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ost of us don’t think of having a “relationship” with porn, but if we use it regularly, that is what it becomes. We may not place a personal ad that reads, “In search of someone unreal who can meet my every sexual desire whenever and wherever without asking for anything in return,” but that’s because with porn we don’t have to. Like the suitor who won’t take “No” for an answer, porn is always there, seducing and enticing us to start or continue a relationship. And as with most relationships, breaking up is hard to do.
When asked to think back on what led them to their current “serious relationship” with porn, most of the people we spoke with said they didn’t see it coming. Using porn was all about having a good time, escaping worries and pressures, and getting a chance to do things they couldn’t do in real life. They didn’t stop to think that while they were enjoying porn they were also developing an emotional and sexual relationship with it that could—or should we say, would?—lead to a whole host of other problems.
Whenever we don’t pay attention to how we relate to porn—what it means to us and where we are going with it—it’s easy for porn to silently slip into the role of our “Significant Other.” This is not surprising. We are likely to become both emotionally and physically attached to anything we regularly turn to for emotional comfort and sexual satisfaction.
As we’ve seen in the last chapter, when we are young and are first introduced to porn we are often clueless as to what it is and how it might impact us. We can easily develop a serious involvement with porn well before we are old enough to know better. But when we are adults, we are in the driver’s seat in terms of where we go with our own lives. Now we are responsible for whether we continue our relationship with porn or move on and create relationships that are sexually, emotionally, and socially healthier for us.
While many of us may flirt with pornography from time to time during our adult lives, some of us become more deeply engaged. Studies show that about half the men and one-tenth of the women who are exposed to pornography in childhood go on to use it regularly as adults. Something obviously acts upon us, leading some people to continue their involvement with porn, while others leave it behind and move on with their lives.
Porn habits often change and shift over time depending on varying life circumstances and personal experiences. A man may be more drawn to using porn when he is a young and single college student than when he is a husband and father of three children. And similarly, when a woman shifts from being a soccer player to a soccer mom she may be far less inclined to fool around with pornographic materials. In general, however, use encourages more use because we learn to associate pleasure with each interaction. And by staying involved with porn we may forfeit time and energy we might otherwise spend improving our ability to create satisfying real-life relationships.
In this chapter you will get an opportunity to take a good look at what kind of relationship you have developed with porn throughout your lifetime. Did you drift away from porn as a young adult or did you get more heavily involved with it? Are you in a process of leaving porn or are you “going steady” with it?
We will identify important factors that influence if, why, and how you relate with porn. This information gives you the understanding necessary to take responsibility for the type of relationship you create with it. Once you are informed, you can then choose which attitudes and behaviors concerning porn you’d like to develop.
The factors that influence the type of relationship we have with porn fall into two main categories. There are inhibiting factors that discourage our involvement in porn. They cool off and diminish passion for porn. Then there are accelerating factors that encourage use and pull us deeper into the porn trap. Accelerating factors heat up and expand our interest in it.
At any given time both accelerators and inhibitors are influencing us, pulling us toward and pushing us away from a porn relationship at the same time. The critical issue is identifying the factors that are strongest in your own life and exert the most influence over you. When your inhibitors are strong and plentiful they can tip the scale so that you have the strength to move away from porn over time. When your accelerators outweigh your inhibitors, on the other hand, you are more prone to stay involved with porn and get sucked in deeper.