A report in the Archives of Sexual Behavior says that porn influences real-life relationships. Men who watch porn frequently need it to stay aroused, according to the authors.
By Meredith Engel
Friday, December 12, 2014
New York Daily News
Porn may help men get in the mood — but it may have long-lasting consequences on their relationships.
Men who watch pornography several days a week or more depend on it more for arousal but enjoy sex less in real life, according to a new report in the Archives of Sexual Behavior.
Ana Bridges, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Arkansas, and her colleagues studied 487 male college students. They found that how often men watched porn correlated directly with how much they wanted to act out scenes they’d seen. The more they watched, the more they relied on pornographic fantasies in the bedroom as well.
“Pornography is sometimes dismissed, celebrated or problematized as fantasy,” Bridges wrote. “[B]ut pornography is also much more. What happens on the screen may implicate life off of it.”
Bridges also said in her study that most of porn focused on “acts of violence and degradation toward women,” neglecting tender touches, kissing, laughing and verbal compliments.
Patrick A. Trueman, president of Morality in Media, said that porn is “a public health crisis” that government and society need to address.
