Cheating

It depends on your partner. The vast majority of partners feel it is cheating. A better question would be, why in a committed relationship would you feel the need to use porn?

 

Putting aside the usual 'it's up to each relationship to set its own boundaries' stuff...

IMHO, if the person viewing the pornography is a porn addict, they're crossing a line, the same with any other addict and their drug of choice. I'm not sure I'd label it 'cheating' per se, but ultimately they're engaging in an activity that drags them down spiritually and emotionally, and the degradation of themselves is cheating their partner.

If someone isn't addicted to porn, I wouldn't consider watching it cheating.

 

Being open with it and having your partners consent is not cheating.

Doing it behind your partners back is definitively cheating.

Porn addiction hurts more to most than a one night stand. Every porn user needs to ask themselves: "if this isn't cheating, if this isn't wrong, then why can't I tell my spouse about it?"

 

During my p addiction I would say 'no'. During my detox I had to admit I was in denial. Why can something be right if you know it can deeply hurt your partner and even end your relationship? So we keep it a secret .. what we don't tell can't hurt, right? That's the denial.

So, yes it's cheating. There are some accounts of partners sort-of-knowing and saying they are okay with it. I believe this is possible in a 'benefits' relationship. But not in a relationship based on passion and love.

 

That depends, ask your SO. If i think so, yes, it is cheating.

 

I think you can define cheating in two different ways. Either you apply it to the act of violating your SOs boundaries (whatever they might be) and not being honest about it. Or you apply it to the act of sexually connecting to someone who isn't your SO. I think most people in committed relationships, if they were openly and honestly asked by their partner 'can I have sex with person xyz' the answer would be 'no, that would be cheating' so in this case dishonesty is not the problem, but rather the act of sharing sexual intimacy with another person is seen as a violation of the sexual-emotional commitment in the relationship. I think that historically, sexual promiscuity in a marriage/committed relationship has always been accepted as a universal, objective boundary, so that the word 'cheating' (=acting dishonestly) became synonymous with breaking the sexual commitment, which people would only dare to do behind their partner's back.

I think both definitions are independent of each other but can apply at the same time. When you watch porn without your SO's knowledge and she views it as a violation of her boundaries, you are cheating her twice. If your SO doesn't have a problem with you watching porn as an outlet for sexual intimacy and you don't tell her when you do, then you are not cheating on her either way.

For me personally, the sexual connection I have with my SO goes beyond the physical expression of that connection. Just like I don't need to hug or cuddle with my SO to feel emotionally/spiritually/romantically connected to him, I don't need to be sexually intimate with him to feel sexually connected to him as an expression of my love. For me, not only sexual intimacy is an expression of love, but also sexual desire and attraction. Sexual desire on a biological level is the need to connect with a body that visually appears attractive for making babies and being physically stimulated to the point of having a physical reaction. If my SO looks at a picture of another woman and gets himself aroused by her body and fantasies of having sex with her, then on some level, he did have sex with her, because he had a pleasurable physical response triggered by his sexual physical attraction to her physical appearance. I do acknowledge that it is still not the same as actually having sex with her and connecting with her body by physically interacting with her, but I still see it as a (mild) form of sexual infidelity. I think a lot of people are just afraid to commit to sexual intimacy on such a deep level, because in order to become open to intimacy, one has to become vulnerable to rejection. And for a lot of people, the potential pain involved might be too scary. Maybe social conditioning also affects that because in todays sexualized society, it seems to be normal to have people sexually objectify themselves with the effect of attracting sexual attention from other people, single or not. For me, sexual commitment is very easy, because my natural instincts, for whatever reason, are not working properly, and even if I wanted to, I could never feel sexual desire or attraction to a body without feeling an emotional connection to the person first (apparently this type of sexuality is called 'demisexuality'). So I also acknowledge that my personal circumstances make it very easy and simple to stay sexually committed, on every level possible.

Sorry if that was a long and complicated answer, but I thought I would offer a different perspective on your question.

 

Very well written @AngelofDarkness!