Watching porn can actually ruin your sex life. Here are 5 legit reasons why

Blame it on being a “fantasy escape” or simply a stress buster, countless studies have found how a majority of women around the world love watching porn just as much as the men do.

While studies have also proven how porn-viewing can lead to erectile dysfunction and performance anxiety in men, porn-viewing in women has consequences too!

Here are five science-backed ways how watching porn can affect your sex life.

1. It can raise your expectations from your partner
A study, published in The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, found that women who watched porn tend to compare their partners to porn stars, thereby, expecting more from them.

This can actually backfire, considering porn movies are just fantasies being played out and in the real world, a guy making a woman literally squirt at every go or simply getting an orgasm ten times himself is not even possible!

2. It might make you find your partner less attractive
Surely, sex is half physical and half psychological. Which is why attraction plays an important role in your sex life.

Be it his/her looks or personality, there’s got to be something about your partner that makes you want to get between the sheets with them. However, porn can ruin this fatal attraction, as per a study, published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology.

Also read: Is anal sex safe? Here are 8 things you need to know about anal intercourse

3. It may make you hypersexual
According to a Live Science report, German researchers found that women, who watched porn more frequently were more likely to turn hypersexual.

This means that they might feel like having sex very often, so much so, that it can cause trouble in their relationships—thanks to their higher likelihood of becoming too dependent on porn, masturbating excessively, and well—even becoming promiscuous!

4. It can reduce your chances of getting an orgasm in bed
A study conducted at Canada’s Universite Laval found that watching porn scenes led to dopamine secretion in the body. Now, this dopamine sends signals to your brain and activates its reward system.

Hence, if you’re drawing parallels with a porn movie you watched the day before while having sex with your partner, the excess dopamine released during that time can damage the reward system and make the brain unresponsive to the real source of pleasure. The result? You might not be able to experience an orgasm.

Also read: This is how you should be taking care of your sexual health in your 20s

5. If you use it for sex lessons, you’re only really fooling yourself
As per a 2018 study, published in the Journal of Sex Research, using porn as a ‘how-to’ manual can lead to poor-quality sex as mostly, the orgasms are misrepresented in the movies.

Not to mention, how so many actresses fake it till they make it in far-from-reality videos.

However, watching porn with your partner can work to your advantage

• A recent survey conducted by British sex toy and lingerie retailer Ann Summers, revealed that couples, who watched porn together once a week had more satisfying sex than those who didn’t. The reason, you wonder? Well, apparently, it gave women the “courage” to “ask for what they wanted in bed”.