Does his habit of watching porn bother you a lot? Is watching porn alright? Can watching porn affect your relationship?

Pornography is a common part of private lives of many couples and individuals. It can be a great tool for couples to improve intimacy, if it is introduced into a relationship correctly. Men are more likely to be drawn to porn because they derive more enjoyment from visual stimulation.

People will watch porn by themselves for a variety of reasons. They feel it takes away the pressure of having to perform, or is a good and fast way to relieve stress without having to spend time being intimate.

Some experts believe a sexual relationship can be enhanced when imagination is allowed to run wild. Many are of the opinion that if sexual intimacy is not being replaced by porn watching, then it should not be an issue in a marriage. Others contend that a guy’s porn watching habit can only hurt his partner’s feelings if she allows herself to be bothered by this. If she has a good self-image and does not feel insecure, she should not feel hurt by her partner’s habit. Whether or not pornography will add to or lessen a couple’s sexual enjoyment is up to each couple.

When coming to the question about whether watching porn is alright, there is no specific right or wrong answer to it. As long as we are talking about legal adult movies and as long as everyone who is watching is consenting, there is nothing inherently bad in pornography.

Porn watching can only become harmful when he allows himself to be addicted to it or gets too obsessive about it. It is a problem when a guy will rather choose to watch porn instead of being intimate with an available and interested partner. But the problem may be more about the relationship than the porn.

When Is Watching Porn Considered Excessive?

According to a research conducted on online behavior, for people who engaged in any kind of sexual activity for less than an hour a week, their habit had little impact on their lives. However, if the exposure to online porn was 11 hours or more a week, the respondents said their habits could affect both their self-image and feelings about their partners. Therefore anywhere between one and ten hours a week is a grey area, which is still tolerable. It may be just a way to release stress.

When Or Under What Situations Can Watching Porn Becoming A Relationship Problem?

Guilt, mistrust and anger about pornography can hurt marriages. Turning to pornography may cause a guy to be emotionally withdrawn from his relationship with spouse because he receives instant gratification from his fantasies. When a woman disapproves of his partner’s porn use habit, this can create a wedge in the relationship. Porn could make it difficult for a guy to see sex as a loving form of communication. As a result, pornography can decrease sexual satisfaction within a relationship.

The obvious sign for misuse of porn is the lack of sexual desire in a relationship. Other signs and symptoms of porn addiction are excessive masturbation, moodiness, and a guy who almost totally ‘shut’ himself off from the outside world to the extent that he neglects his family, spouse, job, hobbies, etc. He will stay up late at night just to spend time on the computer and he wants to be alone when he is online. He will also refuse to admit there is a problem with his behavior and is unwilling to talk about it.

If you feel that your spouse is slowly pulling away from being intimate with you and he is not willing to let you see what he is watching because it may be inappropriate, you should consider going to get help together. You have the right to expect your needs to be addressed, exactly as much as he has the right to have his needs addressed.

Sitting down to discuss with him is the first step towards understanding why your partner favors pornography and how both of you can improve the intimacy going forward. Allowing a problem like this to fester has the potential to ruin a relationship. Without being judgmental, it would be best to find out what he likes about porn. Is it due to fantasy? Ask him if there is anything that he sees that he wants both of you to try. Is his behavior due to boredom or habit? No matter what reasons he has for his actions and if it is having a negative impact on your sex life, you have the right to an explanation.

At the same time, you need to think about your feelings around porn. Is it something that interests you at all? If so, there are some key things you need to consider about picking movies that may help you out. If you are not keen in making porn a part of your sexual relationship, are you willing to let him watch it sometimes? If you feel absolutely wrong about this, how are you going to explain your reasons to him? It is normal that we will never share all our partners’ sexual interests. To some extent, relationship is about compromise and there may come a time when one or both of you have to meet somewhere in the middle.

My buddy was recently sitting in a church meeting and someone finally had the guts to ask a reality based question. He asked: “Who hasn’t had an issue with porn addiction at some point?” It was like someone finally gave the guys in the room permission to be human. In the internet age, as much as some people don’t want to admit it, porn addiction is as common as the common cold. And until we get to a place where we can just open up and talk about it, it will continue to destroy families and trap more and more people.

This is unfortunate because there are ways to overcome pornography addiction. It is not as difficult as people are making it. But it does require long term effort, and most addicts want a quick fix to their addiction. They want something that will fix them as fast as their addiction does. But that is not the way of recovery. Recovery requires consciously learning to cope with life in new ways. These new tools must be used repeatedly until it becomes their way of life. New habits are the only solution.

Ok. That sounds easy enough. Then why is it so hard to quit a porn addiction? Because the addict has been using a sexual release as their primary coping mechanism in life. They never learned other coping tools, because this one worked so well. Plus, anytime we try and change a core behavior in our life, our brain will resist the new habit like crazy. Think about your new years resolutions over the years. How long did those last? Probably about 3 weeks. Because if you had gotten past the first month, the behavior would have gotten easier and easier and you would have been on the road to making it a new habit.

In order to overcome porn addiction, the addict needs some serious support. Unfortunately, because we have shamed the behavior so bad, most people can’t talk openly about it. So getting support becomes a real issue. The idea of going to one of the anonymous meetings and standing up around a bunch of strangers and announcing that you’re a porn addict isn’t at the top of most people’s lists of goals in life. And to add one more layer of complexity, it is likely that they will be in front of their computer most of the day. Its kind of like an alcoholic spending all day, every day at the bar while going through addiction recovery.