Porn - Helpful or Harmful?

Now this is an issue that I'm sure EVERYONE has an opinion on... I know I do! Hehehehe...

I have never been into porn myself, but I do remember that the very first porn I came across was a hentai (japanese anime with sexual content) magazine that a friend had bought; I remember it was, of course, straight porn, but there was this one character that was drawn all furry and muscular... That was the one thing I found interesting in the whole thing. 

Later one, when I got internet, I found a way to download a movie called "Bear Trap" (which took about a month, since back then the connection was so damn slow). I could never see the whole thing but I did realise that I loved the bearish type guys...

Most recently, when I visited my current boyfriend about a year ago, I found out he had a bunch of porn dvd's, which I didn't like much - he got rid of most of them before he moved to Mexico, though.

Anyways, the other day I heard someone discussing the topic and how a lot of people tend to have issues in their sexual lives because either their partners or themselves do not fulfill the fantasy created by these films. I mean, guys like those shown in porn movies are very scarce (and are seldom as good as they look) and you would have to live for the gym to look even remotely like most of them.

This got me thinking... As men we think about sex a lot (besides the fact that being gay men, getting sex is extremely easy) and when we watch these performances, we tend to idealise the sexual act and expect utopic situations which would most likely not satisfy us even if they came true.

This is related, ironically, to a study performed to find out why some people eat more than others. I don't want to bore you with the details since I know that this geeky stuff is not interesting to everybody; the result was that the 'liking' (the actual process of enjoying the food as you are eating it) is way lower than the wanting (the expectation and imaginary feeling of enjoyment you think you will get when you eat), and therefore requires more stimuli to meet the requirements of one's imagination...

Is that the same case with porn? You build an act in your head and when it is consumated it is not nearly as hot as you thought? 

I know I have idealised some situations that, when actually happened, didn't really turn out to be as amazing as I had imagined... The opposite also being true; sometimes I had very low expectations and was quite pleasantly surprised (literally, hahahahaha).

So, do you think porn makes a relationship more tense because of the stress put on each other by unreal expectations? Or does it make it richer by allowing the couple to share kinks and experiment with new stuff?