Porn and How to Make Your Wife the Problem*

Dr. Wall looks at the confusing messages pornography sends to wives when their husbands use it and explain it away.  

It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.+

Virginia Woolf

Hey, guys. If you want to make your wife crazy here’s a sure-fire way: Look at porn a bunch and masturbate to your heart’s content all by your lonesome and then when she finds out and conveys to you that your masturbating and pornifying (P & M) are hurtful and disgusting to her tell her she’s the problem!

It’s normal, sweetheart!

All’s the boys do it!

It’s a (fill in the blank with the current stats) _____ billion dollar industry! (2006: $13 + billion in USA alone) AND it’s LEGAL!

I’m just more sexual than you!

It’s just pictures! I’m not doing it with a real person!

I love you, babe!

Hey, relax!

You don’t have to be angry.

We can do it together!

It’s can’t be wrong, ‘cuz it feels so good.

If you say things like this to her, you can have your cake and eat it to…for a while. It (P & M) is a rising factor in divorces, in case you didn’t know.

And, no. Not all the boys do it.

And if you are smart and planning ahead, you’ll figure out a way to put yourself on that list, the list of those who are former dabblers or who never did it. P & M ain’t helping you, Son. And it’s turning your wife into a shrew. She doesn’t like being turned into a shrew. She likes being happy and feeling good about herself and feeling good about you and your relationship and she WANTS, yea, LONGS to respect you. Really. Yes, you! But how is she supposed to respect you when you have this dark secret? And you are thinking of breasts and butts all the time and it’s not hers you are thinking about or if you are it’s you comparing hers to theirs and hers aren’t as big nor as nubile and even if you never ever looked at porn in your entire life and she never did either, she’d have enough problems with accepting her own body. She doesn’t need any help from you. And how is she supposed to respect you when your mind is in the gutter and you act all selfish and superior and get all mad and pissy if she even just ever so gently suggests that, you know, dear, I don’t think this porn thing is helping us out here and you turn into an angry troll and throw up words all over her dignity? And you scream at her that she’s a control freak and taking away your fun and she’s so frigid and why won’t she be sexual with you the way you want and sex with her is sooooo booooooring and why won’t she dress up and act all whorie and debauched and stuff. And how is she supposed to respect you when you don’t even go to bed with her ‘cuz you are surfing the internet for one more rack or other unmentionables, just the perfect one and you search and search and nothing is good enough now. It’s all boring you. You can’t look fast enough and long enough and get enough, you, you, you, you. More and more and more. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Oh, yes!!!! There’s one. That’s it. And then the next night that picture or video is BOOOOORRRING and you have to get something dicier and juicier and grosser, but hey, that’s just you. You’re just this sexual creature, dear.

Where’d her husband go? He disappeared. Into a quagmire of lust and self-absorption.

And she’s not supposed to be upset about that? She loved her husband. She married him for better or worse, but if you’d a told her that the worst really was the worst, the worst possible, the most grossest thing you could ever imagine, a husband who spends his time not thinking about her and cherishing her and protecting her, but his mind is lost in a sea of nameless body parts with no faces.

No faces.

Except distorted ones.

And those are not really happy.

You aren’t really happy doing it. Admit it. You hate yourself for it. It’s turning you into monster. Wait until your kids find out. Or your grandkids. Or your boss. Ha! Won’t you be the party animal when they usher you out to your car and they mail you your crap from your desk ‘cuz they don’t want your sorry butt polluting their office and setting them up for a lawsuit and robbing them of the time you were supposed to be WORKING and you were P & Ming? At work? Are you crazy? You’re crazy, too? AHHHHH! So what are you going to tell your wife now? Aren’t you all Mr. Superior?

How is she supposed to respect you now?

She loved you, remember?

She was the wife of your youth.

She was your sweetheart.

It was just you two. ‘Til death us do part.

And you went and polluted the whole thing and then on top of it you act like you did nothing wrong while you wipe your mouth, like you can do evil and nothing will happen. Nothing.

Nothing, but rotting your soul and garbageifying your mind. And making your wife crazy. But, noooo. You had nothing to do with that, right?

Don’t be mad, if your wife is hurt, Bud. Your wife’s got a conscience still. You could use one. Maybe you could borrow hers for a while, while you work on getting yours out of the gutter.

That’d be a plan.

Hopefully it’s not too late.

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*My thanks to Jill C. Manning’s wonderful video titled The Impact of Pornography on Women: Social Science Findings and Clinical Observations at the “Social Costs of Pornography Conference” at the Witherspoon Institute, December 11-13, 2008, for the theme of this blog today and to my son Brandon Wall for hooking me up with this material.

+As quoted by Jill C. Manning in the video mentioned above

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Check out these other blogs by Dr. Wall about marriage and pornography:

Dr. Wall rants against Oprah’s recent declaration that women need to kick up their sex lives with porn.

Porn Stars As Victims

In this blog Dr. Wall porn stars are NOT glamorous and having some empathy for the soul of the porn star may be an arrow in the quiver of someone struggling with porn.

Wandering Eyes

Dr. Wall writes that porn says boundaries are bad while your marriage vows declare the boundaries around your marriage are good.  It’s one or the other.

Conversations After Porn

Dr. Wall shares a hypothetical conversation with a couple who is healing from past porn use on the husband’s part.

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Dr. Bing Wall is a marriage therapist with a practice in Ames and Urbandale, Iowa.  To set up a time to see Dr. Wall click here or call 888-233-8473.  For more information about Dr. Wall click here.