What happened to the sanctity of marriage?, page 1

I'm going to say something and most of you are probably not going to like it. I think that the biggest threat to the sanctity of marriage is pornography. I say this for several reasons.

1) Someone mentioned earlier the modern obsession with instant gratification...I think porn just feeds on this problem. For some porn can become a full blown addiction and the results aren't just that men aren't attracted to their wives anymore, but that they don't even bother to interact with them in other ways, like any other type of addict might.

2) Porn has seriously, seriously skewed our culture's view of what a woman is supposed to be. I'm not saying all men, but I am saying that I think men in the 18-30 age range who grew up with the internet and any kind of porn right at their fingertips, along with older men who have made up for lost time (lol) think that deep down inside all women are some kind of porn kitten. Maybe not consciously, but definitely unconsciously they think that women want to be sprayed in the face or some other thing that may not feel good but for some reason looks good on video. And this makes them fail not only to please their wives intimately, but also to connect with them in other intimate, nonsexual ways.

3) Men who deal with pornography on a regular basis have also forgotten what a woman is supposed to look like. (Most) Women who are not in the adult industry do not look like liposucked, collagen injected, fake boobed hookers. Most women have some dimples, or some wrinkles, or some freckles, or some other thing that according to the advertising/media bombardment is simply unacceptable. But if a man is becoming aroused on an increasingly frequent basis only by women who have more bodywork done than a low rider, then of course they aren't going to waste their time trying to cultivate a meaningful relationship with a normal looking woman.

4) Porn culture isn't just relegated to dirty movies and magazines. It's all over tv, movies, print, and advertisements in every medium. If a man is titilated by the (I'll say it nicely) Vampish sort of woman, and what man is not?, all he has to do is turn on cable, a recent hollywood movie, or open any sort of "men's" magazine with cars or fitness or whatever and he can see all the eye makeup and skin that the law will allow. And let's not leave out music videos, i.e. stripper training videos.

5)A long time ago in my grandparents' generation, before porn was available at the click of a mouse, and before it was even available in seedy theatres, people had a lot fewer sexual partners. No, not everyone was a virgin when they got married like some would have us believe. But, lots of people were, and the ones that weren't didn't go a-whoring with 30, 40, 50+ partners before they did tie the knot. And here's my biggest point: before porn was so readily available, there wasn't this crazy expectation for sex to be a mind blowing experience every time. Men didn't expect their wives to want to do all the things they've seen done in videos. There wasn't a constant comparison of your wife to Jenna Jameson in your mind. I think because of this comparison and expectation, men are always going to think that there is someone hotter who can rock their world better. A good friend of mine has told me he wishes he'd never seen a porn because no woman could ever live up to the height of the bar set in his mind by pornography, and I commend his honesty and introspection.

I think that this issue has to be examined on a macro level. I don't think that pornography is wrong per se, but it does have an effect on and in my opinion does cause problems in society. It may not ruin every marriage, but if it ruins enough then society suffers, much in the way that I don't disagree with an individual's right to choose to do drugs, but society is made up of individuals, and their drug use does have an effect on society.

I'm not laying every failed marriage at the foot of the husbands. I'm not some kind of feminazi who wants to blame men for all the problems. I think women are effected as well by a need for instant gratification and other marital issues. I'm only presenting one of the main reasons I think that over half of marriages fail and the other half seem to have lots of problems.

[edit on 12-5-2008 by sc2099]