Purpose: To strengthen emotional connection and jump-start the courtship process by synchronizing your physical movements with those of your partner. Suggested Time: 5 to 10 minutes Sit facing each other, close enough that you can comfortably press the palms of your hands together with those of your partner. Imag­ine that your partner is a mirror […]

Blue whales rub each other with their flippers, male baboons swagger back and forth, chimpanzees kiss and hold hands, and female possums turn toward their suitors, cock their jaws, and look them straight in the eyes. All mammals, as well as many reptile and bird species, have their own, unique ways of courting each other. […]

What kind of sex is capable of competing with porn? In our work with people overcoming porn problems, we have found that whether you are currently in an intimate relationship or not, an approach that is power­ful enough to compete with and prevail over porn is one that has the primary goal of being intimate […]

The seriousness of my porn problem made me scared of sex and left me wondering whether I could ever have sex again without falling back into old bad habits. But I know that if I don’t learn new ways of sexual expression, my old destructive ways will have all the power. —Marie L ike Marie, […]

Wes and Marge, both in their mid-fifties, held hands as they shared their difficult tale of healing their relationship after porn. The parents of three grown children, they had been together for twenty-five years. Wes used porn for most of their marriage and lied about it throughout the relation­ship. He’d tell Marge he’d stopped when […]

As effective as the four steps are for most couples, there are a few for whom trust, forgiveness, and deeper intimacy seem impossible to achieve due to the extent of past lies and deception. Wes and Marge are one such couple. At the recommendation of their therapist, they decided to use a lie detector—also called […]

The fourth step in healing as a couple is to learn to communicate with each other in ways that help you regain feelings of closeness and inti­macy. Couples who have been successful in rebuilding their relationship while one partner recovers from a porn problem often attribute their progress to having established routines for sharing information […]

Another important step in a couple’s healing is to resolve angry feel­ings and create conditions for forgiveness. Many intimate partners feel extremely angry in the wake of a serious porn problem. Their anger not only reflects the degree of emotional pain and outrage they feel, it can be used as a hammer to punish the […]

Once you have started to rebuild a foundation of trust, the next step in healing is to better understand what your partner has personally gone through as a result of the porn problem. This step involves the recover­ing porn user sharing important details about his involvement with porn as well as his recovery efforts, and […]

Restoring trust is fundamental to healing as a couple. The dishonesty that is almost always involved when there’s a porn problem affects the very core of a couple’s relationship. It destroys the intimate partner’s ability to believe anything the recovering porn user says or does, includ­ing his promises of quitting. She’s afraid if she believes […]