Transcript excerpt from a Pure Desire Ministries discussion (YouTube) exploring how pornography affects marriages and relationships. Speakers discuss research findings and practical observations: pornography can replace a spouse emotionally/physically by depriving the marriage of bonding chemicals and creates unrealistic sexual expectations that burden the non-viewing partner.
So it occurs to me, Les, we kind of are approaching marriages from two sides here, that at Pure Desire, we're often helping a marriage through the lens of someone's sexual brokenness and addiction. And you're often ending up dealing with their maybe sexual addiction or brokenness because you're helping the marriage. And so from your perspective as kind of a marriage expert and in dealing with relationships for all these years now, what is the impact that you have seen that pornography has on a marriage and a relationship?
Well, as you know, there's a mountain of research on this, and some years ago, I wrote a book called Crazy Good Sex. And it's about the myths that men believe about sexuality, especially in. In marriage. And there's a whole chapter I devoted to. To pornography. And of course, what the. The biggest thing that I see that that happens is just the removal of your presence, your healthy presence in the wife, in the life of your wife, because now you have a substitute for her that you're counting on for gratification. And she's missing out on that part of that kind of all the oxytocin, all the. All the good chemicals that you want that join you, that create a bond between you. You're giving those away for free. You don't enjoy those. That's a huge payoff in marriage if you. It extends your life, by the way. It helps you heal faster. It does all kinds of incredible things for you in your relationship. Well, when you have that struggle with pornography, and now that you're leaning on that rather than the relationship with your wife, you miss out on all that good stuff.
Yeah. And I think it creates a wrongful or an unrealistic expectation of what sex should look like for both spouses. And a lot of that pressure does get put on the betrayed partner who is not watching pornography. And is that not what their norm is for sexuality?
