Sex therapist counsels couples on ‘the porn problem’
For 35 years, Palo Alto author and sex therapist Marty Klein has listened to wives describe their devastation after discovering their husbands are peeking at porn.
He’s also listened to husbands who resent being called unfaithful because they like to occasionally indulge in private fantasies about actresses they’ve seen in X-rated movies.
Klein said there is nothing new about couples having these often painful, angry conversations. What is new is that the number of conversations he hears in his office has dramatically increased since around 2000. That’s when broadband internet began to make a wide variety of pornographic films easily accessible on home computers, TV or smartphones.
Still, new or not, he says, “the level of suffering is heartbreaking,” especially because he believes this suffering is unnecessary. He says couples argue about porn because a “moral panic” in our country has given them false information about what’s harmful and what’s not. Moreover, couples often blame one partner’s viewing of sexually explicit images for their problems instead of facing more fundamental issues.
To help couples get a better handle on when porn becomes an issue in their lives, Klein is out with a new book, “His Porn, Her Pain: Confronting America’s PornPanic With Honest Talk About Sex” (Praeger, $24, 208 pages).
In it, the “renegade of couples therapy,” as he’s been called by the New York Times, takes what some may regard as controversial stands, saying porn doesn’t necessarily hurt society or demean women. But he also doesn’t judge people for finding porn objectionable. He just wants couples to communicate with more
honesty, as he explains here:
In heterosexual couples, isn’t it usually the woman who has a problem with the man looking at porn?
The couple has the problem, but usually the woman is upset that the man is looking at porn at all, or the kind of porn he’s looking at, or that he’s looking at porn when they don’t have much of a sex life. I don’t get a lot of couples where the man is complaining about the woman’s use of porn. From the guy’s point of view, the issue becomes about his privacy or dealing with massive judgment on the girlfriend or wife’s part.
Hasn’t porn always been around?
Yes, and every new technology has always been adapted to sexual purposes. That was true of ancient pottery, the Guttenberg Press, photography and the automobile. Broadband technology in 2000 brought free, highquality pornography to every home in America. What is “Porn Panic”? It’s an outsized fear response that gets an enormous amount of media attention. Moral panics tend to arise in times of social change. The country was completely unprepared for 24/7 porn in everybody’s home. You get moral entrepreneurs who have given themselves the job of alerting everybody to this supposedly horrifying, dangerous thing, promoting falsehoods that all porn is violent and brutal, or that it’s leading to an enormous spike in sexual assaults, or in people having erectile dysfunction. They are saying porn is coming into happy homes and dragging husbands or boyfriends away. My job with this book is to share some data that isn’t getting publicized.
For example, since 2000, the FBI notes that the rate of sexual violence and child molestation have gone down. The rate of divorce has gone down, too.
Aren’t human males more hard-wired to respond to visual stimuli?
It’s not a law, but it tends to be true when it comes to sexuality. That’s been true for a long time, and that didn’t start with the internet. But plenty of women like porn, too.
You also write about the sanctity of people’s fantasies: does that mean partners shouldn’t be dictating what people should be thinking?
Everyone has an imagination, and it’s not just about sexual matters. People certainly don’t want to be told what they can and cannot imagine. What people forget is that fantasy doesn’t equal desire. Fantasy doesn’t mean you want to actually carry out the thing in your imagination. I might fantasize I’m going to rob a bank and move to Tahiti, or that I’m going to strangle my boss and my problems will be over. It doesn’t mean I really want to do those things or ever would if I had the chance.
Doesn’t some porn go too far?
Every week, I hear from one guy or another who is worried about his porn watching — how much or what kind. It’s OK to have fantasies, and most surveys show that fantasies are often about inappropriate situations that people would never act on. Of course, viewing anything that involves minors is illegal and fortunately most people don’t do that. Most porn is pretty vanilla: men and women having intercourse. A concern is if it becomes obsessional. If you’re watching porn 93 times a day, it’s not because of what you’re watching but because of the obsessional attachment.
But you don’t believe in porn addiction?
Addiction is about the unhealthy relationship a body has with a substance: say heroin, or painkillers or alcohol. If you take that substance away, the body goes into profound shock. Calling something an addiction pathologizes behavior that is often harmless. It also overlooks how the partner may be contributing to a dysfunctional relationship, or it keeps someone who is using porn to medicate anxiety, depression, loneliness or anger from getting treatment that would be helpful. People who claim to treat porn “addiction” rarely offer a model of healthy porn use or healthy passionate sexuality.
What usually worries women when they find out their partner is viewing porn?
She’s worried that she can’t compete with the beautiful young women, and she doesn’t have to, or that he wants to have an affair when no, he does not. Some may also say that when a man looks at porn, it’s disrespectful to women. Porn is fiction. It isn’t designed to be a documentary about real people having sex. Porn features unusual bodies in very unusual situations.
What about the view that porn is infidelity?
People rarely define monogamy while they’re coupling up. When a woman says that looking at porn is a form of infidelity, and he says “no, it’s not,” then they go into an adversarial mode where her pain isn’t addressed, and he doesn’t get a chance to be sympathetic or to have a chance to be heard about his interest in masturbation or sexual fantasy. Some people say looking at porn is infidelity because it means someone is experiencing eroticism outside the couple. That definition challenges adult autonomy in a serious way.
So what usually is the real issue when couples argue about porn?
When it comes to people’s sex lives, people would much rather talk about porn than about how they miss the sex they used to enjoy together, or that one person is always too tired, or the other wants to get it over too quickly. In this context, the conflict isn’t about sex but about power, or respect, or shame or withheld resentments. And, if one person doesn’t feel desired or that she’s not attractive because he’s looking at porn, then that person deserves to be heard and comforted.
Starting a discussion by arguing over a solution — such as “no more porn” — is a mistake. I don’t tell couples that porn is good, and I don’t even say watching it is OK. If a couple wants to decide that looking at porn is not OK, I care about the process by which they came to that decision.
If a woman is OK with her husband watching porn, should she be expected to join in?
No one should watch porn if they don’t want to. In every couple there are things one person wants to do and the other doesn’t, whether it’s bicycling or shopping or watching “CSI: Miami.” Human beings are different, and at some point in a couple, everybody has to admit they enjoy something that their partner doesn’t. That’s part of growing up and being an adult.