Watching Porn: How normal is it? When is Porn an addiction?
Over the last 2 years, in my Practice, I have seen a huge increase in the number of my relationship counselling clients citing Porn addiction as a key factor in their relationship problems and break down. So how normal is it to watch porn? When does porn watching become a porn addiction?
During the last 15 years, the volume of porn available and the ease of accessing porn on the internet has grown exponentially. For many porn watchers, porn’s promise of easy, commitment free, sexual gratification can be just too hard to resist, when pornographic images, videos and chats are available any time of the day or night. While very occasionally watching porn has no ill effects on relationships, many users of porn are often surprised at how easily porn use can change from an occasional diversion or fantasy to an habitual problem that has the potential to destroy almost every aspect of their real lives.
Statistics on Pornography Impact
The following data highlights the scale of porn usage and its influence on legal and social outcomes:
| Category | Statistic / Finding |
|---|---|
| Online Searches | 1 in 8 online searches are to porn sites |
| Divorce Cases | 56% involved one partner with an obsessive interest in porn |
| Study Release | University of Central Florida study (March 2013) found porn use leads to cheating |
The Psychology of Addiction
While pornography is used by both men and women, there is little doubt that it is primarily men who become hooked on it. Men’s brains are wired in such a way that pornography hijacks the proper functioning of their brains and has a long lasting effect on their thoughts and lives. Many people don’t realize they have a porn watching problem until there is either a consequence, like losing a job or embarrassment from someone catching them, or they try to stop watching porn and find it more difficult to stop than they originally thought it would be.
The Impact on Relationships and Intimacy
There’s nothing virtual about the damage pornography can do to a relationship. Regularly using porn interferes with a person’s ability to maintain good self-esteem and have a mutually rewarding sexual intimacy with his partner. It is almost impossible to be a porn user without it having serious repercussions on their partner and on their relationship.
Does watching Porn help spice up your sex life? While occasionally watching porn with your partner can help get you in the mood for sex, regularly watching porn on your own actually decreases your sexual satisfaction.
Key Issues Caused by Regular Porn Use:
- Fantasizing and masturbating to porn enables you to gratify yourself instead of finding fulfilment being intimate with another person.
- Over time, real sex and lovemaking situations seem boring.
- Many men can get to the point where they start suffering erection problems and delays and/or can’t perform without fantasizing about a porn scene.
- Porn winds up creating an object that competes with their partner for erotic value.
Do you confuse Sex with Intimacy?
The natural progression is to grow from discovery to gradually realize that intimacy and true connection are superior to focusing solely on the opposite as sexually consumable objects. If, however, you continue to objectify the physical act of sex, you then can continue to have sex more about compulsive behavior and bodies, rather than intimacy. You may be a mature person in most ways, but you may not understand intimacy and may have confused intimacy with sexual activity.
Many porn addicts think they can keep their porn use separate from their relationship, but you can’t reach this ecstatic and rewarding state if you remain caught in the adolescent mindset interested only in body parts.