A Debt You Owe Her

Paul writes plainly about the marriage bed, saying that a husband should give his wife her conjugal rights and that the two should not deprive one another except for a time of prayer, and then come together again. He frames intimacy as something owed, a gift each spouse has a claim on.

Pornography quietly defaults on that debt. A man who spends himself in secret arrives at his marriage empty, with less to give the one person who has a right to him. He may tell himself it harms no one because no other person is in the room, yet his wife is left with a husband who is present in body and absent in the ways that matter. Paul assumes that the answer to temptation is a turning toward your spouse rather than away, more closeness rather than less.

If you have been robbing your marriage to feed a habit, confess it to God first, and consider in time confessing it to her with humility and patience. Ask the Lord to restore what has been drained, so that you can come to your wife with your whole self and not the remnant.