where are all these porn "addicts?"

[valsa]

It was affecting his daily functioning in that he couldn't have a functional relationship with his girlfriend. That seems pretty obvious to me. It wasn't just the matter of the hours spent, though that was part of the problem.

But how did it prevent him from having a functional relationship with his girlfriend? Having problems is bed is not caused by porn (at least you haven't shown any proof that it is) You could argue that it interferred with his relationship because he spent time on it that his girlfriend preferred he spend with her, but that could be said about any hobby (how many girlfriends complain their boyfriends spend too much playing video games and hanging out with their friends?)

I'm not sure why, but you seem really defensive about what I'm saying. I'm out.

That's funny, because I was thinking the same thing about you. You obviously have a problem with porn and I think you're looking at a situation where a guy has intimacy issues and looks at porn and automatically jumping to the conclusion that the porn must be causing the intimacy issues. As we're fond of saying to the fundies- correlation does not equal causation. I'm not defensive about porn, I'm defensive about poor logical conclusions.

One of my best friend's ex-husband started watching porn as a teenager, and didn't tell her (or anyone else). When they got married he would get mad when she wouldn't act like the people he'd been watching. He used to abuse her and tried to force her to get breast implants so she'd look like a porn star.

Yes, because a guy who abuses is wife must have no underlying issue other stupid expectations coming from porn... :doh:

[StarrieEyedKat]

I've known at least two guys addicted to porn, one is an ex-boyfriend and the other is his cousin. The ex was only mildly addicted, to the point that it caused problems between us because he preferred to watch porn instead of being intimate with me. Outside of that it didn't affect his life too much, as far as I know. His cousin, on the other hand, was a youth pastor and ended up getting fired for looking up porn at the church he worked in. Ick.

I also wonder if my dad could be classified as having an addiction to porn, although with him I think it's just a branch off of his hoarding issues. He owns hundreds of Playboy and I think ever Girls Gone Wild video ever made, amongst other things.. (It's not something we talk about or anything like that, he just really does have an extreme hoarding problem and I've come across the boxes and boxes full of them when I've gone through his house to clean.)

[Rosa]

A friend of mine's dad was an addict kind of in general - gambling, drinking, maybe narcotics? And sex and porn were definitely in there - along with the gambling what did him in was spending money on sex workers and paying them off so they didn't out him to his church/wife. It's hard to tease out just one thing in there, though.

I have a friend whose partner is a self-described porn addict, and even when he wasn't looking at porn much it was in a context where he knew it enraged her and every time he did, he risked her leaving him. To me, that level of risk-taking (including all the idiots who look at porn on work computers when they have a high likelihood of getting fired) says "addict" even if it is not right at this moment impeding their day-to-day life - once they get dumped or fired, it will. And like many addicts, that dude is doing WAY better since she dumped him, they were hella codependent.

I mean, I like a lot of porn - not so much video stuff, but I like comic-format porn (print & video) and pornographic novels. That doesn't mean it's harmless for everyone. I also drink and have in the past smoked tobacco and pot, it doesn't make me disbelieve in addiction or overuse of those substances.

[Three and Done]

I can quite definitively state that porn/sex addiction does indeed exist. How do I know this? I was with an addict for 4 1/2 years :(

His addiction caused him to spend thousands of dollars (that he did NOT have) on online "pay per view" sex, steal my credit card for the same purpose, and even lose his job due to viewing porn online at work - repeatedly.

Sadly, it would take me far more space than I am allotted here to fully describe what life with a porn/sex addict is like. Suffice it to say that it is heartbreaking and typically results in the end of a relationship.

I would be happy to answer any questions anyone may have regarding this issue and my/our experience with it.

[FloraDoraDolly]

A friend of mine was once married to a guy who preferred porn to real sex. I don't know if he was addicted to it, but I think his main problem was that he was a socially inept nerd in his late 20s who'd never had a girlfriend or slept with anyone until he met my friend. Then once he was married, he couldn't deal with being around a real live woman 24/7 and so he retreated into his own little world of porn, video games, and science fiction geek culture. The marriage did not last long.

[doe]

Edited to protect someone's privacy.

[Three and Done]

Doe - the fact that he is stealing pics from others is a sign he is indeed addicted. The theft in and of itself is likely part of the thrill for him; it adds to the "high" an addict experiences.

My sympathies to your friend.

[Lainey]

Considering that precious few men can get aroused without the woman being shaved to look like a prepubescent girl, I'd say porn is a problem.

What!? This has not been my experience.

Also, I see someone else said something similar, so I'd just like to add that in my experience, some (my limited experience is 2) men don't care if you shave your legs, either.

ETA: Not really related, but kinda. My husband is tearing apart our basement so we can renovate it, and he found old porn mags in the bathroom ceiling. They are...disturbing. :shock:

[emmiedahl]

Maybe it is the men I dated, but most didn't care if I shave at all, anywhere. My husband does not care if I don't shave my legs except for that prickly week when it is growing out. He hates Brazilian bikini waxes because it makes women not look like normal adult women. I personally like a nice wax down there, so he has to put up with it at times.

I don't think occasional porn is necessarily horrible. I used to enjoy occasional porn, just the normal non-kinky style, but neither of us likes the fake boobs/overly tanned/bleached hair/no pubes look and that seems to be all you can find anymore. Also, modern porn seems to be getting too 'out there', so we go without.

[Lainey]

I asked my husband recently if he preferred shaved or not "down there," and he said not.

As for porn, I have mentioned before that I like it. Apparently I'm just a voyeur, I seem to like watching people have sex. :? I'm not sure what that says about me...

[snarkbillie]

I have a friend whose husband is reportedly addicted to porn. He can't/won't even have sex with her. He always says he's not in the mood and then she catches him whacking it to porn 3-4 times a day. He apologizes and says he'll quit but eventually he goes back. She said they haven't had regular sex in like 5 years or something. It's really sad. I questioned the addiction side of it but I read a lot of things saying that it can happen.

[StarrieEyedKat]

I don't think occasional porn is necessarily horrible. I used to enjoy occasional porn, just the normal non-kinky style, but neither of us likes the fake boobs/overly tanned/bleached hair/no pubes look and that seems to be all you can find anymore. Also, modern porn seems to be getting too 'out there', so we go without.

I dislike the fake looking porn that seems to be everywhere now. I prefer "amateur porn" since it looks like real people actually enjoying themselves. I also prefer my husband and I enjoy it together, not separately, but that mostly stems from being with someone who preferred porn over me and ended up giving me a complex.

I worry about teens that are growing up now and going through puberty seeing the unrealistic images that are so mainstream today. I don't want my son thinking that it's ok to treat women like that or to expect them to look or act like that, and I don't want my daughter to feel like she has to act or look like that or feel pressured into doing things that she doesn't want to. :?

[Austin]

I worry about teens that are growing up now and going through puberty seeing the unrealistic images that are so mainstream today. I don't want my son thinking that it's ok to treat women like that or to expect them to look or act like that, and I don't want my daughter to feel like she has to act or look like that or feel pressured into doing things that she doesn't want to. :?

I hate porn, just the very idea of it, but I assumed my sons would look at it at some point. When the topic arose during their teenaged years, I make the point to tell them that those women are not like real women, and being with a real woman is a lot different than anything they'll ever see in a porno.

[emmiedahl]

I think the porn that is popular right now could seriously screw someone up if they had no prior experience of sex. Sex is not usually an acrobatic feat***, few girls want a threesome, and most women are not artificially enhanced in any meaningful way. Can you imagine all the teenaged boys and girls having their typically underwhelming first time after watching the pros? Yikes!

***unless you have a sex sling or similar assistive devices :D

[doggie]

lumping most men Or most people into anything is a limited fundamentalist outlook. Unless you have hard figures to back it up it is just something pulled out of the air. My wife has shaved a few times it was fun but nnot required. my wife doesn ot even shave her legs and she has more hair on hers then I do. porn gets boring since it is so fake and no one enjoys it. even amature porn is an imitation of real porn from what I have seen. Some people have problems and porn or booze or drugs or gambling are a problem. but the addiction is the problem and they way it takes effect is just a symptom.

I think most of the porn preaching is one time and you are addict. Do some men watch porn and expect that from a woman? of course Just like some woman read romance books and expect those details from every man.

[doggie]

I think the porn that is popular right now could seriously screw someone up if they had no prior experience of sex. Sex is not usually an acrobatic feat***, few girls want a threesome, and most women are not artificially enhanced in any meaningful way. Can you imagine all the teenaged boys and girls having their typically underwhelming first time after watching the pros? Yikes!

Most of that would kill me and I doubt it feels that good. I hate those fake porn boobs they don't jiggle and stick straight up when she is on her back. you could get your eye poked out with some of them.

[Kitty]

porn gets boring since it is so fake and no one enjoys it. even amature porn is an imitation of real porn from what I have seen.

Not that I don't agree with the rest of your post, but definitely, amateur porn is almost worse than pro porn, ime. The "actors" try to make it like pro porn, but the woman will inevitably be even more irritating than an actress and the man will be damn near silent.

As for the shaving discussion, I think shaving got started off in porn to get a better view, but now it's crept its way into real life. It's rather difficult to find cute underwear that doesn't involve shaving it's it's often lacy and see-through. There's also just a general disgust toward women's pubic hair. It actually comes from other women/girls, also ime. Like, nobody wants menstrual blood getting caught in the hair. I don't get it either so I just trim, I haven't been with very many guys but none of them really expected anything. Well, one asked me to shave, but he never got to see the results. Which were fugly, btw, I'm never doing that shit again.

[doe]

Doe - the fact that he is stealing pics from others is a sign he is indeed addicted. The theft in and of itself is likely part of the thrill for him; it adds to the "high" an addict experiences.

My sympathies to your friend.

The internets ate my post.

That makes sense. I don't know al the factors that makes an addict an addict.

Curious if anyone knows anything about peer to peer file sharing and how it works. She told me years ago her husband was really into it and would download movies and songs. A couple of times she found a different kind of porn than she was used to on their computer. She wouldn't go into much detail about it but said it really bothered her. When she asked her husband about it he told her sometimes the people you download from will falsely label a file and you will end up with porn, or they will sneak porn into a file that contains a movie or song. She wasn't very technically inclined and she believed him. I haven't done much in file sharing (and I don't do it anymore), and I never encountered anything like that. At the worst the person I was downloading from got the artist or title of a song wrong.

[doggie]

it is true that files get labeled wrong or can be spam or virus's I pretty much gave up because so many files were something else. maybe there is a code but who knows? I have not done it in years though. But I would download lots of stuff and it would take houses or days and then the work of checking everything and see what you got.

[valsa]

Curious if anyone knows anything about peer to peer file sharing and how it works. She told me years ago her husband was really into it and would download movies and songs. A couple of times she found a different kind of porn than she was used to on their computer. She wouldn't go into much detail about it but said it really bothered her. When she asked her husband about it he told her sometimes the people you download from will falsely label a file and you will end up with porn, or they will sneak porn into a file that contains a movie or song. She wasn't very technically inclined and she believed him. I haven't done much in file sharing (and I don't do it anymore), and I never encountered anything like that. At the worst the person I was downloading from got the artist or title of a song wrong.

I don't really download porn via file sharing (if I do, it's usually yaoi which is in comic book form) but I do download songs, shows, and movies and I've never had that happen.

It may be a coincidence but that exact explanation was always what I was planning on going with if I ever had to explain any of the graphic man-on-man gay porn on my computer when I was a teen.

[Sola]

The only people I know of who seem to have a problem with porn, are the ones who deem porn to be taboo.

I think for most teen boys (and girls too) viewing porn is a natural progression. When you think back to thirty years ago the closest thing to porn that boys saw was the ladies underwear pages of the clothing catalogue that many mothers had. If they were lucky they had an older brother who managed to get hold of a dog eared porn magazine which was passed around to all the teen boys. If they were REALLY lucky and had a VCR and their parents went out, they might be able to get hold of a dodgy, barely viewable VHS tape of some repeatedly copied 1970's porn film.

Now there is porn at our fingertips with the internet. Should people be surprised that teens look at it? Hell no, porn has been around for centuries. Viewing it is a phase that most people go through and come through the other side. After a while it's pretty 'meh'. However if you forbid it, if you make it taboo, then you are going to see issues with it. It's a bit like masturbation; it isn't a problem unless YOU make it a problem.

Now on the other hand, do I think that there has been some detrimental effects of porn on the general population - yes I do. But I don't think that it is the concept of porn per se that is causing the problem. It is what is IN the porn and the attitude that comes with it that is the problem.

I do not agree with what has become the sexualising of young girls. Really, do 9 year old girls need underwired bras? Do they need thongs? Do they need t-shirts with 'Future WAG' on them? Stuff like that makes me sick. I was given a small back of girls clothes the other day from a friend who has a daughter a couple of years older than mine. All things her daughter has outgrown. Most of the stuff was fine but in there was a T-shirt with Playboy and the logo on it. This was a t-shirt in size age 10 years. Are you kidding me? A Playboy t-shirt for a 10 year old girl? Needless to say it went in the bin.

Someone else posted about how teen girls feel they have to have the 'porn actress look'. You go to any pub or club on a weekend and you see the girls there, bleach blonde hair, clouted in make-up, 6 inch high hooker shoes, skirts up to their arses etc. You can bet under all that there isn't a pubic hair in sight either. The 'must have' thing is boob implants - I really cannot understand why anyone would want a bag of silicon shoved in their tits just to attract men.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that you can have a healthy attitude towards porn. However for the most part in teens these days there isn't a healthy attitude towards porn (from either side of the fence). That's the way I see it but that might be more with me being a hairy, crunchy, old hippy than anything else :D

[gilora]

I have a friend whose husband is reportedly addicted to porn. He can't/won't even have sex with her. He always says he's not in the mood and then she catches him whacking it to porn 3-4 times a day. He apologizes and says he'll quit but eventually he goes back. She said they haven't had regular sex in like 5 years or something. It's really sad. I questioned the addiction side of it but I read a lot of things saying that it can happen.

If he's being caught 3-4 times per day then it seems he wants to be caught. You didn't mention whether they have children, but if they do how will your friend explain the situation when they "catch" Daddy in the act?

Addiction or not, it sounds like your friend has ample grounds for divorce.

[gilora]

Someone else posted about how teen girls feel they have to have the 'porn actress look'. You go to any pub or club on a weekend and you see the girls there, bleach blonde hair, clouted in make-up, 6 inch high hooker shoes, skirts up to their arses etc. You can bet under all that there isn't a pubic hair in sight either. The 'must have' thing is boob implants - I really cannot understand why anyone would want a bag of silicon shoved in their tits just to attract men.

Anyway, what I am trying to say is that you can have a healthy attitude towards porn. However for the most part in teens these days there isn't a healthy attitude towards porn (from either side of the fence). That's the way I see it but that might be more with me being a hairy, crunchy, old hippy than anything else :D

I guess I'm a hairy, crunchy old hippy too.

While teenage girls may not have the self-confidence to stand up to "porn actress" demands, I cannot fathom why grown women would do so.

Guys, you want the vag, take it as it is. Oh wait, you want me to look like a porn actress? Well, most porn actors have 10 inch cocks. I don't see you sporting one of those, pal.

[Sola]

I guess I'm a hairy, crunchy old hippy too.

While teenage girls may not have the self-confidence to stand up to "porn actress" demands, I cannot fathom why grown women would do so.

Guys, you want the vag, take it as it is. Oh wait, you want me to look like a porn actress? Well, most porn actors have 10 inch cocks. I don't see you sporting one of those, pal.

I think I love you!

[gilora]

LOL!

Take your five inches of fury and hit the road!