But what is your partner doing? The link between relationship quality and pornography use depends on the contextual usage patterns within the couple

Front.Psychol., July 30, 2021| https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.661347

Commentary

It is commonly believed that exposure to pornography is harmful to relationships because pornography changes the way individuals think, feel, and behave in problematic ways.

In this study, the relational context of pornography use was carefully scrutinized. In contrast to dominant theoretical explanations, we argue that at least some of the apparent negative "effects" of pornography use on relationship quality may reflect partner dissimilarity in pornography use behavior, rather than a consequence of exposure to such material.

In addition, we further investigate the use of specific types of pornography and suggest that previous evidence may be positively related to relationship quality.

To this end, we examined a sample of N 1 = 200; N 3 = 207, two longitudinal (N 2 = 77; N 4 = 277) heterosexual couples, and across these samples, partners who watch pornography together report higher relationship and sexual satisfaction than partners who do not. We found consistent evidence of this.

Notably, this association is not moderated by gender.

Apart from this association, evidence of a similarity-dissimilarity effect was also found, where one partner's sole use of pornography was negatively associated with their own relationship and sexual satisfaction, but only if the romantic partner did not use pornography alone at all.