, using your senses sense of smell, touch, taste. Hearing all of these help you connect with your body, connect with your husband, connect with what you're doing instead of letting your mind wander and dissociate just to Go somewhere else in your mind. So those are my 10 skills for a couple where porn has been present or is present in their marriage. And I hope that is helpful. I just wanna encourage everyone. It is. Totally possible. To get free from porn and to rebuild a beautiful love life together. I see it happen all the time. I'm inside my delight and. I just want to encourage you that it's worth it as well, because it's moving into the light and out of the darkness and we're so much happier there. God bless you. Bye.