Men who watch porn damage partner’s self confidence

Men who look at porn have a corrosive effect on their partner's self confidence and this habit can even break up happy relationships, a study has found. Women's sex lives were also damaged if their partners preferred virtual ways of arousing himself instead of sleeping with them. The study adds to the growing body of evidence that porn is damaging to relationships and can even causes people to break up. A recent study found that one in five men "preferred the excitement of watching porn to being sexually intimate with their partner." Young children in particular can be damaged from an early age because it is so easy to get hold of sex films on their mobile phones. Destin Stewart, a clinical psychology intern at the University of Florida, looked at the problem after one of her patients explained she was having difficulty with her porn-addicted partner. She asked 308 students aged 18 to 29 and asked them to complete online questionnaires about how often their partners viewed porn. They were also asked about how sexually satisfied they were, how much self-esteem they had and how they rated the quality of their relationship. All the women were heterosexual. The results showed a strong statistical link between men viewing porn and women becoming unhappy. When women thought that their partner was a heavy porn user or a porn addict it also had a negative impact on their self-esteem and general sexual satisfaction. Stewart said that the key to solving the issue was to get couples to talk frankly about what they wanted, even though it can be tough. "It's just about trying to do some education about what is realistic and unrealistic and trying to get couples to be honest about what their wants and needs and desires are," the Daily Mail quoted Stewart as saying. Previous studies showed that after viewing porn men tend to expect their partners to behave and look like porn stars. In a response from one paper in 1999 study a woman participant told researchers: "These men look at these pictures and say, `Look at her. She's just beautiful. Why can't you be like that?" Concerns have long been raised over the effect that porn has on young children too. A recent study in the US found that schoolboys who develop an addiction to porn exhibit more problems such as poor grades, social isolation and behavioural issues. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation in California, seven out of ten teenagers have viewed pornography on the Internet with boys at greater risk of it doing damage than girls.