Let’s be honest…it’s the epidemic no one talks about…but shapes our culture more than we care to admit.
The availability of pornography on the internet is staggering…the ease with which anybody can access pictures of a pornographic nature is frighteningly easy.
It’s an unspoken factor in many relationships...women feel ugly and fat and unloved when their partners watch porn. To many women, it feel like unfaithfulness, a form of cheating/infidelity to know that their intimate partner is engaging in sexual intimacy with images. The relationship bears significant costs with pornography.
People don’t like talking about it. People (more men than women, but women as well) start using internet porn for their own pleasure, but it doesn’t take long before the porn starts making the decisions. The vast majority of users let no one know about their behaviour.
Internet porn can so very very easily become an addiction.
Addictions, of any type, are hard on a person’s soul. It captures and hijacks one’s attention as more and more of the addiction is needed to achieve the same effect. It creates the need for secrets and causes shame to create distance This, ironically, feeds into more addiction to remove the pain of the resulting disconnection. When “caught”, most users underreport their usage. A feeling of inability to stop. Withdrawal from previous interests. Potentially soaring financial implications.
It’s an addiction, people. An actual addiction. It affects the brain in ways that are powerful and real
No. Joke.
Researchers wanted to see the effect of porn on college men today.
But they couldn’t.
Because, you see, in order to have good research, scientists need to have two groups: one that uses porn, one that doesn’t.
They couldn’t find enough guys that hadn’t used the internet for pornography to make a control sample.
Gulp.
For a more extensive and thorough discussion of internet porn, and how it affects the user’s long term sexual function: Check this out. It’s a valuable 16 minute primer on the personal costs of something that on the surface doesn’t seem to harm anybody. And guys…no joke…ongoing use of internet porn has significant effects on your sexual performance.
Internet porn is porn on steroids…it’s not like the Playboy magazine you found between your uncle’s mattresses.
It affects your attention, your motivation, your ability to be engaged and involved in the world.
That is serious…and yet few talk about it. I’m realizing I probably don’t ask about porn and its effects often enough in the counselling office.
I know that the staggering majority of folks who read this blog are women. So women: if you have an adolescent son, or a husband who spends time alone in his office and keeps the credit card bills from you, or a brother or a dad or someone you care about, take a chance. Tell him you love him, and want him to see something…as an act of kindness and caring, suggest they watch the above video. Or the TED talk to have them understand the implications of the use of internet porn on their lives.
We need to be talking about it…because when we don’t, porn remains a big secret that remains hidden…and hidden things always have more power and energy than those that are spoken aloud. Addictions lose much of their power when they are dealt with openly, vulnerably and authentically…it’s soooo not easy…
but aren’t you worth it?!
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