POSA™ Blog

The many, varied challenges that partners of sexually deceptive men face are typically the focus of our blogposts. But today we expand that focus to include a concern many of our partners express: the hideous fact that our children are being affected by the prevalence of pornography everywhere they turn, often despite our best efforts.

This tasks already infidelity-traumatized partners with a sizable burden: speaking with their children before the damaging exposure inevitably begins. 

To help give voice to the difficult feelings this can bring up for partners, we wanted to share an article that is not the usual how-to; rather, it is a stirring expression of a mother's care for her young son, her frustration at the culture we live in that turns a blind eye to pornography, and ultimately, it is a rousing call to action. Jill, who authored the piece, generously provided some of the original content for PoSARC almost a decade ago. Here, Jill articulates her heartbreak with her usual intelligence, wry humor and the awesome feistiness for which she's known. 

Listen to the replay of PoSARC founder, Lili Bee, on the Katherine Albrecht radio show (36 minutes). It's a great listen, full of useful information! For more on Katherine Albrecht: www.katherinealbrecht.com

The Ten-Day Debate at The Economist, with Dr. Robert Jensen

The Economist magazine sponsored an online debate on the question "Can porn be good for us?" Dr. Robert Jensen argued against pornography and Cindy Gallop argued for, with guest commentaries. At the end of the 10-day debate, readers voted 81% against pornography.

(For those not familiar with Dr. Jensen, he is a long-time mentor of mine whom I had the pleasure of interviewing four years ago on the topic of pornography and again in March of this year- see Related Content, below this blog post).

In the ten-day debate over at The Economist last week, the always-brilliant and outspoken Jensen gave these as his opening remarks: 

This past week, someone sent me a recent advice column from the successful online magazine Slate. In the Sept. 16th issue, a woman who is married to a sex addict submits to their advice columnist a question all of us no doubt have struggled with. The response from the advice columnist, Dear Prudence, will leave you dumbstruck.

Here is a direct reprint of Slate's Sept. 16th Dear Prudence column so you can read it for yourself:

Seems good old Noel Biderman who founded Ashley Madison had an app in development that allowed men to rate their wives' appearance and then invite other members of the married cheater's site to go ahead and contribute their own opinion of what someone's wife was worth, looks-wise.

The screenshot (below) shows the app with the rating and the woman's value in dollar amounts that appear as the ratings come in.

PoSARC's inbox was full the past few days with e-mails coming in from readers wanting to share the news: the world's largest married cheaters website, Ashley Madison had been hacked by insiders who called themselves The Impact Team.

The hacking team gained access to almost 40 million website members' personal data, including their names, addresses, credit card numbers and even their sexual preferences, causing the site to immediately suspend operations as panic ensued.

Have you ever noticed how your powers of discernment have noticeably sharpened during this entire journey of being partnered with a sex addict/compulsive? Part of that comes from frequently having to figure out if you're being given the truth, weighing out what you're told against what you perceive.

While we are having to rely on our intuition over and over again while in relationship to a SAC (sex addict/compulsive), it might be worthwhile to learn some basic skills that can help us along the way.

In the TED Talk video below, fraud specialist Pamela Mayer encourages us to educate ourselves on how to detect a lie but then we're also admonished to "....go the extra mile from lie-spotting to truth-seeking....and ultimately to trust-building". I don't know a single POSA who wouldn't desire that exact trajectory. Cautiously, of course.

While men (and boys) are raised in a society, now a global society, thanks to the Internet, that not only accepts that they'll watch porn, but actually pushes it on them at every possible turn, superstar comedian Russell Brand came out speaking against it.

This is really important because Brand enjoys and benefits quite nicely from his bad-boy image and rock-star status out in the world, not just with girls and women but even amongst his huge "bro" following. To have taken the unnecessary (for him) and hugely unpopular position he took here, claiming that pornography harms us and makes him feel ashamed to use it for lots of reasons, was, plain and simple, an extremely brave move. I am very impressed.