Couples Who Watch Porn Together, Stay Together

Psychologist Taylor Kohut reveals how you and your partner may benefit from watching pornography together.

By Mark Travers, Ph.D. | June 25, 2022

A new study published in Frontiers in Psychology reveals that certain forms of porn consumption can improve relationship quality and satisfaction.

I recently spoke to psychologist Taylor Kohut to understand the reasons behind this effect and to see how porn, typically considered to be detrimental to functioning, can generate positive effects. Here is a summary of our conversation.

Could you give me a brief overview of your research aims and the aspects of pornography use that you are trying to investigate?

My areas of interest are fairly broad, even within the subdomain of porn research.

I often tell people that I'm interested in studying what pornography is, who uses it and why, and how it may affect the way we think, feel, and behave.

Lately, my areas of concentration are piling up around more interpersonal subjects like pornography use within romantic relationships and the association between pornography use and sexual aggression, but I maintain an interest in other topics as well.

On top of solitary pornography consumption, you also look at its effects on relationships. Could you give a brief overview on the effects of 'dyadic' porn consumption and how this affects relationship functioning?

It's interesting that you frame these questions in this way.

Establishing the "effects" of pornography use in the relationship domain is very challenging. The answers depend somewhat on what you mean by "effects," but also on what you accept as evidence and how you interpret that evidence.

So, for example, we have a fair bit of information about the "effects" that people attribute to pornography use (either alone or with a partner), and we have a lot of correlational research indicating how pornography use is associated with various presumed relationship "outcomes" of use.

While the effects that people attribute to pornography are more often relationship-enhancing than detrimental to relationships, correlations between pornography use and relationship quality tend to be negative.

That is, porn users tend to report being in lower-quality relationships. In comparison to these bodies of research, there are precious few experimental studies involving relationship impacts. And, if you are not aware, experiments are the gold-standard for establishing that pornography use "causes" a particular outcome.

Unfortunately, none of the few existing experiments are well-conducted, and the results of the experiments that have been done contradict one another.

In the end, what this means is that we know a lot about what people think porn does and how it is related to different relationship variables like satisfaction or commitment. Still, we don't know much about how porn "impacts" relationships.

More germane to your questions, researchers have generally failed to distinguish between solitary and shared pornography use when investigating its use within relationships. Having said that, some people, like me, are starting to disambiguate these two types of pornography use, and from what I have seen, most of the studies seem to be indicating that shared pornography use is positively related to relationship quality in correlational research.

That is, the more often people use porn together, the more functional their relationships appear to be.

These results correspond nicely with qualitative data we have on the subject in which participants describe how using pornography together with a partner can encourage sexual communication and sexual experimentation, which can help people learn about each other's sexual likes and dislikes, and may bring people closer together as a couple.

At present, I am only aware of a single experiment in which couple members were exposed to pornography together. It was published way back in 1971, and it doesn't appear that anyone has done work in that area since.

Unfortunately, while the experiment itself was really well designed, the researchers didn't analyze their data very well so I'm not confident that their results are entirely credible.

In any case, their bottom line conclusion was that watching porn together with a partner created a short-term increase in sexual interactions with one's partner, but this was no different than seeing a non-sexual movie together.

Watching porn also had no effect (positive or negative) on relationship quality, and there was very little evidence of increased sexual experimentation following exposure to porn.

They basically reported that they found nothing of interest.

As to why correlational studies indicate that shared pornography is correated with higher relationship and sexual satisfaction, there are a number of possibilities.

It is possible, for example, that qualitative accounts of increased sexual communication and experimentation are accurate. On the other hand, it's also possible that simply engaging in a shared novel and/or exciting activity with a spouse, like using porn together, is what is important, because it may relieve relationship boredom and re-ignite sexual (and non-sexual) interest in one another (I'm actually writing a paper about that right now where we found some evidence of this kind of effect when partners experimented with new sex toys together).

It's also possible, of course, that people who are in higher-quality relationships are simply more open to experimenting with porn together. So, just because there appears to be a reliable correlation between these things does not mean that pornography use is having a positive "effect" on relationships.

You also report that the level of relationship and sexual satisfaction is dependent on the difference or similarity of solitary pornography consumption between the dyad. Could you elaborate on this?

On average, it appears that porn use is negatively related to variables like relationship and sexual satisfaction.

If you break things down further, it's clearly solitary porn use rather than shared porn use that is responsible for that association.

One problem with past research, and one I have been mentioning for almost 10 years now, is that researchers are not paying attention to what both partners in a relationship are up to with respect to porn use. And this, I think, is critical.

Outside of porn research, there is a large body of evidence suggesting that similarity in attitudes is strongly connected to how much you like another person. Within romantic relationships specifically, there is a body of research indicating that partners who have more similar sexual attitudes, sexual preferences, and sex drive report being in higher-quality relationships than partners who are dissimilar in these characteristics.

Porn use is related to all of those things so it occurred to me at some point that similarity in solitary pornography use is also probably related to being in a better relationship. And indeed it is, at least with respect to sexual satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, intimacy, and comfort with sexual communication.

In effect, when you collect data from both relationship partners and analyze it appropriately, you find that solitary porn use is related to lower relationship quality, but only among relationships where one partner uses porn and the other does not.

Considering your findings, what should people who watch pornography in a relationship be aware of?

Well, if you are worried about avoiding harms, you don't just need to think about how porn might be affecting you as a consumer, you also have to consider how your partner feels about your porn use.

If they don't like it, and don't think you should be using it, your relationship will likely suffer, whether or not porn is affecting you in any direct objective way.

On the other hand, and perhaps this is a silver lining, if you and your partner both use porn, like it, and accept each other's use, the data that I have collected suggests that your relationship will be just as happy and fulfilling as couples who don't use porn at all.

Also, If people differ in their porn use, they are also likely different when it comes to their views about sexuality more generally, their sexual drive, and their sexual needs.

From a relational perspective, there is nothing wrong with someone who wants to limit sex to procreation, birthdays, and anniversaries, provided they have a partner that holds the same views.

Similarly, from a relational perspective, there is nothing wrong with someone who wants to experiment with BDSM, or someone with a foot fetish, or someone that wants to have sex with other people, provided they have a partner who is interested in those same things.

What matters at the end of the day is whether you and your partner are on "the same page," and differences in pornography use are a pretty clear indication that you may not be.