Thread by @sheilagregoire

It’s #FocusFriday, when we highlight bad teaching in the Christian world about marriage.

Today: Focus on the Family (@Focusfamily) blames the wife for the husband's porn use, showing they do not understand the dynamics of porn and marriage.

focusonthefamily.com/episodes/broad…

In this show, at the 16:21 mark, the host, commenting on porn affecting 47% of marriages, says: “I think one of the reasons men are getting into trouble in this area is that that need [for sex] is not being met.” FOTF says men turn to porn when wives reject sex.

This is a myth which research does not support.

For couples married less than 25 years, the majority of porn use PREDATES the marriage. Men used porn to deal with sexual frustration, stress, rejection, and boredom before they were married. Porn became their coping mechanism.

He marries, and perhaps the urge for porn goes away for a while. But when his wife turns him down for the first time he becomes very frustrated. When stress comes up at work, porn is a beacon. He never learned proper ways of coping with negative emotions, & so porn is his outlet.

Did the wife cause the porn use? Or was it the fact that he trained himself BEFORE marriage to deal with negative feelings with porn? We all experience stress. A wife cannot make a husband’s life stress-free. If he is used to managing stress with porn, that's not her fault.

Additionally, in porn women don't need foreplay. They're aroused from men using them, often violently. So he is selfish in bed, & his wife understandably doesn't enjoy sex. If she is also new to sex, she may lose interest quickly, since he is not doing anything to arouse her.

He thinks her non-responsiveness is her fault. In porn, women don't require men to slow down. They're turned on by what makes men turned on. So he assumes she's the one being selfish or frigid.

So he turns back to porn instead of learning how to have great sex with his wife.

Then there's the more sinister side. Porn use rewires the brain so that what becomes sexually arousing is an image, not a person. It trains the brain to crave DIFFERENT—the same stimulus cannot provide the same level of arousal. Men thus can't maintain interest in their wives.

Before porn use was widespread, 15% of marriages had the wife with the higher sex drive. Today it’s 30%, & the vast majority of that increase is men losing their libidos to porn.

Because he always needs different, he must see different women doing extreme things to get aroused.

The wife may be more than willing to have sex, but instead he masturbates to porn. Many porn users also experience sexual dysfunction. The majority of new cases of erectile dysfunction are of men under the age of 40, and it is almost all porn induced erectile dysfunction (PIED).

Porn use is also implicated in premature ejaculation and delayed ejaculation.

It is also associated with men demanding degrading or extreme things in bed that she finds distressing. He needs to depersonalize or dominate to get aroused. Intimacy is no longer arousing.

Imagine a wife who craves great, intimate sex with her husband, but her husband masturbates to porn instead. When he does turn to her, he either rushes through & leaves her hanging, or can’t maintain an erection. Or he demands something degrading, and she feels guilty saying no.

Now she listens to this @FocusFamily show and hears that her husband turns to porn because she isn’t willing to have sex. Imagine how devastated she would feel. She dreamed of great sex, too, but her husband has either checked out or demands things that make her feel used.

What I don’t understand is: Why doesn’t FOTF understand the effects of porn on marriage?

This is commonly known, in both Christian writings and secular research. Why does Focus on the Family insist on blaming women for porn problems? Shouldn’t they know better?

Please, Focus on the Family: Do some research. See the effects that porn is having on marriages. And next time you talk about it, frame it correctly, rather than heaping shame where it does not belong.

tolovehonorandvacuum.com/2014/03/effect…