| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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Thus the Catholic Church approach was eliminated, and the study was expanded to include women who self-identified as co-addicts and attended COSA meetings. Questions from the General Social Survey measuring religious attitudes were no longer a factor and the responses were not incorporated into the findings. The research focused on the experiences of women whose husbands used Internet pornography and examined variations in women who attended COSA.
The proposal still contains the references and literature examining Catholic teachings on sex and sexuality as well as Catholic influence since this was an original part of the study and informed the early interviews.
I hypothesize that there is a relationship that exists among several factors, the psychosexual development of women, gender socialization, self-esteem, the particular dynamics of the marital relationship, and wives’ unique responses to their husbands. The primary objective was to illuminate the experiences of women who suspect or know that their spouses use the Internet for pornographic purposes. The results of my research will aid social workers in therapeutic work with women who report that Internet pornography is causing marital distress and are in distress over this disruption in their lives.
Interest in the topic came from clinical experience with Roman Catholic women who had negative experiences with their husbands’ use of Internet pornography. Approximately one-third of the women in my clinical caseload expressed concern about their husbands’ use of Internet pornography. Priests from various parishes provided information on the growing problem in their congregations and pornography’s affects on men and their families. A survey of local colleagues revealed that they were not hearing about this issue in treatment, which was also very curious. Meanwhile, Internet pornography was becoming a news item in the media.
Female clients repeated similar stories of their experiences with their husbands’ use of the Internet for pornography. These narratives had many commonalities. All the women were impacted in negative ways by discoveries of their husbands’ use of the Internet. All reported feeling betrayed, likening spouses’ use of pornography to an affair.