If its no big deal then why risk your marriage over it? Why degrade yourself by lying about it? Just tell her since it is no big deal. Who would risk their marriage and throw away their integrity over "no big deal?"

So why capture it?

You know me, I ain't taking back nothin'!

ITs funny how some people like to argue and defend porn use .. i can attest that it is INFACT very damaging. Seen it over and over again ow damaging it is.. how degrading it is .. and how the ladies feel when their man prefers porn to the real thing. I am disgusted with myself for having this issue in the past and could never turn back to it.

WHen I get old and grey (grey is here already >.<) I want to be able to look at my wife and not compare her to something she can not compete with. I DO NOT want a contrast effect. QUiting porn use was one of the best things I ever did for my marriage.

MNG

Hey, grim, I think what you are missing in Dr. Harley's concepts is his explanation of Type A and Type B resentment. Do a search on this forum for that concept (I don't believe there's an article about it). I think it will explain to you how porn use, POJA, and PORH fit together in Dr. Harley's plan, and why.

Here it is:

Type A and Type B resentment

No, nobody said this. Dr. Harley thinks it's very common for men to masturbate and view porn, and he knows full well it is common in bad marriages. You are misreading.


What judgmental attitude? If you want to view porn, go right ahead! Enjoy! Just quit judging your wife for how she feels about it! She will probably always feel horrified; that will probably never change.

Learning about Dr. Harley's Type A and Type B resentment will help you understand what he recommends for cases where both sides feel strongly.

The "default policy" of the POJA (never do nothing without the enthusiastic consent of your spouse) is not supposed to be a happy state of affairs. It is supposed to be uncomfortable, in order to motivate the couple to find a happy, win-win solution as an alternative. Obviously following the "do nothing" default policy of the POJA here would be extremely uncomfortable for you.

As far as living with the differences, married people do agree all the time to just live with love busters from each other, like independent behavior (doing things without the enthusiastic agreement of your spouse). This is why only 20% of marriages are happy. Dr. Harley explains what that 20% does different in order to be happy, and the main thing they do different is complain to each other and address complaints and find alternatives.

There's not only one acceptable answer. You are engaging in a false dichotomy fallacy. You are seeing only two alternatives. We would like to help you see other alternatives, so you aren't stuck with "be extremely unhappy because I'm not using porn" versus "use porn and hide part of my life from my wife and/or make her extremely unhappy and much less likely to meet my emotional needs." Frankly, both of those two options SUCK if you ask me, and I would like to help you escape that.

I'm looking right now at Dr. Harley's workbook, at his worksheets for overcoming independent behavior. Part 3 has a worksheet with the following questions:
1. What bothers you about this independent behavior?
2. What doesn't bother you about this independent behavior?
3. Your spouse engages in this behavior because it is enjoyable to him/her. How might the behavior be changed so that it is enjoyable for both of you?

Right after that is a worksheet titled "Independent Behavior Possibilities Inventory." It has instructions that include the following:

"Please name and describe activities that might replace the independent behavior. Keep adding activities to this list until you find one that meets with your mutual agreement. Your goal is to find a behavior or activity that addresses the reasons that the independent behavior existed, yet changes it to accommodate the feelings and interests of the other spouse as well. You should both carry a copy of this inventory with you throughout the day so that when you think of a possible solution, you can write it down."

Notice how the whole attitude of "judgment" is completely taken out with Dr. Harley's approach? He wants you to see how good a marriage can be when it accommodates the feelings and desires of BOTH husband and wife, not just the ideas of one or the other.

It sounds simple enough on the surface but it becomes much more complicated when you try to apply it to both sides of the equation. As I understand it the policy of joint agreement is mostly about showing concern for how your spouse feels about any decisions that involve both of you and not trying to force them to accept your own agenda or try to gain an unfair advantage at their expense. So if you make a suggestion and your spouse says no to it then you should just let it go and maybe try to work it out later if it is clearly not more important than your marriage or the quality of your relationship.

I understand the general idea that even if you manage to get your own way and your spouse is willing to put up with it that doesn't necessarily mean that it is in your own best interest to continue doing something obnoxious that causes your spouse to have negative feelings about you. This is all fine and good but what I am hearing in this particular case sounds a little too one-sided for my taste. For example, why can't I turn this POJA principle completely around and say that if my wife thought this way then she should cut me some slack, stop making such a big deal out of porn, and stop making unrealistic demands as if it should just be easy for me to never view porn again and feel happy about it? What makes porn non-negotiable? Is it because we supposedly already know that it is always wrong, disgusting, filthy, and despicable?

I guess if you are absolutely certain that you are right then the basic POJA is no longer necessary and now it is alright to go ahead and play hardball to get your way at all costs and make all the disrespectful judgments about it that you want. Is that how it works? I could see the value of a zero tolerance approach like this with things like physical abuse or drug addictions where the damage done and danger of putting up with it are real but I don't know if it is such a great idea over differences of opinion especially with a natural tendency like this that is going to keep coming up over and over again in future generations. Basically my main point is that there never was a real joint agreement because I never really had any say in the final decision so I don't see why I should be expected to honestly feel good about it and really buy into this as a permanent solution.

The answer to your question is found in the concept of Type A and Type B resentment. Have you gotten a chance to take a look at that, yet? Type A/B resentment explains why you can't "turn POJA around." That's actually a pretty common question here, and I don't think we do a good enough job of answering it.


No, when it comes to POJA porn is not different than any other issue. The question you are asking there, we see people here asking the exact same question about things as innocuous as going out to eat Mexican food or buying romaine lettuce.

You wanna know what's weird, Grim?


Defending jerkin' the gherkin so passionately.

15 pages, and you are still hung up on that?

WHY?

Seriously, dude. Wouldn't you rather have mind-blowing sex with your wife, than to sit there with Palmela Handerson?

Rosie Palm is a horrible lover, man.

No, you shouldn't be happy about it, and it's not realistic to expect that you'll be happy about it.

To make your marriage a happy marriage, the two of you will have to find an alternative to porn that makes you both happy.


You are misunderstanding the Policy of Joint Agreement. "Do nothing" is never supposed to be a permanent solution. It's an uncomfortable situation, which is supposed to motivate the two of you to find a permanent solution you are both enthusiastic about. If either one of you is not enthusiastic about "doing nothing" on a particular issue, then that means you are not done negotiating and finding an alternative.

Take a look at my posts today. There is some helpful (I think) explanation about how this works.

Thanks for that insightful contribution to the discussion; I appreciate your concern. People were asking questions and bringing up interesting new ideas I had never heard before so I tried to respond to some of them to help understand what Marriage Builders is all about and how it works in different cases. To me porn is basically one of many visible symbols of the larger issue of who gets to decide what is best for me and the fact that my own home feels more like a prison sometimes than somewhere I can feel comfortable and enjoy my free time as much as possible. Sure that is easy enough to deal with a week at a time but if I look forward to an entire lifetime of the same thing it can be much harder to accept. Also, I have already tried going long amounts of time without ever viewing porn or "jerkin' the gherkin" as you put it but I didn't end up having sex more often anyway because half the time my wife doesn't feel like it or else she isn't even around to begin with so how does pointless and unnecessary deprivation really benefit me in any way in cases like that?

Now we're getting somewhere, I think.

Why does your wife not feel like sex half of the time?

Also, what puts her in the mood the other half of the time?

Why does your home feel like a prison?

Why is your wife never around?

These are the larger issues you haven't been telling us about, because apparently we all think it's more fun to talk about porn!

Depriving myself of porn and masturbation doesn't hurt at all in my marriage, because I know how to get my wife enthusiastic about sex, at least most of the time. She's around all the time, as am I, and our house doesn't feel like a prison to me, although it does to her, so we are moving.

I would like to help you get into a similar arrangement, where hopefully you are having fantastic sex all the time and not giving porn a second thought, you know?

My home is like a prison because I am basically not allowed to do what I want and I have someone constantly monitoring everything I do and say closely and telling me what to do and when. So I feel like I have to constantly put on an act and worry about what she wants and exepcts as if anything I want does not matter. Things have improved somewhat since I started saying no to more demands my wife tries to pressure me into than I used to but with porn I think I still need to be careful and not do anything crazy like being completely honest about it and letting her decide how to react to the truth because she feels so emotional about it and I already know she will not understand very well if confronted with this information all at once.

Maybe I just have a stronger sex drive than my wife and one difference is that even when she is interested it takes her much longer to get into it and really enjoy it but I am always ready to go in an instant. Actually I don't think my sex life is really that bad on average because I hear horror stories about some couples going weeks or months without sex so maybe I have been lucky to get at least once or twice per week. I don't know of any consistent way to predict when my wife will be in the mood or not; it seems completely random to me. I know that if she is mad at me because of something I said or did then I will definitely get the cold shoulder and she will be like, "Don't touch me"; so of course I am going to masturbate sometimes when she acts like that for very long.

My wife has her own interests that she keeps fairly busy with and spends lots of time on Facebook or watching her favorite shows so then by the time she comes to bed I am usually so tired that I just go to sleep. So sometimes it is just much easier and faster to masturbate. For example, I can masturbate in the morning to help take the edge off and start the day off right and still easily make it to work on time but I doubt that my wife would want to get up early enough to have sex before work on a consistent basis. My wife is not really gone very long to the point of spending nights alone very often. What I meant was that if she is out shopping or visiting her friends or family then what harm does it do and what difference does it make to her if I masturbate while she is not even around especially if I still have sex with her the same day if she wants to?

Certainly I wouldn't mind having sex more often than I do but to be honest I think that even if I had sex 10 times as much to the point that it starts to feel like too much work I would still want to view porn sometimes on top of that simply because it is basically instant gratification that requires no real effort. My point is that sex, porn, and masturbation are all completely different things that each have their own advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation. Personally I think it is possible to achieve a healthy and comfortable balance of all three to the point that you are fully satisfied without getting burned out.

So what you are saying is that even though gourmet food is available, you will still go for the junk food because gourmet food is not worth the effort for you.

That's essentially what I read in what you are saying.

Not to mention that you know the junk food kills your wife, but you don't seem to care.

The reason you feel like this is because you act like a child in your home by hiding your true feelings. You even use childish verbiage: "she won't allow me." You don't act like an equal partner in your marriage when you are not honest with her. And the reason you are not honest with her is because - again, as a child - you can't face her anger. See, a grown up man can be honest with his wife because he is willing to change behavior that is reckless and destructive to his marriage.

One of the main reasons there is this disparity of power in your marriage is due to your porn. [behavior you have to hide] The other is that you have never learned to negotiate agreements that benefit you both. If you can do that, you wouldn't have to hide like a boy.