Dear DL,
I’m so glad I have someone to write to about this topic that has got me turned upside down. I have been married to my husband for three years and dated for three years before we were married. He is a good man. He loves me and takes care of our family. My problem with him is he looks at porn. I have tried becoming okay with porn but deep inside me I have a big problem with it. I strongly feel it is cheating. I am disgusted by it and by the way the women are. I consider myself to be fairly open-minded but I just can’t accept this about him. It hurts me. He has done it since we dated and even though I have threatened to leave several times, he always goes back to it. Sometimes I do a good job trying to forget it happens or turning the other cheek, other times it gets me so angry. I think I am pretty attractive, even after my baby I bounced right back and look good I think but I don’t look like a porn star. I can’t compete with those women. Not to offend anyone reading this but I hate those women who do porn. Why do they exist? Just to make normal women like me feel awful and like I could never reach their level. On any given day I feel my husband would choose those women over me. I guess I should be happy he doesn’t sleep with other women and this is just a porn thing but it hurts me every time. DL, what can I do? I don’t like feeling like this. Thanks for listening and being willing to post about this porn topic that I know a lot of my girlfriends struggle with.
Discouraged Wife from Fort Collins, CO

Dear Discouraged Wife,
Thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story that I am sure many of us can relate to. You can find so many different opinions on the porn topic and I have probably come across most of them in some form. Of course there are couples and women who enjoy porn, who take no offense in it and some who even use it as a means to enhance their sexual lives. To each their own. With that being said, I completely empathize with you dear Discouraged Wife. Your truth is your truth. You don’t like porn. You see it as a betrayal. This is your right to have this opinion. Many, many people feel cheated upon by their partners who engage in porn and begin to feel low self-worth trying to compete with those false, unattainable images. When porn has been studied, it has been proven it stimulates the same parts of the brain that the most addictive illegal drugs do. Basically, compulsive porn watching IS an addiction and once one crosses over into addiction, even if that addiction is sex, it stops becoming sexual and becomes more about an addictive behavior than actually about being sexual at all. Sexuality is about intimacy. I could possibly open my mind to believe in some scenarios porn can be considered intimate, but that is stretching my mind as far as it can. Under most conditions, porn is not intimate and in fact is used to put a huge barrier between a person and their partner resulting in diminishing intimacy. For those of us who have been directly negatively affected by porn, I find no problem with yelling it from the mountaintops that no no NO I am personally not ok with porn in my home, in my relationships. Discouraged Wife, you have said you have threatened to leave because of it. I do not recommend this unless you actually plan on backing up this choice and leaving. I am a behaviorist in that way. Romantic partners are always paying attention, especially in the beginning to what our boundaries are and if we follow through on upholding those boundaries or if they perhaps suave themselves past your boundaries. So ask yourself, do you want your husband as he is today or do you want to leave your husband? Notice how I didn’t say, do you want to stay with your husband as long as he changes? That is not an option. We should never, ever bank on someone changing. What we see is what we get. I mean I am a relationship therapist so of course I believe people can make lasting changes within a relationship if both are committed to some real work, but sadly I have found it quite rare where both are equally committed to personal change to benefit the relationship. Your husband has been clear about who he is and what his behaviors are. If you can accept that he does this and still enjoy being his wife, then continue as is but without the resentment and discouragement you are feeling. Rewind. Let me be clear, by accepting that your partner does something you do not like is not at all saying you now agree with what they are doing or like it. No, no, no. It just means you are a full and vibrant woman that has better things to do with your time than tracking your partner’s habits you find repulsive. I have known couples where one of them absolutely despises the others’ habit like smoking and were still able to share happy lives and children together, married and intimate. I have known women who left their partners due to porn and were discouraged by how many future suitors were also engaged in porn. I have known people I have held in the highest respect in my personal lives come clean about a porn addiction and address it in the most honorable way possible with sponsors and computer software tracking them to keep them accountable. Addictions have been proven none absolutely ever get kicked without support and humility. I have known women I love be tortured and broken by their partner’s porn relapses that left them feeling so empty and lost that they came the closest they ever did to actually leaving. If they could choose again they would never sign up for a partner with a behavior of porn addiction but they still stay and try to either look the other way or accept them as they are. Some of us have been driven mad by porn. I can say for myself personally the lowest I ever felt about myself in my life in any relationship was when I was engaged in a relationship with a person who compulsively needed and hid porn. The sanity I lost, the lows I hit, there was no dignity left. It tore me up. It took me a long time but I was lucky enough to be able to get out and start over and eventually find someone who shares my values. They do exist. So many of us suffer from intimacy issues. We are all so married to our phones. With our technology replacing our human interactions, it makes sense it has replaced our sexual lives too. But like I said before, it is not sexual, it is compulsive. Even actual sex isn’t sexual or intimate for many, but just another compulsion or addiction which is why porn has been known as a potential gateway drug to actual physical, not just spiritual infidelity. I have never in my life seen someone lastingly become clean from any addiction FOR another person. We can plead, manipulate, control, shell out empty consequences but no one ever gets better from an addiction taking hold of them and ruining their relationships until they hit their own personal bottom within themselves and choose to seek help and become free from their addictions with some substantial work. The person I knew who sought the sponsor for porn and got help, his wife didn’t even hate porn but felt compassion for him for suffering from something that depleted his soul. What I am saying is, it wasn’t her threats that lead him down a healing path. We can’t control other people. We can only make our own choices and control our own selves. We don’t have to like every single thing our partner does, but there are some deal breakers. Readers, what are your deal breakers? You should know them like they are your own ten commandments, something one can’t engage in any friendship or romantic relationship without. Discouraged Wife, I see you genuinely love your husband. I see he disappoints you with his shortcomings. I hope you can find the peace you are seeking within a marriage of love and truth, but mostly I hope you can find serenity within you, spending less time focusing on his behaviors and more time focusing on your blessings and all the strengths and beauties you have within you. You have my utmost respect and warm wishes as you navigate this heavy, painful topic. Reach out to others, you are not alone.

Dear Doctor Loveland,
I have been checking your site now for many week trying to get the courage to write in. I keep hoping someone else will write in with a story like mine so I can just see what you tell them so here I am on April 7 finally brave enough to write you. So I love my boyfriend. I really love him but we have both done things to make each other not really trust each other I guess. So my question is about his phone. I feel like when I am with him all I can think about is when he might leave the room for a minute so I can check it. There is never really anything on there but I found something on his phone a real long time ago and ever since I just can’t stop checking. I know he loves me. He makes me feel special a lot. How can I stop checking his phone? What if there is something on there I really need to know about? I swear I am not really this person but this is how it has been like lately. Help!
My Fake Name: Julie

Dear Julie,
Thanks for mustering up the courage to write in. Everyone should know this is a safe, anonymous place to write in for relationship help whether you are crushing or single or in a relationship or breaking up. I am here to answer your dilemmas. Julie, you say here you want to give up checking his phone. If you are committed to that, then you have all my support. Really it comes down to a choice and if you truly choose to stop, it will take some discipline and motivation but you will be able to stop. Maybe you just decide you are going to trust him and then you just will. Also trusting the universe will reveal to you anything you will NEED to know to make informed decisions about staying with him or not. Perhaps you don’t trust him but you want to stay. If you don’t trust him, I recommend that if you are sexual with this man you protect yourself from any possible incident of STI’s. That is your body, your health… not worth putting that at risk. Period. Love is a tricky thing. Sometimes it is very hard to distinguish between actual love and this things that feels a lot like love but is more like obsession- “I can’t see myself living without you” kind of feelings. I often see couples who are just looking for an excuse to leave each other but just don’t have the proof yet. It is too painful to leave without substantial evidence, and confusing and causes lots of repetitive getting back together. I am sure you are aware that if this man wanted to hide anything on his phone or in his life from you, he easily can. Unless you are some kind of tech hack that knows more than the average person who is phone snooping, it would be very possible for anyone to cover their tracks. That may be a reason to justify giving it up. You aren’t going to find hard evidence there anyway so therefore it is a waste of your time and your serenity you are freely giving away. Sometimes we are just looking for a reason to justify leaving. We are not told to go with our guts. We are told to find the proof to back it up, that seeing is believing but when we have this sick “I know I am going to get hurt” feeling we ignore it and so continues the cycle of abuse. Self abuse. Because you have a choice to stay or go, to check the phone or not. Think of all the things you could be doing with your time besides waiting for that small moment to snoop on your boyfriend’s phone like actually connecting with your boyfriend! My suggestion is spend that same time reaching out to others, being a good person serving, and getting out of your own head of hurt. Getting out and seeing the world can give you a clear head to move forward in a more clear-minded way and give you the courage you need to make logical choices for yourself. Love is emotional. But healthy love is also logical. You are writing to me because you know you have jumped past logic and right into what can feel like insanity. Any bad habit, like phone snooping (which most of us are guilty of at some point so no judgement here!), can make anyone question their own sanity. How did I get like this? I went to college? How did I stoop this low? Have I got nothing better to do than check up on some man I could easily live without? The “easily” part may not feel doable now but it will become it. I have never in life met a woman who does not eventually learn how to do a break up with grace and rise up like phoenix above all of her past love stories or tragedies. We gather. We console. We inspire. We get busy living. We comfort others. We find our road less traveled, our own Julie-specific road and on that road we rise so high like that phoenix. Drop the phone. Go outside. Feel the sun on your face. There is hope and grace in it.