Welcome to another episode of Thrive Beyond Pornography! We are so glad you are here! 

 As we shift our podcast from focusing mainly on the person who struggles with pornography to the relationship and all parties involved, we will have a variety of episodes. Some with be geared specifically for the person struggling with porn; in our podcast dialogues, we will assume it is the husband, although we are well aware that women struggle with porn too; some will be directed towards the wives, and others will be for both. 

We would recommend if you are in a relationship that you listen to all the different episodes because we believe it is helpful to learn all sides of the struggle.  

I want to start off by saying that no matter where you are on your journey, your feelings are valid, and the struggle is REAL!!!! 

I have been where you are, and this is not easy work to do. I also want you to know that there is so much room for hope and healing! 

I would never have thought it was possible to get to where I am today, and in this podcast episode, we will discuss some of the shifts I decided to make on our road to healing. 

If the things we discuss today are a bit hard to hear or maybe cause you to be defensive, that is ok too. I would invite you to ponder on what we talk about, and when you are ready, challenge yourself to grow. One of the things I have learned along this journey is that growth is really, really hard. It is uncomfortable, and often times it is way easier to just stay in the same cycle on repeat. 

Anytime I talk about my journey, I always like to point out that I was and I am married to a good man who struggled with unwanted pornography. I realize that not all men who struggle with porn are good, and only you can decide what kind of man you are married to and if your marriage is worth fighting for. We have personally known and worked with hundreds of really incredible men who struggle with unwanted pornography. If you are married to one of these men, I believe this episode will benefit you. 

So let’s get started!

When I stopped judging, criticizing, and vilifying my husband's struggle surrounding unwanted pornography, things changed for both of us. Here are the different ways things changed

1) I sought to understand his side of the issue - I began to seek an understanding of all the different aspects of Zach's unwanted pornography. I did this not to provide myself with fuel to justify my angry position but out of a desire to know him better and to understand what it was like on his side of the street and what porn did provide him.

This was a massive shift for me. For years I looked at Zach's pornography struggle as a moral failing. In some way, he was just not good enough, and I looked for all the evidence I could find to prove to him how his actions would destroy us. I was not really interested in learning what was actually going on for him from a behavioral standpoint. I was very much fixated on the moral failing and all the pain and damage he was causing me and our relationship. Taking the time to really get to know Zach and what was going on for him around his pornography struggle while also being able to hold onto myself was a huge turning point for both of us,

2) I questioned the story in my brain - I began to question the story my brain was playing on repeat about what unwanted porn was going to do to our marriage, what it meant about my husband, and what was going to happen to our family. I realized that my brain was just regurgitating all of the fear bass lessons I sat through at church. And reliving the horror stories I had heard about so and so’s divorce. I never questioned what I believed about this trial or whether or not the story my brain played helped me create the results I wanted in our marriage until I was utterly miserable.

I was miserable because I was trying to live out someone else idea about what all this meant instead of creating the intentional dialogue I genuinely believed about this trial.  I stopped letting FEAR run the show and chose to create a story based on my own reality, not on the story I was told I needed to believe that was not serving us or helpful in any way besides keeping us stuck. . 

3) I focused on our similarities and de-emphasized our differences - I began to focus on the ways my husband and I were more alike than different I realized that what was going on for him around pornography what's the same thing that was going on for me in different ways. I wasn't turning to porn, but I turned to other more acceptable things like food shopping and social media. I stopped focusing on the porn and turned my focus toward what caused it to be there.

It can be so effortless to focus on porn as the problem. To put ourselves in the one-up position because we don’t struggle with porn, and our partners do. 

Been there, done that!!! Honestly, we come by this so easily. The reality for most wives is that we can have an army around us sporting us and holding us up on a pedestal because we don’t struggle with porn and our husbands do. 

I am having a hard time typing this out. Still, hopefully, you understand what I am trying to say and that it is easy and justifiable to put ourselves in the one-up position with our husbands when it comes to porn and their behavior to choose porn. 

Personally, after many years of standing firm in the one-up position, I realized that this was not helping our relationship or helping me be someone I was proud of. I did not like myself when I took the self-righteous position of being better than Zach.

I am embarrassed to look back on my behavior because the more I genuinely learned about the struggle with unwanted pornography, the more I realized we were much more similar than I would care to admit. 

The beautiful thing that came about from me realizing we are more similar than different was that we were able to discuss our different challenges and bounce ideas back and forth off each other in a non-threatening way.   

4) I stopped making it worse by recognizing my own unhelpful behavior  - I began to realize that criticizing, threatening, and judging him was not helping the situation, it seemed to worsen the problem. It also made me feel worse. I hated how I felt inside and the behaviors I exhibited, for example, anger, trying to control everything, and obsessing about porn. I'm pretty sure porn was on my mind more than Zach’s. 

5) I challenged my own position - I began challenging my position on how I faced unwanted porn in our marriage. At first, it was him against me. This was his problem; this was something he needed to fix and quickly, or I was leaving. This was all his fault, and I was the innocent victim of his actions. He was disgusting in my mind, I threw out all of these threats trying to get his behavior to change. I realized that all the other trials we faced in our marriage we faced together, we were a United team, and once we became a United team around porn, that was when things started to shift. I changed the narrative in my brain from this is his problem to this is our problem, this is something he needs to fix quickly to this is something we can fix together, and it will take time; this is all his fault, and I am the victim to we have both played a part in the struggle, and neither of us is the victim nor are either of us responsible for the other's behavior. The less I became the victim, the more empowered I became. These were not easy shifts to make, and they required a lot of humility on my part because, for over 5 years, I stood firm in my previous position.

6) This can be a destructive battle or a relationship-building challenge - I began to realize that unwanted porn was either going to be the thing that tore us apart or the thing that challenged us,  stretched us, and required us to grow up. I am not going to say that this was easy!  It was hard, sometimes super ugly, and one of the most challenging things I've ever done, but in the end, it was so worth it. I am so very grateful for the wake-up call that I had that helped create the marriage that Zach and I have today. It is not perfect, but it is one I am proud of. We fought hard for it. 

If you are ready to create change in your life and your marriage, set up a consult with us!! We would love to help you create the results that you want in your marriage. 

We are so grateful you are here! Wherever you listen to this podcast, we would love it if you would rate and review it. It helps us spread our message to those who need it. And we love hearing how this podcast has impacted you. 

Untitled project from Captivate

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Zach Spafford: Hey everybody, and welcome to Thrive Beyond Pornography. I'm your host, Zach Spafford, along with Darcy.

Darcy Spafford: Hello guys.

Zach Spafford: Hey, so as we work to integrate more fully into the work that we do, the, the part of the spouse, the part of the relationships. You've probably seen the, a change in the way that our episodes sound, but I want you to be really clear.

Zach Spafford: Everything that we are doing is a hundred percent valuable for either an individual or just a spouse or a couple together. So you know, some of this is specifically geared towards a certain party in that, and of course you can skip that, but I would highly recommend that you continue to listen to those episodes.

Zach Spafford: Partly because understanding what's on the other side of the street, understanding what your partner might be thinking, or how this might be engaging their brain and how this, this problem can be, problematic for them is helpful if only to give you greater understanding of what's going on for them.

Darcy Spafford: And I think it's important to remember that no matter what you listen to on this podcast. It is not designed for you to go to your spouse and say, "Hey, you need to listen to this because you are doing it wrong. You need to fix this." that's not how it works. It's, that's not gonna be what creates change.

Darcy Spafford: So just also remember that.

Zach Spafford: It never works out well.

Darcy Spafford: Yeah.

Zach Spafford: I'll be honest, I, I've sometimes had husbands go to their wives and they're like, Hey, you need to call Darcy. And the wife has no idea why , and then Darcy gets this phone call or a text message and says, I'm supposed to meet with you. And that's not the purpose of what we're doing here.

Zach Spafford: The purpose of what we're doing here is to bring everybody greater understanding, give you guys some really clear and tangible skills that you can utilize. To deal with your pornography struggle and create the thriving, amazing relationship that you actually want. That's, that's what we do in the deep dive work that we do in our individual coaching, uh, our couples coaching, and in the membership.

Zach Spafford: So, if that's something that's interesting to you, I highly recommend that you sign up for a, you know, a, a consult with either me or Darcy. You can go to zachspafford.com slash work with Zach or work with me. Either one of those will get you . To a place where you can just click a button that says, I wanna set up an appointment.

Zach Spafford: And if you wanna work with Darcy, just put in there. This is a consult just for me and Darcy. Otherwise you're gonna meet with me. Awesome. All right, Darcy, tell us what this podcast is all about.

Darcy Spafford: All right, so today we are going to talk about six vital shifts that I've made on our journey to get to where we are today.

Darcy Spafford: But before I do that, I wanna start off by saying that no matter where you are on your journey, your feelings are valid and the struggle is real. I've been where you are, and this is not easy work to do. I also want you to know that there is so much room for hope and healing. I would never have thought it was possible to get to where I am today.

Darcy Spafford: And in this podcast episode, we will discuss how it is that I got to where I am. If these things we discussed today are a bit hard to hear or maybe cause you to be defensive or get upset, that is okay. I would invite you to ponder on what we talk about and when you're ready, challenge yourself to grow.

Darcy Spafford: One of the things I've learned along this journey is that growth is really, really hard. It's uncomfortable, and oftentimes it is way easier to just stay in the same cycle on repeat.

Zach Spafford: So what you're telling us is that this might be really tough for some people to hear.

Darcy Spafford: Yeah.

Darcy Spafford: Yeah. De depending on where you're at and how willing you are to maybe see things a little bit differently or shift just slightly in one way or the other.

Darcy Spafford: It could be challenging.

Zach Spafford: I think this is an interesting idea that we're gonna talk about things that are difficult to hear. I think they're also important to hear, and that's not to say that wherever you are in your journey, you're in the wrong place because you're not. We all have to go through that process ourselves.

Zach Spafford: Our goal here is to hopefully give you a roadmap and a place that you can go, you know, from where you are to the place that you want to, to be in the end. But if any of these ideas are not helpful in the moment, feel free to set them aside and come back to them later. There's no shame in that. And think of each of these ideas as an experiment.

Zach Spafford: If you can just run it as an experiment, see how it operates, and if it operates well for you, keep doing it. And if it doesn't operate well for you, feel free to set it aside for a little bit of time. Move on to another experiment or even . See if you can, you know, have a conversation with either Darcy or me or somebody, maybe your own coach, maybe your spouse, and just kind of work through these as as an experiment in order to see if there's something that you can find that's valuable.

Darcy Spafford: I know for me, when we were starting on this path, I didn't really have anybody that had been there before me and someone that I could look up to, and so. That is what I hope that you will take this as, as something to look and see, like, okay, maybe that that works for me or, I don't like that, and that's okay.

Darcy Spafford: All right, let's get started. The first thing, when I stopped judging, criticizing and vilifying Zach's struggles surrounding unwanted pornography, things started to change for both of us. And here are the ways in which things changed. I began to seek an understanding of all the different aspects of Zach's unwanted pornography.

Darcy Spafford: I did this not to provide myself with fuel to justify my angry position, but out of a genuine desire to know him better and to understand what it was like on his side of the street and what porn did provide for him. This was a massive shift for me. . For years, I looked at Zach's pornography struggle as a moral failing on his part.

Darcy Spafford: In some ways, he just was not good enough, and I looked for all the evidence I could find to prove to him how his actions would destroy us. I was not really interested in learning what was actually going on for him from a behavioral standpoint. I was very much fixated on the moral failing and all the pain and damage he was causing me and our relationship.

Darcy Spafford: I. Taking the time to really get to know Zach and what was going on for him around his pornography struggle while also being able to hold onto myself was a huge turning point for both of us.

Zach Spafford: For my part of this. that gave me a little bit of leeway. Just a little bit of grace allowed me to start to be able to say, okay, this is what's actually happening for me to Darcy, as part of my own journey, I had been doing that myself.

Zach Spafford: I had been, I. Discussing that, that stuff in my own brain and with people that I trusted. And the truth was I didn't really trust Darcy because before that it had been difficult to share with her what was my reality because she would hold it against me. And after she started to do this work, then it became apparent and possible for me that I could, have that conversation with her and be real with her.

Darcy Spafford: Number two, I began to question the story. My brain was playing on repeat about what unwanted porn was going to do to our marriage, what it meant about my husband, and what was going to happen to our family. I realized that my brain was just regurgitating all the fear-based lessons I had sat through at church and reliving every horror story I had heard about, so-and-So getting divorced because of pornography. I never questioned what I believed about this trial, or whether or not the story my brain played helped me create the result I wanted in our marriage until I was utterly miserable. I was miserable because I was trying to live out someone else's idea of what all of this meant.

Darcy Spafford: Instead of creating the intentional dialogue, I genuinely believed about this trial. I stopped letting fear run the show and chose to create a story based on our own reality. Not on the story I was told. I needed to believe that was not serving us or helpful in any way besides keeping us stuck.

Zach Spafford: Yeah, and this was helpful to me because it gave me, again, it gave me some space.

Zach Spafford: It was no longer me trying to have to convince Darcy of a particular narrative or that the narrative. Was different than the one that she had been taught, but it was her being willing to see, you know, maybe that narrative that we had been given. It hasn't been very helpful and there's a more positive, valuable narrative available for us to move towards.

Zach Spafford: And that that was super helpful because it gave us, again, some space to clarify and work through and become . More willing and more capable of dealing with the actual problem rather than the problem that we thought we were supposed to be dealing with.

Darcy Spafford: I think we often like to see things as very black and white and like there's only one right way to think about something or only one right way to deal with something.

Darcy Spafford: But the truth is, is that there can be multiple things that are true. And if you can believe something that is also true, that is more helpful, why the heck not right?

Zach Spafford: Totally.

Darcy Spafford: All right, so number three, I began to focus on the ways my husband and I were more alike than different. I realized that what was going on for him around pornography was the same thing that was going on for me, just in different ways.

Darcy Spafford: I wasn't turning to porn, but I turned to other more acceptable things like food shopping, social media. I started to focus less on the porn and turn my focus towards what was causing the porn to be there in the first place. I can be so effortless to focus on porn as the problem to put ourselves in that one-up position because we don't struggle with porn and our partners do.

Darcy Spafford: Been there, done that. Honestly, we come by this so easily. The reality for most wives is that we can have an army surrounding us and supporting us and holding us up on a pedestal because we don't struggle with porn. And our husbands do. And I'll be honest, I'm having a really hard time, just trying to convey this.

Darcy Spafford: So hopefully you understand what I'm trying to say here and . Is that it's easy and it's super justifiable to put ourselves in that one-up position with our husbands when it comes to porn and their behavior and their choice to choose porn. So if you find yourself in that one-up position, just recognize that there's no shame in it.

Darcy Spafford: You came by it rightfully, and that you can also choose. To see things differently.

Zach Spafford: You could step out of that one-up position and stay on the level.

Darcy Spafford: Yeah, so personally, after many years of standing firm in my one-up position, I realized this was not helping me or our relationship, and it wasn't something I was proud of.

Darcy Spafford: I did not like myself when I took that self-righteous position and thinking that I was better than Zach. I'm embarrassed to look back on my behavior because the more I genuinely learned about the struggle with unwanted pornography, the more I realized we were more similar than I would care to admit.

Darcy Spafford: The beautiful thing that came about from me realizing we are more similar than different was that we were able to discuss our different challenges and bounce ideas back and forth in a non-threatening way. So being able to see each other on more equal footing and being able to recognize that we are both struggling with different things, but we can also learn and grow from each other, and each other's experience was huge.

Zach Spafford: Yeah. And I think being able to see that most humans deal with their struggles in very similar ways. It's not simply that you and I were the same because of, specifics of our lives. It was that most people, when they have something that they don't like or want in their life and they still choose it, so an unwanted unliked behavior, they, we deal with it in mentally similar ways.

Zach Spafford: That's not to say that, you'll choose porn and he won't choose porn or vice versa. Right. What it is to say is. The way that our brain interacts with these difficulties is basically the same. And we manage our, our brain in similar ways. And, and that allowed for me to be able to start trusting Darcy.

Zach Spafford: Stepping out of that I'm a victim. Or I don't have someone that I can share this with and started to allow me to see that she was really an advocate for me.

Darcy Spafford: All right, number four, I began to realize that criticizing, threatening and judging him was not helping the situation. In fact, it seemed to make the problem worse.

Darcy Spafford: It also made me feel worse. I hated how I felt inside and the behaviors I exhibited, for example, anger, trying to control everything. The anxiety, the constant anxiety. Obsessing about porn. I honestly, it's kind of a joke, but I'm pretty sure that porn was on my mind more than it was on Zach's mind because it was constantly something I was focusing on and thinking about and worrying about, and it just was always there.

Zach Spafford: Yeah, honestly, I think I was trying not to focus on it so hard and you were trying to focus on it so hard and neither of us were succeeding. .

Darcy Spafford: I would agree.

Zach Spafford: Yeah.

Darcy Spafford: Alight, number five, I began challenging my position on how I faced unwanted porn in our marriage. At first, it was him against me. This was his problem.

Darcy Spafford: This was something he needed to fix and quickly, or I was leaving. This was all his fault, and I was the innocent victim of his actions. He was honestly disgusting in my mind. A lot of times I threw out all of the threats and all the trying to control his behavior and change it. I realized that all the other trials we faced in our marriage, we faced together.

Darcy Spafford: We were a united team, and once we became a united team around porn, that was when things started to shift. I changed the narrative in my brain from this is his problem to this is our problem. This is something he needs to fix and quickly to this is something we can fix together and it's going to take time.

Darcy Spafford: Right? There's no magic pill. If there was holy cow, that would be amazing, but that's just not the reality, right? There's no magic pill to changing behavior. It takes work, it takes time, it takes effort. It takes trial and error, and it takes honestly, forgiveness and just really working hard. I went from this is all his fault and I'm the victim to, we have both played a part in this struggle.

Darcy Spafford: Neither of us are victims, nor are either of us responsible for the other person's behavior. And that is really, really important to remember because no matter what, we are never responsible for somebody else's actions. Period. Hard stop, right? But we do play a part in the struggle.

Zach Spafford: And when you say we play a part in the struggle, this is about creating an environment where each party has created a, a dance, we'll call it a dance that we do with each other in order to manage both ourselves and the other person. And once we start figuring out what it is that we're doing and we start to step back from that dance and stop managing the other person, then what we can do is actually create the relationship that we want.

Zach Spafford: And this is really important because, the work that Darcy and I did was... it was trial and error. It was, okay, we see this one thing and we're gonna try and experiment without anybody showing us the way. Nobody . I, I, I honestly, I wish someone had been there to give us more information, to give us more understanding of what it was that we were doing.

Zach Spafford: And when Darcy says it's gonna take time, for us it took a lot more time than it will probably take for you if you do the work that we show you to do. And that's a different place, right? You get to stand on our shoulders. You get to stand on the work that we've done, and you get to see how you can do it without having to go blindly into it.

Zach Spafford: And this is a, a position of empowerment. The more you can do this stuff, the more you'll become empowered. The more Darcy became empowered over time through the trial and error that we went and, and those are not easy shifts to make. They require humility. They required humility on my part to just be patient.

Darcy Spafford: And they required a lot of humility on my part because for over five years, I stood firm in my previous position of, I'm better than you.

Zach Spafford: You were better than me. (LOL)

Darcy Spafford: But you know what I mean. I know, right? Like it, it was like it was my identity, right? Because it was like, I don't sin the way you sin. Right?

Darcy Spafford: Like, I am not like you.

Zach Spafford: Your fault was in this space.

Darcy Spafford: Yes.

Darcy Spafford: Alright, and for the last and final shift, I began to realize that unwanted porn was either going to be the thing that tore us apart, or the thing that challenged us, stretched us, required us to grow. I am not going to say that this was easy. It was hard.

Darcy Spafford: Sometimes it was super ugly and one of the most challenging things I've ever done, but in the end, it was so, so worth it. I'm so, so, so very grateful for that wake up call that I had that helped me create the marriage that Zach and I have today. It's not perfect by any means, but it is one that I am proud of, and it's one that we fought hard for, and it's one that we have intentionally created through the work that we do.

Darcy Spafford: If you are ready to create change in your life and in your marriage. I would encourage you to set up a consult with Zach and I. We would love to meet with you to get to know you, to see where you're at, and to see how we can help you get to that next level and create the results that you want in your marriage.

Zach Spafford: I'm grateful that you guys are all here. We love doing this podcast. It's, it's honestly, it is one of our favorite things to do, to talk about pornography and how your relationship, just like our relationship, can get to a place where it is not just moved beyond pornography and moved beyond betrayal, but it is thriving.

Darcy Spafford: Alright guys, we are so grateful you are here and we would love it if you would go and rate and review our podcast wherever it is that you listen. It will help us spread our message to those who need it. We love hearing from you. We love hearing how this podcast has made an impact in your life. So go rate and review it and we will talk to you next week.

Darcy Spafford: Bye bye.