Why Is My Husband Addicted To Porn?

The Porn Addict Who’s a “Nice Guy” but Not Very Nice At All

What is a ‘Nice Guy’ & Why Your ‘Nice Guy’ Husband Is Addicted To Porn 

The concept of the ‘Mr. Nice Guy’ comes from a 2003 self-help book by Dr. Robert A. Glover, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist titled No More Mr. Nice Guy. Glover describes what he calls the “Nice guy Syndrome” where men, in an attempt to appear always nice, try to avoid conflict. While these men may appear nice on the surface, often their behavior isn’t nice to themselves or to others. While trying to avoid conflict they hide their true selves including their personality, needs, wants, desires, goals, and feelings from others. Once these patterns become embedded, often in childhood, they become disconnected from themself in knowing their own feelings and needs. According to Glover,  ‘nice guys’ believe that if they do everything right and are ‘good’, they will be loved, get their needs met, and have a problem-free life.

The Toxic Combination Of Your ‘Nice guy’ Husband And Pornography

While not all who struggle with porn addictions fall into the ‘nice guy’ there are many who do. First we need to look at how men can become the ‘nice guy.’

Often we receive messages in childhood and society that condition men to become ‘nice guys’ when it comes to women. Men get messages about how to be successful in the world. On one hand they are to be tough and have no feelings other than the approved happy or sad. Any other feelings are seen as weak or unacceptable. Another message is that they should make everyone happy and not cause conflict. Another one, often implicit, is that in pleasing women, they will find happiness. They get a message to not ‘be like other men’ but instead be a “nice guy,.” and that this is what women want. 

They are trained to seek approval from women, starting with mothers, often their teachers are school, and later in romantic relationships. In time they begin to rely more and more on that external validation if they haven’t been taught or given the room to learn how to build their own internal self worth. This desire and constant chase of approval results in self-loathing, often subconsciously.

‘Nice guys’ want approval but don’t think they deserve it. The shame, low self worth, and constantly chasing the external validation creates an internal frustration and lack of peace. 

For those who had fathers or male figures in childhood, who were acting in undesirable ways, especially with women in their life who pointed this out, are more likely to become ‘nice guys.’ This is because as a young man they got the message that they needed to be different than those other guys. The verbal reprimands of other men get interpreted in the growing mind as a rule of book of how they are supposed to act. Any intense feelings need to be hidden, any desires or wants that weren’t restrained should be hidden, and only the ‘nice guy’ should be seen. 

For those who struggle with sexual addictions, there is deep shame attached to their sexual desire and sexual behaviors in childhood all the way to adulthood. When you take the shame and the messaging accompanied around hiding your sexual self, it deeper embeds the pattern of hiding who you really are and to be who others want you to be. 

This desire to obtain approval from everyone, especially women, turns him into a ‘nice guy’ who isn’t actually very nice. It can cause him to act in very unnice ways. These behaviors include dishonest, emotionally unavailable, and passive-aggressive to name just a few. 

This not very nice pattern doesn’t just hurt the ones they love. It hurts the ‘nice guy’ too. Often these men find themselves feeling like they are going in circles. While they may have had some temporary success in pleasing others, this never lasts and it doesn’t fill the void within. They are forever chasing a carrot they can’t catch in an attempt to feel loved, accepted, and enough. 

The Real Reason Your Husband Is Addicted To Porn 

While this concept doesn’t apply to all men, we have found it fairly common among the population we work with, those who were raised in strong religious cultures and who have struggled with pornography or sexual acting out. These traits are the result of a narrative often formed in childhood, that guides their lives today. While all people may have one or two of these traits, ‘nice guys’ have a pattern consistently of many of these behaviors. 

• A ‘nice guy’ avoids conflict and try to please others at all costs
• The approval of others make them feel best 
• The ‘nice guy’ desires to show women that they’re different from other men
• They are givers that believe, and frequently state, that helping other people makes them feel happier and better
• They live their life off of others expectations versus their own
• ‘Nice guys’ repress their feelings and tend to analyze rather than feel
• The idea of having someone dislike them or strongly disagree with them makes them very uncomfortable
• They just want people to think well of them and accept them. So they live their life the way that seems “right” or easygoing in the eyes of others, even if it means abandoning their own dreams or interests.
• ‘Nice guys’ seek the “right” way they are expected to do things
• They feel powerless and helpless because they’re living life according to the values and standards of others. Often they haven’t really figured out for themselves what they believe and value outside of their upbringing or separate from the others around them
• ‘Nice guys’ need the approval of their wife or others to feel okay with themselves or their choices. 
• They avoid conflict and hate it when things are not running smoothly, especially in their close relationships
• ‘Nice guys’ often make their partner their emotional center and report that they are only happy if their partner is happy
• They often try to be different from their fathers because often they had been emotionally neglected by them or abused by them
• They hide parts of their true self including perceived flaws like negative feelings  or everyday parts of being human like having sexual feelings
• He struggles to say “no” to anyone. With his wife he often agrees with her up front but then in secret still does what he wants or finds passive-aggressive ways to show her that he’s upset
• ‘Nice guys’ are often more comfortable relating to women than to men
• The universal trait of a ‘nice guy’ is that everything they do or say is at some level calculated to gain someone’s approval or avoid disapproval

If this list feels uncomfortably familiar, you might be a ‘nice guy’. A ‘nice guy’ believes being passive and pleasing others will make them and others happy. This over delivery of being seen as nice inhibits your own needs, wants, personality, goals, and dreams to avoid conflict. This leads to a lot of resentment or rage, often subconsciously. 

Problems For Your Husband Of Being the ‘Nice Guy’

• ‘Nice guys’ are secretive and dishonest. When you hide your mistakes, repressing your feelings and avoiding conflict by saying only what people want to hear can lead to a pattern of dishonesty. This dishonesty often can spread to other areas of your life
• ‘Nice guys’ are manipulative and controlling, often in subtle or discreet ways. Since they don’t explicitly ask for what they really want, ‘nice guys’ frequently resort to manipulation to try to get their needs met. They control how others see them, they try to control others’ experiences, and they try to control the outcomes of situations 
• ‘Nice guys’ go along to get along. They go along with what others want in attempt to avoid conflict or difficult emotions
• ‘Nice guys’ are passive-aggressive. Frustrations and resentment are expressed in indirect, roundabout, and passive-aggressive ways
• ‘Nice guys’ are full of resentment. Because they repress so much, resentment builds and often they don’t even recognize how much resentment is under the surface
• ‘Nice guys’ often struggle with addictions. They are often compartmentalized where they try to blend contradictory pieces of information about themselves by separating them into individual compartments of the mind. Addictions thrive in compartmentalization, so the compartmentalizing protects the addiction while the addiction feeds the compartmentalization. 
• ‘Nice guys’ have difficulty setting boundaries
• ‘Nice guys’ give to get. They can generous givers but they also expect something in return; and they feel really hurt when they get little or nothing
• ‘Nice guys’ are often attracted to people and situations that need fixing to fill their own need for validation and a feeling of self-worth. As long as they are only looking for this externally, it doesn’t get built up internally
• ‘Nice guys’ frequently have problems in intimate relationships and issues with sexuality
• ‘Nice guys’ are usually only relatively successful. Despite their talent, they fail to live up to their potential

“By trying to please everyone, Nice Guys often end up pleasing no one – including themselves.” Dr. Robert Glover

What is the difference between a nice guy and a guy who is trying to be kind to others? 

While kindness is a positive characteristic, doing so at a loss for your values and your own self is problematic. This approach prevents you from reaching your goals and is likely to do more damage than good.

A ‘nice guy’ is being nice for others’ validation and acceptance. They are hiding their own true feelings, values, and self in an attempt to be who others want. While they may also have desires to be a kind person, that is secondary to needing to be who others accept. Someone who is trying to be kind without the ‘nice guy syndrome’ is doing the kindness for the sake of others without a need or desire for anything in return including recognition, validation, or any positive feelings reciprocated. 

The ‘Nice Guy’ Tries To Fix Other Reactions

One common sign of ‘nice guys’ is that in all of their years of trying to be seen as good or nice, they’ve tried to hide all of their flaws or what others might call “bad” parts of them. This can lead to continued patterns of not addressing issues and they begin to  instead try to fix the reactions of others. According to Glover, these ‘nice guys’ have trouble accepting responsibility for their actions. They struggle to admit fault. They don’t  address their wrongdoings when they mess up. Instead, ‘nice guys’ try to quickly fix others’ reactions to their mistakes rather than address the real issue at hand. 

Betrayal Trauma and The ‘Nice Guy’

If you are a ‘nice guy’ and have betrayed your wife, learning how to stop being a nice guy can be difficult to navigate. Many men who have lived life as this ‘nice guy,’ who wasn’t very nice, have a wife who has been through a lot of pain. If you have sexually betrayed your wife, often she has trauma as a result. Being sensitive to her trauma as you are learning to find your own self can be extremely difficult. 

While she may see the need and value for you to stop living your life to please others, she often may be asking you to live and do exactly as she needs so she can feel safe in the relationship. Many men describe this place as feeling like they are in a double bind, “damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

So how do you step out of being a ‘nice guy’ while being kind and sensitive to your wife’s pain? It begins with understanding that healing this part of you will be a journey, one step at a time. Healing your relationship after betrayal is a journey. 

The first step of this journey is to become aware of ways you have been a ‘nice guy.’ What part of your story led to you becoming a ‘nice guy.’ What ways was that helpful? What ways was it harmful? 

The next step is to begin to learn about you. Start to build your emotional intelligence (EQ). What are you feeling? What are you experiencing? What are your values? What is important to you outside of what others think or feel? 

As you begin to discover who you are outside of who your wife wants you to be, this can be scary for her. In years of hiding yourself, she often doesn’t feel like she knows who you are. She isn’t sure who you are becoming. Where she has already experienced so much uncertainty in her relationship, this can be uncomfortable for both of you. Being sensitive to her during this time, while still moving forward in finding your own self is important. 

Things He Can Stop Doing To Help End Your Husband’s Addiction To Porn 

There are a few things you’ll want to practice stopping. The first is to stop agreeing just to please others. Do your own internal work to figure out where you stand. Learn how to have healthy assertion in all of your relationships. When you let your wife into your internal world and where you are at, it helps her have safety in knowing the real you. It allows her to work with reality instead of the façade of who you want her to see. 

Next you’ll want to stop tracking your own good deeds. Often the ‘nice guy’ mentality tells us if we are doing these good deeds then we should be getting [fill in the blank] in return. This creates implicit contracts in our head that others don’t know about and often can never meet. It keeps you stuck and unhappy, always feeling less than. Practice doing good deeds without looking for any type of outcome. 

Stop avoiding conflict. Relationships get stronger when we are able to face all things together, good and bad. Challenges and struggles worked through together can be healthy binding agents to deepen our connections. When you avoid conflict in an attempt to keep the peace, we don’t allow for the relationship to have any real depth. 

The Reward And End Of Your Husband’s Addiction To Porn 

When a man learns how to stop being a ‘nice guy’ and start living as a fully integrated man. This journey doesn’t happen over night but as he learns how to know his values, understand his feelings, and build his own sense of self worth outside of others opinions he will begin to love himself just as he is. He will take responsibility for getting his own needs met and will be able to let go of the need to have others respond or show up in a certain way. He becomes comfortable with his own sexuality and masculinity and is able to work through the shame of the past. 

An integrated man, the opposite of the ‘nice guy,’ has integrity. He doesn’t do what is just expected, but does what is in line with his own values. He can be clear, direct, and express his own feelings. He can lead, protect, and provide for those he cares about without having to problem solve, fix, or care-take. He can have healthy boundaries, and sets them for himself, not to control others or outcomes. He is not afraid to work through conflict. While he still may not like conflict (our brains are wired to avoid pain or discomfort), he can lean into the discomfort for the better of the situation or relationship. 

In short we want to say no more the ‘nice guy’ mentality and yes to becoming an integrated man. Dr. Glover states, “an integrated male doesn’t strive to be perfect or gain the approval of others. Instead, he accepts himself just as he is, warts and all. An integrated male accepts that he is perfectly imperfect.”

If you are looking for more support, education, and healing we encourage you to schedule a call with us here.