Question: There is a problem in my home, and I am sure you can help us. My husband likes pornography. Because he knows that I strongly disapprove - I think it is unhealthy, unholy and immoral - he has in the past lied to me and has been very deceptive.
Upon the recommendation of our therapist, my husband and I agreed that the porno was his private business, that I did not have the right to judge him, but that it was not OK for him to lie to me to cover his tracks, no matter how embarrassed or ashamed he may have felt by my condemnation.Well, what a load of crap! He continued to lie and sneak, even though he was given carte blanche, and I never really bought the idea that I did not have the right to judge.
My problem is this: I am never going to be OK with the porno, so agreeing to turn a blind eye was a huge mistake. My husband himself says that he thinks the porno is dirty and rightfully shameful.
Our therapist's agenda is: No. 1, to teach my husband to accept his "whole self," to embrace his sexuality and lose his sense of shame and learn to stand up to me in the face of disapproval; and No. 2, to teach me to be accepting and supportive.
This feels really, really wrong. She wants my husband to accept a part of himself that even he feels is bad, while at the same time he is supposed to build strength of character. What???
- (Name and city withheld)
Dr. Laura: There is a big difference between the occasional viewing of sexually explicit materials, which is more usually a guy thing, for a bit of a thrill, and the compulsive need for pornography as a release, a safer expression of sexuality than a relationship.
Then, clearly, the problem isn't the viewing; it's the using of pornography to hide from or solve other serious issues about sex, identity and intimacy.
When a need for anything, whether it be drugs, gambling, the Internet or pornography, becomes more important than the welfare of family, intimate relationships, work, etc., there is a problem.
When any therapist defines all of this as a healthy expression of sexuality, then that therapist is not clinically objective and maybe not even competent.
If you and your husband feel that is the case, then please seek a referral.
Question: I am a parent of a middle school boy. He comes home from school most of the time upset about the threats, intimidation and outright violence he has to put up with in school.
He is not complaining so much for himself as he is large for his age and less picked on than others. He says that the classrooms are not pleasant because the kids who cause trouble keep the teacher from being able to do her job.
I don't understand why these kids aren't just thrown out of school like they were when I was in middle school as a kid.
What is the problem here? I've been thinking about private school. Is there any reason to hope that they'd be any better?
-Washington, D.C.
Dr. Laura: What you are addressing is a national problem and tragedy. While we could argue about influences and contributions to negative, even ugly youth conduct, recent studies agree that social factors - mainly the lack of a father at home - play a prominent role in the rise in violence and general bad behavior of our youth.
Here are some statistics as reported in Business Daily (Nov. 12, 1997):
1. Violent children are 11 times more likely not to live with their fathers and six times more likely to have parents who aren't married.
2. Children not living with both biological parents were four times as likely to be suspended or expelled from school.
3. Boys from mother-only homes showed greater levels of aggression than boys in mother-father homes.
4. Public schoolteachers also report more alcohol and drug abuse among students, as well as more frequent violence than their counterparts in private schools.
5. Public schoolteachers in the central city face from four to eight times as much apathy, absenteeism, tardiness and abuse from students as do private teachers in the same areas.
The great 30-plus years of the social experiment of free-love and eschewing rules and values (archaic! restrictive!) have failed our children miserably. We should be ashamed.