Does watching porn damage relationships? If you google what harm porn use can do to people and their relationships, what you are most likely to find is dire warnings. That it makes partners fancy each other less; that it creates unrealistic sexual expectations; causes erectile dysfunction in men; that a porn-watcher is more likely to cheat – and that porn use causes marriages to be far more likely to end in divorce.
The actuality, though, is that two recent studies have found that, overall, people are more likely to find that porn has had positive effects on their sex lives, increased their knowledge and feelings about sex, and made their lives better in general – than they are to report negative impacts.
Porn is now everywhere. Unavoidable. So much so that several research studies had to be scrapped because no-one could be found that hadn’t watched it to make comparisons with those that had. A 2013 survey found that 71% of men and 56% of women think it’s acceptable to watch porn in a relationship, including watching by oneself. Then a 2015 study found that 76% of women don’t think watching porn affects their relationships at all.
Research on samples of porn users revealed that many had started around the age of ten. Single men watched pornography for an average of 40 minutes, three times a week, while those in relationships watched it 1.7 times a week for around 20 minutes.
Women watch less porn than men, surely? Well, that is apparently also not necessarily so. In fact, some recent research has suggested that women watch porn more than men do — at least judged by length of viewing. The main porn platform, Pornhub has data from its Pornhub Insights that has long broken down interesting facts and trends about all things porn. Over a decade of information they have collected surprisingly reveals that women, on average, spend 1:14 minutes MORE a day on the site than men do.
We have to face it then that you have to be virtually asexual not to have accessed porn. And, whilst clearly it can have adverse effects on some – if for instance it is becoming something of an obsession taking up too much of a person’s normal life – most people manage to integrate into their personal lives in a perfectly healthy manner. Some keep it as a private matter others share their porn watching for mutual arousal.
This has been confirmed in a recent Canadian study, conducted with over 200 couples. It included both mixed-sex and same-sex relationships with each partner taking part in a 35-day diary report of their porn use. The most important result the data revealed was that porn use was completely unrelated to relationship satisfaction. Indeed, there was no evidence that porn viewing led to decreases in how happy people are with their partners, nor did they seem to be using porn as a way of making up for deficiencies in their relationships.
Other interesting incidental findings included that people were less likely to use porn the day after they had had sex with their partner – suggesting a diminished interest in porn after intercourse, rather than using porn as a substitute for it.
It was striking that women appear to be more likely to feel an increased desire to have sex with their partner on a day when they have used porn – and for them to actually have intercourse. This finding that porn puts women in the mood for sex held for those in both mixed-sex and same-sex relationships. So it would seem that for women porn use often effectively acts as arousing foreplay.
Men in relationships with other men also showed increased desire for their partner and were more likely to have sex with them on days when they had viewed porn. However, men in relationships with women were less likely to have sex with their partners when they had used porn that day – presumably having given themselves the sexual relief of masturbating to orgasm.
To sum up then, although some studies have linked porn use with relationship unhappiness, there’s yet to be conclusive evidence that watching porn causes damage to relationship. In other words, it’s possible that people who are unhappier in their relationships and their sex lives just tend to watch more porn. And one study found some women can tend to be less happy with their relationship and have lower self-esteem when they think their partner is watching too much porn.
it seems that whether porn use aids or damages personal relationships is down to the view the couple have about it. Individuals (often religious) who see porn use as wrong will feel badly about any use of it by themselves, as well as judging a partner as betraying the relationship by their use.
Those in stable, healthy relationships will see porn use as the almost universal activity that it is = and either happily use it together or accept that use by one of the partners alone is part of their private experience. Like masturbation – which usually accompanies it – it is about that person’s self relief and not a threat to the relationship.