In what ways is porn addiction damaging for men, and why?

sine120 · 2023-10-17T00:28:54+00:00

In a nutshell, it triggers the happy chemicals without having done the things that are supposed to lead to triggering them. Historically, we're supposed to get the "naked woman good" reward when we've taken the steps that leads toward that happening in real life, namely cultivating a social circle and acquiring resources she'd want. If we get the reward without those things, then there's less incentive to go out and meet people and do things that would make them attracted to us.

Head-Language-2977 · 2023-10-17T02:07:33+00:00

 I believe there’s two different conditions, porn addiction and porn sick. I think porn addiction gets thrown around too loosely but I do think tons of men are porn sick. When I say porn sick, I mean these men have a very skewed opinion of what a normal woman should look like, to the point where they can’t perform sexually unless the woman looks like a playboy model. I imagine most of these men can stop at anytime, but don’t because they are the unfortunate majority of men who have significant dry spells between options. The trouble is by the time they can get with a real woman, their sense of normal is so skewed they have a hard time staying hard.

TintNerd213 · 2023-10-17T04:50:05+00:00

The brain doesn't know the difference between porn and real life. So if I watch porn 2 times a day then my brain registers it as if I'm having sex 14 times a week with different women, I'm a stud 💪. I don't need to work on myself, I don't need to do anything to attract women, so my motivation is out the window. I don't need to eat healthy or work on my social status or do anything to raise my value, why? Because my brain thinks I'm already achieving my primal needs of procreating. That's why porn is on the rise and lonely socially awkward men single men are on the rise.

Hoopy223 · 2023-10-17T00:31:06+00:00

If they start throwing money at onlyfans.

lIllIlllIl · 2023-10-17T03:28:24+00:00

It's not inherently damaging, but like any dopamine producing activity, people can use it as a crutch. Moderation in all things.

BeReady6129 · 2023-10-17T00:41:03+00:00

it is much easier to get the dopamine effect from watching porn, keep getting that effect very easy rather than go meet meet women and do the work of achieving actual sex. After orgasm men lose desire for sex temporary.

Sex is a primary motivation, if you can get that that similar effect instantly.

Ultimately it is not fulfilling, because it is not the same thing. Virtually all addiction is usually a product of something below the surface that one is avoiding.

Sad_Apple_1911 · 2023-10-17T01:00:46+00:00

Porn is not addictive in the same way cigarettes are, but men prone to impulse control issues are probably likely to become ”porn addicted” in order to get access to immediate gratification.

ohdiddly · 2023-10-17T01:28:34+00:00

Any addiction is, by definition, damaging to a person. In order for it to be classed as an addiction it must be negatively affecting a persons life ie. work life, personal relationships, physical or mental health.

The problem is that anti-porn people are pushing this idea that literally ANY amount of pornography consumption is detrimental to someone’s health or wellbeing, and they call casual consumers porn addicts.

wtknight · 2023-10-17T01:06:02+00:00

I watched it when I was single. It probably kept me from being motivated to try to attract an actual woman somewhat. To me, that's the biggest harm that a normally wired person might experience from it, and is supposedly why groups like "nofap" exist.

A lot of women say that men want to fulfill the unrealistic fantasies from porn in the bedroom, and that some of these fantasies are often violent. I've never liked watching this kind of pornography, though.

Gold_Supermarket1956 · 2023-10-17T00:34:29+00:00

It don't, for most men... Some people are addicted to it which can create unrealistic expectations of partners kinda how social media gives women unrealistic expectations of men... But to be fair it's become more of a issue recently because dating women is a fucking circus act anymore... Jump through hoops... Walk on eggshells... All the while hoping some dude she finds better ain't in her DMs.... Or you get a date as a dude and she only went out for the free food... So a lot of men would rather stay home and beat their meat and be done in about 10mins than go out and risk getting used for a meal etc

Yarndhilawd · 2023-10-17T02:35:39+00:00

I believe there’s no way to ethically consume porn. As a male at 40 who had a 10 years off dating I can confirm porn has absolutely changed the way younger women have sex. Some of the hook ups I’ve had recently women definitely are way more into kink. Porn changes your neural pathways just like any substance. If you aren’t addicted then don’t watch it for 6 months… I bet you can’t.

fakehalo · 2023-10-17T01:32:01+00:00

I don't know about the amount of it, but based on what's popular there seems to be a ton of hate towards women. I don't know how people get off to some of this stuff.

AceOfSpadesGymBro · 2023-10-17T01:09:23+00:00

The long story short is that it fries your dopamine receptors. With real sex the dopamine release is gradual, while with porn because you can view all kinds of sex, especially the type that you are not likely to ever have in real life and furthermore you can just fast forward to the most exciting spot for you, it will shoot up your dopamine unnaturally. No different that taking a drug and then coming down. Eventually, real sex doesn't really excite you anymore. You start seeing women as objects. Anxiety creeps in because you killed off all your natural sex drive, etc.

For men at least, it is extremely damaging.

13choppedup2chopped · 2023-10-17T01:15:29+00:00

I just don’t believe porn addiction is real. I think a lot of are confused by how high mens libido is compared to them. This used to be understood by gender differences and testosterone. Thats not fashionable anymore so people just say porn addiction.

Opening_Tell9388 · 2023-10-17T00:32:12+00:00

It has a lot of effects that are actually pretty well documented and researched. Here are a couple of sources that would be a good read and probably a little more insightful than us random anon men on Reddit.

I mainly only use porn to get a few nuts off before going to see a woman to make sure I really want to go.

https://www.depts.ttu.edu/rise/Old_Site/RISE_Peer_Educator_Blog/Effectsofpornonyoungmen.php#:~:text=On%20the%20extreme%20end%2C%20a,become%20aroused%20at%20unconventional%20times.

https://extension.usu.edu/relationships/research/effects-of-pornography-on-relationships

https://fightthenewdrug.org/5-ways-porn-changes-your-brain-and-body-for-the-worse/

https://www.heartofaman.org/post/porn-s-impact-on-men-disastrous

https://marripedia.org/effects_of_pornography

https://www.healthymale.org.au/news/could-what-turns-you-on-be-turning-you-off

https://canopy.us/2023/03/23/how-porn-affects-relationships/

https://irisbuzz.cc/the-effects-of-pornography-on-adult-males-relationships/

Vegetable-Rub3418 · 2023-10-17T01:50:47+00:00

It kinda gives up insta gratification and not value sex as much because porn is easily accessible. Does that stop me from watching porn tho? Absolutely not. Because women are super freaking difficult.

upsidemaze · 2023-10-17T09:30:34+00:00

Its a bad habit thats hard to break.

TheCultOfGrogg · 2023-10-17T13:21:02+00:00

It’s not damaging men.

There’s this culture that basically shames everything you like and I’m so against it. Basically there’s this idea that because you suffer, you live a “better” life.

Bullshit.

How’s it damaging men? Because they do less work to get sexual pleasure? Lol. So your car is damaging you because that’s less you’d have to walk/exercise to get to work? So are your feet then damaging you because you could get a higher heart rate and stronger arms by hand-standing all the way to work? Like, where does it end? Microwaves damaging you because you could be closer to being a word class chef if you cooked? But then isn’t all that time devoted to being a chef keeping you from becoming a word class guitar player?

Women want to fuck basically like 5 men out of 3.5 billion, what the FUCK are men supposed to do? Force women to have sex with them? Dudes not getting women isn’t because of porn addiction, porn addiction is because dudes aren’t getting women. Note, if you want to take away most men’s only sexual outlet then you go ahead and dispense with your bike because it’s not as efficient as a car even-though you don’t have shit else as a means of transportation…see where that gets you. Porn is a hot dog diet in the middle of a desert, it ain’t what you’d like to eat but it beats the holy hell out of starving.

And to be brutally honest irl sex sucks compared to jerking off. You know that term “Death grip syndrome” and how they prescribe a resensitization oeriod for it? The only reason you have to resensitize yourself to something is because the prior stimulus was greater than the current stimulus…meaning you get more heightened action from your hand, which I and many guys attest to. A lot of you are virgins so you’ll be real upset when you finally get some pussy after jacking off and realize it truthfully doesn’t feel like anything and I’m 4.5 inches around and 7.5 long…it’s wet, it’s warm, but if we were to put guys in a gloryhole, give them a wet vag and a hand with vaseline on it, 9.9 guys out if 10 would say the hand felt immeasurably better. Guys won’t say this but I will because I don’t think highly of most people so shaming me doesn’t do anything as I don’t hold people’s judgment in high regard…porn is better than sex. If it isn’t, then people in this post wouldn’t be admitting that guys pursue it in lieu of pursuing women…And why do you think so many married women complain about their husbands watching porn rather than fucking them?

Not even just the feeling, when you combine the fact that you feel damn near nothing with the fact that you have to stay hard, with the fact that women’s orgasms are insanely more difficult to reach than yours, with the fact that women pick up and leave relationships at the drop of a hat…sex basically becomes this high-effort low-reward, performative, anxiety-inducing, female worshipping, search-mission for an orgasm, that yields not even a fraction of the constant heightened stimulation produced by your hand and watching a buffet of the hottest individuals on earth do the craziest, nastiest shit…instead you just have vanilla sex with your at-best average wife who is so sexually picky/particular that the whole ordeal basically becomes about her enjoyment.

Porn isn’t a fucking problem.

noafrochamplusamurai · 2023-10-17T01:42:22+00:00

This talk of rampant porn addiction is overblown. It's rare that men are porn addicts. There's just a lot of women suffering from narcissistic injury( not the same as being a narcissist) because their partners like the way someone else looks, and Disney movies promised them a one true love that would never notice a woman. Couple that with evangelicalism that teaches long skirt celibacy, and pray away the gay theocratic chauvinism. You get these ideas put forth. This is basically the 21st century equivalent to pray away the gay. Masturbation doesn't cause ED. The epidemic of young guys not being able to keep their wood up, and the inability to orgasm, or perform. Comes from the rampant over prescription of anti anxiety medications ( this also affects the orgasm gap in women as well).

At point in my life I thought that I had a porn/sex addiction. I even went to those therapeutic talk groups, and even a psychiatrist. Turns out I was addicted to sex or porn. I was addicted to control, I had an abnormally bizarre, and very diverse childhood. That left some pretty serious serious scars, physical and emotional. The trauma, and environment I was raised in caused me to be a violent person.( 2 attempts by people to kill me, saw a get sliced up in an illegal bar, and watched him bleed to death when I was 4,family was heavily involved in crime, and extremely violent, someone almost succeeded in kidnapping me, and I lived in an orphanage) In order to beat my demons. I had to compartmentalize myself into carefully curated boxes, I kept everything under control at all times, until I couldn't. Eventually you run out of boxes, and everything spills over. Sometimes it was violence, sometimes it was impulse control, sometimes it was porn. Repressing your feelings doesn't make them go away, it just makes the fester into something malignant that will erupt with its putrescence .

While my trauma is deeper than most, I still think that my addiction to control through repression is very indicative of a great mass of those with "porn addiction "

Spyro7x3 · 2023-10-17T04:07:52+00:00

Its just virtual cuckoldry. I think its harmful in more ways to count, its degrading the morality, virility and over stimulating the male population and contributing to simpery (just the idea of guys bragging about their favorite star is so sad). I'm not a fan of coomers and set myself out to be the opposite and don't even masturbate while not in a relationship or fwb.

Its basically the worst. Also the womens mindsets in interviews tends to disgust me I can hardly watch podcasts with porn girls on it.

BillyPilgrim75 · 2023-10-17T01:10:25+00:00

Porn is to sex as junk food is to nutrition. It ruins a few people and damages most at least a bit.

kellydayscruff · 2023-10-17T00:51:56+00:00

Its not porn by itself thats damaging. Its that porn goes hand in hand with masturbation and that turns porn into a lie of instant gratification which doesnt exist in life and especially doesnt exist for men. So you have sex which was supposed to be the opposite of that and now youve made it into a commodity. Sex as a commodity turns men into idiots who objectify women, dont value relationships, dont value family and dont value their own bodies. If porn could be separate from masturbation then it could be viewed similar to maybe a violent movie but since it cant, then it becomes one of the most damaging things you can become addicted to.

AethertheEternal · 2023-10-17T03:23:21+00:00

It rewires your brain to enjoy watching other men fuck girls you’re attracted to. It basically turns men into passive voyeuristic cucks.

cromulent_weasel · 2023-10-17T05:08:30+00:00

I think that watching porn is like eating fast food. Some here and there basically doesn't matter. But if ALL you are consuming is porn that changes you and shapes your appetite towards just appreciating porn-sex and preferring it over real sex.

grillopie · 2023-10-17T00:46:04+00:00

frequent pornography use isn’t necessarily addiction. for the addiction part to come into play it has to be affecting the rest of your life negatively. personally i was shocked when i found out people could be addicted to pornography and its likely quite rare relative to how often people consume pornography in total.

_Ad_Astra_Abyssosque · 2023-10-17T03:18:55+00:00

It's not. None of you are doctors so stop pretending you know anything. Men have used porn for ages, but suddenly its a problem now? Please fuck all the way off.

yamom998899 · 2023-10-17T01:03:02+00:00

There seems to be a ton of misconceptions people have about porn and masturbation. I would say that porn is pretty much bad 99% of the time, but masturbation is not. Masturbation is only unhealthy if you’re addicted.

Why they are bad:

. Tanks your dopamine badly (both). This might be the worst one.

. HUGE time waster (both).

. Porn can be a pretty shitty industry, so it might be better to watch homemade stuff if you do

. Unrealistic expectations for sex. Usually doesn’t specify anything related to consent or how to actually have sex.

This is a personal take of mine, but I feel like anything that isn’t POV porn is strange to watch, feels like you’re a cuck. One common myth about masturbation is that it reduces testosterone, it does not. Finally, one thing I will never stop saying is how unfairly men who are addicted to porn get treated, most guys are exposed to that shit unwillingly at a young age. I’ve seen it a bunch of times: someone will be extremely hostile and call another dude a “disgusting porn addict” or something along those lines. It’s a real addiction that needs to be addressed.

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bifewova234 · 2023-10-17T02:39:22+00:00

SO gets mad.

MacaronFinancial · 2023-10-17T05:27:19+00:00

Addicion is bad by definition. Consumption is not.

Overall watching recordings of sexual behavior has made me wiser and more respectful of the women. This would include live webcam feed.

Perhaps the most sombering thing about any kind of recorded sex available online is that even in those recordings the rules we know from commercial porn and Tinder seem to hold; it's a small minority of men getting most of the play. We literally only have to see the man from the waist down to know that as there is a very large discrepancy in favor of massive penises relative to their frequency in the population and I have wondered why this is. In commercial porn we can also recognize the male actors by their penis and scrotum well before their face is shown but this does not hold true for women; the women keep changing and the same man keeps banging different women and there is usually nothing remarkable about these women. They have no outstanding body parts and can only be told apart by their face.

Are men with massive penises more horny and more eager to post their exploits online or is it that in addition to being selected by women the women are more willing to post recordings of their sexual activity with such men almost as if to show off their trophy genitals like women show off their tall boyfriends like race horses?

I think both are factors.

Now if you can get past the brutality of that then I think that recorded sex has real benefits for men similar to how bodybuilding and fitness videos do. I base this on the following observations.

-Every man wants to be desired and have sex just like every man wants to have a strong and detailed build

-Visualizing success is important for success; if you cannot visualize your goals and dreams you have it tough

-Bodybuilding videos and recorded sex provide evidence of such dreams and goals being possible for humans

-Select photography and videos provide more specific and salient proof of such dreams and goals being achievable for you

While looking at insanely ripped and massive bodybuilders and freaky strength athletes who lift massive weights at the age of 20 that most men could not do at 30 can be discouraging and demoralizing, ultimately recorded material of lifting and posing poses an opportunity; you just have to select the material to suit your needs and belief system. You look for videos with average guys who had some amount of success in their pursuit of a great physique and similarly when it comes to recorded sex you look for recorded evidence of women expressing raw desire or at least curious appreciation for men with unremarkable genitals and, secondarily, average faces and bodies.

If it was not for recorded sex the average man would be at the mercy of forum discussions and the mental images evoked by those discussions. On internet forums so many women claim that receiving semen on their skin is degrading but recordings provide evidence to the contrary. Tons of women are also on record making unflattering comments about flaccid penises online and this causes some young men to think that they are only allowed to exhibit their penis in a state of erection but on Chaturbate you have couples interacting naked and the man is not chronically hard nor does the woman puke in disgust from seeing and even caressing a flaccid penis.

I believe social media and dating applications have hurt men more than 'porn'. 'Porn' is much more complicated as in some ways it follows the same attraction principles of 'winner takes it all' like dating apps but it also allows Z-generation men as well as younger men to prevent themselves from developing hang-ups and negative beliefs that men of past generations often hold onto based on fleeting conversations with women.

throwaway-7744 · 2023-10-17T06:46:56+00:00

Women aren't immune to porn addiction or porn-induced erectile dysfunction. They're just judged less for having it.

The nature of porn addiction is similar to the nature of any other addictions (drug, alcohol, gambling, video games, social media) from a neurological standpoint. It's essentially the external regulation of pain. Those addicted to it can experience withdrawal symptoms from ceasing to do it (shortness of breath, heart palpitations, etc.) It's intertwined with the release of dopamine which is also tied into motivation. It can wreck havoc on people's motivation to the point which can have deleterious effect on a person's trajectory in life.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i1pQfGD_MQI&pp=ygURRHIgcGF0cmljayBjYXJuZXM%3D

KlingKlangKing · 2023-10-17T08:51:12+00:00

The only way it could be damaging is if it down regulates dopamine and serotonin.

RedRum-My-Ego · 2023-10-17T13:22:20+00:00

I remember a definition of drug addiction being thrown around a lot when I was younger as “a predisposition toward actions that harm you or hose around you” I like this because it describes why some people can watch porn all day long and still have rewarding lives because if it doesn’t hurt them or others than it’s fine. That seems to be your situation

Others, like myself experience the following negative effects Scorn of a partner Shame Compulsion regardless of desired outcome Decreased drive towards real sex Escalating fetishes due to consumption A complete lack of the ability to bridge the gap between their fantasy porn world and the real one Degraded attraction towards real women Complete inability to see past women in a sexual matter Anxiety for just existing around the opposite sex Distorted view in love and sexuality Inability to achieve or maintain an erection outside of porn use.

Those are some of the direct issues. The biggest though is virtual castration. There is another term I heard in my youth that stuck with me: “The hungry man hunts”. Men are supposed to desire. We are supposed to want and be inspired by those wants and desires to act. Porn pacifies men to a point that there is no need, no desire and no hunger. That’s when men stop hunting and ultimately lose all their appeal.

Most of time and I mean most if you a see a man in this day and age lacking in that hunger or desire for the good things in life (not just sex or an attractive partner) in general it is because they have been virtually castrated by porn or something else. Almost always.

sharksville · 2023-10-17T13:34:13+00:00

I think one way is that when it comes to things like fantasies, it gives the illusion that it’s okay to act it out in real life what you saw in the reels. For example when it comes to the school girl fantasies, it triggers some men to go for that in real life. First it starts off in the bedroom with the partner but over time your mind plays tricks and you don’t want it to be a “fantasy” but rather that actual real life thing. So in order to achieve that, a man will go after an actual school girl. That’s one way it damages men.

And not just men, but women as well. We can consider other fantasies apart from school girl, like student and teacher or doctor/nurse and patient, or policeman/policewoman. People, both men and women will see one thing and will want to enact it because they got interested in what they saw. But then it sometimes comes to a point where it doesn’t feel genuine so they go for the actual thing. And in real life this is a thing, where nurses for example have to deal with unwanted advances by some people who view these things. You see one thing and want more and more of it, one thing leads to another. You watch it once, then it leads to watching more, which then leads to enacting it, which leads to a change in behaviour and now instead of enacting it, they go after something that is genuine.

It’s also something that when I got married I thought I’d try out just for my husband, like put on a nurse outfit one day and a school girl the other, but he told me that he’d rather just see me in lingerie or with nothing at all. His reason is that it doesn’t matter because if we want to get intimate then we don’t need to create unnecessary scenarios or role plays for that, a simple lingerie or nothing at all would get the job done.

IFightingFrogsI · 2023-10-17T15:14:41+00:00

As a woman, I guess I don’t quite understand how the affects of frequent pornography use is damaging to a person’s well-being based on first hand experience.

The reason why you can't understand it is because you, as a female, aren't suffering from loneliness and sexlessness, whish is why porn isn't as damaging to you, since it's only an accessory to your sexual life, rather than being your ENTIRE sexual life

I’m sure the affects it has are unique for men and women based on our biological and social differences. However, I really want to know why it can be so damaging for men since I can’t physically relate.

This is the "Chicken or the Egg" fallacy that your kind always uses when approaching this subject

Porn is a symptom, a biproduct

What's actually damaging to men is the cause that leads to that symptom

Which is long term loneliness and sexlessness

Carloverguy20 · 2023-10-17T16:11:06+00:00

It could cause low self esteem in men, especially men of color, that they need a 8 incher to please a woman, because all the men in those videos have them, and it will make men feel inadequate. I would say that it creates unrealistic body standards. I also do believe that porn addiction is very overused, by the nofap puritans who love to shame people for pleasuring themselves. At the end of the day, what is even considered porn nowadays, watching someone dance, shake their a$$, masturbate, use toys, try on clothes etc.

Suspicious-Bed-2717 · 2023-10-17T18:38:19+00:00

Porn is damaging but if your short and ugly there is no alternative sexual outlet for you.

HighestTierMaslow · 2023-10-17T20:24:50+00:00

They've done studies showing the more porn a guy watches 1) the more he expects sex to be that way IRL 2) sex IRL becomes boring 3) the more judgmental he becomes of women's bodies. Porn activates the same neuro circuits as drugs.

harmonica2 · 2023-10-18T11:09:32+00:00

Porn raised my standards too high so I stopped watching it and then my standards lowered a lot which is good.

I'm not sure how else it is damaging besides raising standards too high though.

RediDitaj · 2023-10-19T06:43:28+00:00

Desensitisation

Title	In what ways is porn addiction damaging for men, and why?
Author	No-Chemist-4872
Upvotes	16
Comments	118
Date	October 17, 2023 12:22 AM UTC (2 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/179l7fi/in_what_ways_is_porn_addiction_damaging_for_men/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/in-what-ways-is-porn-addiction-damaging-for-men.1235370 https://theredarchive.com/post/1235370

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