Being addicted to porn is more common than ever, considering the internet’s endless supply. A compulsive habit of watching porn is often developed as an escape, anxiety relief or to scratch an itch that your brain chemistry might be prone to planting.
You don’t need an addictive personality to develop a life-disrupting obsession.
How much pornography is too much pornography?
As with any addiction, one must take an honest look at how their porn obsession is affecting their life as a whole. If you are watching porn at work, trying to cut back your time spent watching porn without success, or allowing the habit to affect your real-life relationships and intimate encounters, it could be time to seek help.
Similarities between porn addiction and substance abuse
Someone struggling with a porn addiction should be aware that the brain’s pleasure-seeking pathways can altered by the habit.
Porn can act like a “super stimulant” and cause cravings for new content every day. Dopamine’s pleasure-seeking cycle is central to the tendency for porn users to become obsessed with finding “the perfect clip.” The need for increasingly shocking or stimulating material can become a never-ending quest, because (unlike a Playboy magazine or DVD), the internet offers an endless supply of pornographic material.
A social media addiction features a similar cycle of endlessly, mindlessly searching and scrolling.
Sex therapy is a safe space to analyze a potential porn-watching problem
If you come to see a sex therapist or couples therapist like Kim Ronk, you don’t have to worry about being judged. Most therapists and heard and seen it all. We offer a safe space to explore how your porn addiction came about, and how to manage it going forward.
I can help an individual explore their habit, as well as facilitate a healthy approach to discussing porn as a couple. Not all porn-watching is a problem.
Therapy can help an individual work through unnecessary and unhealthy shame. It can also help a couple work through shyness in order to develop a healthy approach to pornography.
How do I get my boyfriend to stop watching porn?
If your partner is watching porn at improper times, or to a degree that it’s affecting your relationship, it’s time for one–or preferably both of you–to seek therapy.
If one partner is more comfortable with porn than the other, but the usage isn’t affecting other areas of life, it could be a matter of honesty and communication, which a therapy session could facilitate.
The unrealistic anatomy and performance expectations established by porn are also something my clients explore in therapy.