So I’m a married man and will offer my perspective here.

I have consumed lots of pornography in life and I am convinced that it is a scourge in society, has warped male and female expectations about sex, and negatively impacted an entire generation of people since porn became widely available about 25 years ago.

First, let’s be frank about what is happening in most porn shoots — extremely vulnerable people who come from backgrounds where they were in most instances abused by other people are doing things with thier bodies that will live on the internet forever for a pittance of money — all for the sexual gratification of the person watching porn and so that a select few people at the top can make money off the entire enterprise. It’s deranged and sickening when you think about it. The people who perform in porn almost universally come from broken homes, and have drug or other interpersonal issues. Would you seriously want your son or daughter doing porn? We all know the answer to the question. If we truly care about vulnerable members of society, then we should not be doing things which aid in their exploitation.

And before anyone even says it … the amount of truly “ethical” pornography is extremely small and even those situations usually involve some sort of manipulation or other unhealthy behaviors.

These are real people we are seeing in these videos and pictures — people who have hearts, minds, souls. Let’s stop pretending otherwise.

Beyond that, the sheer amount of pornography available in society now is scales beyond anything we have ever seen before in human history. The average kid in high school today has already watched more porn that the people who stormed d-day would watch in their entire lifetimes. Think about that. And it’s not just the amount of porn but the type of sex acts too. I am not necessarily defending Playboy, but there was also some element of beauty and art to what they used to portray. Most porn today is very far away from that.

Now the more personal — I grew up in the 90s when an aol Internet connection was a novel thing and I watched porn just about every day for almost 30 years. It absolutely led me to have a very warped view of female sexual desire, true love-making, expectations around sex, the normalcy of certain sexual acts, and many other issues. During my first marriage, when my then-wife and I hit a rough patch in our marriage, I started watching more and more porn and the boundaries between porn world and the real world became increasingly blurred. I started taking small steps to combine the two — going to a strip club, talking in sexually charged chat rooms. Eventually, I had a full blown affair with someone where I got her to act out every porn fantasy I had ever watched. After that glow wore off — and it did — and the affair ended — I was left with the wreckage of a failed marriage, an extremely hurt ex-wife, and horrible feelings of guilt and shame at what I had done.

And yet … even after that … I didn’t stop. I tried but couldn’t. Porn was just an ingrained part of my life. A prison I couldn’t escape.

Fast-forwarding, I eventually got married a second time. I said I would not make the same mistakes again. I said I could control my porn usage now. That I knew the pain of an affair. And yet … when marriage number two hit a rough skid a few years ago, what did I find myself doing again to soothe that pain? More and more porn. More intense porn. The lines were starting to become blurred again and I felt like I was at a major crossroads in my life.

Thankfully, I picked a much wiser path this time. I took a long hard look at my life and how porn had become this type of counterfeit god in my life. And how I sincerely needed to change. I joined a church. I made real friends there. I introduced accountability into the picture (if you use an IPhone, almost all porn will be blocked by the built-in blocking software if you just turn it on). I started working with an executive coach who also didn’t believe in most of the modern therapy BS that porn is harmless. He showed me what it meant to show up as a real man in my relationship. I also came clean with my wife. While I was terrified she would leave me, she had precisely the opposite reaction and showed me incredible love and grace. We also started to professionally address serious intimacy issues both of us had in our marriage. Our sex life is much better now and we don’t have this toxic substance floating around all the time.

Am I an extreme case? Maybe, maybe not. I’ve met a lot of men now who tell me some version of my story. It’s crazy and wild.

I am very convinced that there are many men struggling out there in the world around this issue.

I hope my story shows that there can be change and you are not locked in this forever.

I also hope that this shows that it is not a harmless hobby. Countless threads on this board revolve around affairs, bad relationships, sexless marriages, and the like. I believe if you start to look beneath the surface, porn is playing a major role in many of these dysfunctions, even if people deny or hide it (I did both for a LONG time and never got caught). It was only after I dealt with my porn problem, that my marriage dramatically improved overall.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever notice how it's only women who seem to get mad about porn?
Rarely ever do you hear about a man being jealous or bitter about it, when women use porn just as much as men, especially written porn.
Just an observation.

Woman who is mad about porn here. I’m fine with DH reading written porn. If that’s what you are using, and it’s couched as fantasy and not “real women,” then it’s fine.

Video porn is also fantasy. They are mostly real women, but playing characters or performing a skill for entertainment, like an atete.
Only a niche bit is trying to be passed off as someone's real home life, but a lot of that is husband and wife teams who actually enjoy it.

That’s fine. I’m still not cool with the video.
But if DH wants to read “Court of Thorns and Roses,” it’s fine with me.

I’m a woman who reads a lot of smut, and I don’t see any difference between a book and video. Perhaps you can argue that video can be consumed in massive amounts more quickly, and that it has the potential to be addictive. But if your husband isn’t addicted, there’s really no moral high ground with smut. It’s still fantasy about another person. If your line is “no real women”, then you should be fine with AI or animated porn.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Neither of us do. Notice how all the porn addicts think that’s unfathomable? They cannot imagine someone not watching porn.

I think it’s sleazy and gross. And absolutely not sexy in the least.

+100000
These women are usually drug addicts and trafficed as well.

Thankfully we now have platforms like Only Fans where women can make the choice themselves and receive 80% of the profit.

Anonymous wrote:Neither of us do. Notice how all the porn addicts think that’s unfathomable? They cannot imagine someone not watching porn.

I think it’s sleazy and gross. And absolutely not sexy in the least.

+100000
These women are usually drug addicts and trafficed as well.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever notice how it's only women who seem to get mad about porn?
Rarely ever do you hear about a man being jealous or bitter about it, when women use porn just as much as men, especially written porn.
Just an observation.

Women don't use porn as much as men.

lol

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever notice how it's only women who seem to get mad about porn?
Rarely ever do you hear about a man being jealous or bitter about it, when women use porn just as much as men, especially written porn.
Just an observation.

Women don't use porn as much as men.

Oh you are so very very mistaken.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever notice how it's only women who seem to get mad about porn?
Rarely ever do you hear about a man being jealous or bitter about it, when women use porn just as much as men, especially written porn.
Just an observation.

Woman who is mad about porn here. I’m fine with DH reading written porn. If that’s what you are using, and it’s couched as fantasy and not “real women,” then it’s fine.

Video porn is also fantasy. They are mostly real women, but playing characters or performing a skill for entertainment, like an atete.
Only a niche bit is trying to be passed off as someone's real home life, but a lot of that is husband and wife teams who actually enjoy it.

That’s fine. I’m still not cool with the video.
But if DH wants to read “Court of Thorns and Roses,” it’s fine with me.

Anonymous wrote:Yeah, he does. But only with the AP. I don’t really care what those two are up to as long as his paycheck hits the account.

So much wisdom to unpack.

Anonymous wrote:Neither of us do. Notice how all the porn addicts think that’s unfathomable? They cannot imagine someone not watching porn.

I think it’s sleazy and gross. And absolutely not sexy in the least.

Yes, totally not sexy and your husband totally doesn’t watch it. That’s why the industry only keeps growing. Because everyone hates it so much 😂😂😂😂

Neither of us do. Notice how all the porn addicts think that’s unfathomable? They cannot imagine someone not watching porn.

I think it’s sleazy and gross. And absolutely not sexy in the least.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ever notice how it's only women who seem to get mad about porn?
Rarely ever do you hear about a man being jealous or bitter about it, when women use porn just as much as men, especially written porn.
Just an observation.

Woman who is mad about porn here. I’m fine with DH reading written porn. If that’s what you are using, and it’s couched as fantasy and not “real women,” then it’s fine.

Video porn is also fantasy. They are mostly real women, but playing characters or performing a skill for entertainment, like an atete.
Only a niche bit is trying to be passed off as someone's real home life, but a lot of that is husband and wife teams who actually enjoy it.

Anonymous wrote:Ever notice how it's only women who seem to get mad about porn?
Rarely ever do you hear about a man being jealous or bitter about it, when women use porn just as much as men, especially written porn.
Just an observation.

Women don't use porn as much as men.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a husband who watches porn daily. I would stop in an instant if I had a wife who had the faintest desire for sex, but I don't. The porn is just a means to get off, I don't seek it out for any other reason or have withdrawal symptoms. I think a simple test for whether it is a problem is if you go on a vacation and can't get by without sneaking away to watch. That is a bad sign.

You could channel that energy into being the kind of man she wants to f***.

It's incredibly naive to think that good husbands are having lots of sex and bad husbands are the ones not having much. That's not how women or the world works.

+1.
It’s still probably better to channel your energy into becoming a better husband/father/brother/son than into watching a bunch of online porn.

Yes, nothing sets me up for good night's sleep and great week ahead like vacuuming the house or cooking weekly meal prep at 10pm at night.

I’ve never seen him watching but I assume he has. He’s not into porn star sex.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"I have an issue with it. I feel like it gives DH a skewed perception of how sexually adventurous most married women with kids are"

Your husband doesn't have a porn problem, he has a warped sense of human sexuality between regular people. Watching porn has nothing to do with actually being interested in going to a sex hotel takeover or going to a sex resort. An "In Real Life" action like visiting one of these places takes the "viewer" out of the fantasy/not at all real world into something completely different from "at a distance" porn.

Most men who would freak out at the thought of anyone else seeing their wife naked or having sex with her in front of them.

But don’t you think that watching porn can give you a warped sense of human sexuality between regular people? I get that this is DH’s particular thing. But if your wife won’t do something that you want her to do and then you go online and watch dozens of videos of women doing the thing your wife won’t do with *their* husbands, doesn’t that change how you feel about your wife? How could it not?

DP. I agree with you. It just has to affect their sense of what a normal or at least reasonable expectation of sex might be. Their sense of loss or deprivation is going to be inevitably greater if they know that some people are having fun doing whatever it is versus a world where they could kind of tell themselves that no one else was doing it either.

I guess the thing is that the “some people” who are having fun doing this are acting and making money by filming it and posting it online.

It’s just not true that the average upper middle class PTA mom is doing xyz, and it’s just your wife who won’t.

I am the upper middle class PTA mom and people would be shocked by what’ happens in our sex life.

I doubt that any man who spends an hour a week watching porn would find anything you do shocking.