How A Year Without Porn Changed Everything I Knew About Intimacy And Love
I didn't even realize I had an addiction.
Msporch | pixabay / Emma | from corelens / punghi | Getty Images I remember when I first discovered internet porn — I was 17 years old. Fascinated by this world of unleashed expression and fantasy, I couldn’t get enough of it.
As I grew up and began exploring my own sexuality, I discovered just how different watching pixels on a screen was compared to the intimacy of making love with another human being. I thought I’d outgrow my porn habit over time. But I never did.
I didn’t know it then, but porn had become an addiction. And, like most addictions, it was a behavior that I was ashamed to talk about or even admit was a problem.
How a year without porn changed everything I knew about intimacy and love
“Yeah, everybody watches porn,” I remember hearing. It seemed so pervasive and culturally accepted that having an actual conversation about it was a total non-starter. So I kept it to myself.
I thought I had my habit under control. I thought I could quit porn whenever I felt like it. I even tried to quit a few times and then rationalized my eventual return to the addiction.
I didn’t realize how much watching porn manipulated my mind, warping my sexuality, numbing my feelings, and impacting my relationships with women. And I was not alone.
According to a recent study, more than 70 percent of men ages 18 to 34 visit porn sites in a typical month.
And it’s not just guys watching intimacy online. It is estimated that 1 in 3 porn users today are women. Now, I want to be clear here that porn use extends beyond the male/female gender binary, but for the purpose of this post, I am sharing my experience with porn from the perspective of a heterosexual, cisgender, white man.
Let me also state clearly that I don’t think all porn is bad.
I’ve seen some great videos of couples engaging in intimate and respectful sexual encounters — of course, these are often only found on feminist porn sites or in the “female friendly” category (It’s interesting to note what the category name “female friendly” implies about all the other categories).
But I’m not here to judge anyone else for what they choose to watch. I’m simply sharing the impacts that porn has had on my life and what has changed for me since I’ve stopped using it.
To me, what is worrying about porn is not how many people use it, but how many people — like me — have found themselves addicted to it.
How porn affects people in real life:
A lot of studies have been conducted on the impacts of porn on men and women in society.
Of all of those impacts, three most resonated with my experience:
1. Violence against women
This includes an obsession with looking at women rather than interacting with them (voyeurism), an attitude in which women are viewed as objects of men’s sexual desire, and the trivialization of rape and widespread acceptance of rape culture — fueled by fake depictions of women in porn videos often pretending to desire violent and abusive sexual acts.
2. Numbness and disembodiment
This can include erectile dysfunction, inability to orgasm when not watching porn, detachment from your physical body, emotional unavailability and numbness, lack of focus and patience, poor memory, and general lack of interest in reality. Furthermore, these outcomes in men have been linked to boredom with their partners, higher levels of promiscuity, adultery, divorce, sexism, rape, abuse, and suicide.
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3. Fear of intimacy
Watching porn contributes to many men’s inability to relate to women in an honest and intimate way despite a longing to feel loved and connected. This is because pornography exalts our physical needs over our need for sensuality and intimacy; some men develop a preoccupation with a fantasy that can powerfully impede their capacity for emotionally intimate relationships.
Why did I quit watching?
I always felt like a hypocrite watching porn. Here I was, a man who was striving to be an ally to women, perpetuating the very culture of violence and misogyny that I was ostensibly trying to fight. The reality was that most of the videos I found online had titles that included curse words against women and showcased controlling behaviors that were rooted in a culture of subjugation and objectification, where women are nothing more than bodies to be exploited and dominated by men.
When I am deeply honest, I have to admit I was both intrigued and disgusted at the same time. By that time, my mind had been socially conditioned to find aggressive, misogynistic, and even non-consensual intimacy arousing. That is a difficult thing for me to admit. But it got to a point where I felt physically ill watching the videos, and yet I kept watching. That’s when I realized I was dealing with an addiction.
What I’ve discovered is that there is a whole spectrum of addiction, from a feeling of compulsion on one end to an intense addiction on the other. My porn addiction seems to have been pretty mild since I did not experience any serious withdrawal effects. For some people with more serious addictions, professional support may be needed.
Last February, after a decade of use, I decided to quit watching porn for 1 year. I did this, both for the challenge of seeing if I could do it and for the chance to see how life might be different. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but it was actually a radical commitment to uphold.
Today marks my 1-year anniversary of life without porn. It hasn’t been easy, particularly as a single guy, but what I’ve learned about myself through this experience has transformed my life forever.
How did my life change after quitting porn?
My life has shifted in some pretty powerful ways during my year without porn.
Since dropping porn, I have restored a sense of personal integrity that was missing. Regaining this integrity has allowed me to move through a lot of my shame and find myself in an incredible new space of deepening love for myself and others.
I’ve also noticed that I am often able to stay more present with women now, rather than projecting fantasies onto them. This was hard to do when my mind was cluttered with images from porn videos. This newfound presence has also allowed me to begin to dismantle some of the subconscious sexism that I’ve held, helping me work toward becoming a better ally to the women in my life.
My year without porn has helped me reconnect to my body and begin to transform my emotional numbness into healthy emotional expression. I’ve begun to expand my sense of self by learning how to move out of my head and into my heart.
After many long years void of emotional expression, I’ve reconnected to my tears. This release of suppressed emotional tension has unlocked a lot of joy in my life. All of this has helped me begin to shift my sexuality from mental masturbation and physical detachment to true intimacy, presence, and embodiment.
Over the past year, I’ve started feeling more comfortable in my own skin. I’ve become much more willing to let go of control, to improvise, and to accept people’s differences. I trust myself more than I ever have and, as a result, my sense of self-confidence has soared. I wake up every morning grateful to be alive, clear about my life’s purpose, and passionate about the work I am doing in the world. My life today has a depth of authenticity and power that I never felt before.
Here's what we need to do to help solve this problem:
This week, many folks in my community and around the world are engaging in conversations about ending the sexual violence and abuse that directly affect over a billion women across the globe today.
Of course, women and girls are not the only ones hurt by sexual violence. I’ve heard stories from a lot of guys who are also affected by cycles of violence and abuse that got passed on through generations. It is important, however, for me to recognize that far more women than men are victims of sexual assault and domestic abuse and that men account for a vast majority of all perpetrators.
As Richard Rohr says, “Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.” And this pain is often transmitted in the form of violence. So how do we, as men, break this cycle of violence? It’s clear to me that we will never transform our pain within a culture of silence. It is only by bringing our shadows to the light that we can diffuse the power that they hold over us.
Over the past several years, I have heard a lot about inequality, sexism, and violence against women. I believe it is vital for porn to be a part of that conversation, particularly among men.
If we are serious about ending violence against women, then we must be willing to have open and honest conversations about how porn is impacting our lives.
I am committed to a world of love, respect, and safety for all people. I’m sick of all the shame, numbness, and secrecy surrounding porn and addiction.
I’m saddened to hear about all the guilt people feel (from churches, parents, teachers, etc.) simply for wanting to express their sexuality in healthy and authentic ways. And I’m outraged by all of the violence, degradation, and exploitation of women and children. Enough is enough!
The only way we can transform the culture of violence is to make it transparent by speaking the truth about the ways that we consciously and subconsciously contribute to it. A culture of love and healing can only be built on a foundation of radical honesty and integrity, built from the ground up in our own lives.
Will you stand with me? It’s time we start talking about the things we’ve been afraid to talk about, knowing we’re not alone. It’s time we begin transforming our pain into love, by opening our hearts and reconnecting with our bodies. It’s time we, as men, step into a more mature masculine: one that recognizes the sacredness of life, one that creates intimacy and cultivates authentic connection and healing, one that is unafraid to love and be loved.
Dan Mahle is a facilitator, storyteller, and leadership coach. He founded Wholehearted Masculine in 2014 as a blog, and it has since developed into an organization that has directly served hundreds of men and reached thousands of people through film screenings, men’s groups, workshops, coaching, and writing.