Yeah...I was thinking about it last night before I fell asleep...and the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that righteous or not, John wasn't as likely to break as Dean was. John had lived a much longer and more cruel (to him, not him being cruel) life - he had served in Vietnam and experienced and survived personal loss/pain as an adult that Dean had experienced as a child. Furthermore, John didn't have the amount of self-destructive psychological problems that Dean had (he had psychological problems, but not as openly self destructive).

And yeah...it occurs to me now that the bonds in hell probably are demon-mind-controlled.

Damn you! You are causing me to switch sides in this pointless debate! :-P