Telling Your Partner About Your Pornography Struggle

Real quick, before we get too far, I have a free masterclass for anyone who wants to overcome pornography forever.  https://www.zachspafford.com/freecall (https://www.zachspafford.com/freec)https://www.zachspafford.com/freeclass (all) Here you’ll learn how you can overcome pornography forever. I want to talk about why it may be that you are not telling your partner about your pornography struggle.   You may be one who always tells your partner. There are a lot of reasons that I believe this is the best course of action in the long run. The biggest reason that I believe this is the best is that it allows your partner to actually know you. What I mean by this is, when you tell your partner what goes on for you when you are alone with yourself, they get a real sense of who you are and can more fully make decisions about how they want to choose you or even reject parts of you that they don’t like.    You might not like the idea of being rejected. But I can tell you from personal experience, being rejected from an open and vulnerable position, rather than being validated from a dishonest position is more valuable to your development as a person and your process of leaving behind pornography. Being validated or told you are enough or good or loved from a dishonest, hiding position, leaves us with even greater guilt and possibly shame over not being who we say we are and our partner even more confused about who we really are.    Speaking of who we are, telling your partner about your pornography activity allows you to live with greater integrity. There are two meanings for integrity that are important here.    The first is living with greater truthfulness.  Think of it this way. Would you rather get hired after telling your employer that you have a certificate or diploma you do not, only to look over your shoulder for the rest of the time you work there and live in dishonesty? Or be rejected by that same employer, with the knowledge that you have been honest, earn the respect of the employer and come back stronger later when you’ve actually gotten what you need to be employable?   The second is living in a more integrated way with the person you are when you are alone and when you are with others. Your private self is more fully integrated with your public self.   So, even though we may suffer rejection in the short term, as I spoken about on the podcast before, we earn greater trust with our partner and with ourselves that we are being who we say we are, even if we are not yet living up to our moral standards around pornography.    This is about the aggregation of marginal gains. Getting a little better here, even at a cost, is going to help us succeed at overcoming pornography for good.    Now you may not feel like it is worthwhile to tell your partner and they may have told you not to tell them. That is between you and them. I am simply offering my very real sense of what has made the most difference for me as I have overcome pornography personally.   Those are the reasons for telling your partner. What, then, might be keeping you from telling your significant other about your pornography struggles?  One may be that you promised that you would never do it again and you will admit that you’ve failed.    Let’s talk about that for just a moment. First, if you have not promised that you would never look at pornography again to someone else, I would shy away from that idea. If you are going to be having this conversation with someone else, you want to set yourself up for success. The first thing you’ll want to recognize about the promise to never look at pornography again is, it is very unlikely that you will be able to avoid pornography for the rest of your life no matter what you do. I...