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LIVING ABOVE SUSPICION CONTRACTS

“Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.’-Alfred Adler

One way to help couples draw upon powers greater than themselves to move above and beyond the lies of pornography is to introduce a Living above Suspicion Contract. Such a contract, at its core, is a way to foster accountability that in the short term can help bring the couple to a point where they trust one another enough to address the larger issues at hand, and in the long term the contract can provide a model for conflict resolution and relationship repair. The Living above Suspicion Contract is intended to bring efforts to cease pornography use well above the radar of suspicion: to make the unknown known, to reveal the suspected, and to bring the healing process into the open so that it is not undermined by the non-user’s hyper vigilence. The contract is based on the premise that if a problem has been bred in secrecy, its solution needs to unfold in openness.

Living above Suspicion Contracts are most commonly used by a therapist when working with a couple, yet they can be used by anyone who has a vested interest in helping a couple or family overcome pornography’s influence. For the purpose of this paper, this intervention will be applied to marital relationships wherein the husband is the pornography user and the wife is the non-user. The contract is intended to complement, not substitute for, essential spiritual processes and healing work; therefore this discussion assumes that qualified supports are already in place.