If you want a sustainable marriage, you may want to save the porn watching for when you’re with your partner.

According to new research, watching porn solo is a precursor for divorce.

A working paper presented by the American Sociological Association reports that men are twice as likely to get divorced after they start watching porn alone; women, meanwhile, are three times more likely to throw in the towel after indulging in X-rated clips by themselves.

Sociologists from the University of Oklahoma surveyed more than 2,000 men and women between 2006-2010, 2008-2012, and 2010-2014.

They documented their levels of marital happiness, marital status and porn habits by checking in with them at the beginning, middle, and end of the four-year study period.

“Beginning pornography use between survey waves nearly doubled one’s likelihood of being divorced by the next survey period, from 6% to 11% (in men), and nearly tripled it for women, from 6% to 16%,” wrote assistant sociology professor Samuel Perry, the lead author of the study.

Those who reported being “very happy” in their marriages at the start of the study were three times more likely to be divorced by the next survey. So, basically, porn watching is less likely to ruin already sub-par relationships. Furthermore, more religious marriages were less likely to split when solo porn watching was added to the equation.

It also found that the younger an adult was when he or she started watching porn, the higher was their probability of getting divorced.

Perry says that porn watching causes fewer problems in the marriage of older couples because they are more financially secure and their relationships are more established.

The study found evidence that giving up a porn habit could save a relationship. At least, that was the case when the ladies stopped watching porn – their divorce rates went down to six per cent. As for the men, well, so few of them gave it up that the sample size wasn’t large enough to detect a similar trend.

The whole porn watching and unhappy marriage correlation sounds like a chicken and egg type of situation.

Perhaps people only started indulging in porn because their marriages were already unhappy and unfulfilling. Perry, however, doesn’t think this is necessarily the case.

“We don’t think it’s the relationship quality leading to the porn use and divorce,” says Perry, pointing out that the data was documented over time as opposed to just a snapshot. “We are pretty confident about establishing the directional effects.”

Ok then.

He suggests that watching porn can lead to curiosity, distance and infidelity.

The good news for the avid porn watchers is that watching porn together as a couple may not lead to a higher risk for divorce – in fact, it may be all you need to spice up your marriage.

[ninja_form id=104]

[ad_bb1]