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!