And yet: is watching porn harming your mental health and relationships? Or does this harmless weakness not affect them in any way? We are finally trying to figure it out.
Watching porn raises unrealistic expectations.”This was the most common response we received from experts. So if you make a mental correction about the size of the penis and the number of partners per unit of time, porn is harmless? Intuition suggests that this is not so …
Pornography is dangerous or can become dangerous. It is this feeling that makes wives worry about their husbands (and parents worry about their teenagers), if the former have reason to believe that the latter are addicted to watching Internet sex products. And what exactly is the danger? The opinions of experts are mixed. Some say that comparing themselves to porn stars risks lowering their self-esteem. Others do not see any harm in porn and even believe that its soft subtype can serve as a way (at least one of many) of sex education. But if the point is only in an unflattering for an amateur comparison of their average data with the outstanding talent of professionals in this field, two questions remain unanswered. The first is emotional: is our intuition really lying? The second is rational:Where does porn addiction come from then? I found the answers to them in the book of American psychotherapist Brandy Engler "Men on My Couch" *.
Intuition doesn't let us down - porn is really dangerous:
- for the beholder - that which creates a veil between himself and his real needs,
- for a relationship - that breaks the contact between two people.
And now the answer to the second question: how does porn addiction arise?
To begin with, let's pay attention to the fact that a porn plot in which the participants rejoice at each other, caress each other, express pleasure about what is happening between them is a rarity **. Much more often we come across scenes of mechanistic, impersonal interaction, or violence and coercion of varying degrees. That is, in the additional emotional lines that the creators add to the main, proper sexual plot (in other words, sexual intercourse), not the motives of pleasure are involved, but the manifestations of power and anger. These are the very feelings that underlie our main unresolved conflicts. What does it mean?
Most of our inner conflictsbegins in childhood. (Discussion of childhood in this context might seem blasphemous to someone, but we hope the reader will take into account: this is done in order to clarify the essence of the matter.) Parents order us, we have to obey, even when we don't want to. We suppress our anger with our parents - out of fear of punishment or out of fear of upsetting them. We crave parental care and attention, but we do not receive it as much as we would like. We rush to our parents with an expression of our ardent affection, and in response we hear: "Don't bother", "Can't you see, mom is busy." As a result, we suppress our feelings and desires over and over again, and this suppression becomes habitual, unconscious and automatic. When repressed, they create a reservoir of energy "locked" inside us, which seeks and does not find a way out.
What are porn video creators doing? They combine these feelings (which may or may not have had any sexual underpinnings initially) with a sexual plot. Sexual tension is fueled by emotional tension. And along with real sexual release, the viewer receives the illusion of emotional release - and even more intense frustration in the near future, since his main conflict remains unresolved.
Then comes the "hangover" - feelings of shame, guilt, anxiety. They can be expressed in thoughts: "I am doing bad and cannot stop," "I am spoiled," "something is wrong with me," or in general depression, unreasonable irritability. After all, anger, power, sex are just those impulses that, in accordance with cultural norms (and, accordingly, upbringing), should be suppressed, therefore, for some, their manifestation or even their occurrence entails a feeling of guilt. After that, the whole cycle repeats: the increasing tension again brings its "owner" to the source of surrogate satisfaction.
So "innocent" viewing of porn gradually turns into porn addiction. Which, in turn, prevents the resolution of the internal conflict (in particular, because the client may not even know about its existence and does not look for ways to resolve it) and the possibility of achieving intimacy with a real, living woman. (Since porn becomes a factor influencing tastes and habits, a woman turns from a sexual personality into a sexual object, a tool. Her personality is devalued, but the man also reduces himself to the role of a pure consumer and devalues or denies his emotional needs. The situation is aggravated by the fact that mass culture encourages such an approach ***: a man with emotional needs is a nurse and a boor, and with sexual needs a macho and a sex giant).
Until now, it was about men - it is they who are primarily focused on the production of porn, as is clear from the plots. But this does not mean that the addiction to it is characteristic exclusively of men. Women also have unresolved conflicts, problems with intimacy and sexual needs. So they, too, are not immune to the psychological harm that the habit of getting satisfaction through porn can do.
What is the conclusion?First of all, the fact that if we find a loved one (or ourselves) watching porn, shout "Don't you dare!" and frightening with gloomy prospects is not that bad, but useless. Porn addiction is not a cause, but an effect. The reason is the lack of spiritual closeness, warmth, understanding, human contact. Perhaps the porn lover himself is to blame, perhaps it is he who does not know how to build contact, does not know how to open up to meet another, he is closed and squeezed, but reproaches and punishment will definitely not lead to improvement. The question of wives and lovers "Is that enough for him?" most often it has no basis. Because it's not about sexual dissatisfaction, but emotional. Men (more often than women) tend to sublimate the need for love through sex. Simply put, when they lack love,they themselves subjectively perceive it as sexual dissatisfaction. So this problem should be solved in a psychological space.
* Brandi Engler Men on my couch. Real stories about love, sex and psychotherapy. (Eksmo, 2013).
This is not a special psychological literature, but a work of fiction - the author tells not only about clients, but also about himself, about his reactions to what is happening both in her office and outside, about his love, doubts and attempts to leave. The combination of personal sincerity and professionalism is what makes this book special. Each experience that it describes is simultaneously subjected to careful and convincing analysis.
** At the end of the sadomasochistic videos, they often show the performer of the role of "victim", who, with a smile on her face, declares that she was not harmed and in general she liked everything. But they do not count, since this monologue unfolds outside the sexual plot and is intended not to supplement it, but to soften the conscience of the scrupulous viewer and the possible claims of the law. And in the course of the action, the victim, as it should be, shows signs of suffering.
*** The reason is quite obvious: the consequence of this approach is alienation between potential sexual partners, which has commercial value: the consumer is offered to buy various means to become desired (and then even more desirable - and so on ad infinitum). Whereas for genuine intimacy, the participants do not need anything but themselves.
Elsa Lestvitskaya