ORIGINAL PAPER Pornography Use and Marital Separation: Evidence from Two-Wave Panel Data Samuel L. Perry 1 Received: 28 November 2016 / Revised: 12 May 2017 / Accepted: 7 September 2017 Ó Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017 Abstract As pornography use continues to increase in the U.S., studies have sought to understand its potential influence on mar- ital relationships. Yet, the primary focus of such studies has been pornography’s association with marital quality, not stability. Con- sequently, we still know relatively little about whether pornog- raphy consumption at one time predicts marital disruption later on. Drawing on data from the 2006 and 2012 waves of the nation- ally representative Portraits of American Life Study (N = 445), this article examined whether married Americans who viewed pornography in 2006, either at all or in greater frequencies, were more likely to experience a marital separation by 2012. Binary logistic regression analyses showed that married Americans who viewed pornography at all in 2006 were more than twice as likely as those who did not view pornography to experience a separation by 2012, even after controlling for 2006 marital happiness and sex- ual satisfaction as well as relevant sociodemographic correlates. The relationship between pornography use frequency and marital separation, however, was technically curvilinear. The likelihood of marital separation by 2012 increased with 2006 pornography use to a point and then declined at the highest frequencies of pornography use. Ancillary analyses, however, showed that this group of married Americans with high frequencies of 2006 pornography viewing and low likelihood of later marital separation was not statistically distinguishable from either abstainers or moderate viewers in terms of marital separation likelihood. All findings held regardless of gen- der. Data limitations and implications for future research are dis- cussed. Keywords Pornography Á Marriage Á Separation Á Divorce Á Relationships Introduction As pornography use in the U.S. has continued to increase over the past few decades (Carroll et al., 2008; Lykke & Cohen, 2015; Price, Patterson, Regnerus, & Walley, 2016), numerous studies have sought to better understand its potential influence on dating and marriage relationships (for reviews and meta-analyses, see Campbell & Kohut, 2017; Newstrom & Harris, 2016; Ras- mussen, 2016; Wright, Tokunaga, Kraus, & Klann, 2017). Yet, with few exceptions (e.g., Daines & Shumway, 2012; Perry & Davis, 2017; Perry & Schleifer, 2017), the vast majority of such studies have focused almost exclusively on relationship quality as the outcome, rather than stability—whether couples last. Conse- quently, we still know relatively little about the potential contribu- tion of pornography use to whether committed romantic rela- tionships break down over time. Focusing on heterosexual mar- riage in particular, and drawing on panel data from the 2006 and 2012 waves of the nationally representative Portraits of American Life Study (PALS), this article examined whether viewing pornog- raphy in 2006, either at all or in greater frequencies, predicted a higher likelihood of experiencing a marital separation by 2012. While insights from research examining other committed romantic relationships were included to develop theoretical expec- tations, this study focused on heterosexual marriage relationships for several reasons. First, because of pervasive cultural expecta- tions surrounding fidelity in marriage (Wright, Tokunaga, & Bae, 2014), pornography use may be a more salient issue in marital rela- tionships compared to dating relationships where men or women may make fewer claims on what their partner does privately (Bridges, Bergner,& Hesson-McInnis, 2003; Olmstead, Negash, Pasley, & Samuel L. Perry samperry@ou.edu 1 Department of Sociology, University of Oklahoma, 780 Van Vleet Oval, Kaufman Hall 335A, Norman, OK 73019, USA 123 Arch Sex Behav DOI 10.1007/s10508-017-1080-8