A recent study from the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships analyzed pornography use in the context of coupled relationality. Specifically, the study considered the motivations behind pornography use and assessed how different motivations affected “daily dynamics” between partners. The results linked pornography as a solo project (for things like stress reduction or as a means of “escape”) to conflict and negativity within the relationship, while subjects who engaged with pornography as a couple activity and/or for sexual pleasure tended to experience greater harmony in their relationships. Pornography is an infamous and vilified aspect of sexual culture, but the results of this study gesture toward the importance of understanding why sexual subjects engage with porn in the first place. Consuming porn, it turns out, need not be in conflict with a happy and healthy relationship for a party of two. Eric W. Dolan – writing for PsyPost – provides a useful summary of the shape of the study and its results.
Porn: fruitful or poisonous for couples?
