The porn industry is raking the money in using every trick in the book to grab another buck.

They want you to believe that it’s all perfectly normal, everyone’s doing it … except you, because your sex life is boring.

What they won’t tell you is how their fake product can damage your marriage.

Here are three ways pornography can seriously damage your marriage.

Desensitisation

There are only so many times you can watch a businessman check into a hotel and find the chambermaid making the bed without any underwear on before it becomes old and boring.

So you sign up to a more adult site, hey it’s only the price of dinner out with the wife or a new playstation game for the kids and you work for the money so you deserve it.

You’re not into anything kinky so you slide on over to the teen virgin section … hey we all know they are much older and school uniforms don’t mean you want to have it away with kids.

A month later that’s old and tired, hey check out the threesome section .. it’s perfectly normal, lot’s of people do that.

The wife swapping section looks good .. maybe your friends Gill and Ben would be up for that?

There’s sections for sadism and bestiality which you’ll never look at … although we know it’s only acting so you just have a quick look for a laugh.

This is the process of desensitisation, in the same way that we watch more and more graphic horror movies, because we become less sensitive to what we are watching.

Desensitisation leads to crossing moral boundaries you would never have dreamed of crossing before you happened across that first pornography website.

How can your wife compete with this? You now think these acts are perfectly normal and acceptable, not only that but you need such images to get excited .. however, your wife still lives in the real world.

Self Serving

Most people will masterbate when they watch pornography, which isn’t really a big deal.

However, masterbation, when you have a sexual partner waiting upstairs for you, is purely a self serving act.

As an occasional act for relief it’s not a problem but when you start to prefer to masterbate watching pornography instead of having sex with your wife or husband then your marriage is in trouble.

Once you start ignoring your wife or husbands sexual needs and sneaking off to your fantasy world then your ability to fulfill your own and your wife/husbands sexual needs as a couple are diminished.

If you are watching lesbian films or threesomes you will begin to feel that something is missing when you do have sex with your wife or husband.

Your spouse will therefore become boring and you will be driven right back to the films or internet and back to serving only yourself.

This can then manifest itself in a lessened feeling of affection for your wife or husband, a lack of closeness begins to emerge and your wife/husband begins to feel neglected and unloved.

Addiction

MORE, give me more!!

So you “innocently” enter the fantasy world of pornography late one night when browsing the net, while you’re wife or husband’s asleep.

You know it’s a fantasy world, the men and women aren’t real, they are surrounded by soft lighting, have fake boobs and have been ridden more often than the winner of the Grand National but it’s just a bit of fun.

You masterbate for a couple of minutes then switch it off, no harm done.

The problem is once we enter the fantasy world we can never be satisfied and the occasional look becomes a regular habit.

You visit the sites more often at night after the wife or husband is alseep, until you find yourself waiting for them to go to bed so you can go and watch.

You become less interested in your sexual relationship with your partner because you have the fantasy world waiting and it takes zero effort, there’s no coaxing or foreplay involved.

How long before you ask the tech guy at work if the computers have adult sites blocked?

You hide your actions because you know your wife or husband would be upset, they would feel inadequate.

You download a couple of films .. just to watch if the computer breaks and hide them where your spouse won’t find them.

This is an addiction like any other and like any other addiction it can in time consume you.

There is also the issue of building an unrealistic image in your mind of what a healthy sexual relationship is about.

If you need help in dealing with a sex addiction or addiction to pornography please contact the following organisations and get help before you damage your marriage:

Sex Addicts Anonymous

Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous UK

Sex Addicts Anonymous Scotland

What’s going on when your partner wants to bring pornography into your relationship?

We now live in a very sexually open society where virtually nothing is private or taboo.

Pornography has been around for a very long time and used to be a “guy” thing, limited to bachelors and stag parties but now a simple click of a computer mouse and in a flash you can be watching hard core pornography, which is probably banned in numerous countries.

The pro-pornography camp will say it’s harmless fun, it’s relaxing, it’s healthy, it spices up a relationship and people that don’t like porn are insecure.

The anti-pornography camp say it devalues women, becomes an addiction, removes attention from your partner to the point of not fulfilling their sexual needs and reinforces unrealistic ideas of how a “sexy partner” should look or act.

Pornography is often introduced into the relationship by the male partner, who used to look at it before the relationship started or when the sex life in a marriage gets a bit stale.

Usually it’s introduced as a way to “get new ideas” or “get you both in the mood”.

However, problems begin to arise when it becomes a substitute or you fail to gain the same gratification from your partner as you do from watching pornography.

Another problem arises when it becomes secretive. If something needs to be hidden, either a relationship or your porn stash then it’s a signal something is wrong.

Couples often begin watching it together but it doesn’t take long before one or both are watching it while their partner is at work or sleeping.

Am I insecure … you’re having a laugh!

Would I feel cheated on … no but I would certainly feel inadequate.

Would I be insulted or scared if my husband started watching porn … hell yes, it would signal there is something going wrong with our relationship.

Some couples look at relatively soft pornography together for years without it going any further and in a healthy committed relationship that’s no problem but in a majority of cases it’s a slippery slope.

Just read some of the stories on this how porn hurt our relationship message board.

Marriages that survived 20 years, with all the ups and downs we all go through and then ended in divorce because of pornography.

You go from soft pornography to something more hard core, then add something a little kinky … and so it goes on until you find yourselves inviting the neighbours round to spice things up a bit.

You can read about people that hide their pornography and watch it in secret, totally neglecting the needs of their partner.

Of course YOU don’t have an addiction but neither do heroine addicts or alcoholics!!

What the pro-porn camp haven’t grasped yet is that the damage to your relationship is subtle and you are often not aware of it until your relationship is damaged beyond repair or you have stepped over a line you can’t return from.

For those in the pro-porn camp, consider this.

After watching porn with your partner do you start to suggest or hint at a full brazillian waxing or perhaps she should stroke your ego by shouting “do it to me harder big boy” in a Texan accent? What about dressing up as a slut in thigh high boots?

Do you see the trend here … all of this is about changing the woman you are with to look or act the way porn stars do.

There is nothing wrong with your partner dressing up but when you do it in a way that tries to imitate an airbrushed, half plastic prostitute (be fair, they have sex for money the only difference is they allow it to be filmed .. that’s a prostitute) then you need to take a good long look in the mirror and ask yourself some hard questions about who you are becoming.

In anyone’s language that is not healthy for your relationship.

This can be something sexual your partner is not comfortable with trying/doing or it can be thrill seeking, usually requiring in time harder core material to get you excited.

Now ask yourself, if your have average sized private parts and an average build but you find your partner is regularly downloading images or films of body builders with titles like “12 inches of man love” how long will it take before you look in the mirror and think hmmmm.

Even if she adores you and tells you how much she enjoys your sex life, you are always going to have that nagging doubt in the back of your mind that what she really wants is king dong … so why should women feel any differently?

Watching porn regularly is usually an indicator that something is missing in your sex life which you crave.

I find the argument that you can get new ideas to spice up your relationship totally unconvincing. You will find many more new ideas by looking at the kama sutra than you would ever get from watching Debbie Does Dallas.

Then we have “they aren’t that great anyway, we know they’re fake and some are quite funny” .. erm, so what you watching them for? Turn it off and switch over to the comedy channel.

In most pornography films the women are highly submissive, to the point where they are a breath away from being rape scenes. Being playfully submissive is one thing but being raped is quite another.

Now ask yourself how many women are turned on by the idea of being raped? If you’re a woman and you are then you have issues that need dealt with.

If you’re a man and you believe most women are turned on by rape then you know a lot less about women than my fridge/freezer does.

The next argument is “what’s worse, to watch pornography or have an affair”.

Honestly, if you can’t see that there is something fundamentally wrong with that statement then you’re already a long way down the slippery slope.

That statement says there is something missing in your relationship, which you are unable to communicate to your partner so must look for outside your relationship.

No relationship can be repaired by going outside the relationship itself, even to films or magazines.

So the answers to the original questions are:

When does porn in a relationship stop being a way for a couple to get new ideas and start damaging the relationship?

The moment it is introduced into your relationship.

What’s going on when your partner wants to bring pornography into your relationship?

They crave something they are not getting .. re-open the lines of communication and find out what.

Agree or disagree?