Relationship Advice Critique

Couples and Family Relationships

Relationship Advice Critique

Rokeyah S. Brown - 0793145

University of Guelph

        This paper will critically discuss the advice provided by Hill (2013) in the relationship advice column titled “My boyfriend’s porn makes me feel inadequate”. Hill (2013) suggested a romantic couple should engage in the watching of pornographic material together as a means of relieving the anxiety a woman may experience. There is a common understanding that communication and mutual understanding is key to a healthy and satisfying relationship overall for both partners involved.  However the purpose of this paper is to refute the advice provided by Hill (2013) using lecture material in addition to the empirical research as suggested by Stewart & Szymanski (2012).

        Women have an innate tendency to become jealous if a stimulus presents a possible threat to the success of their relationship with their significant other (Neustifer, 2015a). Therefore it comes by no surprise that women have a greater chance of becoming jealous if their partners are becoming sexually aroused from the sight of another woman. Although the relationship advice   recommended by Hill (2013) acknowledges self - esteem, it still encourages women to engage in the activity to please their partner, which is absurd. The relationship advice suggested by Hill (2013) does not consider the possible psychological impacts of the female that are extremely common that will cause an immediate threat to the success of the relationship.

        Partner interactions are crucial to healthy relationships. A common form of conflict would be cumulative annoyance (White, Martin, & Bartolic, 2013) which occurs when a partner engages in a behaviour that is not only deemed unacceptable to one but also frustrating. This presents a conflict that needs to be mutually resolved. The fact a partner enjoys the viewing of pornographic material may not be okay for the other and Hill (2012) did not consider this in his advice. It is important that while in in a relationship both partners need to consider how their actions may affect one another.

        Feelings of inadequacy is essentially problematic when only one partner engages in the watching of pornographic material and in most relationships the male is often the dominate gender (Olmstead, Negash, Pasley & Fincham, 2013). Stewart & Szymanski (2012) proposed that sexually explicit material has the capacity to negatively impact the self - esteem and perceptions of body images of females in relationships. This research study initially consisted of 330 young adult college women between the ages of 18 to 29 years old. All participants were students in a psychology program at a college in the United States of America. All participants were required to complete an online survey that examined the psychological impacts of their partner’s pornographic viewing habits. After the survey was completed the number of participants were reduced to only 308 female students. The females varied in ethnicity as well as in the range of their relationship lengths. The purpose of this study was to explore if females were psychologically impacted and if so to what extent did their partner’s pornographic viewing habits have on them.

        Students were recruited for this study through their psychology department as well via online announcements. For this study qualitative data was collected through the use of the online surveys the participants were asked to complete. In testing the effects of pornography, the qualitative reports about the women’s partners’ pornographic viewing habits were measured using the Perceived Partner’s Pornography Use Scale (Stewart & Szymanski, 2012). The level of self - esteem,  perceived quality of each relationship  and sexual satisfaction of the women were each examined using questionnaires that consisted of 10, 32 and 5 statements each respectively.

        The results of this study revealed that women’s perceptions of their partner’s pornographic viewing habits were negatively correlated with their self - esteem, relationship quality and sexual satisfaction. In other words the results suggest that the more men engaged in this activity, the worst women felt about themselves. The results of this study clearly refutes the advice proposed by Hill (2013), that pornography viewing enhances the relationship satisfaction. One critique on this research study is that it consists of educated women. In the future it would interesting to see if these results generalize to the public. In other words do women who are not college -  educated have the same views of their patterns watching pornographic materials as the women in this study.

        As previously mentioned Hill (2013) indicated there is a benefit of a couple watching pornographic material together suggesting it relieves feelings of anxiety. However the research provided above, proposes that pornographic material has the potential to do more harm than good in a relationship (Stewart & Szymanski, 2012).

        Hill’s (2013) advice suggested pornographic habits had the potential to enhance relationship satisfaction for both partners involved. However women have a common belief that pornographic viewing is a form of infidelity (Stewart & Szymanski, 2012). It is ludicrous that porn is becoming such an expected and accepted phenomenon in modern day cultures around the world. It is an exhausting issue that presents a greater issue to relationships. Through empirical research it has been proven that the viewing of pornographic material is more common among men than women. It is therefore evident that women are more often than none the ones who are effected mostly by this activity. Reports made by women identify feelings of betrayal, decreased sexual intimacy and a sense of distance in the relationship (Olmstead et al., 2013).