Study suggests pornography use is common for partnered individuals — and unrelated to relationship satisfaction

Pornography use does not appear to harm couples’ satisfaction with their relationship, according to new research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships that collected 13,134 daily surveys from 434 Canadian individuals. The new findings shed light on how the use of explicit material is related to sexual functioning and relationship dynamics.

“Even if we now have some good cross-sectional and longitudinal studies on the subject, we still know very little about the effect of pornography use on romantic relationships. We decided to design this dyadic daily diary study to better understand the very short-term associations between pornography use and the functioning of romantic relationships,” said study author Marie-Pier Vaillancourt-Morel, an assistant professor at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières and director of the Sexual and Intimate Life Research Lab.

“This study is the first to use daily diaries to examine pornography use, so the findings are quite novel. We also wanted to include mixed-sex and same-sex couples as all past studies only included heterosexual couples.”

In the study, 77 same-sex couples and 140 mixed-sex couples individually completed daily measures of pornography use, relationship satisfaction, sexual desire, and sexual activity for 35 consecutive days.

“Our study shows a relatively high occurrence and frequency of pornography use: 97% of men coupled with a man, 76% of men coupled with a woman, 57% of women coupled with a woman and 40% of women coupled with a man reported pornography use at least once during the 35-day period. Also, participants used pornography on average 3.5 days out of the 35 days. These results are important as daily reports may be more accurate and suggest that retrospective reports underestimate actual pornography use,” Vaillancourt-Morel told PsyPost.

The researchers also found that pornography use was related to same-day sexual desire and activity, but unrelated to relationship satisfaction. “These results suggest that we should be cautious before concluding that pornography use is the trigger of couples’ difficulties in particular,” Vaillancourt-Morel said.

Among women, pornography use was associated with positive sexual outcomes, such as higher sexual desire and a higher probability of partnered sexual activity.

For men partnered with a woman, pornography use was not associated with their own sexual desire — but it was associated with their partner reporting reduced sexual desire and lower odds of partnered sexual activity. “It is plausible that on days when a man’s partner has lower levels of sexual desire, he uses pornography instead,” the researchers said.

For men partnered with another man, on the other hand, pornography use was associated with higher odds of partnered sexual activity.

“Our findings talk about associations on the same day and are not about problematic pornography use (e.g., excessive use). There are still many unanswered questions about the effect of pornography use and we think that future studies should examine how different relational contexts surrounding pornography use (e.g., secret around use, quality of communication about pornography use and sexuality) could help understand in which context pornography use may have negative effect on romantic relationships,” Vaillancourt-Morel explained.

“Pornography use has become a topic of considerable interest which had so far polarized public opinion, but it’s very to each couples to decide if pornography use is acceptable within their romantic relationships and talk about their use and how they would like it to take place with their romantic partners.”

The study, “Pornography use and romantic relationships: A dyadic daily diary study“, was authored by Marie-Pier Vaillancourt-Morel, Natalie O. Rosen, Brian J. Willoughby, Nathan D. Leonhardt, and Sophie Bergeron.