I have a friend who has quit porn entirely because he has felt addicted to it in the past and the only way he feels he can quit is to quit cold-turkey. I think it’s possible to have an unhealthy relationship to porn and to develop a more healthy relationship to it without quitting entirely; he feels like that’s not possible for him. Do you feel like it’s possible for you to have a healthy relationship to porn at all?
I also wonder if pornography use is something you talk to your friends about at all. It’s something that for many years was almost impossible for me to talk about because I felt so much shame around it. Do you relate to that?
Generally, porn is like booze. Too much can lead to negative consequences, but a little probably won’t hurt.
But there are confounding factors:
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Porn isn’t real. It’s cartoons for adults. Building your sexual expectations around it is unrealistic.
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Depending on what you watch, it can be pretty degrading. See 1.
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It gives the impression that sex is the same as intimacy and love. If you don’t have healthy role models for romantic relationships, this can be a problem. I speak from experience.
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OnlyFans &c are built on extracting money from lonely dudes. If someone is already in a bad spot, it can exacerbate their problems.
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Some of the people in porn are treated badly, and end up worse of as a result.
In terms of positives: My sex ed classes didn’t admit the existence of the clit or cunnilingus. So porn has had at least a minor positive impact on my sex life (and that of my partners).
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You can consume porn and not be addicted. But if you managed to get addicted to porn, it will be incredible hard to return to a non addictive behavior when it comes to porn consumption. Kind of the whole point of being addicted is that you can’t regulate your behavior on your own anymore.
