Unfortunately, many people seem to think (even my own Christian brethren!) that committing adultery and pornography use are two completely different things. I vehemently disagree with this line of thinking. Nevertheless, I will point out some awfully striking similarities between porn use and real-life affairs:
Porn use and infidelity produces the same effects on relationships.
Porn use and real-life infidelity both destroy marriages. Porn use is just a slower way to do it. Many scientific studies find that porn use is linked to lower marital satisfaction and higher rates of divorce. (If you want to know where to find these studies, start with the Fight the New Drug website. They do their research and talk about this ad nauseum in their articles!)
It still produces a stinging sense of betrayal in the spouse that finds out. Both types of sexual activity make the other spouse feel rejected and inadequate. They both erode trust, intimacy, and healthy communication. Both types of sexual activity are antithetical to what marriage is all about: fidelity, family, love, commitment, and glorifying God.
Porn use and infidelity is usually done in secret without the other partner’s knowledge or consent.
Has anyone ever said to their partner, “Hey, if you’re looking for me, I’m gonna be in the bathroom jacking off to porn. Hope you don’t mind.”? No? You’ve never heard or said that before? That’s because most partners do mind!
(I do acknowledge that there are couples who do consent to watching porn together and enjoy it, and if that’s you, more power to you! However, what I’m talking about here is porn use in marriages where one person is doing it without the other partner’s knowledge or consent.)
When we get married, there is an expectation, spoken or unspoken, that we reserve our whole selves for each other and no one else. This unspoken agreement is present even in cohabiting relationships (i.e. relationships where the couple is not legally married to each other). There’s an expectation of complete fidelity not in just your outward actions, but in your thoughts and your mind. This is not an unreasonable expectation, especially if you’ve vowed in front of God, your spouse, family, and friends that you’ll remain that faithful to each other for the rest of your lives. When one partner is giving even a small part of their sexuality to porn use or another human being, regardless of whether the partner finds out, that’s a failure to meet those expectations, not to mention a serious betrayal.
Porn use and infidelity are both giving your sexuality to something (or someone) that is not your spouse.
Is any of this starting to sound like cheating yet? Call me old-fashioned, but your sexuality is only for the person you marry and no one else. Porn may not be a real person, but porn is usually filmed with human beings in it. You’re still looking at humans on a screen that are not your spouse. And with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), you don’t even need human beings to make porn anymore! AI has now been used to make porn. And AI is not your spouse, either.
Porn use and infidelity are both just fantasy.
Not saying escaping reality from time to time is bad. I’d be the first to say that we betrayed spouses, not to mention everyone else, need an escape once in a while! There’s nothing wrong with it when done right. But both porn use and infidelity are terrible ways to escape from the real world problems.
Porn is not real. It’s airbrushed. It’s augmented. It’s photoshopped. It’s acted. The photos and videos are doctored up to make the people in them look sexier, more beautiful, more enjoyable, more frisky. Porn is notorious for depicting degrading, grotesque sex acts that look nothing like real sex in a real bedroom with real people who love each other. These acts often depict sexual coercion, rape, incest, and violence. The actors in porn are paid (often very little) to act like they’re enjoying those sex acts. In reality, most people do not enjoy the kind of sex depicted in porn.
And we wives feel a pressure to compete with what our husbands are watching. We try to lose weight and change our appearance for our husbands. I’ve heard stories of women who have even tried sex acts they weren’t comfortable with because their husbands saw that in porn and wanted to try it. These wives felt like they couldn’t say no because their husbands would continue to watch porn if they didn’t agree to it.
And after all that we wonder why we’re still not good enough, sexual enough, or attractive enough for our husbands to give up their fantasies. We feel even more insecure with our bodies than we did before. We wonder why in the world our husbands would exchange a real, intimate, loving sexual relationship with us for a counterfeit like porn. And this makes us feel rejected, inadequate, and incredibly hurt, like we probably would if there was a real affair instead. This is what makes porn use especially hurtful to wives of porn users.
And infidelity is similar in several ways. It’s a way to escape from a mediocre marriage, an escape from the responsibility of working on the marriage to make it better. Both porn and infidelity are an escape from the problems within yourself that you’re too afraid to work on. When you’re in that “affair fog”, you begin to think that your affair partner loves you, understands you, and cares for you better than your spouse ever would. Adulterous relationships are built entirely on fantasy. And most of them don’t survive long, even after the adulterous partner leaves their spouse for the affair partner.
Porn can make you feel strikingly similar. Porn use is also fueled by fantasy. Porn puts you in a “fog” too. Porn makes you feel like you’re king of the world, and makes you feel like the only person Porn has time and energy for. Porn is the only one that understands. Porn is the only thing that cares.
Like the turkish delights that Edmund Pevensie loved so much in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, porn and infidelity “delights” may be tasty at first, but they will eventually lure you and trap you into a destructive place you never thought you had the ability to go. Even Edmund regretted the place that the first “harmless” turkish delight led him to.
Porn use is just as hurtful to the betrayed spouse as a real affair.
Hopefully these points are enough to demonstrate how porn use is just an additional 21st-century way to cheat, and only a slower way to do the exact same damage to marriage that real infidelity does. They both cause the same problems. They both cause the same pain. They both cause the same betrayal. And they’re both built on fake fantasy. Admittedly, I take Pam’s words from The Office out of its context and put them into this context, to make this very point:
Physical affairs and porn use really are the same picture.