Disclosure

Many couples come to me presenting the classic,  now frequent case, of a wife finding out about her husband's pornography use.  A 'dance' starts between the couple, and the inner, or sometimes quite vocal, dialogue might look like this:

Wife: "I knew something was going on.  I could feel it, he was checked out.  I confronted him several times but he denied, defended and almost blamed it on me.  I started to feel crazy, like I had the problem.  Something was missing in the relationship, I was protesting, trying to figure it out but he always put me off.  Now I know.  Here's what I don't know: how often did he look, was there an affair, was he in chat rooms on the internet, how often did he think about it, what was he thinking about in the restaurant that one time when he was staring at the waitress...I have so many questions I don't know where to begin."

Husband: "I can't lose her, I'll do anything.  It didn't have much to do with her, I brought this into the marriage.  She takes it so personally but I just looked at porn to get a high.  My wife is still attractive to me.  It wasn't that I was looking for someone more attractive, I just needed  to relieve stress.  Now when she looks at me I see the hurt, the betrayal.  I can't bare it.  And all the questions!  How do I answer them.  She has way too many.  We just need to move forward and let this go.   It won't happen again."

Professional help is needed at this point.  The first step is disclosure.  A quality therapist will prepare the husband to answer her questions while working with the wife to take in the 'waves' of pain that will inevitably come with the truth.  She needs to prepare her questions ahead of time, work on coping skills to manage feelings and have the goal of forgiveness, as hard as that word can be.  The husband cannot engage in 'dribble' disclosure or giving pieces and parts of his problem in a several week span.  It needs to be a concise, one time owning up.

Then he can become the hero to win her back, it's in his hands.  The next step is working on triggers...to be continued.

References: "Shattered Vows," Laaser (2008); "Healing the Wounds of Sexual Addiction," Laaser (2004)