On a quiet Wednesday evening, Sam and Jordan curl up on the couch and decide to watch something a little steamy together. They laugh, flirt, and cuddle, ending the day feeling more connected.
Meanwhile, across town, Alex watches pornography alone after a stressful day at work. It wasn’t about pleasure or self-exploration, but an escape from uncomfortable emotions. Later, Alex snaps at their partner over dinner, avoids meaningful conversation, and acts distant.
What made the difference? According to recent research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, why someone uses pornography is tied to how partners treat each other. Unlike past research, this study tracked people’s daily motivations and behaviors, offering new insight into how porn use affects real-life relationship dynamics in the moment.
Approach-avoidance sexual motivations theory
To investigate, researchers Mandy Vasquez and colleagues used a framework called the approach-avoidance sexual motivations theory. At its core, this theory poses a simple idea:
People engage in sexual activities with partners for different reasons. Often, it’s about enhancing pleasure or intimacy, which are approach motives. When that’s the case, couples tend to experience more positive relationship outcomes, such as closeness, satisfaction, and fewer arguments.
Other times, however, sex might be used to avoid something undesirable, like stress or conflict. These are avoidance motives, and they’re often linked to less satisfying relationships, more emotional distance, and more friction between partners.
Extending the theory to porn use
Vasquez and her team wanted to know if the same motivational patterns held true for pornography use. To find out, they recruited 327 couples. Over 35 days, they tracked their interactions and, if they watched pornography, recorded the reasons why.
Participant ages ranged from 18 to 69, with an average age of 31. Most were cisgender women (51%) or men (46%), white (92%), heterosexual (74%) and had completed at least some college or university. Most couples were living together and had been in a relationship for an average of six years. About half had children.
Why someone uses porn matters for relationship health
Just as with other sexual activities, the reasons behind porn use, whether to connect or to escape, make a difference. These motivations influenced behavior that same day but didn’t carry over to the next. On average, participants said they used porn about 4 days out of 35. Some didn’t use it at all, while others used it almost every day.
Positive behavior
On days when someone used porn to cope with stress or avoid negative emotions, both partners reported fewer positive behaviors toward each other. These positive behaviors included making time for one another, listening, doing something thoughtful, and being physically affectionate.
On the other hand, when someone used porn because their partner wanted to watch it together, they were more positive toward their partner. However, it didn’t affect how the partner behaved in return.
The results showed that when someone used porn for reasons like sexual pleasure, fantasy, boredom, feeling unsatisfied with their sex life, or self-exploration, it didn’t affect how positively they behaved toward their partner that day. However, on those same days, their partner tended to act less positively toward them.
In fact, on days when someone used porn, their partner often reported fewer positive behaviors toward them. This pattern held true across most motivations, except for sexual curiosity.
Negative behavior
When someone used porn for sexual pleasure, they reported fewer negative behaviors toward their partner. But this didn’t affect how their partner behaved.
Negative behaviors included getting angry, criticizing their partner or their ideas, yelling out of anger, or arguing during disagreements.
When someone used pornography out of curiosity, it didn’t change how they acted that day. But their partner showed fewer negative behaviors.
When someone used pornography to distract themselves from or to suppress emotions, they tended to act more negatively that day. But this didn’t affect how their partner behaved.
Gender differences
Three key gender differences stood out regarding how porn use motivations affected daily relationship dynamics:
- Sexual pleasure: On days cisgender men used porn for sexual pleasure, their partners acted less positively toward them. But for cisgender women, it didn’t affect how their partners behaved.
- Partner-driven use (own behavior): When either men or women used porn because their partner wanted to, both acted more positively toward their partner. However, this boost in positive behavior was stronger for men than for women.
- Partner-driven use (partner’s behavior): On days women used porn because their partner wanted to, their partners were more positive toward them. But when men used porn for the same reason, it didn’t affect their partner’s behavior.
Why over what
Your reasons for watching porn may shape your relationship more than you think. They can influence how you behave and how your partner responds.
The findings back up past research showing that when people are motivated by a desire to connect, their intimate lives tend to flourish. But when the motivation is to avoid something like stress or conflict, relationships often suffer.
Interestingly, even when motivations were positive, a person’s porn use was still generally linked to their partner acting less positively toward them that day. This suggests that partners may react simply to the act of porn use, regardless of why it happens.
There were also notable gender differences, including women acting less positively when their male partners used porn for sexual pleasure. The researchers think this may be due to women being more likely to view porn as objectifying or degrading to women.
Future research should explore what happens when porn use is hidden, whether it comes before or after sex, how desire or rejection factor in, and how these patterns show up in more diverse partnerships.
Because when it comes to porn it’s not just what you do, but why you do it.
