porn, your thoughts on this one please

[headswillroll]

NC for this one.
Your thoughts on this, please.
When DH and I first moved in together 6 years ago he arrived with 2 ful sized suitcases full of porn. Magazines but mostly DVDs. He wasn't very computer literate at the time. Although he watched it he was never so bothered, just an occasional if enthusiatic user.
I work hard and my job gets me down.
DH sometimes has ED, about once a month I would say. Mostly after I know he has been watching porn. These days DH has graduated to computer use.
I have mixed feelings about porn myself. On the one hand I can find it titillating, on the other some of my work is with abused children so I will admit I sometimes find it difficult to disassociate the porn from the abuse I am witness to every day. Also I have a teen DD who lives with us which adds to my general discomfort about it all, although she knows nothing about this.
Our sex life has ground to a halt recently, in part because of a lot of stress that's been going on with life in general.
The thing is, I come home from a tough day at work, I know he's been home from work during his lunch hour, watching porn and this pisses me off. Because my job is rough going, I do it to keep a roof over our heads and I mind him coming home and cracking one off while I'm working.
I mind that we are not having sex and even if we did he may not be able to perform because of the he's been watching porn.
What do you all think?

I'll be here all week

SGB - I think you are being a bit disingenuous about the studies regarding porn. I appreciate it suits your agenda to view porn as completely positive, but the truth is far more complex and nuanced and what's more, many, many women come on to Mumsnet and explain that their lives are being damaged by their partners use of internet porn. They deserve to be listened to and not lectured on your ideology.

Regarding peer-reviewd studies published, I would say that results are inconclusive (i.e. some find negative results; some positive). The largest study I could find (Grov, Gillespie, Royce and Lever, 2011, Archives of sexual behaviour, based on a survey of over 8,000 participants in 2004) found the negative aspects were that women were more likely to indicate they had less sex as a result of a partner's IP use, and men were more likely to indicate they were less aroused by real sex as a result of their own IP use. However, it also found that moderate or light amounts of IP use could provide benefits such as increases in the quality and frequency of sex, and increased intimacy with real partners. So we really can disgard all the black and white thinking now.

The most accurate interpretation would seem to be that internet pornography use does cause a problem for a certain percentage of users, especially where the use is heavy. Not really surprising - if you substituted the word alcohol for porn, the result would be the same.

So putting everyone's vested interests aside. Porn is causing a huge problem in this woman's marriage. Whether or not you think porn is disgusting or a bit of harmless fun is irrelevant. Her husband ignores her feelings about it and prefers it to having sex with her. I'd say she's got every right to feel agrieved and dissatisfied with the relationship and it's not really about the rights and wrongs of porn.

OP - personally, I think two suitcases of porn constitutes a heavy use, don't you? I am personally concerned that you are wiping the porn history off the laptop (not him?) when your dd has access. If you wish to stay with him, he should at least have his own password protected laptop for his 'hobby'.

I think the fact that he does not seem concerned about your sexual satisfaction and/or intimacy is a huge problem. Don't be told you are over-reacting.

I don't think your overreacting. There is nothing wrong with porn untill it starts to effect your own sex life, which it clearly is. I've nothing to add apart from that as everyone else has said what's needed to be said.

Just thought I would update this.
negativec thanks, that's what I think too.
triffid thank you too. In our house DD has her own laptop, DH & I share a laptop and a desktop pc. All 3 of our home pcs are protected by a parental programme which requires a password to unlock everything including social networking. DD always uses her own laptop anyway but even if she didn't all the pcs block anything dodgy. I do sometimes check DDs laptop, she knows i do this.

DH and I had a good weekend. As I said in a previous post one of my parents is very ill so there hasn't been much time to talk lately but this weekend DH and I did talk a lot about everything.
He accepts he is being crap and has agreed to step up. I was clear about the things I need (not just a better sex life) and he has said he will do certain things to make it better, this includes ditching the porn at the moment.
He did say he hasn't known how to support me as I have been withdrawn and that he has assumed I haven't wanted sex as I've been upset (I have been crying a lot). This is a fair point and he was not trying to diminish his part in our problems. I have agreed to be more forthcoming about the way I feel about everything. Certainly, we had reached an impasse and I hope that this weekend is the start of an improvement in out relationship overall.

Thank you all for your advice, support and opinions.

I wasn't claiming anything exists, sgb. you were claiming that it is clearly established that a certain class of studies was total rubbish - a claim which I note you still have not produced any evidence in support of.
To be clear; I dislike porn because I find it unattractive, misogynist and boring - much like its habitual users. i am persuadable either way on the question of whether it causes wider psychological and social harm - though it certainly seems to me possible that it may.

Karlos: Zillman, Donnerstein, Malamuth and Check are the authors of the most commonly cited studies, Which are 30 years old or so, and all bullshit. Other stuff done around the same time has proved impossible to replicate and/or methodologically flawed (it generally consisted of sub-Milgram experiments along the lines of 'show a bunch of people a porn magazine then offer them the option of giving, or not giving, someone else an electric shock by pushing a button').

The only people to discredit those studies are people who work in the porn industry. In fact, there has been no independent research conducted that has ever disproved its findings.

You'd also have to be spectacularly in denial not to accept that in some relationships, one partner's porn habit can have a negative impact on a joint sex life and that the nature of that habit is completely different to golf or other hobbies that distract attention away from the relationship.

They are two separate issues entirely.

Time consuming and absorbing distractions at the expense of a partner's general happiness is one problem that needs sorting. The porn could indeed fit that category, but its effect is often more far-reaching than that.

When that problem is compounded by the sexual release achieved by the time-consuming hobby being preferred to sex with a partner AND that partner's sexual needs are unmet, then the OP's got a much bigger problem than being a golf or gaming widow.

Unless anyone can provide even anecdotal evidence of someone regularly orgasming at reaching the eighteenth hole of a golf course and in consequence, preferring that form of sexual release to orgasming with a partner, I'd treat these banal analogies with a pinch of salt....

BethF: Cumberbatch and Howitt (government-backed researchers commissioned to find negative consequences of porn) found the studies unreliable. Behavioural science is about as trustworthy as evolutionary psychology anyway and the sort of experiments where you show someone a picture and then give them a choice of pressing button A or button B can't really be said to prove anything much about anything.

solidgoldbrass Cumberbatch and Howitt weren't independent! Plus it was quite the reverse of what you've stated. The Tory government of 1989-90 commissioned those two in order to support that government's pro sex industry, anti-censorship stance. Cumberbatch and Howitt were well known for their anti-censorship views and dogmatic insistence that people were unaffected by what they watched in moving image media. Their 1990 report is now old news and has been contested by academics ever since, especially those conducting research in the internet age. It was superceded most recently by this 2007 report from the Ministry of Justice which did find causal effects.

Talking with DP is always a good start.

When stress occurs I think that masturbation is often an outlet, with the use of porn helping to stimulate of course. If you feel you are missing out in the relationship because of it then: talk.

I couldn't ever imagine owning a collection of porn though, but obviously many people do!

That's an addiction . Same as Drugs or alcohol. My partner went into rehab for drugs and alcohol addiction and was told to stop watching porn too as its all addiction .

Erectile disfunction

oops! sorry wrong page answer, hence random lol

I would question any blanket dismissal of behavioural psychology. The behaviourists have been responsible for the major - indeed, the only - advances in the education of children with ASD in recent years. Applied Behavioural Analysis is the only intervention with any track record of success at all, and the people working with my ds have seen some success in replicating the findings of the original UCLA research. A totally different context of course, but I feel I must stick up for the behaviourists, as without them, ds would be in a signficiantly worse place than he is now.

Im with rafape to some extent. Is it really the end of the world that he does this? I think your work stress sounds more of a problem than him.