new guy lossing battle

Hi David,

 

Welcome to BlazingGrace.   I have prayed for you.  It is wonderful that you are already in a program.  Does being in a program mean that your wife knows about your addiction?  If so, how have the two of you been dealing with it?  Has she been getting any counsel to help her through the pain of her feelings?  A painful revelation like this may certainly disrupt intimacy while help and healing are being sought.  If frequency of sex was an issue before your addiction came to light, don't expect that to change without finding out why it was an issue and seeing what might be done to change things.  It is a separate issue from the addiction, and is no excuse for acting out.  Even if you were single, with no sex life, God does not want our minds to be polluted with the sexual sin of pornography. 

 

Many factors play a part in a woman's responsiveness.  Some of them include fatigue, stress, time pressures, feeling like sex is all you value about her, or any other issues that remain unresolved in your home/relationship.  Do you have children?  Especially if you do, but even if you don't, do you date her like you did before marriage?  Do you help around the house?  Is your time together for non-intimate time limited by work schedules or other time pressures?  If you have 30 hours a week of free time together, and spend 3 hours intimately, then 10% of your time is spent, but if you only have 10 hours of free time together in a week, and 3 hours of it are spent intimately, then 30% of your free time is engaged in intimacy.  While it is the same amount of hours, being so much higher a portion of your free time might make it seem like that is what you value about her, even if that is not true. 

 

Twelve steps are good, but make sure that the two of you have counsel together, possibly with your pastor, to work through the effects of this addiction on the two of you as a couple.

 

Please be patient.  Pray that God will give/renew her desire for you.  Two things helped me in being more responsive, aside from 1 Cor. 7.  I read that when a woman says "I don't want sex" that a man hears "I don't want you."  I had never conceived that my husband so closely connected the act of sex with personal rejection, and it broke my heart, as that was a message I never intended to send.  Also, grasping physiologically, that sperm build up creates an actual physical pressure/need, something a woman does not experience, made me more understanding, though, I submit, nocturnal emissions are God's way of relieving that accumulation.  Do not, however, use these arguments to put pressure on your wife, as gratifying intimacy will only result from overflowing love, not pressure/guilt.

TruthSeeker