Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - My Husband Is Addicted to Porn, Not Me

Episode Date: April 19, 2023

Like it or not, this is a very common issue couples face. One in five men suffer from low desire, and one of the most common causes is that they are investing too much sexual energy and time into watching porn.  On this episode of Language of Love Session, I am speaking with Isabel whose husband has a porn addiction. I explain to her why her husband is being unresponsive to sex, the reasons behind his immense fascination to porn and more importantly, some of the things they can do as a couple (I assign her homework!) to counter that.  If you are wanting your partner to be less on his laptop and more on you, listen to this Language of Love session! Visit my website and check out my books on love, sex and relationships. Be sure to tune in regularly to The Language of Love for great discussions and thought-provoking conversations with accomplished individuals and experts offering invaluable advice on how to love and be loved better. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Isabel, what's on your mind, my friend? Hi. Well, I'm here because I saw a post that you

shared on Instagram the other day where you said that usually when men don't get enough sex they disconnect from the relationship and disconnect from their partner and I commented on it because I feel like I am on the opposite side I struggle with the opposite I I've been married for 15 years so all these years I've always I've even told my husband before I've always felt like I'm the man of the relationship and he's the woman most of the time I'm the one who's always and I don't know if always is the correct term but it's a more like constantly more active you're the one initiating it you're the one yes yeah most of the time okay I have to say though that my husband's 12 years older than me I'm 39 uh he's 50 already I mean there's a lot of story back there

There's a lot. But I've always noticed that I've always been more initiating things more than him. So I do feel like you posted. I feel like the man in that case. I feel more. Yeah, I feel like it's always been me. I've always blamed myself for that. Listen, I'm so glad you asked that question. I remember reading your comment and telling you you should come on the show because I was talking about the majority, right? The majority of the time, not all the time, but about one in five the statistics show men suffer from low desire. So, and I know that may be even higher because men are, you know, it's supposed to be women who have the headache, not men, right? But it is much more common than you think that men are the ones that are less or at least less, they may or may

not be less interested, but they certainly are less likely to initiate, less receptive, less assertive sexually. And there are lots of reasons that we can get into in a moment why that might be happening. But let me just start by saying that it makes it, you know, it's doubly hard because like I said, it's supposed to be common society assumes that it's supposed to be the woman that has the headache and isn't into it. So for a woman like you, who's living the opposite, you're kind of set up to assume, well, there must be something really messed up about me because men always want it. So why doesn't my man want it? It must be that I'm unattractive or undesirable or whatever else. And listen, men feel that way too when their partners don't want

it. But I think for women, especially because it feels like it's so unusual that it's really hard not to blame yourself. So obviously, relationship issues and other issues can play a part. But I just want to start by saying, do not jump to that conclusion because there are many reasons why a man may have lower desire. And you just mentioned one of them, age, you know, you said you've been together 12 years, did you say? No, we are, he's older than me for 12 years and we've been together 15 years. Oh, 15 years. Okay. So he was, he's 50 now. So he was 35 when you got together. And even you're saying from the very beginning, it was that way. Yeah. I will say that there's going to be a lot there's a story behind that and i if i can mention it it will be

pornography he was using pornography a lot calculating route to avoid seeing poverty turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org. Throughout the years, I've been trying to heal myself, trying to do all this work by myself, like reading, going to groups, you know. I was going insane before, thinking it was all me, like it's me, there must be something wrong with me,

that maybe if I change this, maybe if I move this, maybe it got to a point where, where I didn't, I didn't like myself, but then I went to groups and I realized this is not my problem is his problem. But at the end of the day, I feel like that was a distraction for him, but he will never wanted to do it. So every time I see a post where they referred to a man always wanted to have sex with the wife, I can never relate to that. It's like, I feel like I'm the guy in this situation. Well, you know, this is becoming, I'm glad you mentioned this. This was one of the things that I was going to mention is one of the causes of a man kind of checking out sexually. Here's what happens is that especially since porn has become so accessible, and I would say that's really only

been in the past, really 10 to 15 years, right? And then when Pornhub came out and, you know, everything else. And so what they're, and so it's so accessible now and what they are finding now that this has been around. It used to be you had to buy a magazine or something else or video or whatever. So now that it's so accessible and so many people have access to it, the scientists are starting to look at some of the longitudinal effects. So many things happen when a man starts regularly watching porn to his brain. In a way, partly when you're watching a computer screen, the part of your brain that's relating to the person you see on the computer screen, because it's 2D, not 3D, your brain is actually processing it like an object, not a person,

kind of. Your brain is actually disassociating from the humanity of it. And then you also get a dopamine. It stimulates the screen aspect of the porn even, and the porn itself stimulates the brain in a way that it becomes addictive from even a dopamine standpoint. So you need more and more and more. You need more outrageous porn. You got to watch it more and more and you get a rush and then a drop in dopamine and then you need more. So it kind of easily becomes compulsive. Yeah. So that happens. And then the other thing that happens with porn is that if you're already in this cycle. Right. And especially if you've been alone for a while, you know, and I see this with a lot of guys who have been alone for a while and using porn as their primary sexual outlet.

And I see this in men who have like were late bloomers and were single until their 30s. And then finally, you know, so they had many, many formative years self-stimulating, but even older men who have been single for a while and have been self-stimulating to porn, they get this very specific way, just to be mechanical, they do this very quick and specific kind of way of self-stimulating that is next to impossible to replicate with a human. Yes. Yes. So the kind of stimulation they need, they accidentally condition their body to need that. So then when they're with an actual person, they can't sustain an erection. They can't achieve an erection. They can't reach orgasm. Yeah. That's what happened to my husband. He couldn't sustain

an erection. Like he was, he was always struggling with that. So I always thought it was me. Yeah. And then what will happen when they have, and this is one of the primary causes, pornicide for men with low desire. And we'll talk about the other causes too. But one of the primary causes is when they have difficulty sexually responding. So if they can't achieve an erection, they can't sustained an erection, they can't reach orgasm or they reach orgasm too quickly, then they start withdrawing altogether because it's performance anxiety and like they don't want to, they're embarrassed. And so they just avoid it, right? Like a woman can kind of fake her way through sex, you know, even if she's not lubricating or reaching orgasm, she can still, if she wants to

be receptive and and you know and go through the motions of having sex a man can't go through motions if the mechanic you know if the equipment isn't working and so he almost always and this is what i say to what partners all the time if your male partner is checking out of the sexual relationship and he has sexual function issues that's the reason because he doesn't want to face the failure and the embarrassment and the humiliation so he just avoids it all together How do I address that, though? How do I get through like 15 years together? He hasn't been able to talk about it. We finally started going to therapy and we're finally going to talk about it because I'm constantly I became very, very hypervigilant. Yeah. But doing the work that I've been doing and trying to understand everything that you just told me, that's something that I've been learning and I've been researching and everything. And now it kind of clicks. Now I know it's not me. It's him. It's something that. It's not you. And it's also at this point hormonal because a man in his late 40s to 50s, his testosterone levels are lowering. And then that makes it even harder. First of all, testosterone, both men and women have, but men have a lot more of it than women. And they need it just like we do for sexual response and for desire as well as energy and general sense of well-being.

And so for all of us around the mid to late thirties into forties, that testosterone starts to decline. And so men will see difficulty reaching erections, lower desire that, you know, loss of muscle tone, loss of energy, all of that, just, you know, because I'm, I'm helping you, but I'm also helping them, you know, your question, which is so beautiful is helping millions of other women who are facing the same thing, which is why I'm talking kind of generally first. And then we're going to dive into like specifically what you can do.

So we've said hormones, difficulty performing, porn, changing your brain chemistry and creating a kind of addictive cycle and blood flow starts to diminish with age as well. And then it kind of takes on a life of its own, as you've seen, right, where now there's all this anxiety around it and avoidance of it and difficulty talking about it. So what do you do? Okay. If he is unwilling to address it or talk about it, then obviously the first step is therapy. However, I really want you to make sure that because if he's been resistant, this is true, whether your partner is male, female, or whatever, if your partner has been resistant to the idea of therapy and you finally convinced them to do it, just be really sure that you have found a therapist who a you feel like can relate and your partner can relate to them right so like your part you know that your partner may like them and connect with them

because you kind of have like one shot right and then if you know you want this to work you want him to engage right and you also want to make sure and this still shocks me as 30 years into my career as a therapist, how many couples therapists don't fricking address sex? Yeah. I can't tell you how many couples have come to me and they're like, oh, we went to like two or three different couples therapists through the years. And we would tell them this issue and they'd say, okay, we're going to deal with it. And then six months later, they still haven't even talked about sex. I would almost rather you go to a sex therapist who is a couples therapist as well. And you want to make sure of that too, because there are plenty of sex therapists who

can't navigate a relationship issue. You know, they just are very practical and put A and B and, you know, that kind of thing. So you want to make sure that it is both a couple's therapist and someone who's really comfortable and prepared to address the sexual dynamics between the two of you. So therapy then. Now, the other thing, and normally I would suggest this first just to get it out of the way, but in cases like yours where your partner is like not even wanting to talk about it, then it's harder to do until they get a little bit of therapy. But you definitely want to go to a medical doctor who specializes in sexual medicine because he needs to have his blood flow to the genitals checked, even though early on the loss of erections could be because

of porn. Now it could be because of a cardiovascular insufficiency or some blood flow issue. Right. So So you want a sexual health checkup and check his hormones and look at what medical treatment might be indicated because he might need testosterone therapy. He might need a blood flow enhancer like Viagra, Cialis or Levitra, one of those that increase the blood flow to the genitals and make it much easier to achieve and maintain an erection. And it is extremely common. It's been a lifesaver for pretty much every man over 50 and many younger. so calculating route to avoid seeing poverty turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away then take the next exit let's stop looking away and get in the

way of rising poverty your donations help the united way fight poverty in thousands of ways like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at UnitedWayGT.org. It's a combination of looking at his hormones, looking at his blood flow, looking at potential medical support. Okay. That is a really important piece of this puzzle

for any man who has low desire or difficulty achieving arousal or orgasm. Because what a sex therapist slash couples therapist, someone who really understands couple dynamics and sex therapy will do, is like what I would do, and I'm not going to be seeing you as a couple, but let's pretend I was, then I would find out what the main issues are. And then I would say, OK, look, you know, and I do each of your individual

assessments, everything. And then I say, OK, for the foreseeable future, no sex. We are taking sex, the expectation of sex, the pressure of sex off the table. And we are going to rebuild your sex life from the ground up on new terms. So your homework for this week is to just make out, you know, and then you slowly move through the process and then you can see the points of resistance. We can enhance your communication. Things will come up around his anxiety or his performance or your insecurities that are from all of these years of feeling rejected or, you know, things will start to unfold because right now there's a valley between you and there's no bridge across it. Right. And so to suddenly think you're going to close that valley and just be like,

woohoo, let's swing from the chandeliers. You know, now there's all this awkwardness and this happens in every relationship where sex has gone by the wayside in some way to get it back. There's this phase of awkwardness and, and that's a big part of what the therapy supports you through is finding your way back together on new terms with healthy communication and both of you getting your sexual needs met and resolving some of the and releasing some of the baggage and misunderstandings and miscommunications that have been building along the way because of this. Listen, regardless of your sexual orientation or your gender or your relationship status,

every single one of us has struggled at one point or another with a lackluster or disconnected sex life or difficulty finding the partner that we most desire. So I have designed an amazing program for you. Seven days to better sex. Each day, you're going to get a video and an information packet, all designed to help you jumpstart your love life. Just go to www.drlauraberman.com. Is your therapist also a sex and couples therapist?

She specialized on addictions, like pornography and all of that. Yes. So that will help with the way that porn has been playing into you. Is he still watching it? probably because it's a really hard habit to break. I think that's been the problem that we've had all all these years because my marriage went from being OK when we first got married. Then it went really bad because of the porn. Then I left him, then came back. Then it was kind of hectic at the beginning. And now he's not rejecting me as much as anymore. But here and there,

I see little things because I'm like, yeah, you're watching. Even though I try to control myself and not to be hypervigilant. Yeah. But I'm even though I don't want to do it, it's there. I'm like constantly watching, paying attention. So there's things I've seen that he's done. And he tells me, he swears that he wasn't doing it, that he was dead and know that I'm just, but it's, I can't believe him. So I tell him, I don't believe you. And he gets very upset. He gets very defensive. So this is how we ended up in therapy. Good. I'm glad. I mean, not good that you're struggling, but good that you're in therapy because the therapist, and that's a good way to get him in and the therapist will be able to address all of that part. Right. And you don't

necessarily have to do this the first session or whatever, but just keep in your back pocket to bring up to the therapist, the history that may be because of the porn, but not always because of the porn, especially given his age of response issues. And if he's resistant to go to the doctor, which a lot of men are just resistant to go to the doctor for anything, much less about their penises, you know, but if he's resisted to go into the doctor, get enlist the therapist help in session. I'm not saying to go behind his back and call her up and be like, listen, but like in session, enlist her help and getting him to go to a doctor. And the way that you find a doctor is to look for a urologist that's spelled with a U R urologist who specializes

in sexual medicine. I think the website is sexhealthmatters.info. And they have like a referral network to doctors all over the country, maybe the world that are experts in sexual medicine. And for men, there are so many treatments available. So he definitely at his age, even given the therapy and resolving the porn use is going to probably need some hormonal or medication support he does take some pills for his erections he takes pills i really don't know what kind of pills he's taking but yeah for him to get the help to get the erection he he takes it so that helped that's kind of been like an improved like it's helped us both as a couple i don't really ask too many questions because he says it's embarrassing he says that he feels like

he's losing his manhood like he's he's not feeling man enough yeah that's what i don't ask that much But he's he's I mean, we're going to therapy. He seems to be OK with going to therapy. But I know that when I bring up the subject, he doesn't really want to talk about it. He says men do it. That's why what you have to address in the therapy, because you're never going to have a fulfilling sexual and romantic connection unless you can have honest conversations about this kind of thing and troubleshoot things and at least acknowledge what's the 800 pound gorilla in the room. Yeah. And I would say there's a lot of research that's come out over the past decade or so showing that he's probably taking one of these blood flow enhancers like sildenafil, Viagra or Levitra, Cialis, one of those, and they work. However, they don't work as well. And if he's able to achieve an erection with that, then that will at least remove the piece of his sexual resistance that is about performance anxiety. But he still probably has low testosterone. And so those medications don't work as well if you don't have enough testosterone and they only resolve the part of low desire that is about performance anxiety. They're not going to create horniness or drive or that kind of thing.

So it may be worth at least exploring the testosterone question and make sure that's all okay. This therapist that you're seeing who's a pornography expert or a porn addiction expert is probably going to address this with him. But you don't want to become the policewoman who is like on top of him 20, 24, 7. And in the end, I have seen many, many men who have a history of porn addiction, who move through resolve it. part of the reason he's got a porn addiction is because he can't talk about sex. So he can't troubleshoot the solutions. So it's much less pressure to look at some random woman and masturbate than to be with someone who he loves, who he's worried he can't perform with and then can't talk about his fears or troubleshooting or anything else. So it's much easier to just look at a computer screen, you know, in those cases. So as his communication gets better and he starts to remove some of his resistance, I have seen it.

I'm not saying I don't believe that porn is like the source of all evil and is the end all be all thing you should avoid at all costs. But when you are in an addictive cycle like this, it really needs to be avoided either permanently or at least for a while, because if you can incorporate a little bit of porn here and there and use it in a relatively healthy way that supports the relationship, then it's fine. When it takes the place of the sexual relationship, which is what has happened here, it's not okay. Calculating route to avoid seeing poverty.

Turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away. Then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways, like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org.

There was a time when I even wanted to watch porn with him because I thought, I mean, this might help. But there was this time when we were watching it and he literally just got up and said, I can't do it. Not meaning I can't watch it. He just said, he actually had an erection, but he got up and said, I have to go to work. he just left me there. So I was so confused because I don't know what happened. We were

watching porn. We were both excited and out of the blue, he just said, I have to be panicked. Yeah. I mean, for him, that's really, that would be really interesting to me. And I would share that for sure with therapists. As a therapist, that would be something that would be really important for me to know, because my guess is that he has compartment, and this is where the healing is going to have to happen. He has compartmentalized his sexuality. And especially if it's a little, I don't know what the word is, raunchier kind of porn that he's watching. So from the compartmentalizing piece, I mean, there's my wife and then there's sexual release that I've gotten used to. And I can't combine the two, like something's not computing, right? So

there's that. But then if it's rather raunchy porn or things that he wouldn't necessarily do in the bed or automatically do in the bedroom with you, there may be a little bit. And I see a lot of men fall prey to porn this way, a little bit of what we call the Madonna whore complex. And this happens a lot in men who have a lot of inhibitions around sex, like he does clearly, because he can't talk about it, is that they idealize their wife, their girlfriend, their partner. She's pure. You know, they put her on a pedestal. She's like the Madonna. And then if I want to get like, I'm not going to do it with her. I'm going to do it. So it's possible that, you know, his the ideal is that every woman is both a Madonna and whore. We are both. We are everything in

between. We know we're all of it. And I don't mean whore in a derogatory way. It's just the phrase Madonna whore. Right. But yeah, the woman who is sexual and sensual and loves sex and wants sex and enjoys sex and the woman who is the mother and the nurture and the beauty and all of that so a lot of men especially who have a lot of inhibitions around sexuality when they fall in love with a woman they feel like they're sullying her or dirty dirtying her disrespecting her in some primal that's what i feel has that's what i feel honestly that's what i my god tells me i feel like that's what he feels because when we first got married he actually told me we can't do it all the time because then we're gonna get tired he didn't want to see me naked the beginning

i was thinking it was all me but now when years have passed now it kind of all make it's making sense now yeah and i think that's part of what happened to him like he he didn't want to put me there in that box where he had it was different um his wife he had it totally separated and he's disrespecting sullying you hurting you in some way inside his own mind if he engages in the kind of sexy enjoys watching with you yeah and then to bring you both together like was like head exploding can't deal gotta go to work yeah yeah so these are all things that you will work on in therapy and just like bring these issues up as it's appropriate in the sessions to talk about the medical evaluation and support the madonna whore thing the compartmentalizing thing the

thing around watching, not being able to like watch porn with you and like follow through what happened there and use the therapeutic environment. She will, I'm assuming it's a she, maybe it's a he, I don't know why I'm saying she. Yeah, it's a she. Use the therapeutic environment and the support of the therapist to start practicing talking about these things and getting comfortable talking about them together. And then what will happen, I mean, I see this happen every day. In my clinical practice, there's both men and women and everyone in between have all kinds of inhibitions around talking about these things. And so part of my job is to help model it, facilitate it, desensitize you a little bit, get you used to having these conversations

because that's what sustains every relationship, not just yours. You have to be able to talk about these issues and issues are going to come up no matter how great your sex life is. I'm glad that you're getting the help and it sounds like you're doing everything you can i'm trying because it's kind of out of control and we were about to end the marriage so we i said let's let's just try one more time because i just can't be checking all the time to see if he masturbated or not and then i find things and then he tells me he didn't and yeah there's been so many i have so many stories of him masturbating when i'm in bed when like next to me so it's that as when i think back I do, I feel the pain in my heart. So he doesn't want to bring it up. And he just woke up one day

and say, I'm not doing it anymore. Yeah. I asked him one day, when was the last time you did it? And he's like, four years ago. I'm like, Oh, my God, I cannot do you did it four years ago. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense to me that you waited for it doesn't. No, it just doesn't. So he just wants me to believe that he just woke up one day and said, Okay, I'm not gonna do it anymore. But I get it. I know it's hard. But I mean, we're trying our best and see what happens. And you have to be honest and you have to be able to trust him. And, you know, this is true with any kind of addictive behavior. Right. Like if you were using alcohol, right, and addicted to alcohol, you would be feeling the same kind of like vigilance of like, you know, and not trusting him. And, you know, he has to kind of earn that trust back in a way. But also, you guys have to be able to communicate about this. And all addictions, including porn addiction, is about running from something versus going into the belly of the beast and addressing what you're so hung up about or anxious about or struggling with or unable to deal with. Right. We tend to try to knock ourselves out and then it becomes compulsive.

Yeah. So I am so thankful that you asked that question and that you came on because when you're asking, you're asking for millions of other people that are struggling with the same thing and you're doing all the right things. The only thing I would add to the equation in addition to therapy is to get medical evaluation and treatment from a specialist because with all sexual issues, it's emotional factors, meaning stuff inside of each of you from your childhoods from your fears your anxieties your self-worth your inhibitions so that's the emotional realm it's relational the dynamics that have

developed between the two of you either as a result of these issues or maybe partially that contributed to the dynamics and the communication like the way he can't talk about it and that kind of thing. So it's emotional, relational, and physical. All three in a very non-linear way are affecting everyone every time there are sexual issues. So you don't want to leave out the medical piece because that's a big factor for someone who's 50. Yes. Yeah. All right. Okay. We'll do that. Will you let us know how it all goes? I'm wishing you the best of luck. Thank you so much. And thank you for sticking with it and for calling in. calculating route to avoid seeing poverty turn left to bypass the unhoused youth sleeping on

the street. Then keep right to skip by the lines of people waiting for food. Steer clear of the crowded shelter turning people away. Then take the next exit. Let's stop looking away and get in the way of rising poverty. Your donations help the United Way fight poverty in thousands of ways like providing food, shelter, and crisis prevention. Donate today at unitedwaygt.org.