Porn Addiction/Intimacy Issues

Difficulty being vulnerable with others - Yes

Importance of camera gaze - Yes

These two very much work together in my case. When the model looks at the camera in a certain way, I feel more accepted. As I feel more accepted, I open up more. Unfortunately, what I open up about is sex addiction - I begin to 'confess' my kinks and fetishes to the 'other' who is 'accepting' me in ever-increasing depth, detail, and depravity.

This is not a healing cycle, as you might imagine. Quite the opposite.

I believe it also explains why many of my withdrawal symptoms circle around feelings of having lost sources of intimacy and acceptance.

 

Not entirely sure what that means... But since you mention intimacy in the same sentence, can I answer as if you had asked about 'difficulty being intimate with others'? In which case, yes and no. The intimacy had gradually disappeared from my relationship with my wife, and along with it sex, or indeed vice versa. I turned increasingly to PM to fill this hole in my life (I was going to say 'this drove me...', but that could be interpreted as if I'm blaming my wife for this, which I'm not). So it was the lack of intimacy, rather than difficulty with it, but perhaps that's sort of the same thing in what comes to the question at hand?

Yes, absolutely. I'm trying to be careful in what I say here, don't want to trigger anyone - least of all myself! - but I was never into 'porn star porn', anything that looked and felt staged and artificial, with super slick bodies with various enhancements, performing unreal feats in glamorous settings, etc. Instead - and I realise this may seem utterly laughable, but it's true - I was looking for the missing intimacy, even a (very pale) shadow of it. And indeed, the look on her face, or some fleeting glimpse of the real person in the picture, or anything that suggested a 'normal' or 'everyday' or 'down to earth' or something like that, would often catch me. Sorry if that's not very well articulated, I've not yet quite got my head around it myself.

 

More like people that struggle with intimacy turn to porn more than those who don't . Doesn't necessarily mean porn is the cause of the problem.

 

I find this neither laughable or poorly articulated, @Rob_B_ . What you have done very effectively here is describe my own dynamic with pornography.

I was vaguely aware of this throughout my addiction, but it really came to the fore once I had blocked all overtly pornographic images. At this point, I turned to porn substitutes (which, of course, I justified in all sorts of ways!) and found myself equally - if not more fully - gripped. At some point I realized I was chasing the 'very pale shadow' you mention.

As of today, I haven't intentionally looked at psubs in almost five weeks. This is a stunning record. From time to time I do ache for that shadow, however. I do long for that missing intimacy (which - again like you - has largely left my marriage relationship).

 

Very interesting. I have never seen it this way, but it's true for me.

I always had huge issues with being vulnerable.

Thanks for sharing.

 

Thank you @Tryingto - you're probably being generous, but as long as the message resonates even slightly, that's all that matters.

The rest of your post very much touches a nerve in me. For that reason, I have a strange premonition that if we were to compare our experiences (our use of Psubs etc.) without any guards or obfuscations, they might well be surprisingly similar. I'm not yet ready to say more about mine, but maybe one day...

 

Reading that, you've just made me cry!

Geez, Robbo, try to act like a man. Go read some poetry, or something. Oh no, wait...

 

I don't think I had intimacy issues. I never thought about how the people in the video looked at the camera I didn't care. As a former crossdresser I cared more about what was being worn than anything else. This is the reason that P-subs are so dangerous for me. I can get more aroused by what a beautiful lady is wearing than from a nude lady. Obviously, I have major problems. (Free from crossdressing and PMO since march 11, 2016)

 

Not true for me. I would say 90% of the time I cropped out faces and kept it as impersonal as possible. It was bodies that did me in.

Besides this monster PMO, I am pretty open with people. I am not shy or introverted. I speak my mind most of the time. I'm not afraid to ask for help or to cry, I can be vulnerable in a lot of other ways.

But interesting nonetheless, thanks for sharing.

 

Yes. I always felt that a depraved part of my addiction was the need to consume people, to dominate them, force them to surrender to my will. All this being -now that you mention it - probably a reaction to feeling rejected.

 

In looking back I think what I looked for was that look or behavior that said to me: you're all I need. You're more than enough. I am satisfied by just you. You are amazing.
It is vain but very human. I wonder if it has to do with a lack of a father figure on my life? Or lack of family relationship?
Even now that thing I sell most in my friendships is affirmation. Someone to tell me "you're alright" or "you're one of us".
And when real relationships don't provide that pmo is my go-to quick fix.

 

You're not alone in those needs and the affirmation-searching, @noonoon. We talk here sometimes about those 'love languages', and words of affirmation is certainly one. I'm way bigger on quality time and touching, but I respect that my wife needs those words!

Had a chance to feel some rejection (in employment) this week, and it's certainly true that it tempts you to want to fight back. Fire on fire just burns everyone. Quiet submission is much more about free will and true love, appreciation and acceptance.

@Sadgirl those videos I noticed @Kenzi posted were really cool. I've never seen a better explanation for why the DSM-V didn't oficially have SA types of things. I think they're on crack, mind you, for not acknowledging that there can be a PA issue. But, whatever we call it, it just is something that I experienced. Learning to accept and seek intimacy in a healthy way has definitely been something only possible in the latter stages of recovery, though!

 

I think intimacy is a big problem for a lot of addicts from all persuasions, be it drugs, porn or gambling etc but probably much more exagerated with porn because it taps into our basic human function for procreation and in order to procreate you have to be connected to another person both physically and mentally. I can't tell you what came first, the anxiety or the porn but what i know for sure is that porn use increased my levels of anxiety and also made it more difficult to connect intimately with the opposite sex. To put it bluntly, i knew how to click on porn but i didn't really understand the social dynamics of interacting on a intimate level with females or i had lost that part of my social self and porn becomes a re-inforcing behaviour because you start to look for a very poor representation of 'being accepted' 'not being rejected' 'being in control' 'fulfilling sexual needs' and for someone with obsessive and collecting traits of behaviour this will have an effect of the kind of porn someone escalates to in the future. I had to attend an internet sex offenders course as part of my probation requirement (a result of my escalating nature of porn consumption) and intimacy was discussed in the group in some level of detail so i believe it is quite commonly accepted amongst professionals who deal with sexual behavioural problems that intimacy is an area which needs focus.

 

So I saw this the other day in New Posts and just asked my husband about this. He says no he didn't like the ones that made eye contact with the camera. I asked why, he said he didn't want to get that personal with them. Nice.

Edited to add - Oh yeah, he does have an intimacy disorder, IMO.

 

Gonna be honest, for me it got to a point where I was okay if I never had sex again. The porn became everything to me.