So is watching porn behind your partner’s back the equivalent of having an affair? Atlantic Magazine currently features some in-depth musing on this very question.

Ross Douthat clearly believes that the parallels between adultery and indulging in porn are much closer than many of us may recognise. He concedes that his argument is from a socially conservative, Christian viewpoint, but he does put forward some interesting ideas without moralising.

The suburbanite with the hardcore porn hookup is masturbating to real sex, albeit at a DSL-enabled remove. He’s experiencing it in an intimate setting, rather than in a grind house alongside other huddled masturbators in raincoats, and in a form that’s customized to his tastes in a way that mass-market porn like Deep Throat and Debbie Does Dallas never was. … The Internet era has ratcheted the experience of pornography much closer to adultery than I suspect most porn users would like to admit.

Douthat extends his theory with a consideration of how porn-focussed masturbation, secrecy and the financial cost of porn lead men further into the realms of virtually adulterous behaviour.

It makes for an interesting read. His reasoning is stretched at times; he has to navigate around the tricky aspects of couples openly consenting to watch porn, or the artistic end of the erotica market. I don’t get all of his points, but he does cast the complex nature of porn addiction in an interesting light.