There is no doubt that porn has many attractive and powerful proper — ties—from sexually arousing and fulfilling you, to giving you an easy escape from your real life, to helping you feel powerful and desirable. But using porn also creates problems, many of which evolve so slowly that you don’t see them coming or feel them happening until they are quite serious. As we’ll discuss more in upcoming chapters, porn can:
• conflict with your values, beliefs, and life goals,
• compromise your ability to be honest and open in a relationship,
• upset and compete with an intimate partner,
• harm your mental and physical health,
• make you less attractive as a sexual partner,
• cause sexual desire and functioning difficulties,
• shape your sexual interests in destructive ways, and
• cause a variety of family, work, legal, and spiritual problems.
We believe that the risks of porn use far outweigh any short-term benefits. In our practice and with the people we’ve interviewed, we have seen enough to know that porn use today compromises almost everyone’s ability to relate in intimate, meaningful ways to a real partner. Max, who is only in his early twenties, already recognizes these problems in himself: “Porn distorts sex. There’s no real consent, equality, or mutual respect. It teaches you to take but never give love. Porn doesn’t truly reflect what’s best for us sexually. It’s unreal. You can’t find any joy or lasting sexual happiness there.”
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s powerful as porn is, it can’t compete with the many life-affirming pleasures that can come from approaching sex in ways that strengthen self-esteem and emotional intimacy. Nothing beats experiencing genuine love, caring, and sensual pleasures with another living, breathing human being. Sex is infinite in terms of how it can be learned and expressed. If you have developed an attachment to porn, or adopted some of the attitudes and behaviors it promotes, you can, if you want, undo and unlearn them. It will be well worth the effort.
Many people who give up porn report that they are more satisfied, not only sexually, but morally, socially, and psychologically as well. Corey, thirty-four years old, who ended up in jail because of where porn led him, told us, “I have enough experience now to know that porn wasn’t really satisfying. I experience better sex in real relationships without porn than I ever did with it. Sex with a real partner is more work in a way, but the rewards are better. A healthy sex life improves the quality of your life, unlike the quick fix you get with porn. Porn doesn’t have any long-term benefits, just long-term costs. My life is much better now without porn. I could have saved myself and other people a lot of grief if I’d never gotten involved with it in the first place.”