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The Loving Truth
As a Relationship Expert & Certified Master Life Coach, Sharon Pope has helped thousands of women gain the confidence and clarity they need to either fix their struggling marriages or move forward without regret. On The Loving Truth Podcast, she shares advice on how to navigate deep marriage hardships, challenging common beliefs about what love and relationships “should be” and providing realistic steps towards peace and happiness. If you can’t decide whether to stay or go in your marriage… you’re facing infidelity… you’re terrified of hurting your kids… you can’t bring yourself to leave your marriage, even though you want to… or you’re wondering whether it’s possible to respark the desire between you… tune in to the weekly episodes.
The Loving Truth
Ask Sharon: Navigating Trust and Boundaries After Betrayal
In this episode, I share real coaching moments where we tackle some of the toughest relationship questions.
One member is struggling with her husband's ongoing friendship with his ex, even after an affair. She questions whether this connection is manipulation or emotional abuse.
Another member shares her frustration with her husband's porn use, and how it makes her feel inadequate.
The truth is, both situations require deep introspection and boundaries.
It’s not about changing your partner—it’s about being clear on your own needs and feelings.
Desire, trust, and emotional boundaries need attention, and you’re allowed to set them in your relationship.
These issues don’t just affect the marriage, they affect your own self-worth and well-being.
Struggling to decide whether to stay or go in your marriage and you’re serious about finding that answer?
Book a Truth & Clarity Session with a member of my team. We’ll discuss where you are in your marriage and explore if there’s a fit for you and I to work together so you can make - and execute - the RIGHT decision for YOU and your marriage.
If you've ever found yourself questioning your relationship, wondering should I stay or should I go, you're not alone. Today, on the Loving Truth, I'm sharing an exclusive peek inside my membership program the Decision, which is the only way to get live coaching and support from me. You'll hear real members ask their biggest questions and I'll be coaching them through the doubts, fears and complexities of making this life-changing decision. If you've been craving clarity and guidance, this episode is for you.
Speaker 2:Okay. So if emotions come from thoughts and we are not, our thoughts, is emotional abuse a thing? Are not our thoughts? Is emotional abuse a thing? My husband, after I, had a bit of a spat when I was really sped up in my mind about his ongoing communications with his ex number three, so this has been an ongoing thing where her husband had an affair. He continues to now talk to her even though he wants to remain in the marriage and work on the marriage. Talk to her, even though he wants to remain in the marriage and work on the marriage, suggested that maybe I could think of her as just a general person, as any other person or woman friend, that he may have a conversation with. Sharon's new podcast, the one on emotional affairs, hit my inbox the next day. Thank you for that 15-minute reminder the next day. Thank you for that 15-minute reminder.
Speaker 2:I then considered that in continuing to talk to her, despite my insecurities with that, was akin to emotional abuse In a way. To me it feels like a continual emotional affair which preceded their physical affair, just as Sharon suggests, even though he says they do not talk about personal things any longer and definitely all physical is now over. I'm doing a lot of work on realizing that thoughts are often just thoughts and not reality mine or my husband's. When he suggested that I considered her as any other person, it sounded reasonable, but later I wondered if it is in fact just manipulation. He gets to continue to keep her as a friend. If thoughts precede emotions and feelings which lead to behavior, then we can control our thoughts. We can stop the later negative emotions and behaviors, right? Does it ultimately come down to whether I can control my thoughts on it? Do I trust that they can just be friends, especially as he said he would never be like any other female friend? She would never be like any other female friend since they both know too much about each other? Do I let go of the idea of manipulation and emotional abuse? Are these just my thoughts leading to my emotional insecurity on it? He basically said the other day that he was never going to give up their friendship. So I said I had to decide if that was a deal breaker for me.
Speaker 2:When he spoke to his counselor about my dissatisfaction and the potential consequences of him disregarding my request slash boundary, separation or divorce he was asked if we did separate. Did he feel he had done enough. He was asked if we did separate, did he feel he had done enough? The answer was no.
Speaker 2:Okay, where to begin? Look, let me just you asked in here, sharon, what's your opinion? So I'm going to give you opinion, and I also realized that it's your life and my opinion is my opinion. It's just a perspective, okay, and you got to be able to walk your way through this. We all get to choose for our lives and I'm not here to tell you that your way is wrong and my way is right, that my perspective is right and yours isn't. But I am here to challenge some thoughts that are causing you suffering and help you get at what it is that you want. I cannot find my way through any path where your husband has had an affair and now you're going to just talk yourself into being okay with him, continuing to have a relationship with her.
Speaker 2:Don't use the model as a means to bullshit yourself in any way. Shape or form it has to feel true, the thoughts you reach for. This is not about lying to yourself. It's about reaching for better feeling thoughts to lessen your own suffering and realize that you are in control of your suffering. But what you're doing right now is you're trying to say, well, if I had the thought, well, she's just another person, then I'd have the emotion of indifference and my actions wouldn't be any different. I wouldn't have to blow up my marriage, I wouldn't have to confront him, I wouldn't have to do life on my own, I wouldn't have to walk through divorce. Just change my thought, except that it feels like bullshit, because I know it does. So you can also have the thought of he had feelings for her. That doesn't feel safe for me. That makes me feel like I'm being manipulated or that I'm now the victim here, like the emotional abuse, like it feels like emotional abuse. You're putting yourself in the role of the victim. So now I feel like I'm being victimized and so I feel insecure and I feel worried and I don't feel confident in myself and that means that I can't. I can't like roll up my sleeves and walk away and go. You know what it's her or me dude Like, because that's a really big statement he made.
Speaker 2:When he says like I'm not ending my relationship with her, he's essentially saying, if you make me choose now, I'm not saying he won't choose differently, because sometimes we say things that we can't back up, but what he's saying is my relationship with her is more important than my marriage to you, so you just need to get okay with it. She's just another woman. She's just like anyone else. I can't get okay with that and I'm okay with me not getting okay with it. I think you got to know. If you want to get okay with that, you're allowed to have boundaries. This is a perfectly rational boundary. I know I've told you this many times. You're allowed to have a boundary, that if you continue communicating and being in relationship with her, I can't. But it's your fear and insecurity that keeps you there. Let me just talk myself into it. Maybe I can make it okay. And he knows it, and he knows it, and he knows it, and so that's why he says things like that. He knows how fearful you are.
Speaker 2:So your work is to build up your confidence and know that you're allowed to have boundaries and you're allowed to say that doesn't feel good for me and, by the way, you're the one that broke the trust here. So, buddy, it's on you to rebuild the trust. It's not on me to manipulate my mind in order for me to trust you again. That's your work, not mine. I have my own work to do over here. Right, I've got insecurities. I don't feel confident. This doesn't help. I don't set boundaries for myself. I don't take care of myself the way someone if I absolutely love the hell out of them, like if it was a 12-year-old daughter would I treat her the way I'm treating myself? That's your work, not manipulate your own mind into condoning, overlooking, allowing hurtful, bad behavior in marriage. Let's not do that.
Speaker 2:My question stems around pornography. I watched a video of yours recently where you said it wasn't necessarily about the sex. All those things made sense. Porn has been something my husband has looked at from before we even dated Many years ago, I started expressing how his porn makes me feel Inadequate, not enough, unable to live up to expectations. He would say he won't do it, but inevitably does. I feel like he has an addiction to it to some degree, because I believe he looks at it not only daily but multiple times a day. Over the last couple years. When I have brought it up, he now says it's just a poor substitute for me. Because of prior excessive drinking and other things, we don't have sex often. I'm fairly certain he deletes the browsing history on the computer. I've talked to him so much about this, but he ends up back looking at it again.
Speaker 2:What suggestions do you have to help me get through to him about how this makes me feel and how this has impacted our marriage? Okay, so I need you to ask yourself what if this is never going to change? How do you feel about it? I hate it and is it a deal breaker for you? I think that that's really important, because for some people it is, for some people it isn't, and it's just a personal preference. But if you've talked about it and talked about it and he's not changed and he's not changed, and he says he's going to change and he doesn't change, at some point you have to believe his actions and go this is one of those things that's not going to change. And so what do I want to do with that? Now what? My favorite question now what If it's not going to change? Now what? But that's not what you're asking. You're asking how can I change him? How can I say it in a way that then he'll want to do it and we're going to get there?
Speaker 2:So white knuckling doesn't work, and it doesn't work on diets, it doesn't work on porn. It just doesn't work, people, and yet that's what a lot of people teach. He would want to have to change that for himself. You're wanting him to want to change it because you want him to change it. It's clearly not enough to make him want to change that. And I get it. You're like, but I'm your wife and it makes me uncomfortable and therefore you should adjust your behavior, except that we don't do what we should do or what feels like a logical, reasonable thing. We do what we have to do. He doesn't have to do it because so far, there are no consequences to him besides a nagging wife, right? So this is where you got to figure out where you're at with this, like. If it's a total deal breaker for you, well then, we got some more serious conversations to be had.
Speaker 2:But let's get to your question, which is around how do I make it? Let me reread it again what suggestions do you have to help me get through to him about how it makes me feel and how it has impacted our marriage? So, first of all, how it makes you feel. That is your work, because you could feel a lot of ways. You can feel a lot of ways about anything. You can feel a lot of ways about porn. I have lots of ways I feel about porn. I'm glad to share some of them if you want to go in my soapbox, and I'll just say I love what Emily Moore says, which is learning how to have sex by watching porn is like learning how to drive while watching the Fast and the Furious Like porn actually has nothing to.
Speaker 2:It has a little bit to do with sex. It has zero to do with intimacy and relationship. And, by the way, mamas, our boys, are being introduced to it at age 10 these days. So think about what porn will do to a mind that isn't even developed, which the male brain, is not fully developed until mid-20s, right? So you come to porn in your 20s, 30s. That's going to have a very different reaction than 10, 12, 14 years old.
Speaker 2:It is like I cannot imagine what this is going to do to relationships and sex lives for young men for decades. I can't imagine because what they're learning has zero bearing and only negative energy being pulled from what relationships require. I think there's going to be a lot of single people on the planet, so I'm not suggesting that you should get okay with this. But he's an adult. He gets to do what he wants to do, he gets to choose what he wants to do and he gets to live with the outcome of those choices. There's just been no outcomes besides a nagging wife and all everybody. And can we agree? A nagging wife changes nothing. It changes nothing. We have all tried it. We have tried that path. If it worked, I promise you I'd tell you to do it. Just keep nagging him. Eventually he'll change. It does not work. But you don't have to feel inadequate, you don't have to make it mean anything about you personally because, honestly, it has nothing to do with you. His watching porn has everything to do with him and, frankly, probably his inadequacy it has nothing to do with you. Darling Men watch porn who have Jennifer Aniston sitting at home with them. Right, like it has nothing to do. Yeah, it was Playboy and Penthouse before the internet, that's right. I remember my dad had those in his drawer and I was like what is this Right? So porn is not all bad and porn is certainly not all good.
Speaker 2:I don't love how it objectifies women. I don't love how it creates an environment that isn't actually real. We all know sex is kind of messy. Sex can be a little embarrassing, it can be a little awkward. It's not all like this perfect thing. So there's some stuff that comes with that you can say I don't like it because it objectifies women. But saying I don't like it because it makes me feel like I'm not enough and I'm inadequate, well, now you're turning that thing and turning it as a weapon against yourself. Ladies, let's stop doing that in every area of our lives. Other people's actions have to do with them. It has nothing to do with you. Stop making everything about you and, by the way, your appearance that's what every like think of. You know, I try to not get on my soapbox, but I have so many soapboxes I can hardly help it.
Speaker 2:Think of the number of businesses that would go out of business one week from today if, tomorrow morning, every single woman on the planet decided to love themselves as they are. Planet decided to love themselves as they are. There is not a message in the grocery store, on TV, on the radio, on billboards that does not try to get women to hate themselves so that they can make more money. The entire plastic surgery business would go under. The cosmetics industry would go under. A lot of clothing companies would go under. A lot of bra and underwear companies. So we have been trained. So I'm not saying that it is your. There's something wrong with you. You are surrounded by it. I just want you to become conscious of it. We don't have to turn everything as a weapon against ourselves and make it mean that we are somehow not enough.
Speaker 2:You said that you're not having sex very often because of his excessive drinking and other things I don't know what other things are. You got to get clear about how you feel about not having sex very often Because, by the way, drinking does not help your sex life. I know it sounds like it should be like yeah, no shit, sharon, but yeah we'll still drink. Like he'll drink 12 beers and then he can't get an erection, but we don't look at the 12 beers. Then we just go get a pill to offset. Like, if sex is important to you and your marriage is important to you and the health of your marriage is important to you, you know you might stop it for six beers as opposed to 12 beers. Right, it's all just choices.
Speaker 2:So you got to figure out what are you going to do with this. How do you feel about not having sex and how do you feel about him subsidizing not having sex with you so that he can get off with porn? You got to figure that out and it's just a personal preference and then you've got to communicate it. You've got to let him know where you're really at. So your work, how you really feel about it and how you're making it mean something about you. His work Is it worth losing your marriage over. Is it worth being disconnected from your wife for the eternity of your life, for the rest of your life? Because porn is more important than your wife's feelings.
Speaker 1:If you're feeling stuck and unsure whether to stay or go in your marriage. You don't have to figure it out alone. The best next step is to apply for a Truth and Clarity session a private conversation with a member of my team to explore what's really going on in your relationship and whether my coaching is the right fit for you. Visit clarityformymarriagecom to apply today.