Welcome to “Love and Sex Today.” I’m Dr. Doug Weiss and today’s topic will be an interesting conversation—“Is His Porn Making Me Fat?” In this discussion, I’m going to be talking about the impact that a husband’s pornography or a long-term male partner’s pornography has on a woman, wife or partner. For 30 years I’ve been working with couples that struggle with sexual addiction and pornography. I have counseled thousands of women in my office. I want to share with you today about the impact that pornography has on women whether they know their partner is using porn or not.

Is his porn making you fat? When I talk about this topic, right away eyebrows go up. Now, I’m not going to give you the answer right away. I’m going to give you the answer as we go through this.
The answer comes from my book “Partners: Healing from His Addiction,” which has statistics about the many impacts pornography and sexual addiction have on the wife. Eighty-five women participated in this book and so the statistics are powerful and pungent. If you need a copy, go to loveandsextoday.com, and go to books, you can buy the eBook or hard copy.

If you’re married to someone who has a pornography or sexual addiction, it impacts everyone. I want to talk about why. Whether it’s porn, sex, alcohol, drugs, or any kind of addictive behavior, the human soul begins to get robbed of emotional, spiritual, and moral maturity at the age of onset. Most addicts of every kind start off in adolescence and stay adolescents.

They have very short-term thinking. They resolve problems like a fourteen or fifteen-year-old male would. They’re moral compass is very limited, so you find yourself married to a man who is really acting more boyish, reasons more boyish, gets angry really quickly, and isn’t able to conceptualize what’s going around globally. This woman is in a relationship with a man who really doesn’t see her or her needs and isn’t able to really meet them or predict them as they’re coming down the road of life, so constantly she’s in a battle to try to get understood and get her needs met.

This is very tough on the soul. Every decade this goes by, the harder it becomes. I have had thousands of women tell me they feel like they have another child. If you’re a man and you’re listening to this, I don’t mean to hurt you in any way, but if you have an addiction, you have an adolescent development problem in which you can get better. I got better, but it takes some work. Your immaturity affects not only your partner, but also how you relate to your children. Oftentimes as children reach adolescence and get abstract reasoning, they sometimes behave more maturely than the porn-addicted father and the way they make decisions because the father’s still about “me” and “mine.”

There’s not a “we,” there’s a “me.” The addiction is robbing him of maturity and it affects how he relates to the children and how he can be there for them. Addiction makes it difficult for people to get a bigger view of the world beyond their own little space. Even household responsibilities are challenging for someone with an addiction. It’s not uncommon for them to be unhelpful. Can you imagine the resentment that builds up year after year of living with someone who cares only for themselves, who you’re constantly picking up after, and not met with gratitude or reciprocity, but with entitlement and expectation? If you have a teenage son, your hope is that they get over this, and between 14 and 20, they generally do. When you have someone who’s an addict of any kind, they don’t get over their negative behavior and your journey of walking together gets harder and harder and longer and longer.

There are several symptoms women can have when their husband is doing pornography. Let me give you some statistics from my book, “Partners: Healing from His Addiction.” 62% of these wives felt they had dealt with eating disorder issues because of their husband’s sexual or pornography addiction. 59% of the women in the study said they turned to food. Now, why would they turn to food? Think about it. You’re not getting your emotional needs met from a mature man. You’re not getting your spiritual needs met.

Let’s just take a minute and talk about sex. What is it like to have sex with someone who’s in an adolescent development? Do you think sex is going to be mutual, understanding, giving, and caring, he’s going to hear your heart and connect to you, or want you to be pleased and happy? Most likely not. Most likely sex is going to be more about them getting their needs met than even being aware of your needs. I can’t tell you how many women have told me their husband’s not even aware of helping them out sexually or even aware of their sexual needs.

There is also the whole theme of being sexually disconnected. You feel like something’s happening to you instead of someone being with you. If you feel like sex is something being done to you, sex becomes empty and eventually creates this negative cycle for you as far as sexual desire, which can confuse the man. If women don’t feel like they’re being connected to during sex, that actually makes sex a very negative experience over time.

What about just the general message of not feeling like you’re enough, always being asked to do more, never satisfying your partner, and the whole treadmill of trying to perform sexually? Well, that doesn’t feel good either. Why did she turn to food? She’s alone. She feels unsupported in her marriage, in her family, in the household, sexually disconnected, feeling used and isolated. Those are a lot of really strong feelings. Most women marry for a happily ever after and the knight in shining armor, the guy who actually cares about her and looks into her eyes while he’s making love to her. Instead, they’ve got this adolescent absent person, so they turn to food. Out of those people who turn to food, 84% of them said they dealt with food by overeating.

61% of these people said they gained weight because of their partner’s pornography and sexual addiction issue. This is a really big issue and a lot of women feel bad their bodies have morphed. Sometimes the morph can be hormones, or aging, or they’re not exercising. There are other variables. Not 100% of your weight can be put on the man’s pornography, but it is a variable. If you’re a woman reading this, or one of your girlfriends sends you this, maybe you need to ask your husband about his porn usage. I’ll never forget when I was at a conference and this lady came down. She said her husband wasn’t really leading her at home and they weren’t really connected and she had several of the symptoms, weight was one of them.

I looked at her and said, “Listen ma’am, here’s what I want you to do. I’m going to be here tomorrow night. Bring your husband. When you go home tonight, I want you to ask him about his porn and his self-behavior. Ask him how often he’s doing it.” She looked at me like are you crazy? I said, “I know. I want you to go home and do this and you can tell me tomorrow if I’m wrong, but you’re carrying many of the symptoms I see with women who have a porn-addicted husband. Go home and ask him. Just straight out ask him.” Well, she did. They came back the next day and sure enough, he was very active in pornography and self-behavior, and this was a core reason why she was having many of the symptoms she was having in her life.

A positive of learning this, is that you can de-shame yourself from some of this if you’re a woman who has been carrying some extra pounds and you’re in this situation. Go ask your husband, “When was the last time you looked at pornography? When was the last time you were sexual with yourself? How often is that happening?” With the Internet, you can check history so quickly. Some of them are smart, but women have become smarter on computers.

You can’t compete against the image and you can’t compete with an addiction. Even if you’re the most beautiful woman in the world, you’re not an “it.” You’re not a thing. You’re a soul. I’ve had “Miss Several States” in my office over the years, beautiful women who are unwanted by their husbands because of their pornography, sex addiction, and intimacy anorexia. That is devastating to a woman in her life. The younger and prettier she is, she feels like somehow, the culture lied to her. She was supposed to be wanted and desired and connected to. Weight gain can be contributed to pornography, so find out what’s going on in your home. You can address these issues. If you need help, you can call “Heart to Heart Counseling Center” at 719-278-3708.

There’s my “Partners: Healing from His Addiction” book and workbooks that can help you. There are many things you can do if you’re married to someone, or in a long-term relationship with someone, who’s struggling with pornography or sexual addiction. I would also say this before we go today: don’t blame yourself. It’s not about your age. It’s not about your body. It’s not about your sex life. It’s not about any body parts you have or don’t think you have enough of. That has nothing to do with it. These guys were addicted way before they met you. Sometimes thousands of times and their brains have been conditioned to attach to another world. This is not your fault. They will have to take the steps out of denial and move through the recovery process, but you can start getting help for yourself for the ways you have been affected.

Don’t forget, I want you to go to loveandsextoday.com and subscribe. Get your free chapter of my book that is being featured on our website now. Write us a review on iTunes. This topic will probably get some really interesting reviews, but write telling us how this lesson has helped you. One of you will be selected for a private conversation with me where we will see what we can do to accelerate some area of your life. Remember, always have a great love and sex life today.