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I found this workshop very helpful for my own recovery journey and have told my husband about it and encouraged him to seek out help through your partner page path for men. He has done a few self guided courses and shared some of his answers that I noticed that they were very superficial and he doesn’t seem to be trying to look inside himself to identify underlying core beliefs, which may be fueling his pornography addiction. I’ve encouraged him to seek out a therapist online to help guide him. We just got stationed overseas for a three year tour. Good luck. I hope that goes well and thanks for the service, both of you. He responded that he finds it beneficial to just abstain from porn and he isn’t motivated to seek help from a therapist or coach because he doesn’t think he has any other issues. He did recently attempt to meet with our local chaplain after I insisted he talked to someone, but unfortunately the chaplain totally ignored his issue and instead tried to recruit him to help him with church service. So I’m sure that is on his mind. I know just abstaining from porn without addressing the underlying problems isn’t the answer, even if he doesn’t believe he has any other problem. I’ve tried to have conversations with him about what makes him think that he doesn’t need help, but he refuses to talk about it with me. I’m afraid that when I recover, he will not have made significant progress for us to be able to repair our marriage. What can I do to encourage him to seek meaningful help in a way that doesn’t control his recovery, especially when he doesn’t want to discuss it with me, or am I just wasting my time trying?
I don’t know. Part of it depends on if he’s trying. Right now, I understand that he doesn’t think it’s a problem, but maybe that’s just it. How does he have accountability? How is he being responsible? Is he reporting slips? Is he reporting any of that? So one of my questions is, okay, is there any accountability? If there’s no accountability, then it’s really hard to rebuild trust. So concept number one. Number two, in a recovery situation like this, is you still being able to say, I don’t know how to repair the marriage, as you say, or come closer without feeling some effort on your part. Now, if you say that you’re done, how can I know or rest assured that you’re done, which gets us back into accountability, how will he be accountable to you?
The other part of it may be, if there is a relapse, then will you pursue counseling and deal with these deeper issues? If he has an addiction, and I say if because again, I don’t know the extent of his use, what kind of effort is he going to make to overcome it? And again, if it’s an addiction, has it been properly assessed? How involved is he been in it? How much has it influenced his life? Is he taking risks? Is it influencing other people like you? Yes. But all of those things would need to be understood and I think that’s an important part for him to look at is how serious is this issue? And can I just stop or do I need extra support? And those are some questions that I would want him to address, but those are questions that you may ask him. And really, as you ask those questions, ask him to come up with answers so you can at least know what you need to do. Because you are going to need him and he is going to need to take some steps.