Rebuilding intimacy can also be facilitated through daily check-ins using the FANOS model, which covers feelings, affirmation, needs, owning actions, sobriety, and spiritual growth. The timing to resume sexual intimacy varies, but it s generally recommended to have at least 45 days of abstinence, with a true reboot possibly taking 90 days or longer. My spirits were low, and this was a last-ditch effort to see if we could eliminate pornography from our lives for good. I quickly learned that I could block specific websites and receive weekly accountability emails. For the first time in a long time, I felt some aspect of peace and steadiness coming back into my life. Some who cheat feel intimidated by their spouse in the same way that they felt threatened in their childhood homes. A real-life connection is terrifying to someone who was not shown love as a child. In response, they seek affair partners, watch pornography or pay for sex to avoid these real-life connections. We have not yet been perfected and freed once and for all from temptation to look at porn. But the exciting thing for a Christian is that the already means we can live confidently that the not yet will certainly happen. 1 John 3:2-3 says: Dear friends, we are God s children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. Constructively compassionate is defined as allowing oneself to be fully present with the experience of oneself, while fostering a mutual acceptance of suffering, to bring a kinder reaction to distressing emotionality. This is intimacy with the self. That intimacy then ripples out into every other aspect of the partner s life. The needs were really about safety, support, confidence in our work, movement/change, etc. and we stay aware of what that real need is. Step 3: Third, we understand that our partner is not obligated to meet our need. There is freedom too, but not a requirement too. Yet, because hopefully we have established a baseline foundation in our relationship that each of our needs matter, our spouse or partner can choose to hear our need, and then check their own resources within themselves to see if they could meet that need.