I'm addicted to Porn

I haven't previously considered my self to be an excessive user of porn and nearly all the material I view is fetish based rather than outright pornographic. Unfortunately that is much worse.

I have been someone who masturbates to fetish material daily for about the past 2 years and never noticed any problems until last week when for the first time in a very long time, I had sex. I felt very little excitement about it the whole time and I was struggling to keep myself hard throughout, all the time knowing exactly what I needed to help me out. It was then that I realised that I was addicted to porn (or my fetish based alternative anyway). The term PIED (Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction) is now an acronym to curse.

All the time while having fun with my toys, with all the material I needed, I was savouring the endless amount of pleasure not knowing that all I was doing was flooding my brain with dopamine like a class A drug.

For now though I am planning to go months without viewing anything either pornographic or that caters to my fetish. What to do about masturbation and sex toy use in the meantime I do not know. Also how to regulate porn use once I recover is going to be difficult.

I have been a supporter of porn in the past simply because it has given me so much pleasure that I could only otherwise have dreamed about. I now realise that I've made a similar mistake to drug addicts, and the long road to rehab begins.

If anyone else has seen or dealt with this before, what did you do to help the recovery?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHHyt6z0osA

This vid describes what has happened in more detail but it's an hour long, so basically I'm one of the growing population who have shot themselves in the foot with porn.

Hello, sorry to hear you are going through this. My hubby went through this a couple of years ago and it nearly ended our marriage. I had never thought of porn as a problem until this. Like you he was used to using and masturbating with porn on a daily basis, I was his first sexual partner and didn't know till much later that he had been unable to fully enjoy sex because of the porn. He also struggled to reach orgasm which I thought was down to nerves. Later I learnt it was down to the porn. He got to the point where he would rather masturbate to porn than have sex with me, I found out about this and then he would lie to me about using it. He realised he was addicted and we did some online research and discovered just how big a problem it can be (if memory serves a third of relationships break down due to porn). Having already lied to me he decided in order to break the addiction he needed to excise all porn from his life and destroyed everything, going cold turkey! though he did have to battle the temptation to look online which given he works in IT was difficult. Things are good now but he still won't risk any porn at all and it has taken a long time for him to train his body and mind to enjoy the feelings and sensations of actual sex instead of porn. Please have also online as there are some good resources out there to know you are not alone.

Hi Flaneur,

I am sorry to hear what you are going through and unfortunately I don't have any specific advice but I thought this might be of little help.

When I was at university and I needed to focus (without procrastinating with the internet) I used a program called Self Control- you can block whatever website you need for any amount of time. Hours to days to weeks. I thought this might be a little useful possibly? I am sorry if it's not.

Self Control is for Mac computers only but there is one for windows too called BrowseControl I believe.

Best of luck,

Pai

I did that when I was younger to an extent, you need to simply force yourself not to go there. Abstain not just from porn but from regular masturbation where possible. Make it a far rarer occurence for a while

Part of it is not just dopamine it's down to the difference between your hand and your partners privates. You hand can apply more pressure and go faster than you can during intercourse and desensitise you which is why sex feels less sensual especially if your partner is very wet.

One big piece of advice don't panic and make yourself stressed about it, this won't help. To be honest if you can abstain and stay strong you will find the sensation, urges and drive for sex will actually return quite quickly.

You can also enact some of the things you view in porn in your sex life with a bit of discussion with your other half. Even if your OH is not into some aspects maybe dirty talk or such like there is no harm in thinking these thoughts during sex to boost your mental arousal.

I would imagine in your case it would be beneficial to masturbate regularly. You are addicted to porn, not masturbation, and it's the reliance on that visual stimulation that caused the problem, not anything to do with masturbation itself. You found yourself needing the visual stimulation of porn to remain hard during that session, not to stop and masturbate yourself. There is a difference between porn addiction and masturbation reliance, despite the fact that you obviously masturbate to the porn.

I could be wrong, but I would have thought learning to masturbate and become aroused without porn (including imagining porn) would mean you are helping regain your natural assosiation between physical stimulation and pleasure, as opposed to visual stimulation and pleasure as it was when you were using porn. If that makes sense?

Basically, you need to retrain yourself to get pleasure from sex acts not involving the stimulation of porn. Masturbation would be more helpful than harmful, as taking time to explore and re-engage with yourself without any pressure from a partner being there can only be beneficial. You can't expect to go from relying on porn to being able to have sex porn free without taking the inbetween steps, namely playing by yourself and reforming assosiations. As long as you avoid the 'death grip' and change up the way you play regularly you're not going to become reliant on masturbation or sex toys.

I'd also argue that if you didn't take the time to build yourself up, as it were, and make progress with being becoming aroused without porn through masturbation only, that you could well end up in another sexual encounter where you will fail to remain hard and you'll knock your sexual confidence to the point where that will cause even more problems. Using masturbation as a learning tool (for lack of a better term) means you'll head into your next sexual encounter more confident, more prepared, and hopefully not find it is as much of a problem.

Just my thoughts. I'm sure you'll know better yourself what would work for you :)

My guess is that the frequent masturbation is the primary issue. It's well documented that heavy-handed masturbation can de-sensitise men to the point that they are incapable of being adequately stimulated by vaginal penetration (though this resolves after the masturbation is reduced). I notice that nearly all cases where porn is an issue it involves not just watching porn but masturbating in conjunction with the watching.

Given the number of couples that report watching porn together and then sh@gging each other's brains out I would have thought watching porn without masturbation would probably make you perform better. I know that some of the things I read and see here on LH make me quite horny and can precipitate a more thorough sorting out of my wife than would have otherwise been the case.

Thanks for the replies. I'm pretty convinced that the problems are down to my fetish. Looking back I can remember times when I started to embrace my fetish and suddenly felt aroused constantly and the urge to masturbate more regularly as a result. I also remember returning to more normal levels of arousal a long time later and finding regular porn less interesting. I haven't got to the stage where I lose interest in my fetish though.

As far as fetish material goes, I have not watched any since I found out about my issues and may never again, regular porn is easy enough to avoid since it doesn't do that much for me anyway.

For masturbation, I don't know what my best option is. Since my discovery, I've only masturbated when I wake up too early to help me get to sleep again. I haven't used any toys since either.

I have the self control to stay away from porn but I am not sure about masturbation. I probably will try a period of abstinence in the near future, but I don't feel ready to go cold turkey yet as it would affect my sleep.

I'm not convinced that masturbation is my problem though, because I've masturbated most days since puberty and the problems are more recent.

I've had a very similar problem with my OH. He has masturbated frequently (to say the least) since he was in puberty , but the porn addiction became worse with him getting an iPad a couple of years back. He has other addiction issues (which I won't go into), but he has stopped watching it all together as even he says it distorts and de sensitises you. He has also stopped masturbating on his own as he says it feeds the sexual fantasy of whatever he fancies at the time. He is going to a counsellor for his other issues and she says that the majority of her clients are men who have watched a lot of porn and then can't get erections when they have sex. I noticed this in my oh when we started having sex again and this has got better since he stopped viewing porn. It's all about neural pathways and dopamine, a good book is The Porn Trap if you fancy a read.

Hope it works out for you