You know, when my husband and I went through this it took me forever to be able to undress around him. We showered together for most of our marriage and when I found out about his struggle with porn I started showering alone and locked the doors so he couldn’t see me. I dressed and undressed in the bathroom because I feared him seeing my body. When we finally did have sex (rarely) I thought about women the entire time and I had as much of my clothing on as I possibly could.
It’s taken me so long to trust him with my heart and my body. It’s taken years of my husband repeatedly showing me by his actions and change of heart that I can trust him, but even so, if something happens (like we see an attractive woman), I have the possibility of going into a spiral of “I don’t trust you anymore.” But then I realize it’s an emotional exaggeration on my part and I can trust him because he’s proven to be nothing short of 100% trustworthy.
If you are in the beginning stages of finding this out trust is not going to be there. And how can you unveil the most intimate part of yourself during sexual intimacy if you do not trust him? You can try, but oh how dishonest it will be. You need to be honest, but also be working toward healing of your own heart, without your husband’s help. Tell your husband your fears about sex and intimacy. Tell him that one part of you craves his touch, the other part of you despises it. One part of you loves him, the other part of you wants to bash his head in. One part of you desires sex, the other part of you fears unveiling yourself only to be compared to other women (at least that’s what we think they do, even though they often don’t).
Is he changing? Is he seeking purity now?
You can’t control him. You can’t force him to desire things that you desire. You can’t even force him to stop looking at porn by threatening to leave or divorce him. It won’t work. And, by the way, lust is not something worth leaving over in my opinion. Your issues with this lie mainly in your own insecurities, not your husband’s actions. That’s why it cuts the core of your heart. You were insecure before you met him, just like he was looking at porn before he met you. Now, you are facing an issue that is slicing at the core of BOTH of your problems. His lust and your insecurities. They are tied together. It’s no wonder the devil loves to ruin marriages through lust … it’s so easy to break apart both the man and the woman using the same sin.
Also, I want to let you know that most men don’t fantasize about random attractive women on commercials or walking down the street. They may lust, they may look twice, they may think something in terms of sensuality, but not all men start imagining a sex scene playing on the backs of their eyelids. We women exaggerate that in our heads — our insecurities at work once again.
Also remember that your insecurities are your insecurities. His lust does not make you feel ugly, your own lies in your own head make you feel ugly. You would feel that way even if he wasn’t lusting. It’s just that his lust makes it worse, because now you feel like you aren’t the only one comparing yourself, now you feel like your husband is comparing you too. It just makes you more focused on yourself and what you look like because you have a man in your life that you want to feel beautiful to.
Beauty is about so much more than looks, though. Why are we women so concerned about what we look like? These things fade, yet we tire ourselves as we wish we could look like the pictures on those glossy covers. But we’re never going to. Those people are even embellished and photoshopped. The world feeds us a false beauty, an unattainable beauty.
Here’s a quote from Kate Winslet, a celebrity in the midst of all these beauty distortions:
“Just try not to be too hard on yourself. I think that we can all get very bogged-down and stressed-out by how we’re supposed to look or by comparing ourselves to other people. I think that comparing ourselves to other people is just exhausting, and also pointless.
Try to play to your strengths and just be comfortable in your own skin, and try and stop wishing that you were somebody else. We are who we are, and we have to try to make the best of what we have.”
That’s great advice. She isn’t a celebrity that’s out there constantly trying to look thin and stunning. She’s a little more curvy than the 90lbs frame that’s “in” now. She is aging and she’s not getting plastic surgeries to hide it. I love that about her.
We need to listen to her advice and God’s wisdom and realize that natural beauty is better than the false beauty of makeup, hair, fashion, shoes, and bodies not marked from childbirth. It’s okay to be what God designed us to be. It’s okay to receive the beauty He gave us, instead of trying to attain a beauty the world will never let us have.
Do you spend as much energy and time trying to grow in your character as you do trying to attain and maintain physical beauty? If not, you need to. Stop focusing so much on the appearance and focus on your heart. That’s what we want our husband’s to do, yet we are unwilling to do so ourselves.
Men need to learn to see the beauty of a woman’s heart — to look at a porn star (or a provocative woman) and see her hurting, insecure, abandoned heart. If they saw the hearts of women they wouldn’t use them like drugs. If they saw our hearts (their wives) they wouldn’t feed our insecurities and make us feel devalued. But how can they see the hearts of women when we are constantly adding to man’s physical nature by feeding it with our own obsessions with our own appearances? We’re just giving in to the cycle.
I know one day you can be healed from this. I was hyper-sensitive and very insecure, but God has been and is still changing my heart to not focus on these things so much. There was a time where I couldn’t make love to my husband without crying myself to sleep afterward, but it takes effort from both husband to find true intimacy again. We can’t expect him to make us feel comfortable in bed again without putting in effort ourselves. Yes, our husband’s should do whatever it takes to make us feel loved and captivating enough to make love without worrying about being compared to other women, but we should also do whatever it takes to stop letting our own insecurities ruin our intimacy and keep us (in fear) from allowing our husband’s to touch us.
We need to be comfortable with our beauty. But true intimacy will not come into our beds until our husband’s also understand true beauty and begin to value the hearts of women. Lust fills the marriage bed with too many people. It’s only meant for two. We need to do whatever it takes to get everyone else out of our bed and be ONE with each other.
As your husband’s heart is changing and your own heart is changing remember this:
You are beautiful. You are beautiful. You are beautiful. You are beautiful.
Realize that it’s not a lie and you’ll find freedom in those words.
