Why porn can be GOOD for your relationship

Talking about the porn you or your partner watch, and even watching it together, can make a relationship healthier, a sex psychologist says.

Dr Ari Tuckman says that open conversations about why you or your partner use porn, rather than shaming or blaming each each other, can help to build intimacy in a relationship.

With porn more readily available than ever – at home on our computers and TVs, and on our cell phones and other mobile devices – there has been a surge in controversy over whether or not it is addictive and poisonous to relationships.

Instead, he suggests that conflicts over porn use often have deeper underlying root causes, and productive conversations about porn can help to improve your love life.

Nearly 30,000 people are watching porn every second, according to data compiled by Online MBA and republished by Gizmodo last year. More and more statistics have emerged showing that women are watching porn, too.

Some statistics have also link porn with divorce, finding that watching explicit material may as much as double the likelihood of divorce.

But Dr Tuckman, a psychologist in West Chester, Pennsylvania and sex columnist for Psychology Today, says it doesn’t have to be that way.

He suggests that couples set the stage for a ‘productive’ conversation about porn.

The first reason this is worth doing, he says, is that ‘porn-viewing is quite common. So this is not an unlikely scenario to come up.’

Discussing porn, like any other relationship issue, is ‘a matter of being honest about how you feel as well as trying to be empathic about how your partners feels, so both people are able to understand themselves, but also each other,’ Dr Tuckman says.

These conversations might not be easy, often because ‘a conversation that seems like it’s just about porn has these other insufficiently discussed topics mixed in,’ he says.

Many couples resist talking about their feelings on masturbation, fantasies that don’t involve their partners, and fantasies they just want to watch, and not act out.

‘Each of those is kind of a big question all by itself. I think that when couples get hung up on something unresolved about porn, it may because the other foundational discussions haven’t been had sufficiently,’ Dr Tuckman says.

Talking about porn may actually help couples to be more honest and accepting of one another, and get to the bottom of some of those other issues, he suggests.

‘In an intimate relationship, we won’t necessarily agree with or even like everything we see in our partner,’ Dr Tuckman says. ‘But intimacy doesn’t mean “only tell me the parts I’m happy about.”’

Porn, he says, can become ‘the path of least resistance,’ when couples aren’t getting along. 

‘It’s easier for one person – or maybe both – to watch porn and masturbate, rather than address issues, and easier for the other person to close their eyes and pretend it’s not happening, until a sudden discovery forces a conversation that both were trying not to have.’

But couples can head that off by asking each other what they like, and even watching porn together.

‘I think it can help people to understand each other better, by saying “let me show you what turns me on,”’ he says. ‘If you want to turn your partner on, it helps to know what turns them on.’

Though porn might inspire you and your partner to try some new things, Dr Tuckman says it’s important to remember that that doesn’t have to be the goal.

He suggests couples treat porn like any other media. ‘My wife and I watch Game of Thrones, but I’m not buying a sword and trying to invade Canada. We should hold [porn] to the same standard as TV,’ he says.

Sharing porn needs to be more than just sharing a link, though. ‘The thing is, when you watch porn, like any media, what you see in that media is partially based on the media and partially based on you and what you tend to see,’ Dr Tuckman says. ‘Two people can watch the same clip and get completely different things.’

Instead, he says that couples should talk about what parts turn them on, and what parts they’re tuning out. ‘Talk about it before you even pull out a screen,’ he advises, ‘and ask how you feel about watching this, and why, and what it brings up for you.’

‘Really, it becomes a disclosure and intimacy-building exercise, if you’re interested and can do it,’ he says.

Couples should also choose how they want to watch porn together. ‘Do we want to be naked in the middle of sex? Or do you want to be clothed at the dining room table? Maybe that’s how to start out so it feels less vulnerable,’ he suggests. 

If watching porn together does start to feel too vulnerable or uncomfortable, both partners have the right to ‘pull the rip cord’ if they need a break.

Dr Tuckman suspects that porn gets scapegoated for a lot of other problems, and says that data about porn and marital problems is often ‘cherry picked,’ and demonstrates only correlations, not cause.

‘It’s not like couples didn’t argue about their sex lives before porn existed,’ he says. In fact, he points out that there is a substantial data linking the decline of marital bliss to the arrival of children. ‘So should we get rid of babies?’

No, he says, and we shouldn’t necessarily get rid of porn. ‘Porn isn’t the problem,’ he says (which, incidentally, is the title of his next Psychology Today article).

‘Porn is the content of the disagreement, but it’s really about the process by which people are addressing it,’ Dr Tuckman says.

If one partner, for example, is caught watching porn, promises to never do it again, and then ‘goes back on their word, that’s not a porn problem, that’s a negotiation problem,’ he says. ‘That’s the same problem as if we agree to save money and I’m eating lunch out just as much as I was before.’

Not all couples experience the same kinds of problems in relation to porn though, he says.

‘This is a straight people problem,’ Dr Tuckman says (quoting, perhaps, Dan Savage). He says that gay men are more likely to talk about the porn they like early on in their relationships, while for heterosexual couples, it’s more of a ‘struggle and source of strife.’

He suspects that this comes from the differences in the ways men and women are socialized. For men, porn is ‘not really acceptable, but is…there’s a bit of an nudge-nudge, wink-wink when it comes to sexual fantasies,’ Dr Tuckman says.

Women, on the other hand ‘have been socialized that they’re supposed to be the ones to keep the relationship faithful, and be interested only in sex within committed relationships,’ he says.

He also says that ‘women are slut-shamed much more than guys are, which makes it harder for them to say that they’re curious about what’s online, or that that stuff does turn [them] on.’ These differences contribute to the tensions that can build between men and women in relationships.

‘Couple that are ultimately going to do much better are the ones that won’t try to pathologize particular sexual interests, but will be honest, be more intimate and reach an agreement more mutually satisfying than ultimatums, like “never masturbate again,”’ Dr Tuckman says.