Many people contact Fight the New Drug to share their personal stories about how porn has affected their life or the life of a loved one. We consider these personal accounts very valuable because, while the science and research is powerful within its own right, personal accounts from real people seem to really hit home about the damage that pornography does to real lives.
This story shows just how much porn doesn't 'spice up' a couple's sex life. Porn drives a toxic wedge between partners and drives the focus away from intimacy and toward performance. In the end, watching just isn't worth it.
My story didn’t develop overnight. In the beginning, our sex life was great, or so I thought.
I knew that he would watch porn on his phone, but denied it to myself. About 6 months into our relationship, we introduced porn into our bedroom. You know, something to “spice up our sex life.” However, I’m not sure why it needed to be “spiced up”… We were having sex 3 to 5 times a day.
Related: Is It A Bad Idea To Date Someone Who Watches Porn?
As soon as porn came into our bedroom, our sex life diminished pretty much completely and has never been the same.
I felt I should be open-minded and wanted to please him to the fullest of my ability. Yet, I just found myself in degrading situations more times than not. Then came the toys along with watching porn. Then came the dirty talk and unrealistic screams of pleasure. Then came the secret of his fantasy about “shemales.” That became the standard porn go-to.
It’s now to the point that we don’t have sex without porn being on. He can’t maintain an erection with just sex with me, nor can he finish unless he takes care of himself without me. We don’t have actual sex for long before we are apart and just watching the porn streaming in front of us. Due to his inability to finish, these dual solo sessions can last for a few hours.
Related: How To Tell If Your Partner Is Struggling With Porn & What To Do If They Are
He sexual appetite has increased 10 fold and expects me to be ready to go at any time when he does achieve an erection. At this point, he’s watching porn (with or without me) 5 plus times a day. I came home from work to find my husband watching porn and then he got mad at me because I didn’t rip my clothes off and join him. I hadn’t even put my purse down yet.
I’ve now discovered he has a membership to live webcam “shemale” site. So now he can watch and be aroused by a real person, performing sexual acts in real time. At this point, it’s all too much for me. Every time I bring up my opposition to it, he tells me I’m being scared and closed-minded.
I don’t think I am. I feel I’m being used and expected to be and act like a porn performer. Not only that, I find the live webcam stuff to be boarding on infidelity. There’s real interaction, in real time. Just because you can’t physically touch them doesn’t mean it’s not cheating. He still has to personally select and communicate with the person he’s sexually desiring other than me.
Related: Can Watching Porn Be Like Cheating When You’re In A Relationship?
I wish we never introduced porn into our sex life. It has been the demise of my feelings and our sex life ever since.
–G.
Short term satisfaction at the expense of long-term impact
Have you ever heard someone say that porn can help improve romantic relationships? Or that porn is a great way to heat up a relationship and increase the bond between partners? The argument often goes something like this, “Pornography may not give you real sex, but porn can make your experience with real sex better—and that is good for a romantic relationship.”
But is that true?
The answer actually looks different depending on whether we look at short-term or long-term results.
On the surface, porn might seem to provide an immediate spark for excitement and novelty…at least at first. That is exactly what studies presumably showing the “positive effects of porn” on relationships are measuring—initial, surface, self-reported “positives” for relationships. For instance, one recent study found that couples who watch porn together report being more “sexually satisfied” than those who don’t watch XXX videos—emphasizing, as we just mentioned, the “novelty and excitement” that porn can seem to spark in a couple’s sex life. [1]
Related: Can Porn Improve An Intimate Relationship?
One key factor in all this is the length of the relationship. Many studies reporting the perceived positive effects of porn for couples have studied participants who are in early dating relationships. As the length and seriousness of the relationship go up, so do the negative effects of porn consumption for many couples.
But what does that mean? What exactly happens to the romance of couples who consume porn long-term? The long-term studies paint a very different picture. The preponderance of evidence from a dozen or more in-depth, longer-term studies consistently show porn consumption lowering relationship satisfaction, emotional closeness, and sexual satisfaction. [2] That doesn’t sound great, does it? Here are some examples from different research teams:
A 2012 study by Amanda Maddox and her team concluded that individuals who never viewed sexually-explicit material reported higher relationship quality (on every measure) compared with those who viewed the same explicit material on their own. [3]
A new study published in 2017 examined the impact of couples where one partner consumes more porn than the other—which is a pretty common pattern. The researchers concluded that “greater discrepancies between partners in pornography use were related to less relationship satisfaction, less stability, less positive communication, and more relational aggression.” [4]
Sound familiar? How about the above story?
Consider before consuming
Real relationships are made up of real people who are attracted to each other in authentic and genuine ways. And making that last for a lifetime means being attracted to each other as whole, three-dimensional people. It’s more than just being an imagined fantasy or trying to imitate the completely exaggerated and airbrushed world of scripted and edited porn sex.
In today’s society, porn is considered completely normal and natural, but research is constantly showing the negative effects of porn. The world may consider porn as harmless entertainment, but the results shown by science and research would disagree. Sexual exploitation and objectification aren’t healthy for consumers and society—relationships built on love and respect are what ultimately matter, and that’s what we’re fighting for.
