Here’s the situation…
After several months or a few years of his wife denying sex, the husband ends up seeking some kind of sexual solace in using porn to masturbate to. Typically he carefully hides this activity from his wife, because he knows the reaction it will get.
Sure enough though, eventually he slips up and she discovers the porn. Whereupon she reacts just the way he knew she would – with a huge explosion of rage. Porn, it will be explained to him, is demeaning to women, disgusting, immoral, wrong, disappointing, revolting and hurtful. It’s also very likely to be explained to him that his use of porn has now put the relationship back several steps, just as she was starting to feel like she could open up to him, but of course now she can’t, and it’s all his fault.
Thus The Porn Firewall is created.
Now I’m not mindlessly for or against porn. I can see benefits and concerns about it, and I do understand that many people have acute moral and religious concerns about it. But lets’ save the debate on the ethics of porn for another day and focus strictly on the direct effect The Porn Firewall has on the sexless relationship.
In a sexless relationship where the wife denies the husband, she’s reneging on the core agreement of the relationship and thus defrauding her husband. The defrauded relationship will only continue for as long as the husband allows himself to tolerate the situation. The primary unmet need of the husband is for sex, and this is typically drip fed to him by the wife with the express minimum to keep him engaged in a relationship with her. In short, he acts like a drug addict, and she acts like his supplier.
The unmet need for sex is a powerful impulse, and to keep a physically healthy male in an intimate relationship, but deny him sex, requires a heavy hand of control. Him actually sleeping with another woman and ending the relationship is a serious concern, but it’s also a big bold step for him to take. When he uses porn though, it’s a smaller less serious event, but it’s easily seen as a stepping stone to ending his sexual reliance on her, so she smacks it down as hard as she can. After all, if she lets him get away with using porn now, maybe in a few months he’ll be bold enough to push the limits a little further and visit a strip club, or meet someone for coffee, or start fantasizing about kissing someone else. After that it’s all a slippery slope to him meeting someone really serious and an affair starting, or him just leaving and filing for divorce.
It’s an old behavioral technique to smack down hard on a person making a minor infraction, to intimidate then into never even considering a major infraction. It’s exactly why when I went to high school most teachers would routinely yell at you to tuck your shirt in and straighten up your uniform. Late to class wasn’t even really an option, let alone talking back to a teacher.
Thus while The Porn Firewall will be framed as a moral issue, but the purpose of the Porn Firewall is to control the partner that wants to have sex through shame and intimidation.
So the question becomes what do you do when faced with with a screaming ball of feminine rage over possession of a small supply of rather vanilla boy-girl porn. I’m thinking something along the lines of “Take your pants off or shut up.” about sums it up the response. That will of course make her go absolutely ballistic, but then that’s what people do when you start breaking free of their control. So mission accomplished.
But importantly, before you push something like this to a showdown, make sure you’ve started the process of making yourself the best version of you possible. Ideally your Sex Rank should be higher than hers to do anything like this. If you’re a 5 and she’s a 7, the lack of sex is directly related to your lack of hotness relative to hers. A 5 husband sparking a porn showdown with a sexually denying 7 wife is going to end up a loser in the debate every time. Work your way up to a 7 or an 8 and it’s a much different set of outcomes you’re looking at.
If you don’t think “Take your pants off or shut up.” is going to work for you, try this one. “No.“ Then just let that hang in the air like a zeppelin of awkward.


