People who use porn as a tool for coping with sexual and other kinds of problems can easily get caught up in a deeper relationship with it. Porn, and its accompanying sexual experience, can appear to be a cure-all for whatever ails us. If you learned to use porn as a coping mechanism when you were young, you may automatically turn to it for comfort when you feel overstressed or when you feel lonely, needy, frustrated, or desperate. Financial, professional, and marital stress can increase a desire to click your mouse on a porn site or turn on a cable porn movie if you learned early on that it can provide quick and powerful (although temporary) relief.
Even though Don, a thirty-eight-year-old musician, enjoys an active sex life with his wife, he feels he still needs porn to help him to cope with the stresses of daily living. He tells us, “My wife provides a form of sexual release, but that isn’t enough. I have to have fantasy too. It’s my escape. My wife exists in real life, which is the source of my emotional pain, whereas in my porn fantasies, there is no pain. It’s all pleasure. Not only that, but I’m in control of it.”
Albert, a middle-aged divorced father of three, still uses porn to escape from daily life. “Porn gives me momentary relief from the pains of life. I don’t care about the future. What matters is I have escaped for now.” When it comes to unwinding from stress, porn can be like television. We tune into an alternative reality so we don’t have to deal with our own problems. As Albert sums up, “Porn is my in-hand, ready-made escape mechanism.” The relief porn brings comes not only because the user is transported into an alternative world of pleasurable fantasies, but also because sexual arousal triggers a significant increase in blood flow and, following orgasm, a decrease in muscle tension.
It’s not uncommon for the porn relationship to deepen when porn is used as a way to treat unpleasant emotions such as anxiety, sadness, anger, and resentment. Porn became a steady companion for Kevin when he and his ex-wife were having serious marital problems. “As my relationship with my wife worsened, I started going to an adult bookstore,” he shared. “Using pornography helped numb the pain of my struggling marriage.”
People suffering from certain psychological conditions, such as depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, attention deficit disorder, and addictive personality are especially vulnerable to developing serious problems with pornography. Todd, for example, told us, “I struggle with attention deficit problems and depression. Pornography is a constant emergency escape. Any time the pressure gets very high at all, boom, porn is there and I don’t have to deal with the real issues going on in my life.”
Sexual dissatisfaction with a partner can also trigger a new or deeper relationship with porn. Rather than address sexual concerns directly with a partner, a person turns to porn. This was true for Corey, who entered into a four-year engagement that was not only sexless, but kiss-less as well. Remember how he attributed his sexual frustration with his getting deeper into porn? Some people who are sexually active in a relationship like to keep porn on the back burner, as “plan B” for those times when their partner is absent or otherwise unavailable. A twenty-three-year-old man summed it up well: “Pornography supplements my sexuality. I use it as a reserve backup plan.” And unlike a real-life partner, porn can become the alternative that never says “No” or gets upset about particular sexual needs and interests.
Jim, a forty-year-old electrician, found that his porn use increased when he and his wife were undergoing treatment for infertility. At the time he felt pressured to be “sexual on demand.” Jim said, “My wife and I had marked days on the calendar for sex, several days in a row, to be performed at particular times. It created a lot of tension for me. I had to have sex whether I felt like it or not, or the doctor and my wife would be disappointed. I got into porn then because it gave me a feeling of open — ended sexual freedom where I could choose by myself whether to have an orgasm or not.”
Sexual difficulties are some of the most common stressors the people we talked with said increased their involvement with porn. Porn can seem like a solution for people suffering from problems such as low sex desire, erectile and orgasmic dysfunction, and reproductive difficulty. Reflecting back on his porn use, Carson, a fifty-five-year-old former professional athlete, told us, “I think I got into porn heavily a few years ago because I didn’t like feeling a lack of sexual drive. I wanted to feel the same genital excitement and urgency I felt when I was young. Having a lack of sex drive made me feel old, weak, and inadequate.”
Not having a real sexual partner is another situation that can stimulate interest in and heavy involvement with porn. Len is a typical example. He clearly sees porn as a substitute for a real relationship. He said, “I live alone. I don’t have a girlfriend. Porn provides me with sexual excitement and release. I use it as a sexual outlet, pretty much on a daily basis. I expect I’ll continue along about the same unless I should enter a relationship.”
When porn is used as a way to cope with relationship, sexual, and other life stresses, other coping techniques that would be healthier and less likely to result in serious problems don’t have a chance to be fully explored and developed. Porn use seems like an easy fix to our problems because it can work quickly and well in the moment. But just like with mood-altering drugs, porn can eventually lead us to dependence and addiction. And if we learn to depend on porn instead of using our own coping skills, we end up falling deeper and deeper into a relationship with it.