Monday, January 7, 2013

Strychnine for Your Marriage

      What's that bad for your marriage?  Speaking from many years of clinical experience, one thing that is very bad for marriages is when one partner is into pornography. It is usually the husband. When I hear about the husband regularly staying up into the wee hours of the night, coming to bed after his wife, and a drop in their sexual frequency question marks start dancing around in my brain.  Maybe he has discovered a late night movie channel on TV but then again maybe not.
      Pornography and the associated practices drain off the libido from a marriage - like a short circuit in an electrical wire. Rather then a couple turning to one another for sexual release, the partner who is into porn is likely to turn to the computer.  What starts out as a short term release of tension - pornography viewing- can easily morph into addictive behavior.
         In his movie Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex Woody Allen has an orgasm machine that, as I recall, was like a little phone booth.  Instant orgasm.  I suppose you could call Internet porn like an instant orgasm machine - none of the interpersonal effort that goes into pleasing a real person and of course, no love. Sex - releases oxcytocin and dopamine -which contribute to bonding behavior and are a critical part of the glue between two people in a marriage.   Porn drains off the libido in a marriage, in my experience, decreases sexual frequency and the interpersonal bonding between a couple.  Sounds weird, but I can almost always tell when a couple in my office has had sex that week - they are more relaxed and less reactive to one another.
      Porn is a slippery slope and a heart breaker. It is almost always discovered sooner or later. I have worked with numerous situations where the kids have inadvertently stumbled across Dad's porn.
      I would like to exclude the disclaimer, that I am not a prude and have been around the block of life a few times myself.  I have raised a son through adolescence which taught me a thing or two about easy access to porn on the Internet.  Don't get me started...
      When it comes to one person pornography...it will not help your marriage and likely make it worse.