Hearing strange noises coming from the bedroom, Nicole bursts in to catch her very embarrassed boyfriend of four years, Richard watching porn on his laptop. She bursts into fits of laughter as she recalls an incident she describes as completely normal. "It's just a bit of entertainment," she says. "I wouldn't choose watching porn over Home and Away, nor would I choose it over the relationship," she said.
Richard, although blushing several shades of crimson, agrees. The three hours a week he averages scouring porn sites is merely a form of release. "Porn has never been a problem for us," he says. "We tell each other about it but never do it together. Get in, get the job done and get out."
About a third of Australian adults consume porn, of which a whopping 70 percent are males. Although couples may not think twice about it, experts are warning it could be detrimental to your relationship.
Deputy coordinator of the University of Sydney's Graduate Program in Sexual Health, Dr Gomathi Sintharthan , is currently studying the effects frequenting adult sites can have on intimate relationships.
Although she encourages couples to indulge in pornography, particularly those whose love lives have become lacklustre, she warns that the excessive activity could lead to spouses seeking sexual activity elsewhere.
"Frequenting escort services or brothels and then hiding how much money is spent," she says. "Other examples of negative outcomes can include a loss of interest in the relationship or family, aloofness, rearranging daily routines to ensure the spouse or partner is not aware of certain activities and lack of sexual interest."
Hearing the sounds of her partner having a shower, *Penny leaps out of bed and proceeds to turn on the laptop she shares with her partner. Realising she didn't have a lot of time till he would come out of the bathroom, she proceeds to search through the laptop's history.
That all-too-familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach begins as she scours through page after page of adult sites he forgot to delete. "In a way I blame myself," she says. "A few months ago I told him that a friend of mine had posted a picture on the internet of me topless. I told (my friend) to take it down and it was removed, but he didn't believe me."
Her boyfriend *Daniel began his hunt to find the offensive picture and ended up, for the first time, watching internet porn. Over the past few months, Penny has been witness to her partner's growing addiction to porn and a steady decline in their sex life. "He barely looks at me anymore and our relationship is at breaking point," she says.
"This is a case of one partner not respecting the other's boundaries," Neil Buckley, founder of NorthSide Counselling in Sydney, says. "Porn can destroy a relationship if a partner's boundaries are being uncomfortably tested. Once you start shifting boundaries, where do you stop?"
Buckley has spoken to many couples in his eight years of relationship counselling. He supports the use of porn if both parties have the same sexual expectations, aspirations and an agreement in place to stop if the other desires.
"There are couples that think kinky sex is fine and porn highlights that," he says. "When only one wants to do it, they start putting pressure on the other which leads to an imbalance in the relationship and a breakdown in communication."
Buckley also agrees that viewing porn could lead to partners seeking pleasure outside of the relationship.
"You could go from watching porn to wanting to have threesomes or pressuring your other half into partner swapping," he says. "You might start to need more to turn you on."
The only tension it has caused in the relationship between Nicole and Richard has been when they watch it alone without telling each other. Despite the sporadic friction between the two, the couple both agree it could never tear them apart.
"I don't think porn could ever ruin a relationship," Nicole says. "The people in the relationship do, porn is just a conduit for their frustration."
*names have been changed.
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