I have to laugh at the pseudo-intellectual comments from those that seem determined to prove that the concept of porn-induced ED is bunk. It is smart to be skeptical and challenge any theory, but repeatedly making the same tired arguments without actually digesting the responses that address your questions is tiring. The phenomenon is real, I can assure you. I am a married, 38 year old man in good shape, I regularly work out/jog, eat healthfully, don’t smoke cigs, hardly drink alcohol, etc. For 37 years I had a normal, healthy sex life and had never, ever had any symptoms of ED. I had been using porn and internet porn for years without trouble. But about a year ago, I guess due to boredom and habit I started looking at porn and reading erotic stories more regularly and throughout the day on my phone (and not necessarily even masturbating, just looking at a lot of stuff). I just enjoy sex and the feeling of being aroused and figured there isn’t anything wrong or unhealthy about being horny, right?!
After about 1-1 1/2 years of this more constant exposure, a terrifying thing happened to me. While having sex with my wife, I started to occasionally lose my erection before orgasm. In several weeks, this progressed to penetration ED. I was devastated, and wondered if I was very ill with a heart condition or some other ailment. For the next several weeks, things seemed to be getting worse and I was trying to figure out what the problem was. The strange thing was, if I used porn I could easily get an erection and masturbate (even 2-3 times in a day), so I actually upped my porn use to ‘test’ that everything was working! I now realize, this was just making things worse!
Things only seemed to be going downhill with partner sex, until I had a week where I was far too busy with work to look at much porn. That weekend, I made love to my wife and had no ED problems at all! Feeling invigorated, I assumed that the ED was just a temporary problem, which had resolved itself. Great…problem solved, right? I rewarded myself the next day with some masturbation to porn, and was as hard as ever, so everything seemed to be fine. That same afternoon, my wife wanted to make love again…and I couldn’t perform!! What the hell was going on? It had just worked yesterday AND this morning!?! Did the porn use exhaust my energy? I instantly put the porn-ED connection together and started searching the Internet. When I found this information, everything I was experiencing made sense.
I made a decision that day to immediately quit using all porn and masturbating (but continued having sex with my wife). Things were hit and miss for the first 6 weeks and then, amazingly, everything went back to normal, and there is now absolutely no ED to speak of. I have not had any issues for months now…and my wife and I are enjoying some of the best, most intense lovemaking we have experienced in years. I now realize that porn had slowly been desensitizing me for a long time, and I simply wasn’t enjoying sex as much as I could have been. My wife says my penis feels larger inside of her (I am sure this is because it has not been fully erect for awhile).
I actually had no trouble instantly giving up porn when I realized there was a problem. I simply overused it due to lack of understanding of the deleterious effects. I had always just assumed that porn was merely an empty, harmless, little thrill.
In any case, I can say from personal experience that porn-induced ED is real and can be cured through porn abstinence/masturbation reduction alone. I think that partner contact helped me immensely, as well. I get annoyed by posters here suggesting the authors are trying to push a moral point of view, or want to somehow outlaw porn. It is clear they are trying to get the message out that ED can be caused by porn and it can be easily cured. [Comment under one of my posts on “Psychology Today.”
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