Your Marriage on Porn

Pornography is ubiquitous. The internet has brought porn into the American home, and not just into the American home. One would like to know whether people in other nations, having equal access to the internet, show the same interest in porn, but I have not seen any research on the topic. Cross cultural studies would allow us to know whether it was about porn or about Americans.

As rule, men and women are not equally mesmerized by porn. Men tend to be drawn to it and are more likely to watch it compulsively. Women tend to be repelled by it and are far less likely to watch it compulsively. And, women have far more harsh attitudes toward porn stars and prostitutes, often considering them to be slutty. Feminist mewling notwithstanding, slut shaming is more often committed by women than by men. A woman who is seen to be a slut is often shunned by other, more respectable women.

Of course, some feminists believe that men and women should be equal in all things. And that means, in porn watching. In company with sex therapists they believe in open and honest discussion of sexual kinks. If anything, porn offers a very large variety of different sexual acts with different people. And they believe that good sex is the key to a good marriage. In that they are surely wrong, but, why argue the point?

Why are women disinclined to like porn? Why do most women look down on porn stars and prostitutes? To the point of revulsion. One might say that women who respect themselves do not like to see other women make them look bad. They see porn stars as diminishing the reputations of all women, making all women look cheap. Women who respect themselves believe that sexuality is about more than pleasure-seeking. Thus they think that porn, which removes all but the carnal aspect from the equation, diminishes something that they hold to be… nearly sacred. Women do not like porn because they do not want their sense of their own sexuality to be profaned. And because they do not want men to see them as incipient or potential porn stars.

As I say, this makes sense to me. If one is not a woman one feels constrained to respect women’s attitudes toward porn and prostitution.

Now, Time Magazine reports on a new study about the effect of porn on marriage. It turns out that porn is not good for your marriage. It is less destructive if both members of the marriage are watching it and even less negative if they are watching it together. Otherwise, women who start watching porn are more likely to get divorced than are those who abstain.

Time reports:

Married people who start watching porn are twice as likely to be divorced in the following years as those who don’t. And women who start watching porn are three times as likely to split, according to a working paper presented at the American Sociological Association on Aug. 22. However, porn appears to have a less negative impact on marriage if couples watch it together.

The paper also finds that stopping porn-watching lowers the likelihood of divorce for women, though not for men.

Why should this be so? Sagely, the study does not suggest an interpretation. At the least, it tells us that women find pornography alienating at a very fundamental level. Especially,when they are watching it alone.

Of course, the study does not tell us whether the men and women who are watching alone tell their spouses what they are doing. It does not tell us how much or what kind or how often. It does not tell us whether it is hard core, soft core, straight or gay.

But, Time asks the salient question. Perhaps the couples who tried introducing porn into their marriages, especially when women were lured into watching it, were on shaky grounds already. Perhaps they had turned to porn because their sex interest had been waning. Perhaps they thought that porn could cure an absence of concupiscent longings.

Time addresses these issues:

Could it be that people started watching porn because their marriages were already unhappy? “We don’t think it’s the relationship quality leading to the porn use and divorce,” says says lead author Samuel Perry, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma, because this is data taken over time and not just a snapshot. “We are pretty confident about establishing the directional effects.”

Perry was most surprised to see that porn use by men does not have as negative impact on marriage. Prior studies suggested that men who watch porn had made it a substitute for carnal relations. One understands that women would feel abandoned if their husbands turned to porn and not to them. But, if said husbands wanted both them and the porn... what then?

Of course, we would find this more persuasive if we knew more about what kind of porn, when it was being consumed, and to what purpose it was being consumed. And we would want to know more about the marriage.

In the meantime, Time concludes:

Perry could not definitively explain why the impact was so much stronger on women than men, since that ran counter to previous scholarship on the issue. “That’s a bit surprising because everything else I’ve seen on porn use in relationships suggests that men’s marriages are more negatively affected by their porn use,” he says, “primarily because they’re using it more often for the purposes of masturbation rather than intimacy.”