Relationship Fighting
Cause and Effect: Porn Addiction and Relationship Fighting
You can safely surmise that with an estimated four men entering the professional recovery process for porn addiction through the ultimatums and urgings of their partners as against one man who will do it on his own, the relationship fighting must have been intense for both cases. You can also assume that celebrity couples Christie Brinkley/Peter Cook and Tea Leoni/David Duchovny treaded similar routes in relationship fighting as you are now experiencing with your porn-addicted husband. Indeed, there is no accounting for taste, even when money is of no object!
Still, all the relationship fighting that you and your husband is now suffering through is definitely better than doing the extremes of either turning a blind eye to his mistakes or feeding his addiction by being “one of the girls and boys.” Either way, you lose. No doubt about it. There are, however, certain steps you can do to stop the current cause of your one too many relationship fighting.
First, you have to recognize that your husband has a porn addiction and that you can help him overcome it. With this realization, you can start focusing on getting help for him and cease engaging in yet another pointless bout of relationship fighting.
There are many resources to treating porn addiction – books, recovery programs, church, therapists, to name a few – but the important point is that your husband will put his heart and mind to them. (Family and close friends are often not the best sources of support in this case.) His reluctance can be another source of relationship fighting, but with love and patience, that too shall pass.
Second, you can stop blaming yourself for his porn addiction. In all your relationship fighting over his problem, you will notice that you might have ranted and raved about the whys and wherefores of his actions that will often lead to blames heaped upon your head by your own worst enemy – yourself.
You have to realize that his porn addiction is his own decision. As a mature adult, your husband is responsible for his own actions. There is simply nothing you could have done to push him over the edge of his porn addiction, even when your relationship fighting has escalated to more intense levels.
Third, you have to work together with him to regain mutual trust and rebuild the relationship. Your husband will need all the support he can get from you, especially as porn addiction can take time to heal.
When you have taken these steps, you can be assured that your relationship fighting over his previous porn addiction will be a thing of the past if you can move on and move forward. Can you do that?