Survey: Faithfulness is the No. 1 Key to Making a Marriage Work (explicit language)
On July 1, the Pew Research Center released a detailed survey about American attitudes towards marriage and childraising. What particularly caught our eye was what the public believes is key to making a marriage work--faithfulness tops the charts, with over 90% saying it's "very important to a successful marriage".
You won't get that message from most of today's commercial porn, where polyamory and infidelity rule. Consider, for example, these titles sold by Capital Video (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.
Many spouses report that their partners' consumption of porn feels like cheating to them, a subject explored by these articles:
The Impact of Internet Pornography on Marriage and the Family: A Review of the Research
...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)...
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."
A Review of Pornified: How Pornography Is Damaging Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families
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)
"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...
Salon: Porn Isolates its Users, Erodes Civility and Love
...whether you approve of porn in theory or not, its effect will be to displace [the mate of the porn addict]. Like crack, it tends to take over, to push out other hungers that tend to nurture the human community by making us dependent on one another. Since we are dependent on each other we must be civil and loving. If we are not dependent on each other then we needn't be civil and loving. We needn't have community and family. That is the way in which any drug breaks down family and community by isolating its user. Porn isolates its users also, meeting their needs outside the social compact. The social compact becomes a commercial compact between anonymous people, while those in the actual human community are relegated to bystander status. It introduces a third party into the erotic economy of a relationship...
Testimony in Minneapolis: Porn and the Death Spiral of a Marriage
...we would have incredible arguments with each other. I would tell him I loved him, I only wanted to love him, I wanted to be a good wife, I wanted our marriage to work, but I didn't want to be with these other people. It was he I wanted to be with, and no one else. He told me if I loved him I would do this. And that, as I could see from the things that he read me in the magazines initially, a lot of times women didn't like it, but if I tried it enough I would probably like it, and I would learn to like it. And he would read me stories where women learned to like it.
Young New Yorkers Talk about Porn's Effect on their Relationships (explicit language)
They have since broken up, and have stopped talking. “He was a lot more innocent when he was younger,” she says. “He was looking for love and companionship. Now he just wants a good lay. I’m sure he’s looking for some huge-breasted, tight-assed bitch...” These days, she feels “very jaded about love and sex,” but every so often, she finds her cynicism dissolving... “I think it will be really rare, and hopefully it will happen, that I can meet a guy who will be happy with only me.”
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...
See also:
"Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor."
I went back to the strip bars to make money. I cannot tell you the lie and the fantasy that it is for men. Waitressing, I cleaned the floors and I own a box of men's wedding rings that I found on the floor...
Carolyn McKenzie: Disease, Intoxicants Prevalent Among Strip Dancers (explicit language)
I've had wives call me and say, "I'm reading the credit card bill, and there's all these strange expenses on it, places I've never heard of." Well, those places are the cover organizations for the clubs, or the massage parlors, or lingerie services that their husbands have been frequenting. The next question I get is, "Well do you think I need to get a physical check-up?" And I say, "Yes, you do." I can't tell you how many of them call me back and say they have turned up positive for an STD...
What They're Saying about Capital Video's Kittery Store on Squirt.org (explicit language)
Capital Video's Amazing.net porn shop in Kittery, Maine has been a hot topic of conversion on squirt.org, "your neighborhood cruising guide". Squirt's profile of the site gives directions and "hours" of 10am - 1am. Who goes there? "Married guys looking for head and those who provide it." Here are some (graphic) comments about the site from squirt members...
BondMe56, 3/11/05
Going there either today, tonight, or tomorrow. Wife is away, so no time constraints!!! Would love to hook-up with...couple, if possible...
Donbro, 12/4/05
...sucked off a lunch time married guy w/a nice cock who pumped his load off in my mouth for me..wish it wasn't so...away!
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