About 1 in 3 married US men (33%) watch porn alone weekly or daily, and only 25% say they haven’t watched in the past year, according to the Wheatley Institute’s 2021 National Couples and Pornography Survey, fielded in 2020.
Married women watch far less. 51% reported no porn use in the past year, and fewer than 1 in 16 watch weekly or daily.
In this article, we’ll break down how often married men watch porn, the gap between husbands and wives, married vs single men, secrecy and whether wives see it as cheating, couples who watch together, religion and trends over time.
Top Married Men and Porn Statistics
- About 1 in 3 married US men (33%) watch porn weekly or daily, including 9.8% who watch every day.
- 25% of married men and 51% of married women say they haven’t watched porn in the past year.
- 19.6% of married men watched porn weekly or more in RELATE data, vs 2.9% of married women, nearly 7 times as many.
- Casually dating men were about 2.6 times as likely as married men to watch porn weekly (50.0% vs 19.6%).
- 1 in 4 men in committed relationships actively hide their porn use from their partner.
- About half of married men say they watch porn with their wife, vs about a third of married women.
- Nearly 1 in 3 engaged and married women see porn as a form of marital infidelity.
What Percentage of Married Men Watch Porn?
About 75% of married US men watched porn in the past year, since only 25% reported no use, according to the 2021 National Couples and Pornography Survey from the Wheatley Institute (the 75% is our calculation).
The Wheatley Institute is part of Brigham Young University, a church-sponsored university, and the Austin Institute co-sponsored the survey. Qualtrics surveyed 3,750 adults in committed heterosexual relationships and 713 matched couples in 2020, according to PR Newswire.
Frequent use is common too. About a third of married men (33%) watch porn alone weekly or daily, while fewer than 1 in 16 married women do.
Here’s a breakdown of porn use among married Americans:
| Measure | Married Men | Married Women | Survey |
|---|---|---|---|
| No porn use in the past year | 25% | 51% | NCPS (2020) |
| Watched porn in the past year | 75% | 49% | Our calculation from NCPS |
| Watch weekly or daily | 33% | Under 1 in 16 | NCPS (2020) |
| Never use porn | 37% | 65% | RELATE (2011–2013) |
| Watch weekly or more | 19.6% | 2.9% | RELATE (2011–2013) |
The two surveys disagree on how many husbands abstain. 37% of married men never used porn in RELATE data from 2011–2013, while 25% reported no past-year use in 2020. The samples, years and questions differ, so the gap isn’t evidence of a trend.
RELATE is an online relationship questionnaire, not a probability sample. Its 21,555 respondents, including 6,013 married people, were weighted to census norms.
How Often Do Married Men Watch Porn?
23.3% of married men watch porn weekly and another 9.8% watch daily, according to survey results released by the Wheatley Institute and the Austin Institute through PR Newswire in November 2021.
That’s roughly 1 in 10 husbands who watch every day.
An older survey with a different sample shows lower frequency. 19.6% of married men watched porn weekly or more in 2011–2013, according to RELATE research by Carroll and colleagues summarized by the Wheatley Institute.
Christian husbands report less. 18% of married Christian men said they look for porn more than once or twice a month, and 61% said they never look, in a 2015 survey by Barna Group, a Christian research firm, commissioned by Josh McDowell Ministry and Cru, reported by Christianity Today.
Here’s a breakdown of how often married men watch porn:
| Frequency | Married Men | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly or daily | 33% | NCPS (2020) |
| Weekly, but not daily | 23.3% | NCPS (2020) |
| Weekly or more | 19.6% | RELATE (2011–2013) |
| Daily | 9.8% | NCPS (2020) |
| More than once or twice a month (Christian men) | 18% | Barna Group (2015) |
| Never look for porn (Christian men) | 61% | Barna Group (2015) |
Do Husbands Watch More Porn Than Wives?
Yes, by a wide margin. 19.6% of married men watched porn weekly or more vs 2.9% of married women, nearly 7 times as many, in RELATE data from 2011–2013 (Wheatley Institute; the ratio is our calculation).
Researchers call this the “porn gap.” 65% of married women and 37% of married men said they never use porn, a 28-point gap, according to Carroll and Willoughby at the Institute for Family Studies, a pro-marriage think tank often described as socially conservative (2017).
The 2020 survey shows a similar split. 51% of married women vs 25% of married men reported no porn use in the past year, a 26-point gap.
How spouses watch differs too. Among married people who use porn, 45% of men always watch alone, vs 11% of women, about 4.1 times as many.
Here’s a breakdown of the porn gap between husbands and wives:
| Measure | Married Men | Married Women | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Never use porn (2011–2013) | 37% | 65% | 28 points |
| No use in the past year (2020) | 25% | 51% | 26 points |
| Weekly or more (2011–2013) | 19.6% | 2.9% | Nearly 7x |
| Always watch alone, users (2011–2013) | 45% | 11% | About 4.1x |
| Feel unable to stop (2020) | 1 in 5 (dating and married men) | Under 3% | Not comparable |
Do Married Men Watch Less Porn Than Single Men?
Yes. 50.0% of casually dating men watched porn weekly or more vs 19.6% of married men, about 2.6 times as many, according to RELATE data from 2011–2013 summarized by the Wheatley Institute.
Engaged men look almost exactly like husbands at 20.3%, while seriously dating men sit at 40.0%. Abstaining follows the same pattern: 25% of dating men never used porn, vs 38% of engaged and 37% of married men.
Here’s a breakdown of men’s porn use by relationship status:
| Relationship Status | Never Use Porn | Watch Weekly or More |
|---|---|---|
| Casually dating | 25% | 50.0% |
| Seriously dating | 25% | 40.0% |
| Engaged | 38% | 20.3% |
| Married | 37% | 19.6% |
The 2020 survey points the same way. 19% of dating men never view porn, vs 25% of married men (Wheatley Institute).
Attitudes differ as well. 35% of married Americans called porn morally acceptable in 2018, vs 50% of unmarried Americans, a 15-point gap, according to Gallup (telephone survey of 1,024 adults).
These surveys are cross-sectional, so they can’t show whether marriage reduces porn use or whether lighter users are more likely to marry. Relationship status sits alongside gender and age as one of the clearest dividing lines in what counts as normal porn use.
Do Wives Know Their Husbands Watch Porn?
Often not fully. In 37% of couples, the man reported more porn use than his partner knew about, and only 46% of women judged their partner’s use correctly, according to RELATE data on dating, engaged and married couples summarized by the Institute for Family Studies.
Men read their partners better. 69% of men judged their partner’s porn use correctly, in the same sample of 1,486 couples.
Some men conceal it on purpose. 1 in 4 men in committed relationships actively hide their viewing, according to the Wheatley Institute, vs about 10% of women, according to the Institute for Family Studies, about 2.5 times as many.
Women underestimated how much their male partners watched by about half, according to Deseret News reporting on the 2020 survey.
Diary data shows how much solo viewing goes unmentioned. Partners didn’t know about 64% of solo porn use by men and non-binary participants over 35 days, in a study of 217 couples by Vaillancourt-Morel and colleagues reported by PsyPost.
Most women still trust their partners. 84.4% of women with a porn-using partner said he is generally honest about it, in a survey of 340 women by Resch and Alderson reported by Sex and Psychology.
Here’s a breakdown of secrecy and awareness in couples:
| Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Women who judged partner’s use correctly | 46% | RELATE couples (2011–2013) |
| Men who used more than partner knew | 37% | RELATE couples (2011–2013) |
| Men who used less than partner thought | 17% | RELATE couples (2011–2013) |
| Partnered men who actively hide use | 1 in 4 | NCPS (2020) |
| Partnered women who hide use | About 10% | NCPS (2020) |
| Married adults worried partner withholds details | About 1 in 4 | NCPS (2020) |
| Men’s solo sessions unknown to partner | 64% | Vaillancourt-Morel et al. (35-day diary) |
| Women who believe partner is honest about use | 84.4% | Resch & Alderson |
Do Wives Consider Porn Cheating?
Nearly 1 in 3 engaged and married women see porn as a form of marital infidelity, according to RELATE data summarized by the Institute for Family Studies. About 1 in 5 engaged and married partners say porn is acceptable only when viewed together.
Women are more likely to object than men. 56% of women would prefer their partner not watch porn, vs 29% of men, according to a 2015 YouGov poll of 1,000 US adults.
Many wives are not bothered, though. Among women married to or living with a partner who uses porn, 38% felt positive about it, 34% neutral and 28% negative, in a survey of 625 women by Ruffing at Boston University.
Most Americans stop short of calling it cheating. Only 19% said watching porn without your partner is cheating, in a 2017 Deseret News/YouGov poll reported by Lifeway Research. 52% say viewing porn is morally wrong, vs 90% for a married person having an affair, according to Pew Research Center (2025 survey).
Here’s a breakdown of how partners and the public view porn use:
| View | Share | Population | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Would prefer partner not watch porn | 56% | US women (2015) | YouGov |
| Viewing porn is morally wrong | 52% | US adults (2025) | Pew Research Center |
| Would prefer partner not watch porn | 29% | US men (2015) | YouGov |
| Negative about partner’s porn use | 28% | Women with a porn-using partner | Ruffing (BU) |
| Porn is a form of marital infidelity | Nearly 1 in 3 | Engaged and married women (2011–2013) | IFS |
| Watching porn without partner is cheating | 19% | US adults (2017) | Deseret News/YouGov |
Gender splits show up in older polls as well. 42% of women and 25% of men said looking at a sexually explicit website is unfaithful in a 2004 ABC News survey, one of several polls in the data on whether watching porn counts as cheating.
Do Married Couples Watch Porn Together?
Many do. About half of married men say they watch porn with their wife, while about a third of married women say they watch with their husband, according to the 2020 survey released through PR Newswire.
The gap comes from different respondents, so husbands and wives may simply remember or define shared viewing differently.
Older RELATE data suggests most shared viewing is occasional. 45% of married men who use porn always watch alone, and only 5% mostly or always watch as a couple, vs 15% of married women (Wheatley Institute).
Unmarried couples share too. 44.8% of people in unmarried relationships sometimes watched explicit material with their partner, in a US study of 1,291 adults by Maddox, Rhoades & Markman (2011).
Shared viewing is linked to better outcomes in some studies. Across 761 couples, watching together was associated with higher relationship and sexual satisfaction, according to PsyPost reporting on Kohut and colleagues; the studies are correlational.
Source: PR Newswire, Wheatley Institute
Why Do Married Men Watch Porn?
Partners play a part. 32.0% of men said they used porn because a partner was unwilling or unable, and 30.7% used it with a partner in a sexual context, in a US sample of 556 men (2020) by Solano and colleagues, as summarized by the American Institute for Boys and Men (2026).
The Solano sample came from a large internet survey and wasn’t limited to married men, so treat these shares as indicative.
Pleasure, boredom and stress are linked to how often people watch. Those 3 motives were the ones linked to frequency in research on the Pornography Use Motivations Scale by Bőthe and colleagues (Flinders University).
Some men feel stuck. 1 in 5 dating and married men say they feel unable to stop, vs under 3% of married women, according to the 2020 survey (PR Newswire).
Porn Use in Marriage by Age and Religion
Younger men watch most often. 17.3% of men under 30 in committed relationships view porn daily vs 6.9% of men over 30, about 2.5 times as many, according to the Wheatley Institute.
Religious surveys disagree on Christian husbands. A 2014 poll commissioned by Proven Men Ministries, a Christian recovery ministry, found 55% of married Christian men look at porn at least monthly, in a Barna Group sample of 388 self-identified Christian men reported by Women of Grace.
That’s far above the 18% of married Christian men who said they look more than once or twice a month in Barna’s 2015 survey. The polls had different sponsors, samples and question wording.
Across all adults, 54% of practicing Christians report consuming porn at least occasionally, vs 68% of non-Christians, according to Barna Group (2023 survey with Pure Desire Ministries).
Here’s a breakdown of porn use by age and religion:
| Group | Measure | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Partnered men under 30 | Daily | 17.3% | NCPS (2020) |
| Partnered men over 30 | Daily | 6.9% | NCPS (2020) |
| Married Christian men | At least monthly | 55% | Proven Men/Barna (2014)* |
| Married Christian men | More than once or twice a month | 18% | Barna Group (2015) |
| Married Christian men | Never look | 61% | Barna Group (2015) |
| Practicing Christians | At least occasionally | 54% | Barna Group (2023) |
| Non-Christians | At least occasionally | 68% | Barna Group (2023) |
*Advocacy-commissioned poll. Sources: Wheatley Institute, Women of Grace, Christianity Today, Barna Group
Is Porn Use in Marriage Rising?
Among all US men, porn use has edged up. 31.7% saw an X-rated movie in the past year in 1973, vs 38.9% in 2018, a 7.2-point rise, according to the General Social Survey (NORC; Miller et al., 2020).
Wording matters. In 2022, 43% of men said they saw an X-rated movie, but 65% said they looked at pornography when the survey defined it to include internet material, a 22-point gap, according to the American Institute for Boys and Men (2026).
Here’s a breakdown of US men who saw an X-rated movie in the past year:
| Year | All US Men |
|---|---|
| 1973 | 31.7% |
| 2000 | 32.2% |
| 2010 | 37.4% |
| 2012 | 35.0% |
| 2014 | 34.2% |
| 2016 | 40.0% |
| 2018 | 38.9% |
| 2022 | 43% |
The GSS trend reports don’t split this question by marital status, and the 2011–2013 and 2020 couple surveys used different samples, so there’s no clean married-only trend line. Our breakdown of how many men watch porn overall compares these national surveys by age and question wording.
Self-reported use is up in Barna’s surveys too. 61% of US adults used porn at least occasionally in 2023, up 6 points from 55% in 2015 (Barna Group). Meanwhile, the share of Americans calling porn morally acceptable fell from 43% in 2018 to 31% in 2026, according to Gallup.
Does Porn Use Affect Marriage?
The evidence is correlational. Married adults who began watching porn between General Social Survey waves had about an 11% predicted chance of divorce vs 6% for those who didn’t, in a 2006–2014 panel study by Perry and Schleifer (PubMed), though people in struggling marriages may also be more likely to start.
Couple studies on satisfaction, conflict and divorce make up most of the evidence on how porn affects relationships.
Methodology
We reviewed 159 data points from 38 sources. The core married-couple figures come from two US surveys: the National Couples and Pornography Survey (Willoughby, Rhoades and Carroll; Qualtrics online panel fielded in 2020, 3,750 adults in committed heterosexual relationships plus 713 matched couples, released in 2021) and RELATE (an online relationship questionnaire, 2011–2013, 21,555 respondents including 6,013 married people, weighted to census norms; 1,486 matched couples).
Both come from researchers linked to the Wheatley Institute at Brigham Young University, a church-sponsored university; the 2021 survey was co-sponsored by the Austin Institute, and RELATE findings were also published by the Institute for Family Studies, a pro-marriage think tank often described as socially conservative. Neither is a probability sample.
Barna Group is a Christian research firm, and the 2014 Proven Men poll was commissioned by a Christian recovery ministry. General Social Survey figures cover all US men, not married men alone; its X-rated movie question dates to the 1970s and counts fewer viewers than its 2022 pornography question. Attitude figures come from Gallup, Pew Research Center, YouGov and Deseret News/YouGov. “Watched in the past year” shares, gaps and ratios are our calculations from the published figures.
Key Takeaways
Most married men watch porn at least occasionally. About 75% watched in the past year and about a third (33%) watch weekly or daily, while 51% of married women didn’t watch at all in the past year.
Marriage is linked to lighter use: 19.6% of married men watched weekly or more in RELATE data, vs 50.0% of casually dating men. Secrecy is common: 1 in 4 partnered men hide their viewing, and in 37% of couples the man watched more than his partner knew.
FAQ
What percentage of married men watch porn?
About 75% of married US men watched porn in the past year, since 25% reported no use in the 2020 National Couples and Pornography Survey. About 33% watch weekly or daily, and 9.8% watch daily.
Is it normal for married men to watch porn?
It’s common. About 3 in 4 married men watched porn in the past year in a 2020 survey, and 19.6% watched weekly or more in earlier RELATE data. Married women watch far less: 51% didn’t watch in the past year.
Why do married men watch porn?
In one US sample of 556 men, 32.0% said they used porn because a partner was unwilling or unable, and 30.7% used it with a partner. Sexual pleasure, boredom avoidance and stress reduction are the motives linked to how often people watch.
Do couples watch porn together?
Many do. About half of married men and about a third of married women say they watch porn with their spouse. Among unmarried couples, 44.8% sometimes watched together in one US study.
Do wives know their husbands watch porn?
Often not fully. In 37% of couples, the man reported more porn use than his partner knew about, and 1 in 4 partnered men say they actively hide their viewing. Women underestimated their partners’ use by about half in a 2020 survey.
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