Please don't lecture MelodyLane about whether she does or does not understand Marriage Builders principles. She has been doing this for over a DECADE. That's over 25% of Dr. Harley's career. She's spoken to him personally on the radio and attended his seminar, she's used MB principles to recover her own marriage, and has helped hundreds or even thousands of other couples to do the same.

While I have occasionally caught a few things from Dr. Harley that MelodyLane did not know or got wrong, the idea that she's misunderstanding Marriage Builders on the issue of porn is laughable to anybody who has listened to Dr. Harley regularly. She is posting here exactly what he says, and what he has said since at least 2006, probably longer than that.

The problem is not that MelodyLane is misunderstanding Marriage Builders principles. The problem is that you don't believe it will work, or you don't want to do it. That's all right; there's no law that says you have to run your marriage according to these principles. But there's no law that says your wife has to be happy about what you do, either! You see?

No, you have this exactly right.


No, she is repeating exactly what Dr. Harley says, and she is trying to get across to you that most women are absolutely DISGUSTED by pornography!


So you are basically saying that a man who says he doesn't use porn is lying?

My wife put a keylogger on my computer to check if I was using porn. I thought that was cute. She found out that I was not.


grim, we can help you use Marriage Builders principles to have a better marriage, but you are going to have to get focused on fixing your marriage, not on trying to tell MelodyLane or anyone else how to post to other people.

It sounds like you think a "constructive" way for a woman to deal with porn in marriage is to just accept that this is normal.

But Dr. Harley would completely disagree with you, grim, as would most of us.

Maybe I am misunderstanding what you meant by "constructive."


It is not for you to say that it is "unnecessary" when someone else separates from their spouse. Talk about judgment!


grim, forgiveness has to be predicated upon repentance. A woman who "forgives" her porn using husband every day for years is going to shred her soul. Dr. Harley would never counsel a wife (or husband) to forgive an unrepentant spouse, and neither would we.


You don't need to make them open up and tell the truth; all you gotta do is check up on them!

Do you want help with your marriage, or do you just want to weigh in on how people should advise wives?

Thanks Markos!

grimreaper, if you want to know what Dr Harley says about porn addictions, you should listen to todays radio show. On it, he discusses how the first step to resolving porn addiction [or any other addictions] is to tell everyone. That would include your wife.

The next step is to change your life in a way so you won't be tempted and won't have the opportunity to view porn.

Dr Harley knows that men use porn, just as he knows that men have affairs. He knows people lie, steal and murder too. Doesn't mean he advocates those things! Your solution is to STOP IT if you want to stay married.

Stop lying and stop messing around with porn.

Do you want to stay married and create a happy, romantic marriage where all your needs are met? Or would you rather be a dishonest salami slapper who hides out like a cockroach? The choice is yours.

I did not see an answer to my question. What do you think about this suggestion, grim? I think this is the perfect way to get your wife to quit bringing this up over and over again, and then both she and you will be one step happier.

What do you think?

grim, if your concern is with other people's marriages and helping women who come looking for answers, then my suggestion is that you establish your own website and use it to advocate your ideas about what is best for their marriages.

But if your concern is with your marriage, then we can show you how to use Dr. Harley's ideas to make your marriage better.

Something you might miss in the middle of all of MelodyLane's posts is this:

"Do you want to stay married and create a happy, romantic marriage where all your needs are met?"

I don't have to use porn or whatever, because when I focus on building a marriage that is happy and romantic for my wife, her sex drive goes up, and my needs get met. And having used porn for years in the past, I can testify that a happy marital sex life beats porn and solo flying so badly that I would never want to go back to that.

He doesn't like his wife and feels like meeting her needs is more work than he is willing to do, and only accidentally meets her need for FS because he'd be doing that anyway.

I think he chose an apt name. He is intentionally killing his wife with neglect and deception. Grim, will you send your wife here?

I didn't see an answer to my question either.

Back off, markos, and join the queue!

Me three!!

You're in America now, lady!! It's LINE, not queue!

It's still queue for computer programmers.

traitor!!

I don't think my sneaky approach does fit with radical honesty very well but if there is only one acceptable answer and you don't agree with it then it's not necessarily a problem that can ever be solved. Sometimes it's difficult if not impossible to be honest and enthusiastically agree with what your partner wants at the same time. It's easy enough if one side concedes defeat but I'm still trying to figure out how this would work in complex situations where both sides feel strongly about their position. Why can't people just agree to disagree and live with the differences sometimes?

WOW!!!! I'm stunned. You do know that your character is revealed by who you are and what you do when no one is looking right?

I can't believe someone is trying to justify porn use because 'everyone does it'. My goodness.

I wasn't saying that everyone here is misinterpreting all the Marriage Builders principles in general like radical honesty, POJA, love busters, etc. I was specifically talking about some of the name calling (disrespectful judgments) I am hearing and the idea that it is unusual for married men to ever masturbate or view porn. I don't remember Dr. Harley ever saying anything to directly support these inaccurate beliefs and judgmental attitudes about porn and masturbation. It seems like he said that he has seen some cases where "excessive" masturbation led to some men losing the desire or ability to have sex with their wives but I don't believe he ever said that this will always be the case if you masturbate at all. So then if you start with these observations of a few examples and distort his original conclusions it gets misinterpreted into the general idea that masturbation is supposedly a one-to-one substitution for sex where men can generally only do one or the other which is definitely not true.

Actually I feel like this is already the case more than 99% of the time. I have tried making long-term promises like that a few times but after several months I always ended up breaking these promises so it is starting to seem pointless to think it is even possible to do that permanently. Maybe at some point I will open up and talk about all this honestly with my wife but I don't really see the need at this point. To be honest the whole situation seems completely ridiculous to me. Seriously, all this over what? Looking at breasts in pictures or videos? Shouldn't most people in the world have more serious problems to worry about? How did this end up being such a big deal?

The goal is for both sides to feel strongly about the marriage. At that point, negotiating becomes easy.

Just to play with you for a minute, because I don't think you are serious about your marriage at all, let's look at a potential negotiation about porn. You state all the reasons you would like to continue, all the things you find appealing (different breasts, work-free sex, fantasy), she states her objections (not being your object of lust, not given the opportunity to fulfill your fantasies) and then you negotiate to get what you want while not giving her what she doesn't want. Without getting too graphic, I think a little perky top dressing while servicing could be an acceptable negotiating point, as could locations and role-playing.

I think if you treated your wife like a sexy beastwoman, she would return the favor.

But if you're stuck on OTHERS and ALONE, you will end up alone, just like you like it.

Whoops.

Because what you're doing kills her.

Do you really understand POJA? POJA

You'll be less likely to break those promises if you were completely transparent to your wife, and knew she would be checking up on you.

If it's not that big a deal, then it shouldn't be that hard to just stop it to make your wife feel better, now would it be?