Five Reasons Porn is Bad For Your Marriage

Viewing pornography has become one of the most common sexual behaviors among modern adults. Recent estimates suggest that anywhere from 50 to 70% of adult men and women view pornography on a regular basis. This has made pornography use an increasingly “normal” behavior and led many  men and women and even some experts to question whether pornography use is really that big of a deal. The argument goes something like this, “How can something so common be harmful to relationships?” and “People in relationships who use porn often seem on the surface to be perfectly happy and healthy, so what’s the big deal?”  

Yet just because a behavior is common or even appears to have little immediate effect on people does not necessarily mean that the behavior is healthy. After all, there was a period in history where cigarette smoking was both common and generally considered healthy because it did not appear to have any immediate negative effects on anyone. However, over time, medical research began to clearly show that smoking is, in fact, bad for your health, especially in the long run.  

Recently, the World Health Organization classified internet pornography use as a behavior that can lead to addictive and problematic patterns that cause distress. 

Modern social science research is beginning to tell a similar tale when it comes to the risks of regularly viewing pornography on healthy relationships and marriage. Despite not getting the same headlines and national attention as research on smoking or new findings on the harms of alcohol use, modern couples should understand and consider the risks that pornography use may have on their relationship health for years to come.  

Here are the top five reasons why social science research says pornography may be harmful to your marriage. 

1. Porn Can Lower Your Sexual Satisfaction With Your Spouse 

One of the greatest myths about pornography is that it is a great way to improve your sex life with your spouse. Contrary to this myth, research studies have consistently found a link between pornography use and lower sexual satisfaction. Rather than enhancing marital intimacy, research suggests that pornography may simply be an easy way to grow dissatisfied and frustrated with your real-life spouse when it comes to the bedroom. In a recent study of 3,700 U.S. adults, more frequent pornography use was linked to less sexual satisfaction. Another recent study found that men’s pornography use was linked to lower satisfaction in different areas, including satisfaction with sexual variety, time spent on intercourse, and the love and affection expressed in sexual relationships.

It also appears that this sexual dissatisfaction spreads to other parts of the relationship, too. One of the most consistent findings in the research has been a negative link between overall relationship satisfaction and pornography use. A pivotal meta-analysis of 50 different peer-reviewed studies and over 50,000 research participants found that more frequent use of porn was associated with lower relationship satisfaction, especially for men. Other studies have continued to replicate the association between pornography use and lower relationship satisfaction. For example, another recent study by Samuel Perry explored three nationally representative samples in the United States and found consistent evidence that higher viewing of pornography was associated with less self-reported relationship quality.  

There are many possible reasons why pornography use is consistently linked with lower satisfaction. Many experts have highlighted how the false fantasy of pornography fosters unrealistic expectations in relationships. Pornography is always young, always available, and always caters to the user’s personal preferences and desires. Because of this, some scholars have theorized that satisfaction with a spouse is reduced by consistently comparing your real spouse to the imagined potential partners depicted in porn. Over time, this constant comparison to an unrealistic standard lowers sexual satisfaction and eventually overall relationship satisfaction. It’s also possible that many people turn to pornography when they get frustrated or dissatisfied with the intimacy in their marriage. In this case, pornography becomes an unhealthy coping mechanism that allows spouses to escape their real-life intimacy problems, but, in time, this approach ignores real problems and leaves frustrations or dissatisfaction unresolved. Either way, pornography use serves as a problematic behavior that weakens the sexual relationship between spouses, which diminishes their overall satisfaction with each other over time.  

2. Porn Often Creates an Environment of Deception in Marriage 

While some relationships have open and honest conversations about pornography, many people hide their porn use from their spouse. This can occur because they are worried about their partner’s reaction or wish to hide sexual fantasies and fetishes that they do not think their partners would approve of. We should note that lying or withholding details about pornography use in marriage is common. A recent study noted that most couples fail to have open conversation about pornography in their relationship. Another study of couples found that over 40% of both male and female partners had not fully disclosed their full use of pornography to their partner. This may make pornography use among the most common behaviors that spouses lie to each other about.  

In a recent study we did at the Wheatley Institute, we found that matched partners were surprisingly inaccurate in their reports of their partner’s pornography use. While just under half of men reported accurate pornography use for their partner, the other half were inaccurate to some degree. And women were even less likely to accurately report their partner’s pornography use. Only about a third of women were accurate in their assessment of their partner’s pornography use, with nearly 40% underestimating his use. 

Pornography use is a major risk to healthy, stable, and satisfying marriages.

What’s the harm is keeping pornography use secret? That starts with understanding that happy and healthy marriages are often built upon a foundation of trust and honesty. When one or both partners fail to disclose pornography use to a spouse, this lack of transparency can carry significant risk to the relationship. First, when pornography use is finally disclosed—or often inadvertently discovered—not only is one spouse dealing with the discovery of pornography use itself, but also with the sense of betrayal that comes from one partner not being fully honest about relationship boundaries.  

Second, the nature of withholding something from our partner can create problems in a relationship, even if a spouse is unaware of the behavior. That same study that noted almost half of all romantic partners do not fully disclose their full use of pornography to their partners also found that hidden pornography use was associated with less sexual satisfaction for the partner not hiding anything. This suggests that the act of hiding pornography likely changes how couples interact with each other; to the point that even if one spouse is unaware that the pornography use is happening, he or she senses something is off in their relationship.  

Relationship quality is a result of partners developing a secure attachment with each other, where each partner trusts that the other will be physically, emotionally, and psychologically responsive to his or her needs. Behaviors that are interpreted as disrupting or eroding this trust could have a significant negative impact on couple communication, intimacy, and satisfaction.

3. Porn Erodes Your Level of Commitment to Your Marriage 

It may be tempting to look at the previous point about lying and think that the best way to avoid having pornography negatively impact your marriage is simply to be honest about it. While honesty helps you avoid some risks, it doesn’t erase the other negative effects of pornography use. Even with open pornography use, one of the strongest recent findings noted by social scientists has been the association between pornography use and commitment in a marriage. While the association between pornography use and satisfaction has been consistent, but relatively small, the negative link between pornography use and relationship stability has been both consistent and strong.  

This association has recently been demonstrated in the National Couples and Pornography Survey. In this study, a large national sample of over 3,500 people in committed relationships was examined to explore how pornography is associated with relationship quality. In the figure below, the findings from this study show how pornography use is related to a validated measure of relationship stability at three different levels, low (no or infrequent pornography use), average (monthly pornography use), and high (daily or weekly pornography use). As can be seen, higher pornography use is strongly related to lower reported relationship stability, decreasing by almost 15% across the three groups. 

This same survey found other strong evidence of pornography eroding marital commitment. Couples where both partners report that they do not use pornography report the highest levels of relationship stability, commitment, and relationship satisfaction; with 90% or above of these couples reporting that their relationship is stable, committed, and satisfying. A consistent reduction in relationship stability, commitment, and relationship satisfaction was noted as the relative frequency of pornography use increased within couples. In comparison to couples who avoid pornography, couples where men use porn regularly and women use porn occasionally were 18% less likely to report that their relationship is stable and 20% less likely to be strongly committed. Couples where both partners view pornography daily report a 45% decrease in stability and a 30% decrease in commitment levels compared to couples where both partners do not view pornography at all.   

Other research has suggested a similar pattern where pornography use diminishes commitment to one’s partner. For example, several studies have noted that pornography use is associated with more positive attitudes toward extramarital affairs and the likelihood of it happening. The figure below shows the results of one study that found that using pornography together was a stronger predictor of infidelity than physical aggression, psychological  aggression, and negative communication in the relationship. 

Collectively, this research suggests that pornography use is not only related to lower feelings of stability but may also likely push many partners toward having affairs. 

4. Porn Can Alter Your Mood in Negative Ways

It is becoming increasingly clear that pornography use can become compulsive and cause problems in a person’s life due to obsessive thoughts about viewing pornography. Addictive use of pornography is getting more attention from researchers and clinicians, and the compulsive use of pornography can lead to a variety of problems in a person’s life. Recently, the World Health Organization classified internet pornography use as a behavior that can lead to addictive and problematic patterns that cause distress. 

One of the key findings that has emerged from this literature has been the effect pornography use can have on mood and emotions. For example, several studies have linked pornography use—especially at high levels—with higher reports of depression. Recent research has connected these outcomes particularly to early and teenage pornography use.  Teenage pornography use has been linked in longitudinal studies to depression and other mental health problems, a finding that has also been found among young adults. The association between pornography and mood problems is likely bidirectional, meaning that it may be caused both by pornography increasing feelings of loneliness and depression, as well as those struggling with their mental health seeking out porn as a coping mechanism. Either way, the link between pornography and various psychological mood disorders suggests pornography use puts individuals at risk for mood-related problems in life. 

While this research is not connected directly to marriages, having one or both partners struggling with mental health or mood-related problems will strain and test any marriage relationship.  Strong marriages are based on two strong and healthy spouses, and pornography makes such a strong foundation less likely. Ideally, spouses turn to each other when they are struggling emotionally or with their mental health. Pornography use can become an unhealthy crutch that may actually make mental health struggles worse.

5. Porn Use Increases Your Risk of Divorce

Tied to other findings connecting pornography to lower satisfaction and less stability, the other recent social science finding that suggests pornography is indeed bad for your marriage comes from the divorce prediction literature. For decades, marriage researchers have sought to understand the factors that increase and decrease the likelihood of an eventual divorce. In the last decade, pornography has emerged as a consistent and strong predictor of a higher divorce likelihood among married couples.

The work of Samuel Perry has been influential in this area. In a 2017 study, he found that pornography use appeared to be associated longitudinally with an increased risk of divorce six years later. In fact, those who viewed pornography at time one in his study were almost twice as likely to divorce at the second timepoint of data collection. To follow-up with this work, a larger study of over 2,000 American adults examined this relationship in a more specific way. The following figure summarizes some of the key findings of this second study. Based on models run in this study, a 20-year-old with no pornography use had a 9% chance of divorce later in life. However, a 20-year-old who started viewing pornography had a whopping 51% chance of divorce, an increase of over 500%. 

This same effect can be seen in the nex figure, which examines divorce probability again, but now focused on those who reported that their marriage was “very happy” during the study.  A person who reported their marriage was very happy and who did not view pornography had only a 3% likelihood of divorce, according to the data. However, a person who reported their marriage as very happy but started to watch pornography, reported a 12% chance of divorce, an increase of 400%.  

When these findings are considered as a whole, it becomes clear that pornography use is a major risk to healthy, stable, and satisfying marriages. While many people consider porn to be harmless fun—a solitary and personal behavior that should have little to no impact on marriage—the research tells a different story. Regular pornography use puts serious risk into a marriage, making it harder to build healthy relationship processes and maintain a happy union. The healthiest and happiest marriages are among couples who avoid pornography.

Brian J. Willoughby, Ph.D. is a Professor in the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University and a Fellow of the Wheatley Institute. Dr. Willoughby is considered an international expert in the fields of couple and marital relationships, sexuality, and emerging adult development. 

Jason S. Carroll, Ph.D. is the Director of the Marriage and Family Initiative at the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Family Studies. Dr. Carroll is a past recipient of the Berscheid-Hatfield Award for Distinguished Scientific Achievement given by the International Association for Relationship Research.