by Marty Klein
Some men don’t know exactly who they are, sexually, so it’s more emotionally comfortable to slide into an existing erotic structure (the world of porn) than to create their own. It’s hard to be emotionally or sexually intimate when you don’t have enough of a self.
Performance anxiety doesn’t get mentioned often enough as a demotivator in a wide range of sexual and emotional situations. It’s the main reason so many younger men use Viagra—“for insurance,” they tell me. Even for men who have never had an actual problem, masturbation to porn is the only kind of sex in which they feel no performance (or other) anxiety. Some men who have had erection or ejaculation disappointments are, unfortunately, certain they can’t satisfy a partner, so they settle into a lifestyle of solo sex.
Some therapists are keen to talk about “attachment” styles and inadequacy; they see porn use as an expression of poor attachment to a partner. While this isn’t true for everyone who looks at porn, it is true for some—they just don’t have the emotional skills or the adult desire to focus their sexual energies on one or more adults.2
On the other hand, columnist Dan Savage points out that many heterosexual men are angry at women, and that they enjoy porn where they can feel in control of a sexual situation, don’t have to be attuned to a woman’s needs or feelings, and can get pleasure watching videos of women being treated roughly. For men who are haunted by ambivalent feelings about women, who can’t express reasonable resentment toward them, or who think of them as “other,” watching porn can provide erotic experiences that help them avoid the complications of relating to a real person.
E. Has the guy had any sex-related trauma? Has he felt humiliated by an erection or ejaculation difficulty? Such events affect some men deeply. Because erection and ejaculation are involuntary, any experience suggesting they are unreliable or likely to go awry is a potential focus of anxiety.3 It doesn’t have to be this way; some men have one or two disappointing experiences with erection or ejaculation, then relax and move forward.
But given the typical definitions of sexual adequacy and masculinity for American men, many overgeneralize from a couple of (perhaps alcohol-fueled or simply circumstantial) erection “failures” and create anxiety—which, ironically, creates more of these “failures.” From there it can be a short step to withdrawal from women and/or taking refuge in porn, in which anyone can feel confident. The viewer may symbolically absorb the obvious adequacy of the performers, much like consumers of adventure stories vicariously enjoy the hero’s courage and strength.
Of course, some boys experience sexual exploitation or trauma, which can lead to sexual or intimacy problems in adulthood. Withdrawing into the controlled environment of masturbating to pornography can seem like the only safe erotic choice.
There’s also the not-coercive-but-creepy erotic childhood experiences that are all too common—not just for girls, but for boys as well.
For example, there’s lonely Mom continually confiding too much about her personal life to her son; there’s intrusive Mom expressing way too much interest in son’s toilet habits, genital development, masturbation, sexual fantasies, and adolescent exploits; there’s licentious Dad encouraging son to be sexual before he’s ready (and offering too much help in making it happen); there’s neurotic Mom who’s starting to feel old and unattractive, walking around the house half-undressed and wanting reassurance that she’s still attractive; and there’s narcissistic Dad who flaunts his sexual appeal, multiple affairs, or stream of inappropriate sexual commentary on every female who enters his field of vision, expecting his son to be a buddy and join in.
All of these can create unconscious reasons, later in life, to withdraw from sex with a partner, and/or prefer the safer, controlled, less-threatening idealizations of porn. Porn can be especially reassuring because the viewer can choose exactly what kinds of experiences he wants to have: No oversexed mothers for me! No performance pressure for me! No actual adult women with emotional needs, like my mother’s that overwhelmed me when I was a child!
F. Finally, we should remember that there are guys out there who are clueless (their word, not mine) about women’s bodies and sexuality. There are millions of adult virgins out there (not all of them engineers, although ironically a lot of men who develop the software and hardware that run the Internet are de facto virgins), and the Internet is perfectly designed for their primitive expressions of sexuality. Additionally, there are inexperienced men who scrutinize Internet porn to learn more about women and sex, to gain confidence and a program before their first partner encounter.
In a similar way, Internet porn can seem perfect for men with Asperger’s Syndrome or ADHD. Their limited empathy or narrow emotional focus complicates both getting a partner and sharing sex, so masturbation to porn may be an ideal sexual environment. The repetition and predictability found in porn can be soothing, regardless of the content. For those with an incomplete sense of self, porn offers immersion in a ready-made world, almost like parking themselves on a conveyor belt, which carries them along without requiring too much of their own engagement.
And speaking of adaptation, we should mention the guy who spends hours with Internet porn—not watching, just collecting and sorting. Of course, when people spend time like this with stamps, baseball cards, Disney memorabilia, digital songs, or other non-sexual things, they’re called hobbyists, which is generally considered a good thing—unless they lose touch with their loved ones, or job, school, or other responsibilities.
For some guys, collecting porn thumbnails is a symbolic way of trying to get the messy world of their sexuality under control, or perhaps a compulsive attempt to wrangle the Internet into a coherent, manageable suite. It often has little or nothing to do with orgasm or physical pleasure.
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There’s one more complication in deciding whether someone has a porn problem—the fact that a guy might prefer having a “porn problem” to another kind of problem, and therefore collude with his wife or others in his “diagnosis.” For example, most people would rather do anything than tell their partner “I love you, but sex with you isn’t much fun anymore,” or “I feel so much pressure to make you orgasm from intercourse that it’s hard to enjoy sex with you.” Compared to those conversations, having a “porn problem” might seem quite acceptable.
SO WHAT IS A “PORN PROBLEM”? WHO HAS ONE?
Say a guy isn’t compulsive with the Internet outside of porn; doesn’t feel guilty about masturbating; isn’t terrified of intimacy; feels good about himself and his sexuality. He doesn’t like his porn habits, but he can’t seem to change them. Should we say the guy has a porn problem?
Rather than “porn problem,” I prefer the description “a problem expressed through porn use.” It seems more accurate and more helpful in diagnosing or treating an actual problem.
America’s PornPanic hates this textured and humanistic formulation, even though it’s helpful in understanding and treating people’s problems. PornPanic depends on the narrative that porn itself is a problem, exerting its destructive power by intruding into the lives of good people and their relationships. PornPanic demands a narrative that porn (that is, sex) undermines people’s values and decision-making, rather than holding people responsible for their choices in a complicated world, part of whose complexity is our sexuality. This narrative helps demonize porn, helps diminish both male and female eroticism, and keeps moral entrepreneurs in business.
Many people have problems that they’re expressing through their use of pornography. I’m sympathetic toward them (and their loved ones, if they’re being affected), and I work hard every week to help them heal. To do that, it’s important that I not get distracted by their porn use—and that I understand the bigger circumstances of their activity as best I can.
So how are problems expressed through porn use best treated? In this chapter we’ve looked at the many questions a skilled clinician would ask someone concerned about their porn use. When those questions reveal unresolved em
otional issues (fear of intimacy, anxiety about perversion, belief that masturbation is harmful or offensive to God, etc.), the clinician can address them with his or her full inventory of clinical tools—assuming he or she is not distracted by the pornography aspect of a case.
That said, here are some goals I recommend for those struggling with unwanted or self-harming pornography use:
Deciding it’s OK to masturbate—with or without porn
Finding other ways to regulate one’s internal state, including medication
Coming to terms with one’s religious issues around sexuality
Accepting one’s sexual fantasies and preferences
Resolving personal issues about sexual adequacy and “normalcy”
Resolving internal erotic conflicts, reducing guilt and shame
Diagnosing and treating any depressive, anxiety, mood, or attention disorders
Repairing one’s sex life with one’s partner; this may involve recommitting to the relationship
Talking honestly with one’s partner about sex
Learning to single-task during partner sex—i.e., to focus on nothing but the sex and your partner. The opposite of multi-tasking.
When issues such as these are resolved, an individual can decide exactly what relationship (if any) he would like to have with pornography, and what that looks like in his particular life.
Note that none of these includes the assessment that someone is bad, perverted, selfish, addicted, the wrong orientation, misogynist, sexually inadequate, potentially violent, or deserving punishment. The approaches discussed here are far more helpful and accurate.
Chapter Nine
WHY THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS PORN ADDICTION—AND WHY IT MATTERS
A “nymphomaniac” is a woman who has sex more than we think is OK.
A “porn addict” is a man who watches porn more than we think is OK.
Let’s start with “addiction”:
“I keep doing stupid things” is not an addiction.
“I swore to myself I wouldn’t do it, but I did it” is not an addiction.
“Wow, the results of doing that were just as bad as everyone predicted” is not an addiction.
“I guess I didn’t learn my lesson from doing it those other times” is not an addiction.
“I kept telling myself, ‘don’t do it, you’ll regret it’ and I did it anyway” is not an addiction.
“When I abstain from doing it, I feel deprived, crabby, and bored” is not an addiction.
Doing it, experiencing negative consequences, and doing it again is not an addiction.
If these things do, in fact, describe addiction, then the word “addiction” has lost its value. “Addiction” then just means repeating a bad choice, or making a stupid decision you later wish you hadn’t, or making the same mistake over and over, or impulsively pursuing something now and regretting the consequences later.
If you call these experiences addiction, every person on earth is addicted to something. And yes, if these are your definitions of addiction, millions of Americans are afflicted with porn addiction.
But this is a particularly unhelpful definition of addiction, especially when it comes to pornography. Here are some problems with the disease of “porn addiction” (which was invented in the late 1990s as cybersex addiction):
It pathologizes behavior that is often harmless—but which upsets someone other than the porn consumer himself.
It is moralism pretending to be science. There is no consensus on what defines “porn addiction,”1 nor on how to treat it, nor on what constitutes a successful cure—no porn? Some porn (how much?)? Only certain kinds of porn? Increased desire for one’s partner?
It overlooks/absolves the partners of porn users who might be contributing to a dysfunctional relationship in which high-volume porn use is an understandable response.
It is contemptuous of masturbation; porn addicts are typically told they have to stop masturbating, or do it much less.2
It prevents people with real, non-porn problems (like depression) from being identified and properly treated.
If people do have a problem with porn, this approach keeps them from getting psychological and medical treatment that would actually be helpful.
It honors “addicts” and their partners as the most knowledgeable people about the condition, reducing science to just another opinion. We don’t do this with real diseases like diabetes or heart disease.
It ignores the extent to which someone’s porn problem might actually be an unhealthy attachment to Internet use.
There are no withdrawal symptoms when someone discontinues using porn. They might be crabby (especially if they’ve given up masturbation), but their body doesn’t shake, sweat, or get clammy, they don’t suffer muscle aches, loss of appetite, nausea, or vomiting, and they don’t experience nightmares, paranoia, or crying spells. That’s what withdrawal is like from any real addiction.
People who claim to treat “porn addiction” rarely offer a model of healthy porn use.
If porn consumers/addicts really needed to increase their dose over time (the classical definition of addiction), they’d all quit their school/jobs and spend all their time masturbating to porn, which is clearly not true.
So how did we get here? Historically speaking, America got to porn addiction via sex addiction.
Sex addiction was invented in the 1980s by addictionologist (not sex therapist, thank you) Patrick Carnes.3 Lacking professional training in sexuality, he mistakenly said that people who feel out of control around sex are out of control around sex. He defined that as addiction, and off we went.
Carnes was very familiar with America’s existing infrastructure for treating alcoholics: AA groups, the 12 steps, sponsorship structure, programs for spouses, and in-patient treatments, all ready to welcome new addicts. People ashamed and self-critical about their sexuality loved the welcoming narcissistic nourishment (“we’ve been waiting for YOU!”) that came with admitting their sex addiction. They were told exactly what to do, cheered when they did it, and forgiven when they didn’t. The sex addiction movement replaced their perceived moral degeneracy, impulsivity, selfishness, and self-indulgence with the dignity of a disease, fellowship with millions of other addicts (alcoholic and otherwise), and sympathy for their plight.
This movement offered little real understanding of sexuality—if anything, its message was that addicts needed to focus on sex much less, making sexual feelings, desires, and experiences a smaller part of their lives. Even today, 30 years later, people who “treat” sex addiction are rarely sex therapists, and they discourage sexual expression that is lusty, complex, or non-traditional.
For alcoholics and drug addicts who were old-timers in AA, sex addiction was a chance to work the steps again. Even if an alcoholic didn’t feel out of control sexually, feeling uncomfortable or regretful about sex was enough to qualify for participation. Just as with alcohol, so as with sex—if you want membership in the fellowship of addicts, come on in—no screening necessary.
And a series of celebrities caught doing things they regretted were deciding that they were sex addicts—such as Michael Douglas, Mike Tyson, Marion Barry, and Rob Lowe. So sex addiction was just sitting there—endorsed by Oprah, although rarely by actual sex therapists—when broadband porn hit the country in 2000. Predictably, some people would misuse porn, or feel confused by it, or upset their partner with it. And these were potential customers for the emotional safety net provided by the porn addiction movement. Why be an isolated selfish bastard or confused person or frustrated spouse when you could have a disease with a welcoming fellowship?
And so today, millions of people are said to suffer with porn addiction.4 And although most sex therapists don’t use the concept and therefore say they’ve never seen a case of it, that hasn’t stopped various religious, clinical, online, and criminal justice institutions from quickly developing treatment programs, including incredibly lucrative in-patient programs.
&n
bsp; DSM-5
The porn addiction gravy train has been slowed down a bit by once again losing the struggle for inclusion in the updated DSM-5, in 2013. How was the decision to exclude it made? Or put another way, why did the most prestigious body of psychiatrists in the world decide that neither “sex addiction” nor “porn addiction” were fit to include in the worldwide manual of mental disorders?
The review process to update the DSM-IV took more than a decade and involved thousands of professionals.5 After sifting through mountains of data, opinions, and clinical charts, the review panel of experts decided that “there is insufficient peer-reviewed evidence to establish the diagnostic criteria and course descriptions needed” to include sex addiction or porn addiction as actual disorders.6
Refusing to recognize and include porn addiction in the DSM is no small thing—the DSM includes everything from A to Z (well, A to V), from ADHD to Voyeurism, from Acute Stress Disorder to Vascular Neurocognitive Disorder.
The review committee noted that there is no recognized consensus on criteria for the alleged disease of porn addiction, its symptoms, typical trajectory, effective treatments, etc. Reflecting this, a recent review published in Current Sexual Health Reports says that only 27 percent of all peer-reviewed articles on porn addiction contained any actual data (which tells you about the low level of science in the new sex addiction “journals.”)7
Similarly, there has never been a protocol for differential diagnosis for porn addiction. How exactly should a clinician distinguish Porn Addiction from, say, Depressive Disorder; Anxiety Disorder; Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder; Bipolar Disorder; or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder? Because the symptoms of porn addiction often look like the symptoms of these various well-established and well-studied mental disorders, DSM investigators were required to find important ways to differentiate porn addiction from them. They couldn’t, which discouraged committee members from including it as a new diagnosis.