Study Says You’re Better Off Not Hiding Your Porn From Your Partner

Admit it, you probably hide your porn . Whether it’s inconspicuously named or buried in nested folders on your computer, most people keep their porn out of sight. A new study suggests that we — and our relationships — may be better off owning up to it than hiding it out of fear or shame.

To be clear, the studies here were small and preliminary, but they do a great job of reiterating something we all already knew about healthy relationships: honesty and openness go a long, long way. Dr. Justin Lehmiller, writing at The Psychology of Human Sexuality, explained the research:

In a new study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, a sample of 340 heterosexual women aged 18-41 completed an online survey. To be eligible for the study, women had to report being in a relationship of at least six months’ duration with a man who uses pornography at least sometimes. The women were surveyed about their own and their partner’s use of pornography, as well as whether they thought their male partners were being honest about their porn use. In addition, participants were asked how satisfied they are with their relationship and whether they were distressed over their male partner’s porn use (e.g., do they perceive their partner’s porn use as a form of cheating?).

Most of the women in the sample (84.4%) believed that their partners were generally honest about their porn use, with 10.6% believing their partners had not been honest. The remaining 5% were undecided. The women who felt that their partners were dishonest reported being the least satisfied with their relationship and felt the most distress over their partner’s porn use. Those who thought their partners were honest were the most satisfied and least distressed, while the undecided folks fell somewhere in between.

The researchers also looked at whether women engaged in mutual porn use with their partners. Most of the women (70%) said that they never used porn with their partners, 5% said they did it rarely, and 25% said they did it with some regularity. Mutual porn use was not associated with relationship satisfaction (i.e., women were about equally satisfied regardless of whether they used porn with their partners); however, mutual porn use was linked to feelings of pornography distress. Specifically, those women who rarely or never used porn with their partners felt more distressed than those who often engaged in mutual porn use.

Let’s be fair: There are more people to hide your porn from than just a partner (kids, visitors, roommates or anyone else who may just happen to have physical access to your computer), and more reasons than just so they don’t find out about it. However, the study underscores a few points.

First, our relationships are happier and healthier when we’re open, honest, and not hiding anything, even if it’s something we’ve been conditioned to think is something that needs to be hidden. Second, it cements the point that, frankly, we’re grown adults, capable of being trusted with adult material. At a certain age and stage in our lives, we have the right to stop acting like children whose parents stumbled onto our store of naughty material (or pretend our significant other isn’t capable of looking at our browser histories.)

Hit the link to read more about the study below, or check out the full study here.

Is It Better to Hide Porn Use from Your Partner, or Own Up to It? [The Psychology of Human Sexuality]