Porn Problems: Here Come the Women (2013)

Internet porn’s supernormal stimulation can blight women’s sex lives too

A popular online Swedish news magazine recently reported that women are noticing their own version of “porn impotence,” (already reported in Swedish men). Says one woman,

“I have wondered about the reason for my lack of interest in sex in-real-life. … I can definitely see the pattern: Lots of porn =  declining potency with a partner. I’ve reached the stage where I opt out of sex with a partner and settle for porn. … I’ve never even thought about this in terms of the reward system. And masturbation is so damn obvious a reward! More than the food, I think.”

Said another:

“[Porn use] may in itself be empowering, but can act as a barrier when one suddenly wants to establish an intimate relationship.”

And another:

I’m a 23 year old girl, I’ve watched porn since I was about 14/15, and would masturbate a lot. It’s to the point where I can’t really sleep if I don’t masturbate, because i’ve masturbated every night before I went to bed, for so many years. Also I have never had an orgasm from someone else, I can only do it myself, when watching porn (or fantasizing). I’ve never stopped for longer than 4 days or so, but I really want to stop. Also every time I’m done, I feel really tired and want to nap/sleep. It’s shitty. Where do I start? I don’t have the self control, I think..

Also, it’s not like I watch it because I don’t have sexual partners, I have a normal dating life and i’ve had enough kinky moments, but they never satisfy me as much as I myself do.. I want to enjoy them, and I think I can’t because of the porn addiction.

We’ve often been asked why we seldom blog about women’s porn problems. Answer: The people posting online about their porn-related symptoms have almost exclusively been male. However, spurred to action by the Swedish article above, we decided to dig deeper. We chose Reddit/NoFap, which appears to be the most female friendly of the sites where (mostly young) people experiment with giving up Internet porn and/or masturbation. More than 700 of its 60,000+ members publicly identify as female, affectionately dubbed “femstronauts.”

Of the 540 female usernames we checked, only about a quarter had posted. Of those, 93% were attempting to quit an unwanted behavior (usually porn, but sometimes also excessive sex-toy use/masturbation). To our surprise, only 7% were seeking advice about a partner’s porn use. Although there were both lesbians and bisexuals among the sample, the overwhelming majority of the posters spoke of sex with men.

We were struck by how closely the femstronauts’ accounts mirrored the experience of men’s self-reports of Internet porn-related symptoms. As you’ll see, the women, too, complain of loss of sensation and arousal during real sex, escalation to unwanted porn genres, irritability, apathy, addiction, insomnia without porn use, and so forth. Many also see marked benefits when they quit.

As this is our first in-depth look at femstronauts’ self-reports, we want to include a lot of women’s voices. We’ve broken this long post down into the following segments:

  • Women experiencing porn-induced problems speak out
  • Improvements after quitting
  • Porn conditioning

Women experiencing porn-induced problems speak out

The fact that both men and women are seeing the same symptoms suggests that the issue with today’s porn could be vulnerability of the human brain in the face of today’s highspeed, high-def porn videos more than extreme content. Here’s a sample of femstronauts’ reasons for quitting.

Loss of genital sensitivity/desire for partner

Fiona: I fear that masturbating frequently and watching pornography is desensitizing me greatly (physically and mentally) when I have sex with my boyfriend.

Tory: I am a woman in a long-term relationship. I usually masturbate every few days, and I started using porn because it made it easier and faster to reach orgasm. However, each time it gets more and more difficult to climax, and over the years the porn I watch has become more extreme/unusual to get the same amount of excitement. I also cannot climax with my boyfriend. It’s very true that porn desensitizes you, but once you can hardly orgasm without it, it’s difficult to give up.

Sienna: I just recently broke up with my boyfriend because I never felt any sparks with him. I told myself that it was just the wrong guy, and that might be true, but I also think that my perpetual masturbating kept me from feeling the tingles I would have felt otherwise. Ever since I was a pre-teen I have masturbated with or without watching porn pretty much daily.

Kelly: For us girls a moderate ED is tough to spot, … but I feel it the same way as I read guys describe it. There is desire but no arousal. No throbbing, pulling, overwhelming, pleasurable sensation in the clitoris and the lower abdomen, only a kind of mental push towards sex. And BTW, I do have PE, except it might more accurately be described as PO: orgasming while excitation is low, with the quality of the orgasm being quite mediocre. Such an orgasm is often unannounced except for a kind of anxiety-like tension, but localized in the genitals.

Surya: I am a 23 y/o woman and I masturbate every evening to fall asleep and sometimes during the day. I see my boyfriend a few times a week. I miss him so much when he’s gone, but when we are together, it’s like all my sex drive disappears.

Ellen: It didn’t come to my attention, until my boyfriend and I actually began experimenting, that I had a problem. I loved feeling good. I did it when I was rewarding myself, making myself feel better, or just plain bored. But now I’m realizing I’m so accustomed to a vibrator and my own hand that I can’t orgasm or even feel very sensitive when my boyfriend pleasures me. F*ck. That. Sh*t.

Valerie: It’s time that I stop being dependent on porn to get off.

lilone_mg: I’m a 19 year old girl. College student, girlfriend, etc. Honestly, in the beginning I followed this sub as a joke. I really didn’t understand what the motive was, especially when pmo is so great, right? So, like many, I started pmo-ing when I was younger. Nbd. I never did it too often, never saw any adverse affects. Then I got a single room in college. I would literally pmo because I was bored. Then, I started noticing troubles in my sex life with my boyfriend of 4 years. It was like we fell out of sync. Neither of us were happy. We talked, and we
both admitted that we had (on occasion) pmo before sex, so that I would be ready and he could last longer. I even said i didn’t see the point in sex anymore. Isn’t that sad?? And honestly, I don’t care about lasting long. I love him and just being with him is all I want. So starting that night, I stopped pmo for a week. Just from that, I noticed I was a lot more responsive, eager, and all around more excited and attentive. I’ve relapsed since, but I want to move on from pmo. Its affected my relationship, motivation, and discipline. I want to be a better girlfriend, and a better me. Starting tonight, I’m speaking it into existence.

Binging and “procrasturbation”

Sophie: Female masturbation can get pretty uncontrollable. There’s no “down time.” On “sick days” home from school I’d go on porn binges and cum about 30+ times. Now, I want to stop having to imagine really degrading porn while having sex just so I can cum. It really detaches me from the intimacy of the situation.

Alana: I discovered porn at the age of 10. But my interest in porn was mild [until age 13]. I would spent the next 4 years edging and orgasming every day, and on bad days, I would do it several times in a day. Afterward, I would feel horrible; it felt exactly like a crash after a high. I felt lonely, sad, and even more depressed with every fap. An overwhelming sense of self-pity would wash over me. I would think of my parents, and feel so ashamed that their daughter would be hiding herself in her room, curtains drawn, masturbating to no end. Only pseudo-sex, and false pleasure to fill my mind.

Liz: While I don’t find anything inherently wrong with masturbation in moderation, it’s rather sickening to be so dependent on something so emotionally charged and harmful. And once you start, how can you limit yourself to moderation, really? And [porn’]s not even real. Ugh!

Tina: Recently, I find myself getting off maybe 6, 7 times a day. It takes up my time, makes me late. I can’t help feeling that it’s an obsession of sorts, because I can’t not. Porn disgusts me but recently I’ve been using it as a quick fix, against my better judgement. Anyway, I’m all pro-masturbation but I feel it’s time to take up the gauntlet and do this thing.

Loss of intimacy/seeing others as sexual objects

Elise: I also have the feeling that when I have sex with someone I love, I’m distracted because I’ve watched too much porn and I actually think about all the gross stuff I watched. It just forms this big obstacle in my sex life 🙁

Amanda: I’m in a long-distance relationship. I masturbate almost every day. … I find myself mentally objectifying my male friends; and I lose a lot of valuable time I should be spending on work. I also used to be a flirt when I was younger before I discovered that ladies could masturbate too (which wasn’t until halfway through college), after which I lost some of the urge to cuddle or be close to men.

Lilly: I masturbate 4 to 6 times a week depending on how much alone time I get. We have sex maybe once a week and it’s never very good. Neither of us keeps any energy back for the other. I’ve come to prefer watching porn and looking at pictures to actually spending time with him. I’ve become the thing I hate.

Kat: I am bisexual. The next time I see a new friend that I have masturbated to, something is different. No matter how “normal” I think I am acting, I can’t shake the feeling she knows something is up. This is just one example of why I am starting the no schlick [masturbation] challenge. I am tired of not being able to grasp the reality because I am too focused on the fantasy.

Unwanted escalation to more extreme porn

Nina: I’ve started looking at porn to distract myself from reality and sometimes I masturbate to procrastinate. The worst part is that the porn I look at has gotten progressively more disturbing.

Shona: I’ve been regularly viewing porn as long as I had an internet connection. … I masturbate at least once a day and the things I am viewing only get weirder and weirder… I have mainly been getting off to rape porn lately.

Chelsea: It’s only been a year since I discovered the beauty of an orgasm. But I’ve already seen my share of some of the nastiest and most taboo porn out there. And to think I’m still young. I want to be me again. But it’s hard.

Slipping into addiction (inability to quit despite negative consequences)

Jen: I HAVE TO masturbate every day. I am sick and tired of it. I am sore down there… it hurts. And my mind just can’t stop playing images of sexual fantasies whether awake or asleep. … I miss being normal and being attracted to girls [speaker is a lesbian] and being able to admire their beauty. It’s all gone. I feel like an Asexual now. I am not attracted to either sex ever since my porn addiction started.

Alicia: This porn addiction has changed my life in so many ways. I’ve always had no problem getting attention from men and I’m physically fit and attractive. I used to watch more porn than most men I know. I’d get an urge, then spend anywhere from five minutes to an hour searching for the perfect video to get off to because I found myself bored of the same old stuff. I started off with soft stuff in my early teens and it turned into the most taboo things I could find. I had a gig of porn on my PC, put files on my phone and mp3/video player for easy access, and got a trial account on a porn site because I saw a gif that turned me on so much.

Everything had to be rougher for me. I wanted to be called a bitch and a whore. I asked to be slapped and most guys couldn’t do it. Sex was basically everything but loving for me; all that was missing from my sex life was a camera and a paycheck. I considered myself bisexual, but could never see myself in a relationship with a woman. Basically not only was I objectifying myself, I was objectifying the women in my life. Sexual encounters with others felt okay, but never did much for me. I’d lie about how good it felt and I’d fake orgasms just for it to end. It felt wrong, and I just wanted to be left alone. With porn? I’d have the most intense orgasms and I’d do it anywhere from one to five times a day.

The damage it has done to me psychologically with regard to sex, self-esteem, and relationships is pretty damn evident. Also, it made me want to flirt with men a lot less. “Why do I need to talk to that cute guy? He’s never going to make me feel good sexually the way I can feel by myself.” I’d be in a conversation with a guy online, and I’d just get up and walk away from the PC to masturbate. I’d be late to class or work because I just needed to get in that one quickie porn session. I was pathetic and I wanted to change it.  (See Alicia’s recovery update below.)

Megan: I definitely think it’s a legitimate addiction. … and definitely has the feeling of being out of one’s control. It took me a while to get involved with porn, but once I did, I’d spend entire days watching porn and masturbating instead of working (from home). Beyond the excessive masturbation, I’d also be really unsafe and reckless in real life, hooking up with random people just for the hell of it. I couldn’t think about anything but sex most of the time. I feel like my energy has been completely sapped and my mind and focus are fragmented. Concentration on anything substantial has been difficult, especially with porn available at a moment’s notice on the internet. The “procrasturbation” has been out of control.

As for the female version of ED, I definitely had that type of issue with clitoral stimulation. In order for me to get off with a guy I would generally need to fantasize about something in my mind for it to even work. The sensitivity just wasn’t there on its own, or I was too used to the way it felt when I did it to myself. I could get myself off in a minute or two, but it would take much, MUCH longer with a partner, if it all. [My habits] backfired when I dated a very nice man who actually didn’t have a problem with porn or masturbation. Since he wasn’t also addicted or fueled by pornographic fantasies, I had trouble understanding this toned down, subtle, love-infused version of sex. I think that this might also be what guys face. When a guy not only compares the physical appearance but also behavior in bed, and they notice that their lady is not behaving like their favorite porn star, they’re brushing up to this difference in expectation.

Whitney: I’ve been “exploring” my body since I was probably 8 years old. I started watching porn ~9 years old. Access to a computer whenever I wanted and a curious mind led to some strange explorations. I quickly learned the only technique that I could use to reach orgasm. I’ve stuck to it for 9 years.

Masturbation was always a stress relief for me, something to occupy my time, something to stave off the depression, something to help me sleep at night. I got fairly good at making myself feel good, even if only for a while. I can remember marathon mornings, masturbating for hours, seeing how many times I could orgasm. I didn’t realize it was an addiction, I didn’t see the effect it was having on how I felt pleasure, how I coped with life, how I functioned.

In my first real relationship, I physically could not orgasm with my boyfriend. There was nothing he could do that would feel good, honestly it mostly just hurt. I couldn’t explain that there was no way he could replicate my technique, that it wasn’t that I didn’t want to cum for him, I couldn’t. Eventually it got to the point in which I wouldn’t even try; it was easier to just give him head and forgo any pleasure on my end. It was good enough to know I pleasured him. He was hurt for a while, upset that he couldn’t give me pleasure. He was upset with me, though, as well. He simply couldn’t understand, and I can’t say I tried hard enough to explain it to him. That was a massive blow to my self esteem. I couldn’t do something that the person I loved wanted for me. Eventually, he gave up on even trying to give me pleasure at all.

I stuck to online relationships before and after that. I prowled chatrooms, finding men who could write words that would allow me to do what only I could do for myself. It was a pretty damn dark time. I was depressed (for a variety of reasons), and I was continually coming back from school and wasting the evening away in front of my laptop, finding some kink here or there to watch for hours, following link after link. About a year ago, I met the man of my dreams, quite honestly. I was terrified to be put in a situation where I was expected to orgasm with him. I didn’t want to see the look of disappointment I’d seen before, didn’t want to be subjected to that. How could I explain that it’s so difficult to for me to orgasm that I myself sometimes can’t make it happen? How could I look him in the eyes and basically tell him, “It’s not you, it’s me”?

He has been so open and accepting; it’s been wonderful. He’s created an environment where I am encouraged—not pressured—to enjoy everything, where I don’t need to focus solely on him and his pleasure, where I can relax. Orgasm isn’t the final goal with us; enjoying our time together is. It means the world to me. And it has helped; I’ve gotten over a few of my hang-ups. But, I’m not being fair to him, or myself, if I don’t try to uncondition myself, so to speak. For 9 years it’s taken porn and/or stories and a specific technique to give me orgasm.. It’s time to break the habit.

I want to be able to look into his eyes and orgasm with him, for him, without needing porn. I want to enjoy every interaction with him. I want a stress relief that doesn’t leave me feeling like I need to go take a shower before I see anyone. I want to be able to cope with life without turning to the addiction that is masturbation for me.

Improvements after quitting

More energy, motivation

Hope: (Day 36) This experience has helped me so much. I just can’t let myself go back to how I was anymore. I have so much excitement and energy every day, and there’s a confidence in me I never knew existed. I don’t want to lose that.

Nikki: I have relapsed a few times since I started last month but I really have seen the benefits. First off my energy is so high! I have never been this energetic before even if I have a spliff I am ready to get sh*t done!

Kristen: I didn’t look at porn much either until the last six months before I quit. I never masturbated more than once a day and watched porn no more than twice a week. For me, the biggest motivator for really cutting down was feeling how much more energy, motivation, and social grace I had when I hadn’t masturbated for a few days. When I feel the urge I just remember how much better I feel when I’m not masturbating myself into a complacent haze.

More sexual pleasure and emotional/sexual responsiveness

Olivia: I started masturbating when I was a virgin and when I did finally have sex, I didn’t enjoy it at all. It felt numb and I was programmed to only get off from the clit. After doing a month without masturbating to porn, I started enjoying sex for the first time and I didn’t have to rely on the clit at all.

Meg: My main issue was that I made myself so sore that I would be too sensitive for my SO to give me oral etc. I used to masturbate every day, at least twice, before I went to bed, more out of habit than because I actually wanted to. …It’s only been just over a week and I’ve already been… ahem, enjoying the benefits with my SO!

Julie: The benefits of nofap aren’t just for men. I never thought sex could get any better than it already was, but I was wrong. When both partners are saving all their desire for the other, things can be amazing.

Cara: I definitely notice an increase in sensitivity after a period of not fapping or sexing. It makes me feel even better that there are other women participating. Love makes the sex so much better. It’s a completely different experience relieving your basal needs with someone (or yourself) and making the type of love that melts the world away and feels like a transcendental experience.

Sheena: Last night we had sex, and neither of us had fapped or shlicked or whatever in the last week and it was amazing. I came loudly and hard, probably one of the best (not for the neighbors). Anyways I am encouraged to continue! I hope he does too!

Beth: I am doing this to regain sensitivity. It works. When I made it to two weeks I relapsed and came in mere seconds. I quit so that when my SO and I have sex it is more enjoyable. He definitely notices my enthusiasm after a time of not fapping.

Jessie: I stopped when my husband stopped last fall. Yesterday, I had two “O’s” from only my husband’s touch. This was the first time in our 8 years. He’s the first and only man who’s ever been able to do this. It’s because I stopped being the only one in charge of my button.

Samantha: When I save my getting excited for activities with my boyfriend, it’s also a whole lot better and even more romantic feeling.

Kimberly: (Day 33) I’m noticing more pleasure during intercourse since I’m getting longer breaks between moments of pleasure.

Sarah: I am a 19 year old female doing nofap. Before I started nofap sex was a chore because I didn’t feel anything, I just waited for my partner to climax so it would be over. We’ve been  together for almost a year now and I could count on one hand the amount of times I’ve had an orgasm with them, and none of them were really that good. But last night sex felt amazing and I had the best sex I’ve had in a long time. I’m not even all the way through my reboot but I’m excited to see what’s in store.

Better mood, greater emotional balance

Caitlyn: I’m a better person while not masturbating to porn. I’m happier, nicer, more productive. Porn is sort of a crutch for me – something to fall back on. Perhaps a major procrastination tool.

Kerri: [Day 41] He was respectful, gentle and authentic, and the first guy I’ve been with since I quit. Having gone the longest period of time between orgasms since I was about 11, I found it much easier for him to satisfy me. I felt this level of respect for myself that I’ve never experienced before. Of course I have my days of not feeling so great as well, but I experience a sense of clarity and peace much more often now.

Kayla: I have had a problem with masturbating since I was about 13 or so. It didn’t really involve porn until a few years ago since my parents had filters on our computers. I finally realized I had a slight addiction about a year ago. I have been trying on and off to stop and only recently managed to stop for more than a month.

I used to look at every guy I saw as a potential boyfriend. It was a real problem and kept me from getting into healthy relationships with great guys. Since quitting, I am able to look at guys as potential for a great friendship rather than a potential boyfriend or sex partner. These healthy friendships have made me feel more comfortable around guys then I have been in years. It is great to be in a room with men and consider sitting down and having a cup of coffee with them rather than imagining what it might be like in bed.

Jillian: I’m a virgin and I have no experience in relationships. Porn has shaped the way I view others, particularly males. I think my addiction was pretty bad in the past. For a while I did not find normal people attractive at all and instead was into yaoi and hentai. (In retrospect I find it very bizarre, but that was in my later teens.) Actually, sex was, and still is, something very external and I have a hard time imagining myself engaging in it. The degrading behavior seen in porn would make me hot, but after the fact would make me extremely uncomfortable. I internalized a lot of the “lack of worth” shown to the ladies. Since quitting – and I was spurred onto quitting because of martial arts – I’m impressed at just how much less depressed I am, keeping my mind away from pornography. And how much better my dreams are, my creativity. I am getting better at seeing people as people and my mind isn’t in the gutter and causing me anxiety (much) anymore. And there’s so much less pressure in all walks of life it’s crazy. I feel more innate energy and yet calmer all at the same time, though I do find exercise to be EXTREMELY important as an outlet since masturbating to porn is not an outlet anymore.

Increased self-discipline, effectiveness

Mora: (Day 35) I was unmotivated, frustrated and constantly going in and out of bouts of depression. I was masturbating to porn every day and sometimes I would just lie in bed and do it for hours. I knew there was a lot that I wanted to accomplish but everything just felt stagnant. So I gave this a go. The first day was awesome. I went for an 11km bike ride, wrote a list of things to do and effortlessly ticked each one off. Cool things that have happened in the last 35 days: – Offered two jobs based on personality alone – No more bullying at work – Raised $4000 for a not for profit – Took on more responsibility for the community organisation I am involved with, getting more respect – Confronted mother on unresolved family issues, she ended up flying my father across the country so that my family could be together for the first time in two years!

What’s interesting is that it doesn’t take as much to turn me on now. I came across a photo of a guy in a suit the other day that normally wouldn’t have had too much of an impact but I actually felt crazy from looking at it. I’m hoping that nofap will help me orgasm a lot easier when I’m with the next guy, this is usually a huge mission and probably because I was of the attitude that “It’s just easier if I do it on my own.”

Getting disciplined in one area makes it easier to get disciplined in other areas of life. Also, it’s an escape from stress and pain that I can no longer use, so I have to do something else with all that energy. I did feel worse at stages, but it was weird, like I had a lot of clarity around it and I could articulate and experience my pain more directly. I registered myself into a half marathon and am seven weeks into my training. I was not a runner before this! Got paid to visit one of Australia’s most remote communities (a dream come true). I also haven’t drunk alcohol for nearly four weeks. In a couple of weeks I am meeting a band in another city, get free entry to a music festival, then I will be road-tripping with them to another town, where I will stay for a few weeks playing music.

Aisha: I had a problem with compulsive masturbation a while back. I’d found myself doing it all the time and found it really hard to stop. I’ve just broken my third stint at abstinence. (Each one has been about three weeks). This time is the first that I haven’t really struggled with any kind of chaser effect. I think that maybe you have to abstain for a while until your brain as sorted itself out and then can masturbate healthily after that. I think that for me that maybe two weeks is a good minimum spacing. But when I first started trying to give up I needed longer in order not to be pulled back to compulsive masturbating.

Karen: (Day 24) I’m doing No Fap to gain mastery over impulses, my body, and retraining my brain just like all of you. I’m also participating in it along side my spouse. This process and the effects are not just placebo. It really changes things. I dedicate mental and emotional energy to very productive things now instead of always thinking about sex. My husband says he has an increased desire and appreciation for me. I am feeling more independent and confident.

Nyra: Improvements at day 26:

  • I do not have superpowers, but I AM modestly more productive
  • I still need naps on occasion, but I have a little more energy than usual
  • I’m not a supermodel, but I’ve lost a little weight and I have more motivation to keep working out
  • It’s not a monumental change, but sex is definitely more intense than it was (though it was pretty awesome already to begin with) and I am more connected to subtle, genuine feelings of arousal
  • I haven’t made any sweeping life changes, but I’m a little more motivated in my work. I stay a little less distracted, and I stay a little more on task.

Dee: It was a struggle for a while, but in the end I succeeded in stopping for several consecutive months. … I don’t do it when I’m bored anymore, because I recognize that it’s just something to make me feel better about being bored. I try and do something more lasting, like working on a project. I still consider my experience and the research I did along with it to be extremely valuable. I learned a lot about the nature of addiction, and became more aware of when I was doing something compulsively versus doing it because I really wanted to. It’s still an effort to make that conscious decision, but now I’m much more prepared. I started applying the mental skills I learned to things like sugar addiction and other, stronger substances. Now, I feel more under control. It’s healthy to do things just to feel good, as long as you know that’s what you’re doing and you don’t get caught in a loop, essentially chasing the dragon

Improved wellbeing, fitness

Ashleigh: 20 days might not seem like a lot, but it is for me. Additionally, I’ve lost 12kgs in the past few months, and I feel awesome.

Joan: I feel excessive fapping contributes to this hair issue for women too. My whole life since childhood I have had this thin, brittle, hair. Everyone else in my family has thick hair (except mom, who guess what, likely has a porn/fap compulsion/addiction too) and I just figured I had mom’s thin hair genes. Well two years ago I found nofap and started trying to reach 90 days. I have never stopped, each relapse makes me want to work all the harder. I started taking better care of myself and since I have been cheating myself out of a lot of nutrients (female arousal fluids can’t be just water) over the past decade in addition to eating right I have been taking a multivitamin daily since. I also tossed in a vitamin D and C. The difference is amazing. I haven’t been sick like I used to get during season changes, my skin looks better. But the best part of all (aside from fap-related anxiety vanishing) is my thick head of hair. My old friends can’t believe that simply taking a multivitamin daily hair allowed me this beautiful head of hair. What they don’t realize is that I am not P/MOing 3-10 times daily anymore. A lot of this can be chalked up to bro-science but really, our reproductive organs get first priority on our bodies nutrient distribution list, everything else is secondary.

Alicia: [Story above] Withdrawal was, and still is, hard at times. Sometimes I have dreams that I’ve broken my streak or I will dream about porn clips I used to watch. At certain times of the month, the urges are stronger for obvious reasons (yay hormones!), but my brain is more focused on the fact that I don’t want to break my record so I push it aside.

As for any additional benefits, I’m still waiting to hit day 90 to be certain. So far, I’ve noticed that I’m much stronger both physically and mentally. I got back into working out and I’m the fittest I’ve ever been in my life. Also, I’ve been more into being by myself and focusing on that. I firmly believe that stopping helped me stand up to my abusive significant other and make the choice to leave.

Terra: (Day 98) My life has turned around for the better in comparison with what it used to be, but I’m not sure how much I can credit to abstaining. I have two jobs, I workout every day and, at 115 pounds coming down from about 135, I am in better shape than I have been in years.

Porn conditioning

Porn’s sexual conditioning isn’t limited to impaired responsiveness during real sex (in some users). It can also cause women to believe that porn scenarios are representative of real sex, cause them to think they want to be treated like porn stars, or at least cause them to tolerate a partner’s porn-shaped beliefs.

This young woman, for example, reports (in a UK paper) that her boyfriend’s porn use influenced his desire to recreate tearful rape scenes, which she assumed were within the range of normal because he had groomed her by showing her rape porn.

Whitney: Seeing the hardcore porn affected me in so many ways. Why didn’t I look like those women? Why are my breasts smaller? Would men not like that my labia are longer? What about me being pale, would it be better if I tanned? Shaved, trimmed, bush? Why do I not moan like that, why can I not cum like those girls can? It took me a while when I was younger to realize how fake and unrealistic porn is. Hindsight is really 20/20.

Lena: My boyfriend has been cured of his ED through giving up masturbation to porn, and since then we have been having sex. After starting nofap, I lost my ability to get off, for some reason. But it has returned! and I can tell you why: My boyfriend stopped watching me like he would some pornstar who was moaning and throwing her hair, and treated me like a real person with real needs. He made an effort not to think of me as a woman, or a person, but as me, who has her own set of pleasurable feelings. He no longer felt he had to perform and do all these crazy sexual positions. We were just two people mutually enjoying sex. When I attempted to climax he focused on me and only me, and I on him when he was reaching climax. And that made all the difference.

Dana: I don’t have a porn-addiction problem, but what I did (do, but I’m slowly recovering) have was this idea that as a woman, I need to act like a pornstar in order to keep a man interested. Constant loud moaning, over-exaggerating, constantly switching positions, having (okay, faking) 10 orgasms, willing to do anything, etcetera. Being really fake, because you think that’s how it’s supposed to be and that’s what men like, making it quite impossible to genuinely enjoy what’s happening. And with that also comes: thinking it’s perfectly normal for a guy to watch loads of porn and treat you like a sex object.

Men are noticing too:

“Women are turning up the dial,” says Evan, also 31. “I’m a pleaser. I get off on a woman’s arousal. But I’ve noticed that women are getting a lot more vocal now. Either I’m doing something I’m not aware of, or women are beginning to mimic what happens in porn. Honestly, it’s kind of weird. I’m not sure if I like it.”

Together men and women can overcome the separating challenge of today’s hyperstimulating Internet porn. Mutual compassion is the first step. As a femstronaut pointed out,

“Our brain works the same [as a man’s], no difference with the reward system. No significant difference with the mental processes leading to binging. Except for the usual individual differences. Our emotions work the same. Insecurities may be gender related, but they are, overall, just plain old insecurities. We gotta learn how to deal with ourselves in another way than numbing our daily stresses with sexual stimulation. The same as men do.”

And as a guy said,

“One of the things that gives me a lot more drive and courage to experiment with r/PornFree and now r/NoFap is that I know there are women here with the same problem. Knowing that I’m not a crazy freak and that there are people from both sexes with this issue makes it that much easier to do this. We’re all just people here. Men and women are merely different sides of the coin of humanity, stuck on this rock together until it’s engulfed by the sun.”

More stories here and in the comments section below

Updates – articles and studies published since 2013:

Excerpt: The results of the study did not reveal significant differences between men and women in the CIUS [Compulsive Internet Use Scale] scores…. The presence of subgroups of women in the high-risk group is … consistent with other studies on behavioral addictions (Khazaal et al., 2017), showing that subsamples of women are possibly at increased risk of behavioral addictions.

Thirty one percent (31.8%) of women in the studied sample reported treatment seeking for CSB in the past. Problematic pornography use was the strongest predictor of CSB symptoms.
Brief Pornography Screen (BPS). The BPS is a 5-item screening instrument that measures problematic… RESULTS
Out of the 674 women, 57.4% (n= 387) scored 6 points or higher on the SAST-PL, indicative of CSB, and 73.3%
(n= 494) of the sample scored 4 points or higher on the BPS measuring symptoms of problematic pornography use

Women who are experiencing the kinds of issues recounted in this post may find these items of interest:

From UK’s Telegraph:

Women are no less prone to the negative effects of watching porn than men are.

“I start watching increasingly hardcore porn, until I have to quit for a while”

Siobhan Rosen, a sex columnist for American GQ, tells me, “I look at Pornhub and I get into the same mentality I imagine men get into, where at first the sight of two people having sex is so arousing. And then I’m like, ‘I need something more.’ I start looking at more and more hardcore porn, until I have to force myself to quit for a while.”

Habitual porn-watchers often report feeling less arousal during sex – something Rosen has experienced, too. “My partner and I made a pact to both not watch porn for this reason, and our sex life is so much better because of it.”

Why porn is the death knell for a happy marriage: Married couples who view adult material double the risk of divorce

“Married couples who watch pornography almost double their risk of divorce, researchers said yesterday. …  Men whose wives watch porn may be  encouraged by the news that if she stops watching it, the probability of getting divorced dropped to 6 per cent among the couples interviewed. But if she decides to continue, the risk of divorce  remains at 18 per cent.”

Slideshow on sexual conditioning

Article about porn and morphing sexual tastes

Why porn can be more exciting than a partner

Advice for partners of anyone trying to quit

Sexual energy and the single woman

How men’s perception of women and romance changes without porn use

Internet Pornography Use Among Collegiate Women: Gender Attitudes, Body Monitoring, and Sexual Behavior (2018)

Comments by women under this article

Pornography and sex addiction: Not just a man’s problem

Women Are Reporting Porn-Related Problems Too (radio show)

Growing scientific evidence of a lingering post-orgasm cycle (studies)

Studies on the overlap between sex and drugs in the brain

Looking for the genuine, helpful support of men and women recovering from overconsumption of Internet porn? Visit REDDIT.NoFap. This post highlights the welcoming, caring attitude of most of the men there, and there’s a woman on the moderator team.

___________

3 YOUTube channels by females who have experimented with “nofap”:

► AAHANA: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCksU…

► KasumiKriss: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCp4_…

► Chel-lalasVeganMania: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCyb-…

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Forums for women:

28 thoughts on “Porn Problems: Here Come the Women (2013)”

  1. A woman Femstronaut

    Oh how far I have come since finding this subreddit. I can’t thank everyone enough for being so supportive. 60 days without porn, 26 without MO. Both are new records for me. I feel as if I am in the middle of the great transformation I have always dreamed of having the energy for: better eating, better attitude, motivation for everything across the board, more energy physically and mentally and my anxiety is melting away. My voice sounds “sexier” too.

    Thanks nofap!

    http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1i4zgn/60_days_without_porn_today_and_i_found_this/cb118iv

  2. A woman explains porn to another woman

    I’m a woman with a porn problem so maybe I can help give you some perspective. When I look at porn, I don’t necessarily like what I see, but I know it will get me off. It’s a brain thing. The kinds of things I look at sometimes, are things I would NEVER do, and I would NEVER cheat on my husband.

    My therapist once told me that if you get it stuck in your brain that a bad feeling, like disgust, guilt, anger is connected to orgasm.. It becomes what turns you on. whatever he’s looking for porn-wise, may make him feel bad.. but it’s the bad feeling that gives him the orgasm.. not saying that for sure as I don’t know him, but that’s a very common mechanism.

    What nofap does is allow a person to reset that mechanism, so they can learn to orgasm to positive, nurturing stimuli. I think you should give him a chance, the fact that he’s working on changing is a very good sign. I have known many women who’s husbands do this and they won’t even consider trying to change. If you stick with him and help him out, your relationship will be stronger in the end.

    Also, you may want to look into some counseling alternatives in your area.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1j020d/ok_no_fapchange_my_mind/cb9qopp

  3. Femstronaut on forum

    As a female doing nofap I wasn’t really sure what the results would be like. I’m on day 15 now, and I am finding I care more about the people I love and I want them to be happy. I am also cooking and baking all the time. It seems to ease the tension somehow. This is one effect I definitely was not expecting! Perhaps from an increase in estrogen and progesterone? Its a feeling I’d forgotten for a long time.

    NoFap is making me more nurturing

  5. Comment posted on “Psychology Today” under another article

    Porn causing ED in Men/Causing loss of sex drive in women I am female and I used to watch porn all the time. Mainly because my boyfriend could not get turned on without watching porn first. So he had me watch it with him.For a long time I could not get turned on without watching porn first and then having sex or masturbating.

    After a while I could not get turned on at all without porn and I could get an orgasm only when I masturbated, but not from sex.

    I have talked to female friends and some of them can not orgasm from sex but they can when they watch porn. So this does not only affect guys it affects women also.

  6. Forums for women

  7. [A young woman hooked on porn gets her boyfriend’s help]

    Personally I felt better about my PMO problems after I told my b/f about and he’s said he feels less insecure and it’s put his mind at ease knowing that our relationship/sex problems had a lot to do with my PMO problem. Now he’s my accountability partner – I relapsed yesterday and the worst part was having to tell him about it!! 🙁 He said to me which was lovely – “we’re in this together,” so I just feel a ton of support from him which is great. Obviously everyone’s different, but if you’re b/f is quite into  PMO a swell it might be good for two to try and stop together?

    http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1o4uig/this_is_weird_things_that_have_changed_for_me/ccoueev

  9. Another woman’s perspective if you are interested.

    I started having sex before the internet even existed. I think this may have really messed me up in a different way. Sex used to be good. I mean really good. Then something started to change. I noticed it about ten years ago. Sex was becoming increasingly unsatisfying. All I could think was that this was normal and had to do with age. I was only in my 20’s.

    I have always masturbated since a young age, but I think it increased exponentially over the last decade. I think I thought because sex had become so unpleasant with age, I was resigned to masterbating for the rest of my life. This is in my 20’s. That’s crazy.

    There were times that I started to get hints that fap and porn were what’s wrong with men, but 10 years ago thete was no info on nofap anywhere. I found some old book on controlling your ejaculation which my boyfriend at the time laughed at.

    Fast forward another 10 years, and sex is worse than you can imagine. At this point I can’t figure out why people even do it any more. Worse now – I’m part of the problem. I had some incredibley bad sex, so bad I decided never to do it again unless I could find someone PMO free. I’m only in my 30’s.

    I’ve personally had some very long streaks with a mess up here and there. All I can really say is you get it back. If you stop, sex becomes good again. It’s a million times better than any one self made orgasm.

    I lost like 20 good years of my life because of this. If it wasn’t them, it was me. Don’t fap. Don’t do this to yourself. Don’t do this to someone else. Sex is supposed to be fun. Pleasurable. Every time you rub one out you ruin it. You ruin it for the girl and you ruin it for yourself.

    I feel bad for you guys and girls who grew up with a computer in your home. Who were addicted to porn and already heavy masturbators before losing your virginity. I know what you lost. That’s the only thing I am thankful for in all of this. That I know what I am missing.

    Another woman’s perspective if you are interested.

  10. One Femstronaut’s story

    This day last year I was stuck in a depressed funk. I had been repeating the same cycles of compulsive sex for six years and compulsive masturbation for longer than that. I had become very good at lying, manipulation and pretending. Nothing was my fault, I could blame all my problems on something else, and I was great at making excuses. I was, and still am, a sex addict.

    I have been identifying as a sex addict since 2009. Since then I have stopped binge drinking and abusing prescription drugs, weed and club drugs. Getting off of substances was easy compared to the emotional and behavioral changes that I needed to make. Some consequences of my sex addiction included (but were definitely not limited to) multiple emotional and sexual affairs on my long-term partners, often having multiple affairs at the same time, lying to and manipulating others for my own immediate gratification, compulsive masturbation just to get through the day, and all around emotional stuntedness.

    One year ago I had made good progress on my relationships. I had left an unhealthy relationship and somehow managed to break my cycle of hopping from one unhealthy thing into the next. However I still viewed fapping as no big deal, because “I wasn’t hurting anyone, right?” I couldn’t understand why I was unproductive, unambitious and mentally drained when I knew I was capable of more. I could no longer keep my personal life from affecting my work life, and my year end review was dismal. My daily schedule looked something like this: wake up, fap, eat breakfast, go to work, do little to no work while fantasizing about sex, go home immediately, fap, avoid doing chores/groceries/socializing (or if I absolutely had to do something, fap to get the energy to do it), go to bed, fap self to sleep. As a result I was eating poorly, isolating myself and actively doing my best to lose my job.

    This day last year an all-night-fap-binge triggered me to take the next step in my recovery. It was hard as shit. I boxed up and eventually tossed my entire sex toy collection. I cleared my browser history and even installed blocking software on my most frequented porn sites. I tried to keep busy by researching hobbies I wanted to try (which ranged from learning ukulele to learning how to sew and a ton of other crazy shit). I strictly scheduled my days for the first few weeks, never trusting myself to be alone with free time. I shared my sobriety plan with my 12 step group.

    Somehow something worked. I made it through that first rough month. I learned how to sleep without it, I learned how to avoid porn, I learned how to calm myself down when I was craving. I went through withdrawal, cried a bunch, dealt with some early childhood trauma. Found support from this subreddit early on and from my therapist and 12 step group. I started eating better, working out more consistently, taking care of myself when I was hungry, emotional, lonely or tired. I became the adult I knew I should and could be. I learned how to properly do my own makeup, dress myself, do my hair to look and feel good. I took baby steps everywhere I could; stopped buying junk food, started playing a sport, volunteered at the library, host a game nights for my friends, stopped talking to people who liked the drunk/nympho me better than the new me.

    I had a few close calls. I went through withdrawal for several straight weeks at first and again at 3 months and 11 months. Each time it got easier to sit through. I have learned how to feel emotions that I thought I never had. I have learned how to be uncomfortable and just be ok with that, I no longer need to escape with sex/masturbation. I have stopped having emotional and irrational outbursts. I have lost 10 lbs and have stopped emotional eating. I even lead my 12 step group now.

    The progress that I have made astounds me. I just have to keep reminding myself that a year is a long time and it’s all the sum of hundreds of baby steps. I am happy and I finally understand what it means to be happy. I am healthy and I finally understand how to listen to my needs and know what my wants are. I always knew what to do to take care of myself, I just needed to stop compulsively masturbating long enough to give myself the time and emotional energy to do the work.

    I just wanted to say, from the bottom of my heart, thank you to all the Fapstronauts out there. Thank you to every single man and woman on this subreddit willing to make themselves vulnerable and share their struggles. Thank you to everyone working hard to make this a safe space to share (even on throwaways). My heart goes out to everyone still struggling with their compulsions and their withdrawal. If compulsive fapping is ruling your life, I know you will find the strength to stop.

    Tomorrow I am 1 year sober and I plan on staying this way until I die of old age. I am aborting this self destruct sequence.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1ty6t0/tomorrow_i_am_1_year_sober/

     

  11. NoPorn Confidence Explained (Women’s Edition)

    Last night I read /u/RainFallsOnEveryone ‘s post http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1wedby/noporn_confidence_explained/ where he outlined the effects of porn on men. I decided to translate his post into a women’s point of view.

    Part 1

    -We look at the porn stars in the videos and want to be desired as they are so we have a low level of respect for ourselves because that’s what porn sex teaches young girls: You are disposable, you are a hole for him and nothing more. An object

    -We consume more porn, seeing these “perfect bodies” that we couldn’t be like without plastic surgery/heavy makeup/flattering camera angles. The perception of what is real has changed.

    -Our self respect is lowered and our confidence is even lower.

    Part 2

    -The women in these videos are selected because of looks and most importantly (to the industry) their breast size, and appearance of vagina.

    -Most of us have ordinary vaginas, probably unshaven but not always. We have uneven labia minora and majora. Our labia might be a weird shape/size/color. Our breasts are normal. Our rears too fat/flat/square.

    -By watching porn we are brainwashing ourselves to think that we are not normal.

    -Comparing ourselves to the people in porn we feel inadequate, this forms an insecurity and shy away from sexual intercourse. (And being social in general, at least I find.)

    Conclusion – It’s not possible to have self-respect and confidence while watching porn.

    Solution – Stop watching porn. This thinking goes away. You will be able to be social again. You will want to talk to new men and women.

    This is a post about NoPorn, not NoFap. Masturbation itself has it’s own consequences and effects.

    Edit* – I wanted to add another note, I feel these effects really depend on one’s level of consumption. Someone who watches porn maybe just once in a while likely wont feel this way. But people who watch it consistently will feel these effects.

    NoPorn Confidence Explained (Women’s Edition)

    by LCD8724

     

  12. Erotica is women’s challenge

    [Post on r/nofap] http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/1yx6yz/from_a_girls_experience_why_do_women_need_to_be/

    So, I want to lay out an argument explaining why girls are here and what benefit women gain from no fap from a female experience. I’ll start.

    Society

    Society tells us women that fapping is an addiction only men have. So if you’re a woman who faps 20 times a day, blows off dinner with the girlfriends for solo night fapping and whose closest friend is your vibrator, society says, ” Wow, you’re so sexually enlightened and sex-positive!”. You never get any shame or messages from society saying your behavior is unacceptable before it’s too late. By the time many women have gotten to the point where they say I think I have a sex addiction, things have gotten really bad. Maybe they have failed to satisfy a significant other or they have no significant other at all, our rock bottoms are sometimes even lower than male rock bottoms because we can’t believe that, as women, we have a problem.

    Recovery

    When we finally want to recover, it is very very hard to find a place or a program that deals with female sex addiction. Every single web site I saw talked about porn, which I DO NOT WATCH ( more about this later). Most websites are catered to guys, which made me feel alone and even more isolated. I remember realizing I had an addiction and feeling embarrassed because girls were not supposed to have these problems and confused because I couldn’t find any groups with women who knew what I was going through. I remember how happy I felt when I found women on this forum and realized I was not the only one who suffered. It’s felt very validating and I felt like I could finally begin to tackle my problem.

    How women’s PMO is different

    Female PMO is different and not because no fap gave women another terminology for fapping. (Schlicking? what the hell is that?) It’s different because often women get off more than guys. I have female friends that can get off a ridiculous amount of times in one night because the female biological makeup allows that to happen. But most importantly, many females (not all) spend a lot of time not with porn, but with erotica. The female experience involves a lot of fantasizing to get off, while men are very visual. With the internet, it’s easy to find erotica everywhere, and there are entire forums dedicated to the type of erotica you want. At my worst, I would have 7 or 8 different internet pages and go through them for about 3 or 4 hours or more, looking for the perfect sex story to get off on. To deal with the female pmo problem, one has to deal with erotica. Vibrators, are second. Having never used one, I cannot tell you anything except,people I know talk about the grip of death and can no longer get off by penis alone.

    How Female PMO is the same:

    So, I’ve read comments from guys here where they think of a woman with a vibrator as a sexy thing. To them, female PMO is about those hazy porno videos and a lot of moaning. Fuck that shit. Female PMO is just as disgusting and pathetic as male pmo. It is lying in bed after the 12th or 15th time you’ve gotten off and wishing there was a guy beside you. It is about being lonely and empty and turning to pmo when you have problems. It is about becoming so sloppy, you don’t bother to dress in anything other than sweatpants and sweatshirts because hey, guys don’t matter and you don’t want a bf. right? right? It is being to shy and too socially awkward to hold eye contact with your friends, forget about some guy you like who’s dancing at a party. When you think of female PMO, I entreat you to think of a girl, at 3 am in the morning, lying on bed, vibrator beside here, staring at the ceiling. Feeling cold and sad and alone and crying to herself because she feels lonely. There’s nothing glamorous and sexy about it. Infact, it’s the least sexy thing you can do.

    Anyway, I really like you guys and thank you for letting me be a part of your community. I just noticed that the guys on this forum are rather kind to women and I felt that explaining PMO form a women’s perspective would do a lot of good. I sincerely hope that this helps guys here understand what women are going through and treat us as sisters in arms. Thank you.

     

  13. A woman describes her experience after a month of no porn

    I am a 26 year old female. I was in a pretty fruitless long term relationship where I was able to utilize porn to pick up the slack. After the relationship ended, I definitely increased my porn use to every day. I met my now fiance and we have sex pretty regularly. However, when I was out of work for a couple of months, I was masturbating several times a day. By the time he got home, I didnt ever feel like having sex or the sex just didnt feel that great.

    I went back to work but still was masturbating and watching porn at least 2-3x a day. I realized he was rarely able to get me off with oral (he used to all the time!) and never could with his hands.

    It has been four weeks of no masturbation, porn or vibrators and I feel like a changed woman!!! Our sex together has become so much more fruitful and connected. I dont have porn images running through my head. He’s able to get me off so easily now with both oral and his hands and I feel like he is so much more fulfilled. I am craving him versus craving the porn. I still get urges but I am more able and willing to control myself.

    http://www.reddit.com/r/NoFap/comments/2gw52e/i_am_a_woman_yesterday_was_one_month_of_no/

  14. Help!
    I have been redirected here from the male forum since that was the only one i could find.

    I’m 21 female and in a relationship with a woman.
    My biggest porn induced problem is that i cannot orgasm with my girlfriend.
    ive only had 1 orgasm with her and it only happened because i was fantasising about porn.

    i don’t have many of the common issues as far as im aware, i never went to crazy heights with masturbating per day and it never really got progressively more hardcore. The inability to orgasm with my partner is my biggest issue.

    ive been rebooting for 6 weeks.
    i guess im just wondering if anyone has had the sane issue as me and if so, dod you ever get back to normal?

    Help!!

  17. I’m a 20 year old female. Here is my story

    So, this is going to sound crazy, but I’ve been masturbating since I WAS THREE YEARS OLD. I know, sounds fucked up. I have a cousin about the same age, and she showed me how to do it. It became an uphill battle after that. My parents caught me and were so concerned. They didn’t know how to help, so they didn’t allow me baths anymore. (I’d run water…you get the point).

    I found out I could masturbate with my hands and continued. I didn’t understand what it was. I just knew it felt good. My mom finally told me that it was what sex feels like when I was 12. I felt disgusting and stopped… for a few hours. I started doing it in my classes under my desk. I had a real issue.

    Fast foward 17 years and I have an addiction. The porn kept getting more hardcore and I found myself disgusted with what I watched. I met my boyfriend who introduced me to NoFap. It took me a while to grasp the concept of a man who doesn’t watch porn or masturbate. Then I decided to give it a try myself.

    I made it 21 days on my first try! I was on top of the world. I felt better. Had more cofidence. And our sex was AMAZING. Then I broke. Since then I can hardly make it for a week.

    It’s been 9 wonderful months with this man and I owe it to him to save myself for him. I broke today, but I am finally willing to say it out loud and really commit- I AM READY TO QUIT. If anyone wants to give me some advice, I’d sincerely appreciate it! Wish me luck on my hopefully life long journey!

    Thanks for reading guys!

    I’m a 20 year old female. Here is my story and hopefully the beginning of a successful journey.

  18. 22F: revelation and opinions on female porn addiction deniers

    Just putting it out there, 22F, never had sex. I used to shut people down when they hit on me because I thought to myself (I can satisfy myself just fine, what can they do? they don’t even know my body), also thinking “I just don’t have time for dating”

    But I had enough time to be hours on my laptop, PMO, just being lazy. I’m only got through day 4 but I’ve not fapped for a day since I was like 15. I kept seeing people as unnecessary in life. Now I realize I’m not going to start dating someone magically. I have to be better. I want to be better, even before I find someone I care about that way.

    I was so far from reality I couldn’t stand a real person touching me. That’s super fucked up! Also, to the guys that say that girls don’t get nofap, let me tell you. We get as horny as y’all do. We have the same stuff going on. Some of the horniest people I’ve met have been girls (for fucking real!). If a girl doesn’t understand nofap, it’s not because she’s a woman. We’ve been taught porn is something to expect guys to watch. We don’t want to think about it. We belittle it (he’s just letting off steam), because deep down girls have all sorts of insecurities about their bf/husbands watching naked girls that aren’t them. If they belittle nofap, or your addiction, maybe they’re just acting out for talking about it, or admitting it’s a problem. Let me just tell you, as much as YOU think porn is a part of life (as much as your peers have made it normal), so has it been made the norm for US. We’ve also been told it’s no big deal. In a world of boozers no one is an alcoholic.

    edit: also, having an orgasm takes a mad amount of time (2 hours), and while it’s a lot of time wasted every day, I also don’t want people I may sleep with in the future to feel like they’re not enough.

    22F virgin, revelation and opinions on female porn addiction deniers.

  19. once you stop watching it, you really do start to feel better
    As for myself, I cannot say I have struggled with a huge pornography addiction. However, I was exposed to it quite young (age 9) just simply by browsing the internet. I wasn’t sure what sex really was back then. To this day, I still wonder if my perception of sex would be differen if I had never come across porn.

    Every day after school I found myself constantly browsing through these porn sites (for around two years). Eventually I stopped for many, many years and when I was in my mid-teens, started watching it again for a few weeks.

    Honestly, once you start watching it you feel like you cannot stop. And you feel so attached to it. But once you stop watching it, you really do start to feel better. Your life becomes so much more than just constantly browsing porn sites for hours straight. I found that the porn I used to enjoy watching…I soon stopped watching and started searching for more hardcore material.

    It’s funny because once you finish, you look at the video and realise just how absolutely ridiculous these videos are. You feel it’s an absolutely dehumanising industry and that you’ve broken your own moral code.

    I don’t view porn on a frequent basis, but I do catch myself viewing it maybe around 5 times a year. I’m working on changing that, and trying to finally cut it out of my life forever. permalink

     

  20. Female – 3 months down

    I’ve never posted or commented before but here goes.

    First I’d like to reach out to any other females out there. This is such a male dominated subreddit and it would be nice to know I’m not the only female. But, I guess we’re all here for the same reason.

    Porn has been an issue for me for many years now. I decided to finally quit 3 months ago when I realised I was unable to “finish” with my partner of 2 years. I’m guessing it’s due to my reliance on porn. Come to think of it I never have with anyone but myself, watching porn. Still nothing after 3 solid months without it, but I hope the day will “come” (haha) where I can with my partner. It’s been a bit rough but we are communicating and it’s all out in the open.

    That’s about it. Thanks for reading!

    3 months down

  21. I’m a sixteen year old girl, and I’m through with Day 1 m/

    My story is that I’ve been addicted to pornography on and off for four years, a little bit before I turned 13. Not to say that I had been brainwashed to believe that masturbating was a good thing, but I honestly believed that there no negative side effects to masturbating when I began. I started out small, infrequently watching a video or two at a time. After about a month, it became an everyday thing. This continued for the next year, eventually escalating to multiple PMOs a day each day of the week, which then continued on and off until yesterday.

    Throughout all of this I suffered a massive mood change. I was irritable, constantly uneasy, rarely happy, and slowly losing my friends because of these changes. Honestly, I wish I could have blamed puberty for all of it, but I know now and then that it was because I could not stop myself from wasting every instance of free time to schlicking.

    These habits ebbed and flowed. When they flowed, my life was dependent on my next PMO. It was the thing that made my day or week better – I could not mentally or physically go on without it. As a young person typing this to myself, this is terrifying.

    The apex – or, perhaps more realistically, the nadir – of this came this summer when I sought out sexual relations through kik with the sole intention of getting the same gratification I got through porn. I started many chats at a time, and all of them ended with steep drops in my mood. The only good thing that had come from them is that I made human connections, and one of those connections brought me here.

    I want to be a better person, I want to enjoy life and be happy free from constantly using pornography. I don’t know how my life will be during and after rebooting, but I’m willing to see where I can go. 🙂

    I’m a sixteen year old girl, and I’m through with Day 1 m/

  22. How hardcore porn fucked me up as girl

    Hi everyone. I’m very happy to have found this community. I wanted to share how porn and masturbation ruined my sexuality as a female.

    CONTENT/TRIGGER WARNING: descriptions of sex, porn, and masturbation

    So I hate porn. I hate it so much, but I also watched it for hours, for years. I was only 12 when I first started watching pornos, and even the first ones I watched were already rape scenes- anime ones, at least. I couldn’t even fathom what rape truly was at that age, and there I was, jacking off to it. Eventually, after the first year of porn, it turned out I couldn’t get off unless it was jarring or extreme porn. I needed to be able to get that dopamine rush. I always tried to find the most violent rape porn. Some other things I delved into for a bit, but thank god I didn’t continue to like, were shit + piss porn, bestiality, incest and incestual rape, and, of all fucking things, boku no pico (anime pedophilia). Luckily, most of the porn I watched was anime, so I wasn’t watching actual people getting hurt (i don’t think i would’ve been able to be aroused if it were real people). But the bestiality was real people. I ended up also getting off to vids of animals mating. I am so disgusted by myself for watching and getting off to all that shit, and I’d like to say it’s in the past, but it isnt. I don’t watch any porn anymore, but I’m still very affected by those years of disgusting pleasure rides.

    I can’t climax with my partner. I can’t have any confidence in my past sexual history, only shame and disgust. I’m incredibly insecure, from comparing myself to women in porn and because I literally had been conditioned for women to be treated as inferior and valueless with all that rape porn. And while I can say that I never found the bestiality, zoophilia, and anime pedophilia + scat as arousing outside of the one week of attention they got (I got disgusted by them pretty soon, thank god), the rape and violence stuck with me. When I tried to masturbate after quitting porn, the rape scenes would always come back to my head, even when I wanted to fight them away. When I hear details about a rape, I feel so angry and disgusted and sad for the victim, but sometimes there’s this terrible tinge of arousal that I get so disgusted by and wish would go away, but won’t.

    I hate hate hate porn, I hate that I watched it, and I hate how bad it got. I hate that everyone around me watches it, and I don’t feel safe or comfortable around them. I don’t feel comfortable existing as a woman, knowing we’ve been reduced to a circus show of bodies being fucked for everyone’s viewing pleasure. I hate how I can’t watch a TV show or movie without a full on porno scene (looking at you, Netflix). I feel like I can’t escape, and even my brain likes to torture me by replaying those scenes in my head.

    I had stopped porn 3 or 4 years ago, but I never took the nofap part seriously enough. Anytime I masturbated, the porn scenes would come to mind, and it was just as bad as watching it. But now I’m done. I’m tired of this. Sex should be about love, intimacy, and connection, not violence, rape, and dehumanizing women.

    This shouldn’t have happened. I shouldn’t have had access to watch full grown adults fucking at fucking 12 years old. I feel so broken sexually, sometimes when I have sex I still feel this sinking feeling of being just a thing to fuck, and intense shame and worthlessness.

    But I do love my partner more than I could ever imagine. He stopped watching porn 2 years ago after I talked to him, and he had also felt disgusted and less human after watching porn. But i still can’t seem to drop my anxiety enough to explore more with him. I refuse any foreplay toward my body. And I think a lot of it is because of my porn history, especially the kind I was specifically interested in. And especially because I’m ridiculously insecure of my body, having compared it to 100s of other nude women, and my boyfriend having also seen 100s of women when he watched porn (that really destroyed me- I relapsed into suicidal thoughts for a while). I’ve dreamed about getting plastic surgery since I was 12, and I still fantasize about it.

    I’m gonna quit all masturbation too from now on. I want those powerful feelings to come from my bond with my partner, not just for the shallow feeling of getting off. I want to reserve my sexuality for love and intimacy, and hopefully I can repair all the damage I’ve done over the years.

    Edit: wow guys, I’ll get to responding to everyone soon. Thanks for all your thoughts and responses! And sorry about not marking it nsfw- you’re right. It’s marked now!

    How hardcore porn fucked me up as girl

  23. Porn addiction from an addicted woman’s perspective

    Just relapsed on my 90 day streak. I feel horrible. Literally just closed the tab. As soon as I climaxed, immense regret, shame, and guilt poured over me. I’ve never made it this far. Ever.

    I started watching porn at 10 years old and here I am, 12 years later. I always knew it was wrong, I always knew it was damaging. It’s an addiction. It destroys families, careers, relationships, and self esteem. I wish it were taken as seriously as a drug addiction. In some ways, it’s even worse because we can access it anytime we want. We can pull a device out of our back pockets and watch it anytime and anywhere and it usually costs nothing.

    It’s horrifying.

    I also wish porn addiction was recognized among women as well. As a woman, I feel so alone sometimes. I know a majority of you are men, and I think it’s wonderful that you’re working hard to better yourselves and those around you but I wish women weren’t so uncommon. In Sunday school, they never explained to the young girls that this was a slippery slope, only the boys. It needs to be talked about by EVERYONE.

    Anyways, I just feel terrible about what I’ve done. I can’t blame anyone but myself. I had chances to step away. My computer froze, the phone rang, etc. All these signs kept telling me not to do it and I ignored them. I’m so disgusted with myself.

    After I finished, I scrolled through the comments of the video to see what people were saying. Gross old men objectifying the woman in the video. It creeped me out. But that’s what porn is, it objectifies everyone involved, especially the women.

    Some argue and will say that the women who do this are consenting and it’s not big deal, but it takes a deeply troubled person to do that for a living. I dabbled in that lifestyle before and it is my biggest regret in life. My self esteem was so low then, I didn’t realize how it was messing me up. To this day, I live in fear that someone might recognize me. I deleted those pictures and videos years ago but it’s the internet and everything is permanent. I still have nightmares about it. I live anonymously online and never put my real name on things like accounts because I’m scared someone will recognize me.

    There were a couple of men in particular that I worry they might blackmail me. I live in fear every. single. day. I’ve never told anyone about my past before. I’m upset just typing it out.

    By consuming pornography, people are supporting this. Sure, they may consent to it then, but what about 5, 10, 15 years from now? These videos of college girls who are barely legal break my heart. They’re going to regret it. Any age will regret it.

    I guess I’m just rambling now. I’ve been holding this all in for years. I’m thankful for the subreddit and the support you all give to one another. I think it’s so sweet and beautiful. I hope one day our struggles will be seen as real, valid addictions and I hope one day we can prevent it happening to the next generation.

    Porn addiction from an addicted woman’s perspective

  24. Female here! First post… Trying to stop this problem before it does any more harm.

    So here I find myself. A 33 year old straight single woman. I’ve got my life together. But I realized recently that something I thought was harmless is not.

    I watch porn. Not every day. But most days. Sometimes a few times a day. I watch it when I’m bored, can’t sleep, horny, just for the hell of it. It generally lines up with my cycle (more horny, more porn). It’s gotten to the point that I can’t orgasm without it.

    I’ve had some hookups this year, which rarely can I finish with those, but now I’m seeing someone frequently for the last couple months. We’ve had sex at least 15 times and not once have I been able to have an orgasm. He’s handsome, fit, good in bed. We use lube, even used additional stimulation. I. Can. Not. Finish. I haven’t had an orgasm from sex in over a year. It’s been miserable. When he leaves my house after sex, I look at porn so I can fulfill myself. It’s a sad feeling when you have that clarity after it’s all done.

    I can’t even hardly finish doing things myself with my imagination anymore. I remember used to I’d sometimes be able to finish (even with sex or masturbate) by imagining stuff I’d seen in porn. Is this normal?

    Porn has created fantasies in my mind that have fucked me up. Not that being gay is wrong, but I’m not a lesbian. I don’t want to actually hook up with or date a girl. I’ve never been turned on by a girl in person (other than noticing attractiveness, but not turned on physically). But I get off on lesbian porn more than anything. It’s totally rewired me. Have any other females experienced this? I also never had any interest in watching gay MM or MMF porn, but lately I’ve caught myself getting turned on by that. It’s just escalating into some abnormal shit, for me, at least.

    So I’m starting this porn free trip. It’s been two days. I don’t think I’m severe cause it’s not affecting my day to day functioning… But when it starts impacting my relationships and real life human to human sex … it’s really now the time to do something.

    Thanks for listening. I’d love to hear more from females.

    1. A forum member replied:

      zigiferous_rex

      Female here, similar experience. I quit cold turkey. It’s an adjustment period, to be sure, but absolutely worth it once you’ve had a few months without it. Sex is better. Masturbation is better. It just feels better afterwards, too, because there’s no slimy, guilty feeling of closing out the tab.

      For me, when I look back at the shit I used to watch in just like — wtf, why???

  25. Women of NoFap:

    Hey everyone! I’m a woman who has lurked in this community for a long time. I’ve loved reading about your stories and successes. I also really enjoy the support this community gives one another.

    I’ve been really embarrassed to speak out in this community because I’m not a man. I’m a 23 yr old married female, who has struggled with porn addiction for around ten years.

    It really altered how I viewed myself, men, and sex for a long time. I, like so many of you, felt horribly awkward, especially around men. I also had an unhealthy and unrealistic idea of sex for a long time. My addiction to PMO seemed to run my life at times.

    I’m glad to say that it has been a little over 30 days since PMO!

    A few days ago, I shared this secret- of porn and masturbation consuming nearly ten years of my life, to my husband. I told him about this community as well. To my surprise, he was super supportive. I felt like the odd one out, being a woman in this community, but he encouraged me to make my first post here. Possibly there are other women lurking who can relate as well?

    Anyways, after talking with my husband, we both decided to try PM-mode together! As we believe it can help us connect more, and also help cure myself of my addiction. I already feel more positive and productive than I did a month ago.

    I’m happy this community exists. It has already helped me in so many ways. That’s all for now. I hope everyone has a great day!

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