Illustration by Cara Seccafien
It may be problematic, but it’s not the same as having an affair
By Jessica Berget, Editor-in-Chief
Everyone has their own idea of what is considered cheating, the most obvious form being sleeping with someone who isn’t your partner. Others, however, think it can take a less evident form—namely, watching pornography.
Even Dr. Phil believes that viewing pornography opens the door to cheating. The argument for this is that because one is getting pleasure by watching someone else that is not their partner, it could be considered cheating. While I can understand the reasoning for this on some level, I believe it is woefully illogical. Say your partner wants to masturbate and they—like a big portion of the population—watch porn to do it. I don’t believe they should be regarded as a cheater because of it.
Watching pornography is something nearly everybody does. Psychology Today reports that in an online survey of over 1000 people, 73 percent of women and 98 percent of men reported watching porn on the internet. Porn is definitely problematic and gives people a warped perception of sex, but it’s hardly something you can put on the same pedestal as cheating. Even an article arguing that porn is cheating suggests that it shouldn’t be a relationship ender because it’s a “different level” of cheating. If it really is the same as cheating, shouldn’t it be a good reason to end a relationship? This is exactly the contradiction in this argument that I find difficult to grasp.
Furthermore, if you don’t allow your partner to watch porn, how are they going to masturbate? I don’t think it’s healthy to expect your partner to never pleasure themselves without you. People need time alone to be intimate with themselves sometimes, and viewing pornographic videos is often an accompaniment with this. The fact is people just need to masturbate for stress relief or sexual release, and for many, orgasm is impossible without the visual and auditory aid of online pornography. This doesn’t make them a cheater; watching porn only makes them someone who grew up in a digital age where viewing such a thing is extremely common, and often hard to avoid on the internet.
To me, calling porn cheating downplays the real severity of infidelity. Being with someone else physically or intimately is the ultimate betrayal to your partner and can often ruin relationships and a person’s self-esteem. Watching pornography to masturbate to is a virtually harmless act and something that millions of people do every day—this may not make it okay, but it certainly doesn’t make it equal to having an affair.
I can understand the concern if your partner is choosing to engage with it instead of sex—if they go out of their way to purchase cam girl photos or videos, or if have an unhealthy obsession with it, I see the problem. I also see how it can be considered cheating if there was clear communication that neither party would engage with pornography and one of them discovers the other to be watching it. However, if there was no such communication, and if it doesn’t impede on your sex life or relationship, pornography watching is not cheating.
