Many of the first-person accounts of porn addiction sound similar to my own story. My particular sexual dysfunction is not ED, but inability to orgasm during intercourse with a woman. However, it may be that I am simply at the first stages of addiction and the ED will come later, if I keep this up.
I think the saving grace for me is that being 38 years old, I know what “normal” feels like, and I can recognize when there is something wrong with my sexual function. When the stimulation of a woman’s body and touch isn’t enough to bring me to orgasm, there is something wrong! Like most men my age, when I went through puberty, our access to porn was limited to magazines and late-night Cinemax. In middle and high school, long periods of time would pass and I’d never see a pornographic image more explicit than a woman’s breasts in an R movie. Even in the nineties, at the start of the Internet boom, my online porn viewing was pretty much confined to still images.
Today, I would find still images completely unarousing. I wouldn’t even bother looking at them. What’s happened in the past few years is this proliferation of Tube sites (Redtube and Youporn specifically) where a man can sit for long periods of time and just soak in hardcore pornography videos. It’s numbing, in more ways than one.
Over the past year, I’ve wondered about the degradation of my sexual response. I’ve been to the doctor about it. I’ve talked about it with my therapist. I’ve been fearful that it means I am no longer attracted to my wife; she has been fearful that there is something wrong with her, because she can’t bring me to orgasm anymore. I think the eye opener for me was realizing that my wife giving me oral sex didn’t do anything for me anymore. Fifteen years ago, when our relationship started, there was nothing better than oral sex. I couldn’t get enough of it. Lately, I found myself kindly advising her that she must be doing it wrong (after years of doing it right!) because I just couldn’t feel much of anything.
The problem isn’t her, it’s me. So last week, after finding your articles here, I decided to try to cut out the porn. Monday a week ago was the last time I looked at anything. I found it very difficult to sleep for the first few nights, because I had always used porn/masturbation before bed as a sleep aid. And when I woke up early Wednesday morning and couldn’t go back to sleep, I masturbated (w/o porn) in order to fall back asleep. But other than that, I haven’t masturbated.
I did make love with my wife Saturday morning, and it was much better already. I had an orgasm, despite the anxiety that I wouldn’t, and it was a pretty good one. I am now very anxious to see how I respond to oral stimulation. And in the meantime, I’m going to try to keep control and not fall back into bad habits.
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