Dear Anne –What my struggle is, is that there is no connection in our marriage, and there hasn’t been for years. Our marriage lacks intimacy. I don’t feel close to my husband and this is not okay with me. My husband watches pornography, and then says, he doesn’t really need sex. I long for connection with my husband. How can I get it?

What do professionals say about pornography?

Recommendations among professionals regarding pornography use and its effects on a marriage vary. Some experts claim that pornography use can, in fact, benefit a relationship, because it can lead to more open discussion between partners about what they like, as well as serving as a stimulus. 

However, more recent research has shown that pornography use, especially where one partner masturbates to pornography, can hurt a couples’ intimacy, connection and sex life.

One of the most respected experts in the world when it comes to relationships and marriage is John Gottman. More than thirty years of research done by Gottman at his famous “Love Lab” in Seattle provides us all with principles that make marriage work. Gottman takes a scientific, rather than a moral approach. In the past, the Gottman institute stand was that soft pornography when mutually consensual could perhaps enhance the marriage. However, their extended years of research is now showing that this is not the case. Pornography is detrimental to a couples’ sex life, and thus to their marriage. 

Marital Therapy & Sexual Therapy Go Hand in Hand

Many therapists have come to acknowledge that you can’t do marital therapy without also doing sexual therapy. Likewise, you can’t do sexual therapy without also doing marital therapy. Whatever is (or isn’t) going on in a couples’ sex life, is likely to be reflected in their relationship and vice versa. Therefore, if you desire to increase the connection with your husband, aiming to strengthen your sex life as a couple is a good goal, as the two tend to go hand in hand.

Please keep in mind that sex is not limited to intercourse, but includes cuddling, touching and being naked together. Many couples stop being sexual around the age of sixty, and much could be said about this. For the purpose of this article, let it suffice to state that this need not be the case. David Schnarch in his book Passionate Marriage states that the couples who experience the best sex are in their sixties, seventies and eighties, something then for most of us to look forward to, unless one us is using pornography.

Supernormal Stimulus

One of the big problems with pornography is it tends to become a supernormal stimulus. Nikko Tinbergen, a Nobel Prize winning ethologist, described a supernormal stimulus as a stimulus that evokes a much larger response than one that has evolutionary significance. One effect of a supernormal stimulus is that interest wanes in normal stimuli. Tinbergen studied male stickleback fish who would naturally attack a rival male that entered their territory during mating season. He created an oval object with a very red belly, more intensely red than the natural fish. The fish fiercely attacked the mock up and subsequently lost interest in attacking its real male rival. Now the supernormal stimulus evoked a reaction, but not the normal stimulus.

Pornography tends to have the same effect. Everything about pornography is a lie, the perfect bodies, the uninterrupted spaces, the partners always willingness, and perfect everlasting erections. In porn fantasies, sex can take on many forms without any negative consequences. Real sex, real life and real people aren’t like that. Pornography doesn’t show rejection, being stressed out and tired, a fight with your spouse, being at the doctors getting tested for an STD, unwanted pregnancy, or legal ramifications because you had sex with someone you shouldn’t. Everything is okay in pornography. That’s not real. In addition, when someone masturbates to pornography, they are in total control. Real sex involves an adventure between two individuals where control of the experience is shared.

After exposure to pornography, a persons’ response to normal healthy stimulus is impaired, like the stickleback fish, you end up seeking the counterfeit. The problem is, while the counterfeit may provide you with a sexual release, it leaves you feeling empty. Human beings were made for intimacy and connection. Pornography use steals this from both partners – the one using the pornography as well as the one who isn’t using the pornography. The illusion that pornography isn’t hurting anyone is a lie. It’s hurting you and your partner. Pornography use by one partner leads a couple to have far less sex, and therefore less connection, and ultimately, it’s the connection that satisfies us, both for male and female.

Pornography is Sabotaging Intimacy

In some instance’s mainstream media is starting to pick up on the truth that pornography is sabotaging intimacy in relationships, like this article from Time Magazine “Porn and the threat to virility.”

Furthermore, pornography use tends to be a steppingstone towards infidelity. 

Porn can also lead to addiction, alter the brain, and a lot of porn includes violence towards women which is the antithesis of intimate connection.

Hope for Recovery from the Negative Effects of Pornography

If you, or the one you love, have a past of extensive porn use, don’t despair. It does not mean there is no hope for you. If you commit to intimacy exclusively with your partner and engage in activities that build intimacy, your brain can heal itself, just as our amazing bodies can heal themselves from other poisons, if we stop exposing ourselves.

Not everyone who has watched pornography is an addict. An addiction is a behavior that you are unable to stop, that is, without help. Someone who struggles with an addiction will have a tendency to simply trade one addiction for another. But with good professional help, accountability and being part of support group, you can learn to live free from the chains of addiction.

Recommended Resources & References:

The work of Patrick Carnes

Sexhelp.com

The Seven Desires of Every Heart by Mark Laaser (An amazing resource for sexual addiction recovery)

Shattered Vows by Debra Laaser (Healing from the betrayed wife’s perspective.)

Supernormal Stimuli by Deirdre Barrett

An Open Letter on Porn by John Gottman