Steve and Cokie Roberts Report on Marriage: A Good Idea that Refuses to Die
Steve and Cokie Roberts have been married for 41 years. They have two children, six grandchildren, four books published, a joint syndicated newspaper column, and countless bylines and media appearances. Bethesda Magazine profiles them and four other couples in "Love stories", July/August 2007...
Steve, who's been the Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University since 1997, says that time and again his students come into his office and ask, "How do you do it?" The students aren't asking how to write a snappy lead or tips on getting an interview with Al Gore. "Popular culture tells them it's naive and foolish to think of having a lifelong devotion to someone. But they have the impulse. I'm not saying marriage is right for all people all the time, but I think it's right for most people, most of the time. To have a partner to go through life with is one of the most elemental human desires, and these kids want to hear it's not a pipe dream, a fiction."
See also:
A New Category Debuts: Love and Beauty
Our new category, Love and Beauty, will show how sex, love, relationships and people can be so much more than the narrow, blinkered version that porn offers. Watching porn instead of seeking a loving relationship with a real person is like being given a gorgeous race car that can go 200 miles per hour, only to drive it backwards down the highway at a crawl and scrape it against railings and bridge abutments.
Schwyzer on Porn: "The pursuit of everlasting novelty is the enemy of actual relationship"
Ultimately, the great tragedy of porn is that it teaches the men who use it to pursue “everlasting novelty...”
The pursuit of everlasting novelty is the enemy of actual relationship. Real relationships are built on a very different premise from porn — the notion that what is really sexy is not “new skin” but radical connection with one other person. Porn says that happiness is found by having the same experience over and over again with lots of different women; true eros says that happiness is found by having different experiences over and over again with the same person.
...no one, no one, no one, can just “compartmentalize, disconnect, and come back.” Many men think they do so with impunity, but it’s the consensus of both the theologians and the marriage and family therapists that no good life can be lived well in compartments. We are called to wholeness, Ethan; men — all men, even in their late teens in the throes of lust — are capable of matching their desires, their behavior, their hearts. Is it easy? Heck no. But is it possible? Yes. Is it desirable? You bet it is...
The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the Research
In North American culture, it is most common for people to select a marriage partner according to romantic love as opposed to family arrangement or economic necessity. Research by Roberts (1982), Davis and Todd (1982), Davis (1985), and Bergner (2000) is useful in clarifying what romantic love entails from a social science perspective. They found that romantic love embodies the following characteristics: (a) investment in the well-being of the beloved, (b) respect, (c) admiration, (d) sexual desire, (e) intimacy, (f) commitment, (g) exclusivity, and (h) understanding...
...when there are violations to these characteristics and the violations are sufficient in magnitude, partners will commonly conclude that they are no longer loved as they once were and re-evaluates their place in their partners’ world. As Bergner and Bridges (2002) point out, many women who discover a partner’s intense involvement with pornography engage in just such a reappraisal of their relationship...
Maurer found three common traits that distinguish sexually satisfied couples from unsatisfied couples: (1) acceptance of one’s own sexuality, (2) listening to one’s partner and being aware of a partner’s likes and dislikes, and (3) open and honest communication.
Moreover, according to data from the General Social Survey in 2000 (N = 531), people who report being happily married are 61 percent less likely to report using Internet pornography compared to those who also used the Internet and who had completed the General Social Survey in 2000...
...the following observations were made by [the 350 attendees of the November 2002 meeting of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers] polled with regard to why the Internet had played a role in divorces that year...56 percent of the divorce cases involved one party having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites...
Whitty (2003) also found that both men and women perceive online sexual activity as an act of betrayal that is as authentic and real as offline acts and that Internet pornography use correlated significantly with emotional infidelity (N = 1,117; 468 males and 649 females)...
A Review of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families
Many of Paul's interview subjects said porn use made them more judgmental of their real-life sex partners. One thrice-divorced 34-year-old subject, who had been watching porn since age 10, said that he would break up with any woman who wouldn't give him the kind of pleasure he saw men getting in porn films. If the woman takes too long to reach orgasm, or doesn't enjoy swallowing semen, she's history. (pp.92-93) Other young men said they wanted their girlfriends to be "slutty" and submissive (p.94).
In 2002, a professor at Texas Christian University conducted a survey of straight men who spent an average of five hours a week looking at online porn. The study found that the more porn they watched, the more likely they were to describe women in sexualized and stereotypical ways, and to want women to be subordinate to men...(p.92)
The women Paul interviewed, even those who considered themselves sexually experienced and adventurous, frequently reported problems with their partners' porn use. One woman in her 30s told Paul that she felt cheapened and alienated from her lovers when she noticed them using porn-film moves on her. She could tell when a man was a heavy porn user because he treated her as an object to be viewed, keeping her at an emotional distance. (pp.128-29) Other women said their partners constantly deceived them about how much porn they were watching. Women who made the concession to watch "couples" erotica with their partners felt betrayed and second-rate when they discovered the men were still secretly indulging in hardcore porn. They felt anxious that their men were not sufficiently fulfilled by a relationship with them. (pp.146-47) Just as when a wife discovers her husband's adultery, these women wondered if it was their fault that the men looked elsewhere for sexual satisfaction. (pp. 170-71) Meanwhile, acceptance of porn was a romantic deal-breaker for many of Paul's male subjects; they would rather sacrifice a relationship than kick the habit. (pp.134-35) This is a common symptom of addiction...
Porn also undermines respect for marriage vows. The Zillmann-Bryant study [link] found that only 39% of the massive porn exposure group thought marriage was an important institution, compared with 60% of the control group. "This shouldn't be a surprise: loving wives and faithful husbands rarely feature in a porno. Pornography is the fantasy of permanent and unfettered bachelorhood; married characters who do appear are pursuing sexual adventures on the side. In pornography, partnered life hampers sexual pleasure." (p.141)
Porn use takes away time and energy that a man could be spending on his real partner and family. In psychologist Jennifer P. Schneider's 2000 study of women whose partners were involved in cybersex, 37% of respondents reported that their partners spent less time with the children because of online porn use. (p.155) Other researchers found that watching porn made men less enthusiastic about starting a family at all.
"Spousal Use of Pornography and Its Clinical Significance for Asian-American Women"
Many female participants in the study by Bridges et al. (2003) noted a diminution in their partner's sexual desire for them and believed that their partners had come to prefer the pornographic models to them... They reported a decline in the intimacy of their relationship, a diminished sense of their partner's commitment to them, strong feelings that their partners failed utterly to respect them or understand their emotional distress concerning the pornography, and lastly, a sense that they were living a shameful lie by presenting themselves to others as a loving and committed couple... More often than not, the woman blames herself for losing her partner to his pornographic interest. She believes that if she were a ‘good’ enough woman, she would have been able to keep her husband's attentions and affections and her loss would never have occurred...
Porn Use Correlates with Infidelity, Prostitution, Aggression, Rape-Supportive Beliefs
In 2004, researchers also reported in Social Science Quarterly that "Individuals who have had an extramarital affair are 3.18 times more likely to have used Internet pornography than individuals who did not have affairs."
Now on Sale at Amazing.net (explicit language)
Wonderland
This DVD features a story-driven title that mixes drama with hardcore sex. Wonderland tells the story of a man obsessed with his stepdaughter's friend when she visits during Christmas break. Gary sacrifices everything in his traditional suburban existence for a single moment of ecstasy with a femme fatale.
Deviant Housewives
In this world nothing lasts forever and it looks like Kelly Erikson's husband Van needs some space. Kelly decides to invite all her friends going thru the same problems to stay and support each other. But all of Kelly's friends have an empty void in their lives they need filled and it's from a younger man!
Use Em' Abuse Em' and Lose Em' #9
Ride along as we pick up ordinary young women fuck'em senseless and dump'em! It's all good clean fun!
Housewives Unleashed #16
These fine ladies have been locked away in their houses for far too long. With their husbands away on business our housewives need crave and demand satisfaction. The action gets hot and horny the moment their desires are finally unleased..!
Darkside
David and Jennifer have a marriage on the rocks. In desperation they seek out a marriage counselor who proposes a revolutionary new method of therapy. David and Jennifer have free reign to cheat on each other for the next 24 hours. Their sexual inhibitions are set free and their fantasies fulfilled as they visit The Dark Side.
Comments