Is pornography damaging to a marriage? Question for wives & husbands.

[Lola_mama]

My husband and I have been married for 7 years now, and we have, what I believe to be, a pretty healthy and loving relationship. We have gone through our fair share of ups and downs of course, but overall, we are very much in love, and try hard to be attentive to each other's needs, and the needs of our marriage. We have 3 children (ages 10, 5, & 3), and all of the normal daily demands to keep us busy each and every day. Our biggest challenges throughout the years we've been together, have been the common ones; stress, money problems, kids, and at times, a lack of desire in the bedroom (always from me), but for the most part (other than the year or two periods of time after just having a new child), our sex life has remained pretty regular, consistent, and satisfying for both of us. I deal w/ the added hardship of having a few health conditions (fybromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and possibly MS), which has w/o a doubt, placed some strain on our relationship, but one thing I believe we are very good about, is talking about our problems whenever we feel they are interfering w/ how we get along w/ each other. Our top priority is making sure we are always aware of how our actions may be affecting one another, and keeping each other's feelings in mind at all times. Both of us agree that first and foremost, we are best friends, and want to always remain that way, because after all, if you can't be best friends w/ the person you've chosen to marry, have children w/, and spend the rest of your life w/, how can you expect to have an honest, loving, and trust based marriage? So now that I've painted a picture of how our relationship is structured, I'll get to the point of why I'm posting this question. As I mentioned earlier, there have been periods of time throughout our marriage where I have lost the desire to be sexually intimate as frequently as I normally do (btw, I am 27 and he is 29. We typically have sex around 3x per week, or every other day when my libido is functioning normally), and during those timeframes, I have never really taken any issue w/ my husband using other methods to satisfy his sexual needs, ie. pornographic magazines, videos, or Internet websites. Even during those stretches of time where sex sat on the back burner, and was more often than not, usually initiated by my husband rather than myself, I still tried hard to be concious of the fact that my husband still needed that intimate time to be sexual and close w/ me (and that I needed it as well, even if my body wasn't doing the best job of alerting me to it), so I continued to make the effort to engage in making love w/ him at least on a weekly basis if at all possible, because I know how important that activity is in a marriage. Anyway, over the past 6 months or so, and after discontinuing some of the medications I had been taking that I am now realizing were directing contributing to my decreased sexual desire, as well as the fact that my youngest child is now 3 years old, I am happy to say that I have fully returned to my normal, sexual self again! Like REALLY sexual self!! It has been a gradual thing, but I have steadily progressed from the once a week chore, to now initiating sex w/ my husband every other night, and every single night if he'll go for it! He loves it, and things have really spiced up in the bedroom for us! As I said, this has happened slowly overly the past 6 months, but I grew exceptionally more interested in having sex just over the past month or two, and at first, didn't really know how to go about approaching the act w/ him, so I don't think he realized quite how strong my urges were, and therefore wasn't aware that I was as "on board" w/ doing it regularly again as I actually was. SO... one night, the question of "are you still masturbating to porn online?" just popped out of my mouth, right after we had finished up a lovely little tumble together. He said "um yeah, occasionally. Why? It's not very often since we've been more active, but if it's been a couple of days, I do" (this was after our frequency had improved, but wasn't to the point that it is now), and I suddenly found myself feeling irritated, bitter, and even a little bit jealous about the idea of my husband getting turned on and sexually aroused to the point of orgasm, by a woman other than me, even if it was just through a computer screen! Not to say I ever really loved the idea to begin w/, but I knew that he had needs to fulfill, and if I wasn't in the mindset to assist him in achieving that, I should at least be reasonable about him using other methods to accomplish it, but now that I was giving him all of that and more, I didn't think that option needed to be utilized, nor should he want to! As I thought about it more over the following days, it occured to me that the women in those videos are being treated so disrespectfully all for the film company's financial gain, and there are so many stories that prove that all these graphic videos that are making their way into the homes of married couples around the country, are very often damaging relationships to the point where they many times cannot be repaired because once a man begins satisfying himself by watching unrealistic sexual performances that he can't reenact in his own life at home, it becomes much more difficult for him to acheive that same level of pleasure w/ his wife, and sometimes even leads to addiction of those videos. I have heard it again and again, but never really thought too much about it in my own marriage because "my husband isn't like that", but niether were so many of those other husbands out there who ended up hooked on porn, or cheated on their wives. I don't mean to sound overly dramatic, but it has been bothering me, and I don't know if I'm being irrational, or if this is something that most women are concerned about. I want to be respectful of my husband's natural needs and urges, but everyone has natural needs and urges and that sure doesn't mean they should act on them all. If I am giving my husband all the sexual attention he could possibly ask for, do I have the right to expect him to ditch the porno videos? He's really not someone who needs a lot of sexual stimulation. He hasn't even done it since we've been having sex a lot, but I just feel like it should be something that's off limits as long as we are having a good sex life together. Let me also differenciate between when I say porno videos, and any other kinds of sexual materials. I don't have a problem w/ magazines, pictures, or even "erotica" type videos. It's just the hardcore porn stuff that I am not comfortable w/ him watching. Sorry for the lengthy novel I've written here. didn mean to ramble on for so long, but I'd love to get some insight from people on this. Not only from other married women, but from men as well would be great! Thanks!

[ac1895]

to be honest lola i wish my wife would get jealous of me watching porn but she doesnt i am married for 3 years and we know eachother for ten we have a one year old little girl and we are toghther around three to four times a week the problem i am having is that my wife never talks about sex she says she really enjoys it and loves what i do to her but she never talks about it so when i finally ask her why she nevers talks about it she says because she thought i knew how good i made her feel but to me if something feels great or if you really enjoy something why wouldnt you speak about it it doesnt make sense to me so of course i am always thinking she is lieing and i am not doing something right but she says i am perfect i dont know what to do and it driving me crazy  also thier are times that she orgasims so fast i feel like she faking so please can i get a response from other women out thier because this is making me feel like crap what should i do

[LifeCoach]

Only the two of you can make the decision as to whether or not pornography is damaging to your marriage. You may want to ask yourself these questions to help you figure it all out:

How is it strengthening our marriage?
Am I truly comfortable with this as a part of our marriage?
What is the pornography a replacement for?

Remember, this is your marriage.  You get to decide what goes into it.  Listen to your heart; it will help you make your marriage what you want it to be.  Hope this helps you  :)

[psyvamp]

OMG! I think I could have written most of this, myself...  with the exception that porn has NEVER been ok with me in any form... My DH & I have gone many rounds on this very thing... and even still are... It's very frustrating, hurtful, infuriating at times, and also a very big blow to the self esteem ( mine)... It's something we are working on-- slowly, but still it's an issue that i wish wasn't... Yes-- I agree, it can be addicting, it can be very detrimental to a marriage- especially if one spouse sees no wrong in it-- and the other sees it as a threat or as I do--- cheating. . . . .
Other difference here, with me & my DH-- i have never had a low level of desire-- my libido has always been high- to very high.... HE on the other hand ( sometimes lilterally) has been , more so in the past, the one with a lower drive-- or at least a lower level of desire for me, I think partly due to the porn/masturbation issue just being something that  he was used to doing ( before me), it was/is a "quick, cheap thrill" as he put it once, and he was even turning down my advances-- very frequently-- but still participated in self stimulation with the pornography...

Well... guess rambled on enough.... pick what you can/need from my reply ( sorry- it's been a long day)..... Hope something helps.....