Does Porn Lead to DistRUST – Part 2

This is the second part to the blog on pornography that you will find on my website. I recommend that if you haven’t already done so that you read Part 1 first.

In the last blog I talked about how intimacy, trust and honesty, and fidelity were three key elements to accomplishing and enjoying a healthy marriage. In this blog I will introduce some thoughts on how pornography can compromise those very things. Let’s start with intimacy.

INTIMACY

Intimacy is at the heart of a strong relationship. For the sake of this article I want to focus on physical and emotional intimacy. You really need both for a healthy marriage. Without it your relationship will slowly wither and die. In a marriage relationship this kind of intimacy should be reserved for just one person and that would be your spouse.

You cannot create a physical intimacy without the emotional intimacy, nor can you have complete emotional intimacy without the physical aspect as well. Ideally, sex in a loving relationship should be the physical representation of intimacy. It should come from a place of love and connection. Intimacy builds sex and sex builds intimacy.

You know the old saying, “Two’s company and three’s a crowd?” Couldn’t you say that watching pornography is like opening your bedroom door and inviting other people to walk right in. Maybe the question needs to be asked as to how watching strangers having sex makes you more emotionally intimate with your spouse in a healthy way.

Pornography skews what people expect in the bedroom. Trying to imitate what you see in pornography is setting yourself up for disappointment and disillusionment. How so you ask? Because you and your spouse or worse yet, you expecting your spouse to recreate or be something that it took a whole crew of people working to make what is fake and fantasy to look real. There is no way anyone living real life can compete with the made up, fake and unrealistic images that you see on the screen. There’s only two credits rolling at the end of your show!

Pornography has been shown to weaken commitment in marriages because it creates an utterly false impression of what a normal body looks like and what sexual behavior is really about. Instead of it being a mutually satisfying expression of each partner’s love for the other, it becomes a tool to use for self-gratification and often involves dominating or mistreating the other person.

And let me emphasize what you are seeing has NOTHING to do with intimacy. It is a sex ACT and nothing else and usually between people who don’t even know or like each other. Isn’t that a warm and fuzzy thought? In a marriage relationship having sex with the one with whom you
have learned how to really be intimate with is the only way you will find a true sense of fulfillment.

While physical intimacy is important in the relationship, the couple’s ability to build emotional intimacy is what’s key to a strong, long-lasting relationship. It is what makes a relationship most meaningful. The porn industry and our sex-obsessed culture would have you believe that sex is the primary binding agent in a relationship, however, it is emotional intimacy that makes a person feel valued, cherished, loved, cared for, listened to and appreciated. When that kind of intimacy is kindled and then nurtured between two people, satisfaction with their sexual union is far greater and there will be no need to go outside of that relationship for other types of sexual stimulation or entertainment.

TRUST AND HONESTY

An ideal relationship is built on trust, openness, mutual respect and personal freedom. With that personal freedom you make a choice of not just who you are with but how you will treat the other person. Choosing to be honest with your partner every day is what keeps love real. And choosing that partner every day by your own free will is what makes love last.

While there are some marriages where participating in pornography is freely done and the other spouse knows about it, for the most part, you will find that the one looking at porn is keeping it under wraps. This behavior usually necessitates the need for sneakiness and deception. And when the other spouse finally finds out about it they are usually shocked, hurt, disgusted, angry and feel very betrayed. It attacks their self-worth making them ask, “Am I not good enough?” and also makes them anxious and fearful about what else their partner might be hiding.

Being intimate with someone takes being vulnerable. If your partner is secretly inviting others through porn into the realm of what should be reserved for the two of you, it breaks that trust and brings feelings of violation. Broken trust takes time and a lot of work to heal.

FIDELITY

Porn use is associated with a wide range of negative sexual behaviors and attitudes that significantly harm intimate relationships. Research compiled by Mary Anne Layden, PhD, director of the Sexual Trauma and Psychopathology Program for Cognitive Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania showed that adults who use porn are more likely than those who don’t to: rate sex partners as less attractive, be less satisfied with their partner’s sexual performance, desire sex without emotional involvement, try to get their partners to act out sex acts seen in porn, go to prostitutes, and yes even among married porn users have extramarital affairs.

Other studies have also linked porn use to unhappy marriages and divorce. In 2014 one study of 20,000 adults who had ever been married found that those who had watched X-rated films were more likely to report being unhappy in their marriages, more likely to have had extramarital affairs, and more likely to be divorced.

Fidelity is the promise to be faithful to your partner demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support both sexually and emotionally. Viewing porn can create a wedge in an intimate relationship because it involves bonding with images and sexual acts instead of a real person. Even if you do not cheat physically are you not cheating emotionally if you only remain faithful with your body but not also with your heart and mind?

RUST

So now about those rusty safety pins I talked about in part one of this blog. We all know a safety pin is used to hold something together. We usually feel confident that what we use it for will be secure and not come apart until we remove it. In a healthy relationship, intimacy, trust and honesty, and fidelity is the safety pin of the relationship.

A metal safety pin has its own elements that make it work — a sturdy material, a spring mechanism and a clasp. Take one of those away and it is not going to work. In the case of the rusty pins, something was allowed to compromise the metal and because it was not cleaned up and protected the rust kept eating away at the pin until it could no longer be used for what its original purpose was intended for.

Rust is a menace. Not only does it weaken iron and steel, it can cause damage as it forms because the rust takes up significantly more room than the original metal. As rust expands it can distort and put stress on parts of a structure. It may sometimes look attractive but it inevitably marks a decline in the effectiveness of a piece of iron. That is the legacy of rust. It is always associated with deterioration taking its toll in the form of decay.

Pornography has the capability and has been shown to compromise the “safety pin” of the relationship also leading to corrosion (rust). And especially in cases where only one partner is involved and the other is completely against it the danger of it affecting the marriage is even greater.

Now a metal safety pin that holds your clothes together is inexpensive and can be easily replaced. Not so with the “safety pin” that holds your marriage together. That safety pin is priceless and should be protected at all cost. And the best way to deal with rust is to prevent it from happening in the first place. However, if “rust” has occurred, it might take some work but it will be easier and less expensive (emotionally) to fix it if you tackle it at the beginning by removing it and then putting on a protective layer so that the rust cannot spread.

I believe that introducing porn into any relationship is risky and potentially dangerous business. For the sake of not making this blog overly long I did not even attempt to go into the data which shows how porn can be addicting, or what it does to the brain and how that can have a negative impact on your relationship. But if pornography has become a challenge in your relationship I encourage you to do something about it now before it invades any further. I invite you to call my office at (616) 516-1570 to make an appointment or click on the blue “Contact” tab on the bottom of the screen and you can schedule an appointment that way also. I look forward to your call.