[Doris28]

Hi! I am new to this website. I am in a difficult situation and I do not know if I am entitled to feel a certain way. I have been married for about a year and before getting married, I had a talk with my husband about porn. I told him my feelings about it…I was raped in college and I just feel like porn can encourage bad behavior in men since it is demeaning to women. I hate how women are portrayed as sex objects. I can’t even go running outside without being harassed by men. He said that he agreed with me and would no longer look at porn. I have since caught him several times because of an account on youtube that was left open on our computer and pages that were accidentally saved. (we have an iMac and it will save sites with images of the site to our favorites even without using a bookmark). Each time he has apologized and said that it won’t happen again…and of course it has. I feel like I can no longer trust him because if he lies about this, then I am worried about what else he is lying about. Each time that I have confronted him about what I saw, he lies to my face until I show him how I know what he was doing. He says he loves me. I don’t really feel it though. He is really focused on school and work. I need help because I feel like a loser-maybe I shouldn’t care so much about him watching porn or looking at naked girls. I feel like maybe I am not good enough for him if he has to look at this crap. We have only been married for a year and I really want to make this work but I also don’t want to make a mistake by staying with him. Any advice would be appreciated since there isn’t a single person I know that I would talk to about this.
Thank you!

[Ask April Masini]

Since you’ve been raped and have a specific reason for reacting badly to porn, it would seem gentlemanly if he could put your need to heal from your trauma above his need to look at porn. It’s a telling sign that he hasn’t. The problem that is actually worse than his looking at the porn is his lying to you. The lying can be about porn, money, health — anything — and is more far reaching than any bad behavior.

Understand that liars can love people, and the two behaviors (lying and loving) are not mutually exclusive. Addicts love people. Murderers love people. It’s easy to love — what’s more difficult is to find compatibility and mutual respect.

Normally, I would ask you to consider what more YOU could be doing in the relationship to entice and arouse him in the bedroom and otherwise because sometimes men go to porn because they don’t feel like they can get what they want in the bedroom from their wives. If he feels like you may be embarrassed or not open to his feelings in the bedroom, he may not want to approach you about them. This is the time when you can start to open up and show him how interested you are in satisfying him and becoming more of the vixen and less of the wife. Marriage is work and keeping a sex life hot is work, too! In fact I’ve written a book to put the X back in the sex lives of couples called Romantic Date Ideas that you can download here: [url]http://www.askapril.com/relationship-dating-advice/romantic-date-ideas.html[/url]. If sex is something you want to work on to see if it alleviates the porn issue, then I’d recommend you check out this book.

However the problem of his lying is more basic, and before you consider divorce, have a serious talk with him that isn’t so much about your feelings about his lying, but about your behavior in response to it. Tell him you’re not sure if you can stay in a marriage where there is lying like this and if he’s interested in addressing this problem head on, himself. Listen to what he says; assess what he does, and make a tough decision.

Let me know how things go — I know this isn’t easy. And please join me on Facebook at this link: [url][/url]. 🙂

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