Porn Addiction and Relationships: A Therapist's Guide

By Mark Ryan, BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist

You can't stop. You promised yourself last week that this time would be different. You delete the apps, clear the history, mean it. And then a few days later, you are back, and the shame is heavier than before. Or you are the partner who found something on a screen left open, and the world has tilted. The discovery itself feels like a betrayal, but more than that, you don't know how to think about what you have found.

"Porn addiction" is a phrase that means different things to different people. Some use it freely and some find it misleading. In my experience the useful position sits between the two. The suffering is real, the label is complicated, and the way through is rarely about porn alone. Shame rarely changes behaviour. Understanding does, and that is where this article starts.

This article is for two groups of readers. The first is people who feel they have lost control of their porn use and want to understand why. The second is partners whose relationships have been affected, who are trying to work out what it means and what to do next. The starting points are different, but the work overlaps more than you might expect. This piece is specifically about porn. Where the compulsive pattern involves other people rather than solo content, such as affairs, repeated encounters with new partners or apps used compulsively, a separate piece covers what the term sex addiction means and what helps.

What people mean when they say "porn addiction"

Most people who use the phrase are describing a pattern. They want to stop or cut down, they can't, and the cost keeps rising. It might be hours lost late at night, money, secrecy, a flat sense of connection with a partner, or a growing fear of being found out. The behaviour has become something they feel done to by, and not something they choose.

What I notice again and again is that two things get tangled together. One is how much someone uses porn and how hard it is to rein in. The other is how much the use clashes with what they believe about themselves and about right and wrong. Both are real, and they feed each other. A person raised with strong religious or cultural messages about sex can feel enormous shame about relatively modest use, and a person with no moral objection at all can still be frightened by how out of control it feels.

Research bears this out. A 2026 analysis of 66,994 people in 34 countries found moderate to strong links between how often people used porn and both problematic use and the feeling of being addicted, and only weak links with religiosity. Moral disapproval made the connection between frequency and problems stronger (Bőthe et al., 2026). So frequency matters, the gap between behaviour and values matters, and the combination is the most distressing. None of this means the distress is imagined. The suffering sits as much in the gap between what someone does and who they believe themselves to be as in the behaviour itself.

If you have come to this article carrying a heavy story about being broken or perverse, the most useful starting place is to set that story down for long enough to look at what is going on. Curiosity gets you further than self punishment ever does.

The relational impact

For most people who seek therapy around porn, the trigger is not the porn itself but its effect on a relationship. This is the work I see most often.

Trust erodes through secrecy more than through porn. Partners who discover porn use often describe the secrecy as the deeper wound. The image on the screen matters less than the discovery that someone they trusted has been hiding something for months or years. When a partner says "I feel like I don't know you", they usually mean the secrecy, not the content. A study of 217 couples who completed daily surveys for 35 days and further surveys over a year points the same way. People reported lower relationship satisfaction and intimacy on days when their own solitary use was unknown to their partner. When the use was known, they reported higher intimacy over the year, while their partner reported lower intimacy over the year (Vaillancourt Morel, Rosen, Bőthe and Bergeron, 2024). Put simply, hiding costs something and knowing costs something, and how a couple handles the knowing is where the work lies.

Partners often describe something close to a betrayal injury. There can be intrusive thoughts, hypervigilance, a checking of phones and histories, and a reassessment of the entire relationship. Questions about their own worth and desirability arrive uninvited. In my experience this is a real injury that deserves to be taken seriously in its own right, and not treated as background to the other person's recovery. If you are the partner, you are allowed to be shaken, and you are allowed to take time before deciding anything.

The "is this cheating?" question has no universal answer. Different couples hold different positions, and people in non monogamous and polyamorous structures often have to be more explicit about porn agreements than monogamous couples ever are. There is no objectively correct answer, only the answer this particular relationship has, or hasn't, worked out. In my experience what tends to matter most is whether the two of you are in the same place about it. For couples where the question is unresolved, the discovery often forces a conversation that should have happened years earlier. My article on infidelity and rebuilding trust covers some of this ground in more depth.

Sexual disconnection often runs alongside, but rarely the way people assume. Many partners worry that porn use means they are unattractive, or that they are being replaced. The picture is usually more complicated. Porn use often coexists with reduced sexual desire in the relationship, but it tends to be a symptom of avoidance and not its cause. The person using porn is often avoiding intimacy, not avoiding their partner specifically. When we get underneath it, the question is usually about what feels too risky to be seen in, and not about attraction at all.

Gay men, queer people and women face particular pressures. Most of the cultural conversation centres straight men, but porn use is not confined to them. Gay men often navigate porn alongside Grindr and other hook up apps in ways that can blur where porn ends and contact with others begins. Internalised shame from religious or cultural backgrounds shapes how the use is experienced. Women's porn use is easy to overlook in the public conversation, which can leave women who feel out of control with porn feeling doubly isolated. The relational impact does not look the same in every relationship, and a good therapist will not assume a script.

For most people who seek therapy around porn, the trigger is not the porn itself but its effect on a relationship. If that is where you are, you are welcome to get in touch with any questions before deciding anything.

For most people who seek therapy around porn, the trigger is not the porn itself but its effect on a relationship.

Why porn use becomes a problem

Porn use itself is not the problem. Many people use porn in ways that cause no harm to themselves or their relationships. The clinical question is what function the use is serving.

For many people, problematic porn use is a coping strategy that has stopped working. Porn can offer a reliable way to manage anxiety, loneliness, low mood, sleep difficulty, boredom, or the residue of stress that doesn't have anywhere else to go. The relief is real, which is what makes the behaviour so hard to interrupt. Whatever else porn is doing, it is also working, at least in the short term. The trouble comes when it becomes the only tool, and the feelings it was soothing keep growing underneath.

For others, porn use is bound up with avoidance. Avoidance of intimacy with a partner, of grief, of difficult feelings, of the discomfort of being known. Porn offers contact without contact, and intensity without vulnerability. I see this most often in people who carry early attachment wounds, where intimacy itself can feel unsafe.

Trauma plays a role for many people, both as something porn helps to numb and as something that shapes what people are drawn to. That does not mean every person who struggles has such a history. Where it is present, the work needs to be done carefully and at a pace the person can hold.

None of this excuses the impact on a partner. It does, however, mean that the change is rarely a matter of willpower. People who manage to stop using porn through sheer effort often find the underlying state, the anxiety, the loneliness, the avoidance, does not go away, and something else fills the space. Real change usually means working with what the porn was for, not just the porn itself. The encouraging side of this is that patterns built around coping can change when the circumstances and the support around a person change. Many of the people I work with are surprised by how much shifts once the shame loosens.

What helps

The work is rarely linear, but a few principles tend to hold.

Honesty before strategy. In my experience the most useful first step is rarely a behavioural plan. It is for the person using porn to be more honest with themselves, and then with their partner, about what is happening. Behavioural change without honesty tends to drive the behaviour underground, which compounds the original wound. Disclosure is not painless for a partner, which is why it is best done with support and at a time and place chosen with care.

Shared agreements rather than imposed rules. Couples who work through this well tend to negotiate explicit agreements about porn, and not to have one partner policing the other. The agreements vary widely. Some couples decide together that porn is fine. Some decide it is not. Some allow it within specific limits. What matters is that both people are involved in working out what they want their sexual life together to include, not that they arrive at a particular answer. My article on talking to your partner about sex covers how to approach these conversations.

Working out what the partner needs. A partner's request is often less about porn specifically and more about wanting honesty, presence, and the sense of being chosen. When the response focuses only on the behaviour, both people can miss what the conversation is about. Asking "what would help you feel safe with me again?" tends to open more than "how do I make this stop?".

Individual work where appropriate. Some of this work happens between the couple. Some of it needs to happen on their own. Looking carefully at what the porn use is for, whether the anxiety, the trauma or the avoidance, is rarely possible with a hurt partner in the room. A good piece of work often runs in parallel, with individual and couples therapy supporting each other.

Small, kind practices between sessions. Many people find it helps to notice the moment before the urge, what they were feeling and what they needed, and to put one other thing in that gap, such as a walk, a message to a friend or a few minutes of slow breathing. These will not fix anything alone. They do build the sense that the urge can be survived without acting on it, and that matters.

Professional support helps when the patterns are stuck. A 2025 meta analysis of 20 studies with 2,021 participants found that people receiving psychotherapy, mostly cognitive behavioural therapy and acceptance and commitment therapy, improved significantly more than controls on problematic porn use, how often they used it and sexual compulsivity, with large effects, and smaller effects on craving. The studies varied in quality, so the picture is encouraging and still developing (López Pinar, Esparza Reig and Bőthe, 2025). If you have tried to change and cannot, or if the discovery has destabilised the relationship in ways the two of you cannot work through alone, therapy can offer the structure and the third perspective the situation needs.

Working through this with a relationship therapist

If you are reading this and recognise yourself or your relationship, you do not need to have everything worked out before reaching out. Most of the people I see in this work arrive uncertain about what they want, unsure whether the relationship can survive what has happened, and carrying a fair amount of shame about being there at all.

I work with couples, individuals working through relationship issues on their own, and polycules navigating questions like this in non monogamous and polyamorous structures. My practice is sex positive and affirming, and I do not work from a moralising or abstinence based frame. The work is about understanding, honesty, and finding a way through that fits the relationship you have.

If you would like to talk it through, I offer a free 30 minute consultation in person at one of my central London rooms, or online by video, with no obligation to continue. You are welcome to reach out.

About the author

Mark Ryan is a BACP Accredited Psychotherapist and NCPS Accredited Relationship Therapist working in person across central London, from rooms in Pimlico, Kensington, and Angel. He works with couples, individuals, and polycules on relationship issues including affairs and betrayals, sex problems, sex addiction and porn use, jealousy, and considered separation. His practice is integrative, sex-positive, and affirming of all relationship structures and identities. www.riseandgrowtherapy.co.uk

References

Bőthe, B., Michaud, A., Beaulieu, V., Houle, S., Nagy, L., Koós, M., Kraus, S. W., Potenza, M. N., Demetrovics, Z., Költő, A., International Sex Survey Consortium, & Grubbs, J. B. (2026). A global investigation of the Moral Incongruence Model of Pornography Use across genders, religions, and cultures. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 636 to 649. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.2025.00540

López Pinar, C., Esparza Reig, J., & Bőthe, B. (2025). Psychotherapy for problematic pornography use: A comprehensive meta analysis. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 630 to 643. https://doi.org/10.1556/2006.2025.00018

Vaillancourt Morel, M. P., Rosen, N. O., Bőthe, B., & Bergeron, S. (2024). Partner knowledge of solitary pornography use: Daily and longitudinal associations with relationship quality. Journal of Sex Research, 61(8), 1233 to 1245. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2023.2219254