by Guest Author
It’s been a long time since anyone was able to buy cigarettes without also seeing an alarming message about cancer, emphysema, or some other horrible health effects from smoking. Maybe it’s time pornography came with warning labels too. That idea may provoke a snicker or two initially. But think about what research has shown: pornography consumption damages marriages and other relationships, and it ironically hurts porn users by stunting their sex drive. The more one learns about how much harm pornography causes, the more the idea of slapping a warning label on the material starts to make sense.
The link between pornography and broken relationships is clear. Couples therapist Laurie J. Watson has written in Psychology Today about how pornography addiction breaks the trust between men and women.
“I know men who are ruining their lives, marriages, and finances paying for prostitution and voyeurism; looking at porn at work and getting caught and fired; spending money needed for bills on porn; and needing ever-riskier behavior to match the initial high, and being unable to stop,” says Watson. 1
Social science research backs Watson’s claim. Addiction expert Dr. Jennifer P. Schneider published in 2000 a survey of 91 women and three men who experienced serious adverse consequences from their partner’s involvement in cybersex, including the viewing of pornography and conducting sexually explicit online chats. Among 68% of the couples, at least one of the partners showed decreased interest in having physical sex with their partner. Survey respondents also often reported “feeling hurt, betrayed, rejected, abandoned, lonely, isolated, humiliated, jealous, and angry” by their partners’ addiction to pornography or other cybersex. And survey respondents said they felt unable to compare favourably to the people depicted in pornography. 2
Ultimately, the consumption of pornography is often linked to divorce, with all the ugly ramifications for family and finances. The American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers surveyed its members in 2002 and found 56% of them reported that “obsessive interest in pornographic sites” was a significant factor in their divorce cases in the previous year. 3
Yet as much as pornography damages relationships – indeed ends them in many cases – it also directly hurts its users. Here too the evidence is clear. Pastor and frequent television commentator Stephen Arterburn notes that a man who is addicted to pornography often ends up with sexual and erectile dysfunctions.
“He can’t instantly substitute the illicitly erotic and naughty images for a wife he has disappointed–a partner who feels disconnected, who fills him with anxiety, has her own needs and desires, and can judge his manhood,” he writes. 4
It’s not just the pastors who recognize this phenomenon. Psychiatrists do too. Dr. Norman Doidge has treated men in his practice for addiction to pornography, noting that many of his patients reported “increasing difficulty in being turned on by their actual sexual partners, spouses, or girlfriends, though they still considered them objectively attractive.” 5 Doidge also notes it is not coincidental that pornographic magazines and websites are filled with ads for impotence drugs, such as Viagra. He suggests the ads make sense because of the poisonous effect pornography has on its viewers’ minds.
“When pornographers boast that they are pushing the envelope by introducing new, harder themes, what they don’t say is that they must, because their customers are building up a tolerance to the content,” Doidge says. 6
The evidence is in. Pornography damages relationships and it has harmful psychological and physiological effects on its users. It is helping to keep divorce lawyers and therapists busy. So, why is it not recognized as something that is as poisonous as a cigarette? Far from being a harmless activity, or merely “adult entertainment”, it is dangerous material that deserves a health warning as much as any pack of smokes does.
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1. Watson, L. J. (2010, June 27). The Real Danger Porn Poses to Relationships | Psychology Today. Retrieved November 17, 2015, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/married-and-still-doing-it/201006/the-real-danger-porn-poses-relationships
2. Effects of cybersex addiction on the family: Results of a survey. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.jenniferschneider.com/articles/cybersex_family.html
3. Is the Internet Bad for Your Marriage? Online Affairs, Pornographic Sites Playing Greater Role in Divorces. – Free Online Library. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Is+the+Internet+Bad+for+Your+Marriage%3F+Online+Affairs,+Pornographic…-a094221879
4. Arterburn, S. (2013, October 14). Sexually Incompetent Men: The Neutering Effect of Pornography | Stephen Arterburn. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-arterburn/sexually-incompetent-men-_b_4086075.html
5. Doidge, N. (2007). The brain that changes itself: Stories of personal triumph from the frontiers of brain science. New York, NY: Viking.
p. 104
6. IBID p. 105