I am in college and proposed a research topic of : How prevalent is the use of pornography in America and what are the effects on the user, family and society?

I plan on getting a lot of info from the American Family Association. If anyone has links to research papers on pornography please share the links (if the moderators allow).

I am hoping that this will not only be interesting but also perhaps reach someone in my class.

I don't have any links...but there was a posting on here by someone (Pepperband?) about how porn makes men bad lovers.

It is an excellent read, and after reading it I have always wondered if the younger generation is full of bad lovers, having now grown up with easy access to porn and a general societal view that it is fine to use as an outlet. Is there a generational movement toward terrible sex. Is this forum going to see ever increasing numbers of people who have complaints about the SF need not being met, because the affects of porn viewing will create sexual practices that are not conducive to a loving caring sexual partnership.

Anyway, hard thing to do research on I suppose

Perhaps if you email Dr. Harley directly, he could provide you with some links to research articles regarding the affects of pornography. He has a very strong stance on it, so it is likely that he has also done some research on this topic (to pair with his long term experience).

Check out TED Talks. There are a few porn-related talks there, which will lead you to scientific studies....

Jedi Knight, Interesting topic for research. As one who has lived with the ramifications of porn use, I can tell you it is toxic for SF in a relationship for both partners. I've done some looking into the issue. Are you aware of Ran Gavrieli's talk "why I stopped watching porn." I think I learned about it on this forum. His take on it is very interesting. Also from Tedtalks. com there are a few talks on the subject. Also on Tedtalks there is a very powerful talk by Jackson Katz "violence against women; it's a man's issue." I wish every man could see this one. While it is not specifically about porn, it relates to it in an important way. I believe there was a study I heard about which was done using men on a submarine whose porn use was the subject. The contrast effect became a problem when they returned home. You might be able to find the study somewhere. Related to the whole issue of the contrast effect, on my thread I wondered how the average male deals with all of the prevalent sexualized images we are all bombarded with on a daily basis. Partially clad images of beautiful young women everywhere! It seems to me a male cannnot get away from the contrast effect even if they wanted to! This can't be good for male/female relationships. The fantasy expectations are becoming more unrealistic and unobtainable for real women. I would be interested in knowing how men feel about it, and how it effects their relationships...

**EDIT**

Dr Harley's stance on this is very clear, porn is not in any way 'helpful' to a marital relationship. Porn has no place in a marriage, controlled or uncontrolled. None.

Like drinking saltwater to control thirst!!!!

I've never seen Dr Harley direct 'shame and disgust' at anybody.

However watching porn is a bit of a natural sand trap. People who watch it rarely feel as good about it as they do about true sexual experience. When it is pointed out that it is ineffective and indeed will kill their partner's sex drive for good (few women can feel aroused with a porn user) this is seen as 'shame and disgust' -

Not at all. It's the logic of the situation. Women are not wired for competition, and if they are, it's a polygamy situation where they will be replaced by younger wives and so they are not expected to maintain a sex drive.

However Dr H's method even restores the sex drive of women who have NEVER felt arousal. Ever!

The 'shame and disgust' comments I do believe often come from people who are not actually happy with their own choices - but don't see an alternative.

Here's your reference: Harley Q&A on pornography .

You wrote, " I highly doubt the Doctor would ask us to blindly following his principles like a mandated doctrine without flexibility." Well, there is no need to be "blind" when following Dr Harley's recommendations. You can educate yourself about why he makes the recommendations and how they fit with the goal of the Marriage Builders programme, which is to create marriages of extraordianry care and protection, in which each spouse is romantically in love with the other. The MB marriage is one in which time and care is given, and in which there is radical honesty. There is no role in an MB marriage for the hiding of activities that would upset the other spouse, nor of committing acts that are destructive to romantic love - such as masturbating to images of highly-attractive naked women.

If you don't want to follow Dr H's principles, that's fine - but you will be challenged if you post your own, contra-MB solutions here. Posters here are striving to achieve the kind of marriage that Dr H describes - the kind of marriage that he and his wife Joyce have had for over 50 years. That kind of marriage includes the mutual meeting of needs, including the need for sexual fulfilment, and it does not include masturbation, and the hiding of that activity.

MrHappy,

I understand fully the issue in your writings. Half of my original thread on these forums is seeking advice on how to get my H to fill MY #1 need which is SF. That's right, not all men and women are created equal, there are men who do not have a high need for SF, and likewise there are women like myself who do. I can COMPLETELY relate to the biological and mental affect of not having that 'release.' I have also used porn in the past to get this release. And I have been a student of Dr Harley's for enough time to have seen just how destructive this has been to my marriage and many, many others. I have never, not once, seen porn that is constructive or is used in a constructive way.

Dr Harley is one of the few marriage therapists who acknowledges the needs of men (and women) without shame. He acknowledges the SF need and has created a program that supports a marital relationship where this need is met enthusiastically by both partners. Likewise he acknowledges other needs, such as the need for PA, that general society frowns upon. There is no avoidance of those very important needs on this forum. But you will likewise not get agreement with ways to fill those needs that are destructive towards marriages.

Porn can always be avoided. You do not 'work' to stay away from something that is destructive to your marriage, you just do it.

That's exactly what he asks. He says it over and over again you that you shouldn't bother if you are going to miss anything -even one thing out. Especially sexual exclusivity! How on earth can you be in love without that? You may manage a need or conflict but you will never get up there to actual love.

He is a former engineer and the plan is designed as recipe. Miss one ingredient and the whole thing fails.

This is why it works.


Porn is conflict management not love creation. It is short term not long term solution.


It's impossible for your wife to meet your need unless she is in love, getting 15 hours of your undivided attention on dates and she is free from any sexual competition.

This is something I would NOT want my H to do, I do not even like him getting Playboy magazines or anything. He has a wife if he wants to see a woman naked then he needs to come to me not to some book or website.

This forum is about learning and applying MB principles, and is not a platform for personal opinions. If you can not abide by the TOS, then please refrain from posting.

Here are Dr.Harley's articles on pornography.

Addiction to Pornography #1
Addiction to Pornography #2

Jedi,

There is a website called "Your Brain On Porn" that goes over the effects of porn use and has links to several studies on the matter.

You can also search "Psychology Today" for posts about pornography.

Also, you should have professional journal database access as a student that will allow you to see the most recent published research on the matter.

Should I narrow it to a more specific question or is the original research question good?

The Kinsey institute has some nice research on sex, incluiding pornography.

This link might be interesting

http://www.kinseyinstitute.org/resources/FAQ.html#internet

You may have to cobble your thesis together from separate data sets, so more concise searches might be your go-to.

So, one site I mentioned goes over effects, you might search the journals for "porn and statistics and use" to get use statistics - note I used a Boolean string, which should narrow results.

Most programs expect articles within the past 5 years or so. Your database access should have filters to help with that. You would probably also want to stick to journals to do with psychology, psychiatry, marriage, family, and healthcare.

A good show on how to overcome porn addiction.

Radio Clip on How to Overcome Porn Addiction

Jedi,

Very cool that you are doing this. I think porn is a huge problem with broad ripple effects on society that are largely being ignored because to criticize porn is to be seen as criticizing sex itself, which is a huge misnomer. Porn is an illusion, and the closest proximity it has to reality is in hook-up culture, which itself has very little in common with monogamous sexual relationships.

So much of the discussion on sex these days seems to be focused on sex outside of a committed relationship or sex as a sort of personal hobby rather than part of intimacy. MB is so awesome because it is really the only sexual advice I've seen for married couples that is not contradictory to monogamy or outright dangerous. Modern commentary on pornography is similarly misguided so I think objective research on it is very cool. I wish my wife and I would have found MB years ago, it probably would have saved us a lot of grief with a problem neither of us understood or could find constructive advice on.


Thank you so much for sharing this, unwritten. I haven't said much on here about this topic because there's been so little dialogue between my WW and I in my situation, but pornography was a huge problem for both of us. I'm going to share my story in hopes that others can relate to it as I have to yours.

My wife and I both had on/off pornography addictions before we were married or even met each other. Started very young, as both of us had unfettered internet access as young teens, back in the 90s when parents I don't think understood this risk very well. I don't think either of us were even looking for porn per se when we found it at first, we were just young and curious about sex and arrived there with the help of search engines.

In my wife's case, I don't feel like I know the whole story. I now tend to suspect that she had past sexual abuse when she was young because her sexual history is so random (I would get trickle truth revelations on additional men she had "been with" before we met in some fashion even years into our marriage...now I even wonder if they were actually affairs that she wasn't being totally honest about), I'm not sure. But I know we both came into our relationship with very high sex drives and struggled mightily with purity while we were dating. She had a lot of sexual partners before me, I didn't have any before her, and so that sort of added a weird dimension to the relationship where she was very pushy at times to get to places with me she had been with other guys, but would other times be very withdrawn and disappointed that I had not held her back more (which she expected me to since I was a Christian, unlike her prior boyfriends) or when I was pushy myself. We did have intercourse a handful of times before we got married, and while we both had a great time, it was something we both felt guilty about and regretted immediately.

I also know the porn use continued on both sides during our dating/engagement and up to the time of the marriage. I did it to get the release you mention, and I know she would do it when she was lonely, maybe for the same reason. She would call or text me upset about it, sort of as a confession. In my case, I just thought "this is bad, but I'll be married soon and I can quit then". I actually had completely quit porn for 3 or 4 years between middle school and college after committing to do so at a youth retreat, and so doing it again didn't seem daunting.

Of course, the disaster was when we got married the sex didn't happen. From the wedding night itself she had pain when we tried to have sex, and so there went her sex drive. She went to doctors, read books, tried diets/supplements, etc. Nothing helped. I read up on massages, foreplay, erogenous zones, etc. Nothing helped. We were trying to tackle the issue from the standpoint of arousal rather than attraction, and I think most of the advice we got was bad. The books she read encouraged her to masturbate in order to "find herself" sexually, something which she had done in the past and now felt guilty about so she wouldn't, and the literature I read was not at all aimed at overcoming a sexual aversion. It was more aimed to encouraging a partner who perhaps wasn't in the mood yet, which didn't speak to my problem. Occasionally (and very randomly) she would be aroused and come onto me very strong like when we were dating, but it was always short lived, maybe for a few days at most. I would try and never could figure out what conditions led to her being that way, and she could never remember much about when we had sex (ever) and seemed to treat all of it like a mystery she couldn't solve and didn't want to talk about.

And this whole time I kept using porn for the release aspect of it. I simply didn't expect my wife to want to take care of my needs and I felt guilty bugging her about it so I would wait for a week or two until it was driving me crazy and then give in just to get rid of the "itch" so to speak, and then the clock would reset itself. Short sighted fixes to a long term problem.

My wife was aware of it and we talked openly about it. She felt guilty about her sexual aversion and didn't understand it, and so she acted like she "understood" my use of porn. She never complained to me about the fact that I viewed porn but knowing all of what she has hid from me now, I wouldn't be surprised if it was something that really bothered her and she was simply scared or unwilling to tell me. She may have used porn herself during this time, it's impossible to know because we never had technical accountability of any sort and I doubt she would have ever told me.

In any case I mention all of this just to illustrate a real life example of how destructive I think porn is to sexual chemistry. I know with my wife sex itself was a topic she always had a tremendous amount of guilt/reluctance discussing or thinking about (even after we were married), and I think a lot of that is because of her history with porn. I know for me it helped me to basically put off solving a huge issue in my own marriage for long enough that it was never resolved and my wife ended up having an affair. And for all I know it may have deeply hurt her during the marriage and perhaps made her feel justified in being unfaithful.

I have resolved to quit it forever going forward which is tough with the needs I have, but it just got to the point where there was nothing I enjoyed about it other than getting the monkey off my back. It wasn't anything like or even close to as enjoyable as sex with my wife and the only reason I used it was because I had mostly given up hope on my wife ever being interested in sex or working with me to solve our sexual problems. I didn't want porn, I desperately wanted to have SF with my wife and for her to enjoy it as well. I've never been one to just keep it around and gawk at it when they're bored like some of my male friends do, it was just a quick fix.

It's not reality, it's not even close, and I worry that young men out there won't "get" that. Everything about it is staged and exaggerated, and if your understanding of sex is based on porn you're not going to be an effective partner sexually because your expectations are going to be so far off. I also think (and I believe Dr. Harley has said this as well) that it alters/damages the natural sexual chemistry in people. And probably the biggest reason I am quitting is reading what other women have written on here about how hurtful it is to them. Whether my wife miraculously decides to reconcile or whether I get remarried, I never want to hurt someone in that way.

Well I submitted the research proposal. Ill post updates in here as it progresses in the class. Thanks

Guarding Against Pornography

Pornography has been a contentious matter for decades. In the 1980�s, groups against pornography often picketed adult magazine stores and boycotted advertisers with racy ads on television. In the 1990�s, pornography became available on the internet and soon flourished into a multibillion dollar business by the end of the decade. As the internet expanded, so did smartphone technology and now adults and children have access to pornography in their fingertips. Despite its popularity, pornography causes psychological harm to viewers and appropriate actions should be taken to restrict child access to pornography.

Pornography enjoys widespread acceptance among emerging adults between the ages of 18 to 26. In one study of University students, ��9 out of 10 emerging adult men reported using pornography to some degree, with nearly half viewing pornography on a weekly or more frequent basis.� (Carroll, Padilla-Walker and Nelson) The researchers also found correlations between acceptance of pornography and increased sexual behavior. Notably, a majority of women were accepting of pornography but only 1 in 10 reported viewing it recently. It is indisputable that pornography is more popular than smoking, exercise and healthy diet among emerging adults.

Alarmingly, many experts now believe that most children first view pornography around the age of 11 (PR, Newswire.). Access is very easy with the use of a smartphone or family computer. Since pornography is accepted by the culture, many parents may be hesitant to place restrictions on their children�s access to it, much less their own. Some may argue that sexual expression through pornography is healthy or perhaps even enriching to the child. Although actual child pornography is widely opposed, the ability of children to access pornography seems to be enjoy support of parents and childhood peers.
Unfortunately, there is little clinical research on the relationship of pornography to lifestyle and psychological health. President Reagan created a special commission in 1988 to examine the relationships of pornographic use to crime and found that there is a correlation but there have not been ongoing studies coinciding with the rise of the internet. I was unable to locate any long-term studies of subjects. However, what little research is available is in agreement that pornography has a negative impact on the lives of users.

Dr. Bill Harley, a clinical psychologist and author of more than 18 books on marriage, describes pornography as a scourge on marriages. In a recent article posted on his website, Harley explains that wives often find their husband�s use of pornography highly offensive (Harley). Their husbands often have a decreased sex drive as a side effect of viewing pornography and the wife often feels neglected in bed. This seems to contrast with some who argue that pornography can enhance a marriage and sexual relations between partners. Harley states that men viewing pornography experience a �contrast effect� between viewing pornographic actors and their wife: First, the contrast between masturbating to a pornographic image is less work and equally rewarding to intercourse. Secondly, the models of these films are compared to the bodies of their spouse and wives feel they cannot compete with younger, more physically fit models. It is often so offensive to wives that �Many divorce their husbands who won�t end it.� Sadly, many of these men first viewed pornography at young ages and continued use has affected their ability to maintain mutually caring relationships with the opposite sex.

What causes such a problem with viewing �mainstream� pornography? Why do men find it equally or more fulfilling than sexual relations with their spouses? Many would agree with Gary Wilson, author of Your Brain on Porn that ��two-dimensional images of women were a poor substitute for actual three-dimensional women.� (Wilson) However, recent research into the neural pathways of the brain pleasure zones show that pornography can be addictive, more pleasurable than sex and cause erectile dysfunction.

Researcher Valerie Voon examined brain scans of test subjects and found that viewers of pornography experience a �high� similar to cocaine users. The pleasure centers of the brain reward system, which manufacture the chemical dopamine, respond quicker to pornographic images than real sex (Voon et al.). Test subjects reported that they ��had lost jobs due to use at work, damaged intimate relationships or negatively influenced other social activities, experienced diminished libido or erectile function specifically in physical relationships with women, used escorts excessively, experienced suicidal ideation and using large amounts of money.� Clearly, pornography has not benefited the lives of these subjects. Like drugs, the benefits of short term pleasure (a release of dopamine in the brain) far outweighs the cost in psychological health.

Since the outlook is dim for those who view pornography, parents should take a proactive role in restricting children�s access to it. The North Carolina Attorney General office suggests that parent�s should have passwords to all electronic devices and check them frequently. Spyware, which can be installed at very low cost, is also encouraged. Home computers should be in a central area of the house where activity can be monitored. Many parents may be met with opposition when implementing these suggestions, especially if the children are teenagers. However, parents should face the facts established here that their child has or will have access to pornography by the age of 11 and that continued viewing of pornography will damage their child�s future.

The right to privacy is often cited by both children and adults. In his article, Harley writes that men viewing pornography often get upset if their wife demands to know what was viewed in an attempt to hold them accountable. They often consider this a privacy issue and refuse to be honest which often leads to divorce. Although privacy rights are more debatable in a marital contract, there is not so much debate concerning children�s right to privacy. Parents can and should regularly invade their child�s privacy for any influence which would cause damage to that child�s future.

Although pornography dates from the earliest images found on cave walls to the girly magazines of the 1950�s, it has evolved into a high speed rapid delivery system of dopamine through the internet and is affecting the lives of young adults. Appropriate actions should be implemented to protect children from the dangers of pornography.

Works Cited

Carroll, S. J, L M Padilla-Walker and L J Nelson. "Generation XXX: Pornography acceptance and use among emerging adults." Journal of Adolescent Research (2008): 6-30. web. 4 Aug 2015
Harley, Willard. "The Scourge of Pornography." 2015. Marriage Builders. web. 2 Aug 2015.
PR, Newswire. "2014 Survey: Guess the age when boys first view porn or have sex and where they learn about sex?." PR Newswire US 28 Aug. 2014: Points of View Reference Center. Web. 5 Aug. 2015.
Voon V, Mole TB, Banca P, Porter L, Morris L, et al. Neural Correlates of Sexual Cue Reactivity in Individuals with and without Compulsive Sexual Behaviours. 11 July 2014. web. 28 July 2015.
Wilson, Gary. Your Brain on Porn. 2015. web. 1 Aug 2015.

93% on the above essay!

Just wanted to chime in and say good job Jedi! Awesome that you wrote this and were awarded such a high score on such an unpopular position. A CORRECT position in my opinion, but unfortunately not a popular one in modern US culture.

The professor told me she was hesitant to allow it but afterwards was glad she did.
I also spoke about it last year in speech class...and that professor liked it because she just found porn on her sons smartphone and appreciated the info.
in speech class i started the speech by asking anyone who regularly viewed pornography to raise their hands...none.
Then I asked for anyone who approves of pronography to raise their hands...none.
I then said t statistics show that 73% of men and 50% of women approve of pornography and a third regularly view it. The sources I listed in the paper are very informative.

How interesting!

I've been out of a classroom environment for almost a decade now so that's very interesting to me. While I can't imagine anyone raising their hand then either, I think attitudes about porn have changed a lot in the last decade, at least with people my age.

I notice a lot more joking about it, etc. But apparently people still have some shame in the face to face aspect of it.

I know at church when I'm leading any men's groups and I raise the topic, it's just crickets. Which is sad. In my experience, most men who are tech savvy either struggle with pornography or have struggled with it in the past. I think of it like a silent epidemic, the elephant in the room for Christian men.