70: What to Do When Your Wife is Triggered | How to Hold Boundaries and Use the Language of Safety in Your Marriage When You Have a Porn Addiction

If you’re married and you struggle with a porn addiction, we’re going to talk about what to do when your wife is triggered.

I have seen a recurring trend with my clients who struggle with pornography addiction. Many have no boundaries with their partners. They face some very serious struggles and confusion in their marriage, trying to figure out how to react when their wives with betrayal trauma are triggered. In other words, when their wives become angry, defensive, lash out, become critical and insulting, or they shut down and give their husbands the silent treatment.

Very common these days - even in circles of recovery - is the tendency to believe that the porn addict can have no expectations or standards for how he is treated, because of the fact that he has betrayed his wife by watching porn, and that ALL of the issues in their relationship stem from his behavior. His wife can berate and put him down, and it is “justified” because of his porn addiction.

This kind of treatment can deeply hurt the addict, who by the way, despite his self-centered behavior, is a human being. Betrayed wives will sometimes blame their addict husbands for everything that’s wrong, and this crushes their husband’s self-esteem, causing him to feel hated and worthless. This works against the very thing that the wife wants most, which is a capable, responsible, and selfless husband. Not to mention this does not help him stop watching porn.

An addict’s betrayal of their spouse is, without a doubt, selfish. But it is also personally devastating and traumatic for the addict to endure. To overcome porn addiction requires far more than willpower, motivation, or a decision to stop. The recovering addict needs the proper recovery mindset and lifestyle tools, and qualified help for porn addiction.

Part of building this recovery mindset and lifestyle is to learn how to effectively engage with your romantic partner. Today, we will discuss the following to help you do this:

• Understanding the trauma of porn addiction
• Understanding the what, why, and how of triggers for betrayed spouses
• Understanding a spouse’s betrayal trauma
• Taking ownership over your side of the marriage (and letting the other person’s go)
• What boundaries are and are not
• How to help your betrayed spouse through...
  • Using the language of safety
  • Holding appropriate boundaries
  • Holding daily couple’s check-ins

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