Now that we’ve discussed the factors that can slow down or break up a relationship with porn, let’s turn and look at those that could increase our involvement with porn.
Corey, a thirty-four-year-old computer analyst whom we heard from in the previous chapters, became increasingly involved with pornography after his early childhood use. Like Jack, Corey grew up in a small, rural community and didn’t get into porn heavily until after he left home. But, as you will see, that’s where the similarity ends. Corey’s upbringing and involvements with porn were quite different than Jack’s, and as a result of the many accelerating factors Corey had present in his life, he ended up with a much more involved relationship with porn that caused serious problems in his life.
COREY’S STORY
In my family, porn and anything sexual, was regarded as dirty and wrong. I didn’t dare ask my parents about sex. The community we lived in was so conservative that any type of reality-based sex education was banned in the schools. I grew up shy, sexually ignorant, and extremely guilty about masturbating. Like other boys, I saw porn on occasion, mostly pictures of naked women in magazines that were passed around by my friends. It really turned me on. Still, I didn’t usually look at porn when I was young. It was there and I wanted to do it, but I worried there must be something weird about me for wanting it. I did use images from porn when I masturbated though. During college, I occasionally rented porn videos and bought magazines, but still I was too ashamed and afraid to use porn regularly.
After college I began dating Alice, a cute woman I didn’t know very well. I figured if a girl shows interest in me, seems to like me, and I find her attractive, then I should marry her. She said yes, but we agreed to abstain from sex for religious reasons until we got married. Alice and I were engaged for four years. We didn’t even kiss. As you can imagine, being in my early twenties, it was incredibly sexually frustrating.
About this same time I went to work at a computer firm. I was paid to research and catalog Usenet groups. These are virtual communities where anyone can post anything anonymously. A large percentage of the Usenet groups are devoted to porn. If you are into an unusual type of sex, you can find porn about it easily. In the Usenet group you know that the other people posting to the newsgroup are also into it. I became fascinated with these anonymous porn worlds and the sexual content they contained. For example, I had a little bit of a foot fetish. One of my favorite groups featured the barefoot category. I’d go there and look. I also became interested in sexual photos of underage girls and visited a lot of those sites.
I didn’t hide from my fiancee the fact that I used Internet porn. Alice seemed jealous and hurt, but tolerated it. I felt a lot of guilt about the porn and the masturbation, but my bad feelings only seemed to intensify my orgasms. And I justified it by thinking, It’s better than being sexually frustrated all the time, or sexual with someone else. As time went on, though, I turned my sexual attention more to the pornography and less to the relationship with my fiancee. I developed a pattern of masturbating to porn whenever I was feeling lonely, frustrated, or bored. Our decision to hold off on sex, coupled with
how easy it was to access Internet porn at my job, turned my porn use into an addiction.
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orey’s relationship with porn took on an urgency and intensity when the circumstances in his life changed: he was involved in a sexless, committed relationship for a long period of time, and he took a job that put him in regular contact with porn, a product that had always intrigued and sexually excited him. These changes were accelerating factors that escalated his involvement with porn and set him up for serious problems later on.
Corey’s story provides a helpful framework for identifying and understanding the primary accelerating factors that can seduce a person into a deeper relationship with porn. These include:
1. Associating porn with pleasure
2. Having frequent and easy access to porn
3. Using porn to medicate distress
4. Having difficulty being intimate in relationships
We’ll look more closely at each of these accelerators to help you get a better understanding of how they may be affecting your relationship with porn.