How to recognize and treat porn addiction before it destroys your relationship.
Janet and Ben came in for couple’s therapy because she had caught him watching internet porn. He was looking at “Cheerleaders Gone Wild”: videos featuring girls who are barely 18 years old. To her it was a betrayal and tantamount to watching child porn. Ben for his part was unrepentant, describing it as his curiosity and nothing more. He claimed he was only doing it because she was withholding sex from him. Her trust was shattered and he was angry.
After the births of their three children, Janet was understandably exhausted. They had argued about the children and along with Ben’s career stress they had become estranged. But instead of talking about it they both went into their own worlds. Ben became career driven and withdrew into the privacy of his porn while Janet became Super Mom. Herein lies one of the thorny issues about porn: easy accessibility.
At this point I set about researching the consequences of porn addiction on marriage and families. It was an interesting ride and was much more serious than I initially realized. The internal effects seem to be very powerful and the parts of the male brain that porn gains access to are unconscious and rather insidious. Let me say as well that with porn—like any other addictive substance—the difficulty lies in how much one uses it and the extent that it shuts down sexual activity with one’s mate. Couples who participate in porn together can experience some excitement but it is rarely interesting for women. For those who participate in secret and to the degree that it constitutes an addiction, porn use is the primary issue in their relationships. The manner and intensity of one’s involvement in porn is relative to the degree of damage it can possibly cause in the sex life in a marriage.
Some of the conclusions I came to were these: The internet provides not only photos and videos but online relationships that involve specific sexual proclivities. Porn is a highly elastic business. Entrepreneurs produce media catering to every variety of sexual interest that exists in men’s brains. Online sex stimulates the production of dopamine, which interestingly enough is the addiction maker in the brain, but also is what makes men monogamous. So the very thing that creates a homebody can intensify the need for excitement through porn. Also, continued porn use tends to increase, and the need for new stimulation and the desire to find more intense stimulation leads to more provocative porn sites. Porn users can find more and more progressively exciting images until they find themselves immersed in a fantasy world that makes the real world pale in comparative intensity.
Porn is ultimately isolating. Its use is a turning away from one’s partner and toward a hyper exciting new experience that stimulates the production of dopamine, which both heightens stimulation and creates addiction. Some men begin to prefer online sexual relationships to real ones. The once attractive wife can become mundane and uninteresting. In contrast there is a constant parade of new women in a milieu that is designed to make men’s brains turn cartwheels in excitatory intensity. Porn use is further reinforced by orgasm. Look out Pavlov: online porn beckons and the sexual bell rings.
Some signs that someone may have an addiction to porn are:
- Increasing porn use despite negative consequences
- Denial of the problem
- Irritability toward spouse regarding internet porn
- Using porn to escape from relationship issues
- Lying to others about the importance of cybersex
- Engaging in illegal acts
- Preoccupation with internet sex
- Loss of intimacy with one’s mate. (Carnes 2001).
There are vast differences between how men and women view—or don’t view—porn. The vast majority of women tend to be more focused on the emotional aspects of sexuality like connection and love. Men tend to respond more strongly to the visual aspects of sexuality, such as being more easily stimulated by physical beauty. Men respond to physical variety, which is the mainstay of internet porn.
Because men are more focused on the physical than the emotional aspect of sex, men are more likely to think of cybersex as a safe way to be stimulated—no touch, no foul—while women see the experience as an act of infidelity. When the excitement of online sex exceeds that of a porn user’s real, live partner, the relationship is in trouble.
The use of internet porn is frequently a symptom of larger relationship issues that has have not been worked through. In the case of Janet and Ben there were many issues that had lain dormant in their relationship. They both failed to bring up the matters that bothered them and instead turned away from each other in different ways. As their distance increased, so did Ben’s interest in cybersex. Once Janet discovered the porn it only intensified her anger and resentment toward him, until they were no longer able to sustain their relationship. They were both responsible for waiting way too long to address their differences, but in the end porn extended the emotional and sexual divide beyond their reach.
Because cybersex affects relationships between mates, it also affects entire families and causes a myriad of internal issues. Wives feel unwanted, unable to compete with online images, degraded, stupid or weak. They may see their partner as a bad partner, selfish and like they are “living a lie.” Husbands are up late viewing images, become more moody, neglect the family, spouse, job and friends. They become distant and care less about the feelings of their wives and children. When it comes to addiction, secrecy and overuse are the culprits. If children discover their father’s porn use there is a tremendous loss of trust and respect. In relationships with our partners, the more things we don’t talk about, the more they will affect the overall sense of intimacy.
So how do couples work through this issue? First off, suspend the use or overuse of internet porn. Second, find the stimulation with your partner. If she is your go-to person for sex then it behooves both of you to do some ground work to create a satisfying sex life. Clear away the dead wood in your relationship. Don’t run from your problems: face them and work them out. Find things to do together that you both consider play, or fun activities. If all else fails, get some therapy.
In the most profound sense, a loving relationship will always trump mere stimulation. The challenge is to create a loving and connected relationship that stimulates sexuality. Be willing to get to a place where you can be alone with your partner, where the world goes away and you can be sexually close. The work of building the sexual relationship you want with your partner is worth the effort, because in the end, cruise control is a sweeter ride than going two hundred miles an hour on the drag strip of internet porn.
Published on the Good Men Project : https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-good-life-the-truth-about-porn-and-relationships