Dear Counselor, my husband has been struggling with a pornography addiction. When this came to light – I began to blame myself and found I was dealing with very low self-esteem. I wrote the following script and verses to help me cope with the lies I have been telling myself. I hope that other women will find this helpful.

LIE:
My value as a person depends on what others think of me.

STOP!
That’s NOT true.

TRUTH:
My value as a person has already been determined by God because of my relationship to Christ.
I will not give the power to any human being to determine my value.

LIE:
____’s sexual attraction to and lust for other women, particularly those who are thinner than me or well-endowed, means that their beauty far surpasses mine and I am lacking what they can offer him.  He wants their physical bodies more than he could ever desire or want mine.

TRUTH:
___’s desire for other women does NOT render me undesirable or lacking in any way.  His view of me does not make me what I am.

Sinful, illicit sexual desires/lust is not the same thing as intimate, God-given and God-approved sex in the context of marriage, which serves as a symbol of the union of Christ and the church and ultimately, glorifies God.  These are 2 very different things, and they cannot be compared.  The former is a perversion of the latter, and makes a mockery of God.

Lust is a temporary, cheap thrill which produces shame and pain.  It does not and cannot compare to the more permanent joys and benefits that spiritual intimacy and oneness provides from being intimate in a relationship with the Lord and in marriage.

Lust takes a child of God whom he created in His image, and for whom Christ died, and reduces them down to merely the physical, bodily shell of a person devoid of soul and spirit.  Lust objectifies women to use for purely selfish, sinful pleasures.  Lust is purely base and it devalues and degrades women.  It is idolatry of the person who lusts because they are using a woman’s body to worship themselves.

I wouldn’t want  to objectify me in the way he objectified women he lusted after.  I want him to see me as a whole person and not merely an object for self-worship and gratifying base pleasures.
I want _____ to see my social, spiritual, intellectual, emotional and physical beauty all at once.  I want him to see me as his closest friend, his confidant with whom he can share his innermost secrets and dreams, his cheerleader, his life partner.  I want him to see me as his one and only lover, his God-given wife, his beloved, his cherished treasure, his crown, his jewel, God’s masterpiece, an image bearer of God, a child of God, a woman for whom Christ died, a woman who Christ calls him as a husband to lay down his life for as Christ laid down his life for the church.

His eyes for others is not an accurate reflection of my value or beauty but rather is a reflection of his own lack of integrity, faithlessness, greed, misdirected desires, selfishness, undisciplined life, lack of character, and his sinful, deceitful & sick heart as the Bible talks about.
Ezekiel 16:30
“How sick is your heart, declares the Lord GOD, because you did all these things, the deeds of a brazen prostitute.”
Jeremiah 17:9
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?