No such differences were found among women because of the negligible number of women who go overboard with online porn viewing. Therefore, frequent consumption appears to desensitize the conscience of the user, be it a woman or a man. We also observed a striking relationship between guilt and feeling hurt or offended by a partner's solo use of porn. A guilt-ridden woman is three times as likely as her male counterpart to feel wounded by a partner's porn use. Those who feel very guilty about their private use of porn are also less likely to admit it to their partners.
Men seem to be even less honest about their solo porn use.
The guiltier that a woman feels about her private use of porn, the more likely she is to experience relationship problems related to pornography. This may be related to the finding that men who feel very guilty about using porn in solitude report that online porn has been responsible for a substantial increase in their porn consumption and that they have a porn addiction problem. Possibly, the availability of online porn facilitates the loss of control in some men. Their viewing becomes compulsive, which in turn creates tension in the relationship, results in emotional and sexual neglect of their mate, and consequently triggers feelings of guilt. Our survey also showed that men are slightly more likely to feel guilty about using porn in private than in a couple.