Watching smut alone gives rise to divorce: study

MAYBE THEY’RE just porn to cheat.

Men are twice as likely to get divorced after they start eyeing erotica alone — and women who peep at XXX-rated clips are three times more likely to leave — a working paper presented by the American Sociological Association reported this week.

Sociologists from the University of Oklahoma surveyed more than 2,000 men and women in 2006-10, 2008-12 and 2010-14 and kept tabs on their marital happiness, marital status and porn habits by checking in with them at the beginning, middle and end of the study periods.

Watching porn solo appeared to jack up the divorce rate, “from 6% to 11% (in men), and nearly tripled it for women, from 6% to 16%,” wrote assistant sociology Prof. Samuel Perry, the lead author of the study titled, “Till Porn Do Us Part?”

He concluded, “Viewing pornography, under certain social conditions, may have negative effects on marital stability.”

For example, members who reported being “very happy” in their marriages at the beginning of the study were three times more likely to be divorced by the next survey.

And the younger an adult was when he or she began watching sexually explicit material, the higher his or her probability of getting divorced.

Perry suggested porn rocks the boat less with older couples because their relationships are more established and financially secure.

More religious unions were less likely to split over porn, probably because getting divorced carries more stigma in some faiths than watching porn.

There was also some evidence that giving up smut could save the relationship. The divorce rate of ladies who stopped watching plummeted back down to 6%. But so few men actually gave up the sexually explicit material that the study didn’t have a sample size reliable enough to determine whether men who abstain would also stick with their partners.