This post is the second in a series on dealing with how pornography affects marriages and relationships. Today’s post is an interview with Leanne Grant, Ph.D., who has worked with women who are affected by online pornography in their marriages.

Jason Fierstein: I am interested in learning about a woman’s perspective on the role of pornography in one’s relationship. Could you help me understand more about this?

Leanne Grant, Ph.D: Men don’t understand, from a woman’s perspective, to imagine their significant other getting off to pictures of the opposite sex and how threatening that feels to a woman. I imagine that any guy who comes home to find their wife or girlfriend to watching nude photos of men would feel threatened. For women, the message of “I’m not good enough” and “my guy is looking elsewhere to be stimulated” instead of with them is what comes up for women. Porn is physiologically stimulating, and is new and novel, so is attracted to the newness or the novelty. 

For women, it triggers a cycle about insecurities about their bodies. No woman can compete with an airbrushed image online. Visually, a woman couldn’t be that perfect, but women become obsessed about trying to become that image. Look at industries such as weight loss, plastic surgery, liposuction, Botox, exercise, cosmetics, and the list goes on and on.

Women get obsessed with trying to compete with the images that their men are watching online. Women think that “I’m not good enough,” and remember the point in their relationship that their man was really into them in the beginning.

Women see their guy looking at porn, and imagine to themselves that “he must be falling in love,” and “what if he is falling in love with somebody else.” The initial spark (during the honeymoon phase) can’t last over time. 

JF: So how does a couple break the cycle?

LG: Women need to talk about their own experience, and men need to talk about their own experiences together. Women are making it more severe in their own minds. 

The work becomes to create that spark again in your own relationship again. Women need to understand that that spark between them and their partner needs to be reignited over and over in a relationship. It doesn’t happen as spontaneously over the course of time as it did when you first start dating someone. It’s learning together how to bring that sense of excitement and novelty into your life.

JF: What happens if that doesn’t happen, though? It’s fairly common to see these things not happen, and for a relationship to get much worse?

LG: If it’s not happening, then you need to take the next step and get some outside help, because there might be something else getting in the way, such as feelings of hurt or resentment that impede your communication and intimacy. In the communication, it is important that you talk about how you feel – both you and your partner.

For example, as a woman, you need to admit that you feel scared to your partner when confronted with this. Men need to be able to communicate about why they are doing it, and what they might be needing. They may not need their wife or girlfriend to look like Scarlett Johannsen, but that they need their wife or girlfriend to talk to them.

Each other needs to be able to to express the feelings that each other has. Once you are able to talk about your feelings about it, it takes the tension out of the relationship, and can bring some playfulness and passion back into our sex life.

JF: So, there might be some positive aspects to talking about pornography in one’s relationship?

LG: Yes. Maybe we can look at pornography as the door to improve or enhance our relationships.

I’ve had a number of calls recently from girls (and a couple guys) who are struggling in their relationships or marriages because online pornography comes between them. Usually, she will find the porn sites that he has gone to, and then be in a state of shock and discomfort, and not know how to initiate a conversation with her guy about this.

Maybe the Internet has made porn so much more readily available for guys, instead of walking into your local 7-11 with fake mustache and trenchcoat to ask for what’s behind the corner. It’s much easier and readily accessible to you, and is a convenient place to go when there are relationship problems.

Pornography may be both taking away something from your relationship, or it may be caused by rifts in it already. It seems as if porn could be a chicken-egg dilemma – which comes first – the problems in your relationship, or the porn? Maybe both.

I think that pornography becomes addictive for men, because as men, we are visually wired by evolution. Using porn creates a certain distance from sex or intimacy, by objectifying the online images that are seen. It takes away from sexual intimacy, and creates distance between the viewer and the images. It has an effect of emotional distance, when you have to get off by images that are parts or representations of people, and not the real people.

The use of porn implies having relationships with exaggerated parts of women, not the women themselves or the relationships with them. Real sex is different, and more complicated. If there are sexual fears or inhibitions, they will necessarily come out within your sexual relationship. Porn doesn’t elicit those fears or inhibitions, and thus it is easier to engage in.

For guys, the use of porn can be a stress reliever, and a way to deal with the build up stress (or other emotions, such as anger) that accumulate and have no other avenue of expression for your guy. In other words, maybe the experiences that he is having have no other outlet other than porn. Guys have been masturbating to porn since the beginning of porn time, and trying to not get caught in their bedrooms by their mothers when they are adolescents. There may be some hidden messages of shame that guys recreate when they use porn, if sex was dirty, shameful or not discussed when they were growing up. 

Problems in your relationship may trigger your guy to use porn. He may already be emotionally avoidant, or may have a hard time in your relationship communicating (especially about sex and sexual intimacy). The sexual motivations of your guy to use porn may or may not speak to the problems that you both are having in your relationship. The problem may lie in something unrelated to sex, but then again, it might not. It’s hard to say without couples counseling for this kind of thing. See my website for some more information on my services to help you deal with this problem: http://phoenixmenscounseling.com/index.html.

The use of porn will surely distance you from him in more than one way. He becomes distant from you through his use of porn, and then when you find out he’s doing it, it becomes really difficult to have the conversation with him.

He won’t bring it up, because he’s probably too scared that you’ll catch him using it. And, it’s an easy thing to want to minimize on his part – “I don’t have a problem. I just use it once in a while.” Classic addictive behavior can ensue: lying, falsifying, denying, making up stories to cover it up or to go use it. Watch out for these signs because it may be affecting your relationship.

The goal is to weave in the fantasies and the sexual communication into your relationship, not leave it to the Internet and to one person alone to be fulfilled. The idea is to deepen and develop your relationship through sex, and communication is the door to get there. Otherwise, sex becomes the most powerful wedge in your relationship. It will quickly drive you both away from each other, if it not dealt with out in the open. It needs to be talked about once his use of porn is identified and admitted. 

- Jason