To prepare myself for writing today I watched some Internet porn.
I felt it would help the spirit of this article if I had re-engaged with my lustier side. To get to the movie I went to a website and two clicks later I was being fed some seriously raunchy cyber-woman. I chose a short online movie entitled Good Girl. I watched it with awareness. Memories of my old porn-addicted ways came flooding back to me.
“Good Girl” was a beautiful Hungarian twenty year old. She was initially interviewed by a tall muscular man who looked like a bit of a thug: my projection. She was then made to stand and turn gently before being bent over for a thorough examination. The camera slowly went in for a close view. Are you still reading this? Did energy move in your pelvis?
He then laid her back and forcefully did her. Shortly thereafter he bent her over, hands behind her back and she was done-to harder. He took what he needed. The hammering was clearly painful, she yelped with every thrust … and it got worse, but you get my drift.
Perhaps writing about porn is porn!
In our world today pornography, sex addiction and the broken ways in the world are all high visibility subjects. I can see something has warped in our culture’s relationship to sex and it is detrimentally affecting the way we all honor men, women and the Earth. This cultural damage is reflected in pornography.
My spurting practice.
Like millions of other well-functioning married men with issues, I turned to pornography. For several years I wanked myself stupid. Time and space was filled with horniness beyond my wildest dreams. Time that might otherwise have been used to be creative, productive, or even just plain bored got devoured by lust. In any moment where there was a desire for some escape from life I scored some porn. You know those moments that arise in us that are pregnant with the need for some conscious introspection? Well I used pornography there, too. Porn consumed me as my life became filled with grasping for pussy.
My fantastical life prospered while my real life was numbed. But where was all that battling of the purple-headed yogurt-slinger taking me?
Our thoughts precede our reality; so perhaps we should be careful with our porno fantasies. Did the cosmic-people who wrote about “The Secret” consider that porn fantasies may have the quality of manifestation within them? What have my fantasies with thousands of porn girls manifested!? In general they manifested jacked up, buzzed feelings that were shortly followed by misery.
My relationship to pornography was double-sided. I loved porn because it allowed me to safely channel my still-considerable sexual energy out of my body—and into empty spurts.
And I hated porn. I couldn’t sniff her, worship her or probe the beauty of her being. I couldn’t feel her essence bathing my wounded masculine to wholeness.
Many men today, both married and single, rub away countless hours of their lives looking for harder, dirtier digital women. It probably hasn’t always been that way, though. There’s no doubt the Internet has played its part in dumbing us all down. Sure, a hard woman is nice every now and then, but you know what? There’s nothing in the Universe quite like a soft, loving, all-embracing real woman. But for me, porn somehow replaced the real thing. It was just, well, easier.
Neurosis-free women.
A fantasy-driven sex life was easier because the women of porn are apparently cleansed of all their problems and devoid of their testing neuroses; it was rather like buying irradiated meat in the supermarket in clean little packages without a sign of the industrialised chum behind the scenes. Shooting-up on porn allowed me to savor female energies without all the emotions.
Small men everywhere, who would rather not deal with the truth that women have for them, can go get a fill of female energy, have a beer, then get on with their day.
Men, what is happening to us? Sure, it’s nice to admire a beautiful woman in all her sexually attractive glory. But guys, pornography is disempowering us. If you are a user, can you feel it? That disempowered, out-of-control sadness. Does porn feel good after the release?
Perhaps all is well, though, as women will be able to resume their matriarchal power when all us men eventually become useless wank-piles. They shall reclaim their rightful ownership of all the power in the Universe, the power to create life itself. The Earth will be saved!
It’s amazing the lengths we will go to look at sex, or maybe flee from looking at it. I became very creative at creating porn-time. Always conveniently out of sight. I was a secretive user, and wanking held me in a numb, power-sapped stupor.
Sure enough, I got to the point where I simply couldn’t get enough of such an apparently good thing. Porn is incredibly addictive, and if you have never felt the full power of sex over your logical mind then you will not relate to my words.
But why was I shooting up on porn so much? Perhaps all the sex in our society is helping us stay normal, otherwise we might all go mad.
But we are all mad, so we go get more porn just to keep our sanity. And to make things worse, we don’t even talk about it. We porn users are a secretive lot. What is the problem so many people have in talking openly about sex? (We still say we slept with her instead of shagged her.)
This is why porn exists: it feeds our shadows. Porn is a media reflection of the damaged inner relationship that we have to our sexual impulse. That impulse is beautiful. It is what has brought every one of us here to earth. It should be celebrated, not banished to the provenance of hidden jerk-offs in an upstairs bedroom.
If we all celebrated our sexuality, maybe there wouldn’t be a need for porn. Ultimately I realized that I was using porno pleasure to feed a sense of lack, without any regard for the women behind the scenes or how it was affecting my relationship to my wife or to sex.
The dope had become heroin/heroine. How could I shake it?
Shaking it.
Men who are seasoned porn users will be familiar with the empty-bollock ache that results from the perpetual fixes that are available. I got to the point where I’d had enough of porn. I hated porn to the core of my being. I also realized that I’d had enough of being taken for granted. I needed to be held, touched and found attractive. I needed to be loved by my wife and to give my love wholly.
In every moment we choose communion or separation.
I was a courageous warrior, determined to continue to be a powerful man. I embarked on a five year journey of self discovery to get to the root of the problem. My journey took me deep into self honesty, Tantra and sacred sexuality. I learned a great deal about sex, my relationship to myself, my relationship to women and my relationship to the earth along the way. I wrote a book about my journey to freedom called The Sex God—No Mud No Lotus.
My spirit feels brighter now that I am free of the grips of porn addiction.
Is porn a good thing?
For sure, some men don’t have access to sex; they may be wrinkling, wretched or alone. In those cases copious conceptual copulation with porn may be a healing salve. Porn stars with their minimal emotional engagement could in fact be healers in that capacity.
Some healthy users, men and women, say they like pornography, they say it’s fun and sexy, and that it can be used to raunch up an evening with a lover. Perhaps in recreational doses porn has its place on the smorgasbord of life.
It all comes down to consent and boundaries. One way of expressing our sex is recreationally. I could use some porn with my lover. We could watch some juicy people make love to each other and have a fine time together.
That is, if the men and women in the porn movie were consenting and nobody was being taken from or done to against their will. Then porn may have its place in the smorgasboard of life. (Where can you find giving to and receiving sensual movies?) But it’s important to recognise that porn can creep into the holes in our wholeness and cause all kinds of grief.
My heart is my biggest organ and it knows that being utterly at ease around sex of any kind is my greatest opportunity. My heart can always feel whether porn is a good thing or not. Sex has nothing to do with brutishness and exploitation.
Sex has everything to do with creation and beauty. It is the noblest energy there is.
As for Good Girl, sure the movie made energy fizz in my pelvis. But you know what? It was no substitute for feeling the high fidelity, total sensory union possible with my real beloved. These days my preference is a powerful ejaculatory-choice practice and sacred sex over anything I can gain from lifeless digitised images.
There has never been a better time for us all to take a good look at the assumptions we make about our sexuality and how it affects our culture and all our relationships.
Read more on Men and Pornography on The Good Life.
The Men and Pornography series is the product of the joint call from elephant journal Love and Relationships and The Good Life on The Good Men Project. This was previously published in elephant journal Love and Relationships.
Image credit: kokichuelo/Flickr
If you are in need of getting your Ex-Lover back contact DR_MACK@YAHOO. COM
This article has been so helpful to me. I am addicted to porn and work long hours to take it away from my mind but at 2am I wake up and for three hours look at porn. I better understand my condition.
Porn addiction here
I am addicted to porn
Ben, my marriage reached a crisis point in part largely due to porn… At the bottom I swore off it – completely – not even a glimpse of a bikini. We refound a sex life and were surprised to find we were having and enjoying sex like when we’d first met. Four months on, my wife turns me on – I think of her when I think of nudity, sexuality, and that is a really good thing.
I have a much better idea than spicing up a couple’s sex than watching porn, invite another couple over! Any way you slice it, porn is porn, whether you are single or a couple. Back years ago, during simpler times, we always turned to the jc penney catalog underwear section. Just put it back on mom’s dresser when she wasn’t looking. We are not talking victoria’s secret here. Granny panties were fair game in that world. Porn is unfulfilling, hence the incessant need for novelty and more. Men, and perhaps women too, have a strong urge that drives them to… Read more »
My one friend was also a porn addict , watched porn daily,sometime 4-5 hours in a day and also do towel raise exercise for straightening of penis , after passing 12th ,he and me join college for further study but there we were used to be busy in study and also had no PC for watching porn,slowly slowly he was getting into depression then and the intensity of it becoming more and more and a day came when he told to me as a best friend” I am becoming mental” . He didn’t knew it was due to addition of… Read more »
Don’t touch psychiatric drugs. They destroy your mind and body and your will get worse over time. If you want more information contact me on [email protected] and also go to CCHR.ORG for the truth about mental illnesses. I used to work for these people and I saw people’s lives being saved
I hate my husband! I’ve been sex deprived for the longest time. Blaming myself and the fucker just prefers porn. Are there any guys left that want to feel, smell, fuck a woman? Or everybody is an egotistical jerk like the one I married?
How can he approach you when you hate the fucker. Not that he would otherwise, just now you are in a divergent positive feedback loop, i.e. gonna hate each other more. If you don’t stop hating, and afterwards he won’t change, it is over.
Thanks for sharing this, though painful, I feel like knowing and reading a confession like this somehow made me understand my husband more. But no matter how porn is being used by others, it clearly devastated my life. My husband is now a recovering porn addict under the GreatnessAhead program and although we’re more peaceful than before, albeit his slips last September, I couldn’t believe what we had to go through. I lost myself during his battle. Memories still bring me to tears. I don’t know if I could ever trust him again.
Just a couple of thoughts on this article: 1. I recognize its popular to compare consumption of pornography to use of hard drugs, but the two are really in no way comparable. Unlike foreign chemicals, the dopamine fueled, synapse numbing affect of an organism, even if frequently administered, does wear off in fairly short order, returning the “user” to his/her baseline state. Doesn’t mean one can’t over indulge of course, but an apt comparison would be salty-snacks, not heroine. 2. As so frequently stated, but no less important, the violent, misogynistic, rape imagery of pornography is a best a poor… Read more »
Yes! Yes! Yes! There is a sort of old article here in The GMPM that says that we don’t have to be ashamed of us liking sex. I have come to terms with my taste for pornography, I don’t hide it but don’t flaunt it either, my wife knows about it. After I acknowledged that my watching porn was healthy and nothing to apologize about, I felt “cured” of my addiction. I do watch it still, but as a tool to disspell accumulated stress and when living with my wife, I don’t even need it. Once the ghost of sin… Read more »
Random Stranger, even regular drug use “wears off”. Even with regular drug users, they return to a less animated state. However, tolerance does build up over time both physically and mentally. There are a few articles on GMP that talk about how the brain is re-wired regarding pornography. We are what we consume. The reason that pornography has become more “hardcore” isn’t because we all jsut go back to “baseline”. It’s because a tolerance is built up and people need more extreme imagery to reach the same high. Even when it comes to porn. I bet a lot of men… Read more »
“It’s because a tolerance is built up and people need more extreme imagery to reach the same high.” Like all weed users progress to meth right? People still buy into this shit? It only applies to some people but my “high” from masturbation and porn has remained constant the entire time, my porn hasn’t got any more hardcore, it’s the basic intercourse and oral (both male n female), stuff I’ve done in real life, the women range in age between 20-50. What level of hardcore should I be progressing to? Violence? I hate it, turns me off. Bondage? Borrrrrring. Anal?… Read more »
There are actually neurological studies done that conclude that porn addiction does affect the brain in ways that some drugs don’t, so the pot-to-meth-pathway theory does not apply here. Porn addiction affects not only the pleasure areas of the brain, but the decision making prefrontal cortex and parts of the white-matter and even ends up changing the sizes of those regions.
Holy advertisement for http://www.elephantjournal.com Batman!
Other than that, I have nothing to say about this article except “Blech!” Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too new agey for my tastes. But clearly, everyone is different, so whatever works for you.
Anyways….
“But where was all that battling of the purple-headed yogurt-slinger taking me?”
I can’t even believe I read that. Talk about being graphic. Mine doesn’t get purple, since I am not caucasian, but I get the point.
There’s nothing in the Universe quite like a soft, loving, all-embracing real woman. Well, a lot of people keep saying that. And most of us know it’s true. But whaddayaknow, some of us just keeps getting by-passed. Perhaps all is well, though, as women will be able to resume their matriarchal power when all us men eventually become useless wank-piles. They shall reclaim their rightful ownership of all the power in the Universe, the power to create life itself. Yes, women are powerful and can do alot of things. One thing they can’t do just yet, however, is create life… Read more »
That was solved with the whole genetically modified two eggs thing. Wasn’t there recently a lesbian couple that did just that?
Book or not, thank you for this article. It seems to be an honest appraisal based on experience. We are only beginning to acknowledge that the compulsive use of porn and self-pleasure may have a down side for many relationships. I have seen the downward spiral of a man controlled by those urges. Calling it by its name is a forward step.
I agree…I like this article. Yes some people ‘may be fine’ with their porn watching and think its all good and no problems…for now…but as most men do, you need more and more ‘hardcore’ stuff to get off…that can’t be healthy for your sex life. Or for you psychologically. And I like your point of how after it’s all said and done you have nothing…a computer and an empty feeling. A real woman (if you look for the right one for you) has to be much more satisfying 😉
Shameless plug to sell a book….
“A thorough and sacred investigation”…. putting that English Major to work I see.
This was a very interesting article as it is very different from my own point of view. For me, porn is useful exactly because it makes the need for sexual connection much less urgent. For example, right now due to circumstances I am unable to have sex with my significant other. When I feel the need to have sex with her instead of either being a pest or becoming so tense and irritable I risk taking out my inappropriate anger on someone else I just use porn. No muss, no fuss. And, no, I can’t redirect the energy into other… Read more »
Like many, I watch porn simply because I have no other choice. It’s not like I’m dating anyone or have women who have any interest in going out with me or sleeping with me, so I’m left with the only other option short of prostitution. Such is the life of your typical shy man.
+1. Until we either beat the shyness or women start asking us out…..
Collin, Just because you are using porn as a substitute for real sex doesn’t mean it’s not influencing you. And maybe you won’t really know that answer until you have sex with a real woman. It’s usually in our relationships with one another where we learn the most about ourselves. Not when we are behind our computers by ourselves.
That illustration is awful. What is the lady part supposed to be? It looks like a napkin holder from picnic tables.
It’s a USB in port
Really? I think the illustration, along with the line of the yogurt slinger, are the most memorable contributions of this article. Yet again, taste is very subjective.