Can Pornography help to improve my Sex Life?
For some people it can add an extra piece of excitement that they feel they need to joosh up their sex lives. For others it can create feelings of insecurity, degradation and shame.
Let’s look at the various scenarios:
Scenario 1
You’re in a relationship and have spoken openly to your partner about the role that porn will play in your relationship. Perhaps porn ‘rocks the boat’ of Partner A, but not of Partner B. Therefore, the agreement might be that Partner A will watch it when they want to, but Partner B wants no involvement in it, but feels quite happy that their partner derives pleasure from watching it.
Scenario 2
Both partners have decided that watching porn together is a turn on, gives them new ideas and is a lot of fun! It can ramp up sexual desire between a couple, help them to learn new sexual ideas and open up a world of new possibilities.
Scenario 3
Single person watches porn more than they want to. They use porn as a substitute for real, intimate connection with others. They notice ‘needing’ porn to cope when they feel sad, lonely, humiliated, misunderstood...it helps them to feel whole again, yet the feelings of shame and guilt keeps them in a place of isolation and loneliness, and unable to form healthy emotional bonds with others.
Not a healthy position for you – you may feel that seeking professional help might help you.
Scenario 4
A person with little sexual experience watches porn and learns about the ‘basics’ of sex, some new sex positions, their anatomy, what goes where, what comes out of where etc. Maybe it helps them to feel more confident about what they find sexually arousing and what they find a turn off.
Scenario 5
Someone watches porn but due to religious, cultural reasons they carry huge guilt and believe that they are ‘dirty’ for watching it and feel unable to share this part of themselves in a relationship. These feelings of a lack of self-worth are likely to spill into other areas of the relationship, so may need to be addressed.
These are just some of the many ways that porn can impact a relationship. You can decide which scenario you relate to. Maybe your experience is different from the above examples.
Whatever your relationship to porn is, it’s probably safe to say:
Ø There is less stigma around men watching porn than women
Ø Women are often performing sexual acts in porn for the gratification of men
Ø There is still a huge debate about whether the term ‘porn addiction’ actually exists
Ø Porn shows unrealistic images of human bodies – from men with huge penises to women with upright, fake breasts.
Ø More people are accessing porn, than we may think – the impact of this is questionable! In 2019 Pornhub’s analytics reported over 42,000,000,000 users of their site.