Women's perceptions of their male partners’ pornography consumption and relational, sexual, self, and body satisfaction: toward a theoretical model

ABSTRACT

Are the relational, sexual, body, and self satisfaction of heterosexual women affected by their partners’ pornography consumption? And if so, how? These questions have been asked of women in smaller-scale, qualitative investigations for some time, and are being asked increasingly in larger-scale, quantitative studies. Mirroring the general trend in the pornography effects literature, early papers tended to anticipate negative effects, while more recent papers have often argued for positive effects. The goals of the present paper were to narratively synthesize findings from relevant qualitative reports, meta-analyze the quantitative literature, and provide a forward thinking set of possibilities for future studies. Toward the latter goal, the Partners’ Pornography Use and Personal Satisfaction Model (3PSM) is proposed.

KEYWORDS:

• Pornography
• sexually explicit media
• satisfaction
• meta-analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.