On a positive level, porn can be an outlet for exploring fantasy or for realizing the possibilities during sexual play. Or, porn can serve as a substitute for a lack of sexual partners in real life, for shy men, and for men who cannot afford erotic massages or escorts, or who do not want to deal with the emotional repercussions of a sexual encounter with a woman who expects something more than a one-night stand (or ten-minute body friction exchange). The problem is that isolated porn viewing could set off a progression into further seclusion or emotional distance in romantic relationships. As in, disrupt one's ability and interest in pair-bonding.33 In a recent poll in the UK, a third of light porn users (one hour or less a week) and seven out of ten heavy porn users (more than ten hours a week) said that their porn use caused relationship problems.34 Overuse of porn can also cause other, unwanted, undesirable changes, which young men are typically unaware of until it is too late.
Dude, Where's My Erection?
The most powerful sex organ is the brain, and for men, that's where an erection starts. So what happens to your brain when you watch too much porn? Gary Wilson, of YourBrainOnPorn, compares chronic overconsumption of Internet porn to other behavioral addictions such as excessive gambling, video game addiction, and food addiction. He points out that there are already more than one hundred brain studies on Internet addiction, gaming addiction, and online porn addiction—all of which reveal the kinds of brain changes seen in drug addiction.35
This makes sense because the part of your brain where arousal happens is the same place where addiction occurs: the reward circuitry. Most of this circuit lies behind your nose in evolutionarily ancient structures. It's where you experience the motivation to achieve your desires, to eat, to have sex, to take risks, and to fall in love. It's also where you get turned on—or off—or addicted to something, because cravings also arise here.
Wilson explains that because dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter that turns on the reward circuit, the more aroused you are sexually, the higher your dopamine surges. Though we often think of dopamine as the “pleasure molecule,” Wilson says,
it is actually about seeking and searching for pleasure, not pleasure itself. Thus dopamine rises with anticipation. It's your motivation and drive to pursue potential pleasure or long-term goals . . . But if you chronically overstimulate yourself, your brain may start to work against you. It protects itself against excessive stimulation by reducing dopamine signaling, and you feel less and less gratified.36
An erection won't happen if there is not enough dopamine to signal the reward circuitry, but porn-related sexual problems related to dopamine dysregulation can show up in a variety of ways:
Lack of spontaneous erections.
Lack of arousal by static images or previously viewed porn. Often guys need to escalate to more extreme material just to get aroused—a sign of addiction.
Decreased penile sensitivity—indicating the brain has become numbed to pleasure.
Delayed ejaculation or the inability to orgasm during sex with a real partner.
Copulatory impotence—the inability to maintain an erection with a real partner.
Eventual inability to get any erection, even when viewing extreme porn.
Erectile dysfunction drugs lose their effect. Viagra and Cialis only dilate the blood vessels to sustain an erection; they don't create arousal in the brain. Without arousal, nothing can happen.37
Because dopamine skyrockets with novelty,38 Internet porn can veil creeping sexual performance problems for years before young men realize they have an underlying problem. With every new sexual scene or “partner,” there is another surge of dopamine. If your dopamine starts to decline—that is, your erection starts to dwindle—you just click on something else to boost it back up. And with Internet porn, there is always something new, exciting, or shocking.
In the first-ever brain study on Internet porn users, which was conducted at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, researchers found that hours and years of porn use correlated with decreased gray matter in regions of the brain associated with reward sensitivity, as well as reduced responsiveness to erotic still photos.39 Less gray matter means less dopamine and fewer dopamine receptors. The lead researcher, Simone Kühn, hypothesized that “regular consumption of pornography more or less wears out your reward system.”40 A separate German study showed users' problems correlated most closely with the numbers of tabs open and degree of arousal.41 This helps explain why some users become dependent on new, surprising, or more extreme porn. They need more and more stimulation to become aroused, get an erection, and attain a sexual climax.
Bombarding the reward circuit is the cue to “fertilize” all those two-dimensional cyber mates. So, the brain creates special pathways that activate the reward circuit without relying on dopamine—but only respond to this specific “valuable” activity.
The sorry result is that daily life, and often sex with a familiar partner, grows duller and less rewarding and stimulation from online porn becomes the only thing the brain registers as worth engaging in. As mentioned earlier, some users have trouble climaxing during real sex, or even getting or maintaining an erection (i.e., erectile dysfunction). Or, even if they are aroused at first (because of the partner's newness), they might soon find their partner no longer turns them on. Their brains now require constant screen-based novelty. Until they retrain their brains, they're stuck.
Wilson says:
Internet porn is now a powerful memory that calls to you at a subconscious level—because it's the most reliable source of dopamine, erections and relief from your cravings . . . This is what happens with all addictions. The more you overstimulate the reward circuitry by jacking up your dopamine . . . the less it responds. Think of a flashlight with fading batteries. In simple terms, your reward circuitry isn't providing enough electricity to power your erections.42
An easy way to think about what's happening is that porn is numbing the very thing it intensifies. Or, as Nicholas Carr said, “when we extend some part of ourselves artificially, we also distance ourselves from the amplified part and its natural functions.”43
Arousal Addiction: Give Me the Same but Different
The addictiveness of video games and porn is a real concern for many reasons. As with all addictions, the activity becomes all-consuming and preferable to anything else in life—as every compulsive gambler, alcoholic, or druggie will tell you. Video games and porn, however, are different from drinking and drugs. We can think of them as “arousal addictions”—seeking out novelty in order to achieve or maintain a high level of arousal.
Before high-speed Internet, people consumed porn much differently. Arousal addiction wouldn't have been as possible as it is today.44 Sixty years ago, it was small photos of native women's breasts revealed in National Geographic magazine. Thirty years ago, it was flipping through spreads in a Playboy or Penthouse magazine, to see full naked bodies of beautiful women. Hustler magazine introduced “pink” views into the vaginal area. Men could also be found secretly paying a premium at a theater specifically for full-length adult films, like Deep Throat or Behind the Green Door. Twenty years ago, it was a pile of VHS tapes, and ten years ago it was a burned DVD mix of selected clips. But today, you can have as many windows open as you want on your computer screen with a dozen high-definition videos streaming, and all you have to do is click back and forth between them.
Everyone can remember the first sexual image or movie they saw; it leaves an everlasting impression. So if you're a young, sexually inexperienced male growing up watching hard-core porn (really, any person watching a lot of hard-core porn), and you masturbate exclusively to it—often with a “death grip”—imagine how that will affect your future sexual experiences. If you've trained your brain and body to become aroused by multiple hard-core porn scenes, most likely real-life sex partners will not turn you on nearly as much as they would if you hadn't consumed such material. You might objectively find the other person attractive, but th
ey won't physically or mentally arouse you.
Many young men run into problems when they come to rely on porn to become aroused because the things that turned them on when they first started watching porn will no longer turn them on the same way. A concerned mother wrote in to a prominent sex advice columnist after her son told her that lately he had been exclusively watching hard-core porn:
My 15-year-old son has been watching sadistic porn—and ONLY sadistic porn—for a couple of years. He also tells us (husband and me) that though he's not had sex (which he defines as penetration), he's had oral sex, handjobs, etc., and that he didn't “flash on” violent images at those times. But he says he thinks about this type of porn all the time—all day, every day—and fantasizes about doing sadistic things to the girls he dates. This all came out as we started having conversations about respect and dating! . . . My husband doesn't believe there's much reason to worry (yet?), because to us, his friends and family and girlfriends (as far as I know), he's a very different type of person . . . There have been zero instances of violence from day care into high school . . . I don't know if this is a huge red flag . . . I'm just terrified he's going to harm someone. I'm also shamefully awkward around him now. I hate that my view of him has changed. Are there signs—more signs—that I need to watch for? Is he already a danger to himself or others? Where did we drop the ball?45
The advice she got back was terrible. Though the son's seemingly healthy social life was a positive sign, she was told that her son was most likely “really, really kinky,” that “one day, he'll be able to explore his kinks with consenting adult partners” and that he should read up on the ethics of kinky relationships to find role models. Nothing about porn's influence on sexual tastes or the escalating need for novelty was mentioned. Nobody was asking the son what he initially started out watching either. Perhaps the best thing he could do is stop using porn and masturbating for a time to see if his inclinations are still there after “rebooting.”
With porn, sameness is soon habituated; differentness is attention-sustaining, even if it means morphing virtual preferences that don't line up with a person's sexual orientation, such as extreme, gay, or “shemale” porn. Researchers at the University of Cambridge found that those who have compulsive sexual behavior exhibit a behavioral addiction that is comparable to drug addiction in the limbic brain circuitry after watching porn. There is dissociation between their sexual desires and their response to porn—they may mistakenly believe that the porn that makes them the most aroused is representative of their true sexuality.46
Unfortunately the potential downside for what is best for an individual's long-term needs conflicts with what's good for business. The video game and porn industries are supplying an endless variety of new material via online instant streaming, so porn addicts can always get their “fix.” Neutral stimuli and events that are associated with the addictive substance or its process, such as gambling casinos or drug-taking sequences, can become conditioned to generate further arousal and add to the body's chemical reaction.
Arousal addiction traps users into an expanded present-hedonistic time zone during this quest for the fix. Past and future are distant and remote as the present moment expands to dominate everything. And that present is totally dynamic, with images changing constantly. Brains on porn are being “digitally rewired” in a totally new way to demand change, novelty, excitement, and constant stimulation.
Norman Doidge discussed the notion of tolerance in his book, The Brain That Changes Itself:
When pornographers boast that they are pushing the envelope by introducing new, harder themes, what they don't say is that they must, because their customers are building up a tolerance to the [existing] content . . . The men at their computers looking at porn . . . got massive amounts of practice wiring these images into the pleasure centers of the brain, with the rapt attention necessary for plastic change . . . The content of what they found exciting changed as the websites introduced themes and scripts that altered their brains without their awareness. Because plasticity is competitive, the brain maps for new, exciting images increased at the expense of what had previously attracted them.47
Though the impact of arousal addiction on behavior and physiological responses is going to vary from individual to individual, it is worth examining the general physiological, mental, and emotional effects of watching too much porn because few people consider how it is affecting their brains and their ability to become aroused during porn-watching sessions and in real-life sexual encounters.
The subtle and not-so-subtle effects of arousal addiction can negatively impact any part of a person's life that are static, repetitious, involve planning, delaying gratification, and long-term goal setting. The young men we've spoken with who demonstrated signs of arousal addiction feel very anxious in social situations in general, have less motivation to set and complete goals, feel out of control, and even discussed suicide. They are becoming totally out of sync in traditional school classes, which are analog, static, and interactively passive. Academies are based on applying past lessons to future problems, on planning, on delaying gratification, on work coming before play, and on long-term goal setting.
Do you sense misfits in a mismatch here? They're also totally out of sync in romantic relationships, which tend to build gradually and subtly and which require interaction, sharing, developing trust, and suppression of lust at least until “the time is right.”
The Coolidge Effect
Normally, every male experiences what is called a post-ejaculatory refractory period after an orgasm. Translation: he needs a break, a time out, after sex before having sex again. But that period of time gets massively reduced with a novel sexual opportunity. As far as your brain is concerned, porn is like having your own harem. Although the experience only exists in two dimensions, each new clip is like having a new sexual opportunity.
The Coolidge Effect is the phenomenon where this idea is observed. It all goes back to an unverified story about former US President Calvin Coolidge and his wife, Grace Coolidge, being shown separately around a government farm. When Mrs. Coolidge came across a rooster having sex with the hens, she asked the attendant how often he did that. The attendant replied, “Dozens of times each day.” Mrs. Coolidge then said, “Tell that to the President when he comes by.” Upon being told, the President asked whether it was the same hen every time. The reply was, “Oh, no, Mr. President, a different hen every time.” The President then said, “Tell that to Mrs. Coolidge!”
So you get the idea. The Coolidge Effect is a peculiarity seen in mammals where males (and apparently females to a lesser extent) show renewed sexual interest if they are introduced to new sexual partners. In a study of habituation in sexual arousal, forty male volunteers were divided into two groups; one group was shown images of five different heterosexual couples in sexual situations while the other group was shown the same image five times. The arousal in the first group increased while the arousal of the second group gradually diminished.48 In a similar study using explicit film clips, male participants' sperm volume and quality increased significantly and time to ejaculation decreased significantly with exposure to new females.49
Due to their abundance, once-desirable female porn stars can lose their novelty and commercial value quickly. In what is known as the “New Girl Effect,” many webcam performers, much to their chagrin, make the most money they'll ever make in their very first week.50 But how does the preference for novelty and interchangeable parts affect real-life intimate encounters?
Dating and the Objectification of Women
“Your nails are pretty,” he said as he examined her hands. “Are they fake?” In the world of pickup artists, backhanded compliments like this are known as “negs.” Pickup artists purposefully use psychological tactics such as negs to entice a girl into being attracted to them.
The young woman we spoke with didn't know about this strategy when he asked her the question. “Of course not!” She was flustered and caugh
t off-guard. This guy has no tact, she thought to herself. But he had a formula. And the formula worked, sort of. They ended up making out at the end of the night, but the chemistry was fleeting. Perhaps she just had buyer's remorse and his game needed work, but her attraction to him quickly waned when they moved beyond the script into the world of genuine human connection.
Many books like The Mystery Method and The Game have emerged lately, offering some very effective, sometimes offensive, and generally entertaining advice on how to pick up women. It is admirable that males would go to such elaborate lengths just to get their foot in the door, but unfortunately their solutions don't address other key aspects of a relationship, such as finding areas of mutual interest, transitioning from stranger to interested date, or becoming a long-term partner. Maybe tackling these other areas is not the purpose, but at some point, when a male does want a real relationship, it can be difficult to transition out of the “game” into creating the relationship. Their whole mindset has to change from approaching the girl or woman as a “target” of possible conquest to being with a “person” of potential value and enduring interest. And in the old-fashioned ending, to actually fall in love with someone other than oneself.
The key is staying mindful of ways in which to balance immediate desires with long-term goals, and monitoring the effects one's approach has on oneself and others. When the spontaneity of connecting with someone of the opposite sex is snuffed out, the motivation transforms from meeting an interesting girl to bedding “tens.” It goes from building self-confidence to “peacocking.” It's not even about connecting any more; it's about escalating the game in order to score. Other people involved become interchangeable objects for one's pleasure as the game takes on a new identity more like fantasy football than fantasies about making love with a real-life, flesh-and-blood woman.
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