Why do men save porn / sign up to porn sites?

Before I met my wife, had a few flings, one night stands and short term relationships...saved gigs of porn on my old hard drive.

I'm an OCD obsessive cataloguer of stuff anyway (be it my books, records or DVDs) and I guess I was the same with porn. Going through most of my teenage years being lonely and sexually frustrated, which men seem to get more than women, I guess it was my only outlet for sex.

It was a bad habit I carried on when I met my wife though. We've been together 10 years, had lots of great sex but the PMO stayed for some reason.

 

@bonbon4 During an "act-out" session, which can last for hours, the brain is flooded with hormones that effectively shut off our cognitive thinking processes.
Signing up on sites will allow someone to access photos or videos not available on the free side of the website. Saving those photos and videos is just and autonomic response of the addiction that says "this image or video gave me the fix I was looking for, better save it so I can get it again.... Just in case".
Lying is just what sex addicts do. We lie to our SOs, our employers, , customers, friends, people online, and mostly to ourselves. Learning why we lie, what are the deep issues behind our addiction, how to begin to tell the truth, takes a lot of work (years) with a therapist that specializes is sex addiction. The behavior can be somewhat controlled with filters and definitely NoFap helps, but only if there is a real desire to or a rock bottom experience provides a strong enough motivator. But the porn is serving a purpose in the life of an addict. It's helping to manage feelings that we don't have the emotional maturity to understand or handle. Usually very early exposure to porn or sexual abuse is at the core what needs to get dealt with before lasting change can occur.
Until those issues are addressed and healthy processes are learned, the brain will go to its very established coping mechanism.
I am sorry you are dealing with the pain and trauma of loving and living with a sex/porn addict. Change is possible but it is a very long and messy process.
If you are able/willing to get your own therapist that specializes in this area and understands betrayal trauma, that will help you stay grounded and give you the tools to keep your sanity while living with someone who WILL make you crazy. It's just part of the addiction process.

Best wishes to you and I hope he can figure out he needs help with this.

 

They save them "just in case they need it in the future".

Porn tastes are very specific. 98% of porn online is "not my exact taste" so because of how rare it is to find the perfect image or video it makes sense to save it and archive it for the future.

 

Hey, hope I can help you understand as this is very common and questions like these are very hard to honestly formulate an answer to.

1) Saving things "for later" is very common behavior, it mostly stems from the core issue people that abuse pornography have - they delay ejaculation.
So they enter the counter with no interest of sexual gratification(orgasm) instead they want to enjoy a "high". Men enjoy seeing a woman, especially beautiful and naked, they get a rush - so this sensation is exploited to feel that rush over and over.
Once the rush happens, it begins to subside, interest is lost and attention shifts to finding new content. However because rush was felt, there is natural desire to remember this event and that results in desire to save for later.

2) Again save for later is a reflex, and he probably does not nook at most of what he saves later.

3) He looks at the content primarily because it makes him feel good, this can be just a habit but in most cases there is underlying cause. Dissatisfaction with life, low self esteem, shame, guilt, stress. This is more about feeling better than it is about having a sexual encounter.

4) Abuse of porn and sexual contact with partner have completely different goals, contact with partner is sexual gratification and abuse of porn is trying to feel a high.
The problem is those things are related so by abusing his sexuality for a high, he becomes less sensitive to sexual pleasure, and sexual gratification no longer feel as satisfying.

5) There is ongoing search for novelty - so seeking new things is expected.

6) This is a hard one to wrap your head around, I understand you. I can only say that when people get aroused thing they would deem not acceptable seem enticing, he may honestly regret even thinking about them, but in that moment they seemed reasonable.
This is something you have to explore.

7) It is hard to advise on this.

8) Again he is looking for a high, not sexual gratification. He takes opportunities to get it when you are not around.

9) There is very little privacy allowed in a healthy relationship, if people become private - they grow distant. But spending money part is again - seeking novelty.


So here are my thoughts based on what you described.
First of all consider that he is unable to stop practically because he is dependent on the activity for emotional stability. That much is apparent.
This is usually evident in the behavior, depressed, lack of communication with others, low self esteem, lack of commitments, isolation.
To you this seems like a simple choice of - just stopping, to him its part of his life and he does not see anything wrong with it because it help him. And so he in essence thinks you do not understand him.
Not to say that what he is doing is good, its not good but you have misunderstanding between you, you are speaking a different language.

You force him to make the commitments, he does not make them on his own. And so his commitment is to keeping you unaware of what he does instead of stopping.

My suggestion is to try and establish true safety, let him actually share how he feels about not only porn but about life, about you and about what his plans are.
Then you can try building on top of that. Keep in mind that just stopping is not the solution, its a result - solution is dealing with what leads him there.
Also do not be all loving an all accepting, I know there is a struggle in these situations where you want to be supporting and understanding and at the same time you feel that you were wronged.
You should be loving towards him as a person, but give honest judgement towards his behavior. There is a big distinction.

It more of a journey to make him a person able to change this behavior.
This is allot of work, I feel your pain. I hope he gives enough importance to your relationship.

 

In my case, I got stolen accounts from paid porn sites, downloaded photos and videos and posted and exchanged them on a free porn blog, I registered on porn sites to save the porn videos I liked and do MO. As long as your husband doesn't want to overcome his porn addiction by himself, all your efforts will be in vain.

 

He is an addict who is so into denial it is a crime. Reminds me of my father. Great guy, but utterly in denial. It fucked up our entire family. He's dead and we are still dealing with the shambles he left us with.
I would pack my bags and not return until he was firmly committed to serious counselling. He's more committed to porn than you. He's more committed to porn than your family life. If he can't handle counselling, there are plenty of men out there for you.

 

Your man has a serious addiction, You are in for the fight of your life. Us guys who are long term addicts know everything you are telling us. I can tell you he only half way wants to quit. At some point you'll have to draw a line. As long as he can make excuses every time he gets caught he'll keep messing up. At some point their has to be some consequences for his behavior or he'll never stop. Us addicts are always looking for a way to cheat the system, we want to have this secret life style that doesn't effect our real world life.

The telling lies about money spent, time spent, erasing history, changing passwords are all common true signs of a major addict in denial.
Just my 2 cents form 40 plus years of fighting this addiction battle. I'vee seen this all before.

 

Sometimes I'm pretty good at following directions. Sometimes

I've known guys to download tens of thousands of images. I did a bit of that myself. I think in part it's because the addictive thrill of searching and finding is actually more exciting than just looking at one or two really arousing images to MO to and then move on.

Mostly, I just saved the ones that "really did it for me" so that I could find them again more easily. That said, a lot of my porn binges (which could last from 1 to 4 hours) would involve me endlessly searching for more images to add to my stash.

A lot of the porn that I got into involved themes of humiliation (of the male viewer) and I think there was a hit of shame that came with saving those types of images as well as a hit of risk in that someone might find such images on my phone or computer.

As for signing into sites. That also might include the added thrill of shame and risk (all of our data is out there) but I think it's just mostly to get access to more porn.

If you haven't heard this already: viewing porn excessively desensitises people to what they see. Eventually vanilla porn just doesn't give us enough of a hit to get off . . . which inevitably leads people down the rabbit hole into pornography that has some sort of an additional kick to it (i.e. shame and/or risk)

 

He is extremely lucky to have a partner like you... most of us have destroyed far too many relationships

 

There's an adrenaline rush that comes from saving and having your favorite scene. That adrenaline spike from saving and having the videos was more important than actually watching the videos. I often times didn't watch the videos again before deleting them in shame.

 

It's great you wanted to help. But it was a bad decision on his part to not get help from a professional or group such as SAA. You didn't fail, you're not trained in this, he failed by taking half measures and trying to hide his problem.

You're not an addiction therapist (most likely) - don't feel bad he couldn't give you good answers because you're not trained to ask the right questions.

 

kill the necro, burn it with fire.

 

?

 

i meant this thread is dead and you are being a necromancer trying to revive it.

 

I never did sign up, save pictures or videos. I never signed up because I found free sites. I never saved pictures or videos because I knew I wouldn't look at them later. I have ADHD so I'm very easily distracted and forgetful.

From when I met my current partner to a few months ago, she was more aware of my addiction than I was. I guess I wasn't ready to admit it just yet. I'd had the addiction for around 40 years which I'm deeply ashamed of. When my addiction started, there was no internet or social media. Even the World Wide Web hadn't become a public thing. I started my online life on what was called a BBS (bulletin board systems). I was on some pretty tame generic BBSs at first but then I caught win of Adult BBSs and logged on to them. Again, I never paid for any of this. What I DID pay for early on was going to strip clubs, buying adult VHSs (see, I AM old!), and DVDs and magazines. I had a pretty good collection probably worth a thousand dollars. I got rid of it all when I met my current partner. Then I moved on to online porn. My partner told me a few times I was addicted but I guess I wasn't ready to hear it. About three months ago, what she told me popped into my head and I got curious. So I researched porn addiction on the web which brought me here and a few other porn addiction sites. I spent time reading and eventually, I got the idea: I was addicted. Once I got there, I took action, and now it's over 90 days. I'm still not sure if I got it in time but I have been sharing my progress with my partner.

Bad excuse, stupid decision to save it. Most guys try to hide their addiction from their partners, girlfriends, or wives. Dunno why he had a different approach.

To be honest, I grab all kinds of pictures (no porn) on my phone and forget about them. I do tend to check my phone's gallery and Google photos every so often and delete the ones I don't want or have no use for. I will admit some of those pictures are from Facebook and they are of female Facebook friends. Some I back up to Google Drive or Onedrive and then delete. They are not nude or anywhere close to nude. Thus, not porn, but I don't think my partner would want me to have those pictures so those will go.

Agreed it is part of the addition and I understand why he started. That being said, once you get into a relationship with someone, all of that should get deleted and dumped and you focus on your partner. Not wanting to be hypocritical here, because I still looked at porn after I got into a relationship with my partner. It was wrong and I am ashamed of it. So that you know, porn addiction does affect a person's mind and body. One of those effects is objectifying women. I hated that I did that. I hate that I still do it but much less. Now that porn is out of my life, it's time to change how I think.

First, there are two reasons he has ED, one is guilty. The other is that porn addiction desensitizes the mind and the mind starts saying" I NEED PORN!" which is not true. I have to admit that after about 40 years of porn, it is sorta strange and almost other-worldly that porn is gone out of my life. Porn addiction has many physical and mental side effects. I'm guessing some of the effects I've had may never go away but many have lessened. I also tried all the pills for ED and they didn't work for me. I was beginning to look at other options for ED but we moved, and I didn't follow up. Now that I quit porn, I'm glad I didn't continue those treatments as it was pretty much anxiety and porn-induced ED (PIED). Now I will tell you that I never chose to masturbate to porn over having sex with my partner. However, I seem also to have ED only when during sex. I had partial ED during masturbation but that may have been due to my prostate surgery and the after-effects of that.

 

Collecting porn pics/vids, is one of the worst disgusting habits a person can have, reasons why people do it, can be FOMO since a good chunk of the material is usually quickly cut out of public internet once it's found out by censors, I've heard the news of Ruroni Kenshin's author doing this on his computer with minor porn material, as a result he was jailed amidst continuation of Ruroni Kenshin's manga. There were no signs that he was a pervert in the manga either, so he was also likely shameful about the habit, but kept doing anyways.

The solution is collecting good stuff instead of porn shit, like music, movies, educational Youtube vids, books, etc...

 

overall it sounds like your partner is severely addicted to porn and acts like a junkie, e.g. he lies to you and etc.

i would consider whether such a relationship can destroy my life in first place. imagine you have children/are married/have common property and he cheats on you maybe for years without you knowing it. The amount of troubles it would cause is unimaginable

it made me laugh, sorry

 

It's worth noting that @bonbon4 started this thread with her question in November 2019, and she has not visited this site since January 2020. I'm not sure it is worth us spending more time answering her unless there are other SOs who are interested?