Let me apologize in advance. This post is going to be long. Hopefully, I can make it sound compelling enough that a few souls will bother reading it. The specific questions I have about solutions to my loss of sensitivity and erections are in the last paragraph, and answering them might not require the whole story, so feel free to jump right there. I'd be interested to get general views on how some of you approach recovery.
As the title says, I've only very recently realized that I have a problem with porn. I have discovered this because the adverse effects from porn use have, as of late, caused me troubles that finally got me to seriously online for answers, and there I came across the notion of PISD.
I'm a 36 years old, physically active guy. I run, I do a variety of sports, and I believe I am very reasonably fit for my age. I'm healthy (with no other known health problem than those I will directly touch here) and have had a satisfying love life. As I will explain here, my sex life, however, has lacked in significant ways, when it shouldn't have. The point is, on paper, I shouldn't be having troubles with my dick at this point.
To give short version of the downward trajectory my sex life has taken over the years, here's my problem: about a decade ago, a sudden change happened as I was consuming lots of porn. One day, I came, and... nothing. I ejaculated normally, but felt absolutely no orgasmic sensation at all. I was left absolutely dissatisfied and frustrated. Since that day, I have not had a single satisfying orgasm. On rare occasions, I have had a kind of glimpse of it, giving me hope that it was gonna come back, but it never has.
My sex drive had not changed, and for some time, it was even so high that it was debilitating: it was like repeatedly, over months and months, I was being teased with sexual excitation but never able to quench the thirst. I had uncontrollable erections, had to stop some activities I was doing by fear that I might get a random, unmistakable boner an that would cause me problems (grappling sports...). I even became almost a premature ejaculator. As soon as action would start, I'd just feel a little spasm in the hoses and know it was about to pop, but I still wouldn't feel any pleasure at all. My dick as a whole had become partly numb. I could feel touch, but it would be like touching an arm or a leg. No sexual sensation at all.
I still have that problem to this day.
At first, I had been able to remain sexually excited by remembering moments in my earlier sex life when sex had been amazing, and the orgasm had been memorable. By focusing on that, I was able to almost get a feel of past orgasm. But with time, it's like I depleted those memories, and forgot the feeling of sexual pleasure altogether.
Now, this had so far never stopped me from having satisfying romantic relationships. Since I used to be able to cum (by cum I mean strictly ejaculate, because somehow, I still feel the urge to do that once in a while and find some satisfaction in it now that I'm acustomed to not feeling orgasms anyway...) from penetration, I used to be able to make this problem mostly transparent for my girlfriends.
Recently, however, the number of sexual positions or practices that I find enjoyable and can make me cum has been getting smaller and smaller. Less and less things seem to excite me, and in order to cum, I have to be able to channel thoughts that excites me. I even became virtually incapable of cumming from penetration alone. I like... need the woman to jerk me off in a very specific way and then have to focus really hard on some porn scene and not be distracted, and then I'm golden if I can cum before her arms fall off lol... yep, that's my sex life for you.
Furthermore, and this is what has triggered me to do some research on the topic, I have reached a point where I believe this is starting to impact my love life. I have recently met a girl that I found really interesting and very attractive. Two times in a row now (the totality of the attempts we've had at sex together), at a rather early dating stage (4th and 5th dates), I have been unable to perform. I basically had this girl I found super hot and who was really into it right there, and although I was turned on and had a full boner at the start, I could barely feel anything while fucking, and couldn't remain turned on, ultimately going limp after a few minutes. I could feel the annoyance in her voice after the second time it happened. Now, on the 6th date, she remained mostly platonic, and told me she would prefer we just remain friends...
Now, what does all of this have to do with porn, you may ask? Well, gentlemen, I'm more and more convinced that this condition is at least in large part caused by porn.
I will now give more context as to my porn use, and how I believe it has, over time, changed my perception of sex altogether and ultimately desensitized me. But first, let me add a bit more context to this.
About a month after this numb penis thing started, I went to a family doctor. Tried to explain to him my situation. He just seemed puzzled and did not understand what I was talking about. He referred me to a urologist. This one told me to not jerk off too hard and it would all fix itself with time. Well, it didn't. Then another clueless urologist, and I was done trying for a long time. Also being unable to find anything about my problem on the internet at the time, I concluded I was just fucked and my problem was undocumented and unknown.
Earlier this year, however, I decided to see a sexologist. Early in our discussions, she told me she believed this was more than likely a psychological problem. I thought she was just touting her own horn, so I still took an appointment with a urologist in private practice. Surprisingly, he, too, told me he believed the problem to be psychological. He said if it was neurological, or due to an injury, or infection, I would've lost all sensation to my dick, not just the pleasure part. And the fact it happened suddenly with no apparent external cause hinted at a psychological cause. I left it at that, surprised, but unaware of what to do anyway, and the sexologist was kinda useless. She had me ramble about everything in my life but I never got any change...
Now that urologist asked me to do a bunch of blood tests anyway, just in case. Testosterone levels and stuff. With covid and endless wait time in the system, I put that on a shelf, until recently when, as I said, I ran into this uncomfortable situation of being unable to stay hard. I panicked and went to see a family doctor with the goal of obtaining a prescription for some meds to get hard. I had to explain my situation. That doctor agreed to give me something to help, but he insisted that in his opinion, this was probably a psychological problem, and I should find another sexologist.
That's now a bunch of different experts opinions all saying the same thing: there's something wrong in your head, not in your body. But what?
Now let's get to the porn.
When this problem started, I had been going out with a girl for a few years, with whom I could not have complete sexual intercourse (leaving out the details, but it was related to a physical problem on her part, AND she had very low libido, meaning no other fun stuff...). I was left to my own device, sex-wise, and used a lot of porn. I thought this was appropriate.
Up until that point, I used to not really get excited by girls getting plowed by huge dicks. I somehow had it stiff in my mind that the clit was what mattered and so the porn that excited me the most was about eating pussy. Lots of lesbian stuff, mostly quite soft porn... I'm all vanilla anyway.
But during that time, I came across squirt porn. Started reading about it, got influenced by a lot of exaggerated nonsense I read online and bought into the idea that huge dicks pounding a woman would essentially get her to reach climaxes unheard of, and that these women squirting were living proof of that. Of course, in time, I realized most of this was complete bullshit, but anyway. This notion changed everything I watched about porn. It also changed my understanding of how and where pleasure happened for a woman. It's hard to explain, but it feels like my understanding of sexual pleasure for women changed from mostly external to internal. I became obsessed with seeing women get pounded deep and hard.
For a long time, I remained convinced that porn was absolutely separated from my own sex life. I just didn't see it. I didn't feel like treating the woman I loved the way women were being treated in porn, I didn't act the way guys in porn acted in any way, I barely ever attempted to replicate anything I saw in these clips at all. So I thought it wasn't affecting me. But it was.
Now, the truth of it, guys, is that most women don't actually like getting "destroyed" and have a 12 inch dick rammed into them until they're senseless. I barely have 6 inches, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've met significantly more women that repeatedly asked me to ease off (despite me not really going hard) in half the positions we tried than women with whom I felt I was lacking. Why am I saying this? Because this means that a significant part of the women we see in porn (especially in the more amateur side of porn sites) that get plowed by a huge rod are actually hiding (with little skill) pain. And that's also a documented fact that many women report that many of their sexual encounters are painful. They just get used to it or assume it's normal.
I believe the effect this had was to slowly change my perception of what a pleasured woman looks like.
Let's summarize this part of the journey here: what I liked was to pleasure (not dominate or abuse) a woman -> believing this was better done through clit stimulation, I focused on more sensual softcore -> built the belief that in fact, real pleasure came from getting rammed by a 10 inch monster -> started watching women who were more than likely in pain and changing my perception of what a pleasured woman looks like to what are often signs of pain or distress.
Additional point: I don't have 10 inch. Meaning I can't picture myself actually effecting what I see in porn onto women. Meaning when I fuck, I had to start imagining something else going on, stepping out of my own experience, and constantly, silently, feeling inadequate myself.
That's only part of the journey. But thinking back, this, at some point, started to affect the way I had sex as well.
One thing I've often discussed with friends is how porn has changed over the years. I remember the first time I saw a girl gagging over a guy's dick the latter had just unceremoniously shoved down her throat, I was horrified. In fact, I almost puked myself. It ended my meatbeat session and I felt dirty and weird for about 2 days. I commented to my friends on how this practice had become almost omnipresent in every porn scenes today. Now I find it almost banal, and even, more than I like to admit, sometimes pretty hot. Although I keep asking myself wtf is wrong with me.
Porn, it seemed to me, had been moving away from the overly acted (ostensibly faked) orgasms by women and towards straight up abuse. Much of what I,ve seen in porn in the past years isn't at all about the woman being pleasured beyond realism. It's about the woman being degraded (generally speaking). Or at least, hell, that's what the search algorithms have been feeding me. I don't know if it's the way I did my searches or whatever, but that's what I've been seeing. Bottom line is, I've been seeing, and beating to, lots and lots of porn where the woman is just basically... not raped, but apparently overwhelmed in every way by whatever's going on. So that basically cranked it another notch: I've been used to seeing women basically looking like they're not enjoying sex. Or not actively participating in sex. Sex is being done to them, and they're taking it whatever way it comes.
Now, before this new girl I've met recently, I had spent the last... what.. 15 months? with one particular FWB who happened to give that kind of look. She liked to be the girl who being handled and "oh my god"'s everything. So I think that allowed me to get away with this growing association of sex and subdued women. But this new girl, she's not like that. She's of the "oh yes papi do me harder" type.
I hate to admit it, but... somehow, that just doesn't fit with what I've conditioned myself to like with porn. This woman is taking ownership of her own experience and she's demanding more. I just couldn't relate anything we were doing to what I had come to expect of sex.
Now let's be clear: she's not the first girl I get with who's like that, of course. And I'd never had any problem with this in the past. But now, yes. And it's fucked up that I literally can't even stay hard in the face of it. I've, somehow, through intensive porn use, evacuated the woman demonstrating willingness and pleasure from my list of expected sexual behavior.
But there's more: I went on a trip in south America a few weeks ago (I should say, I had reached the point where jerking off without porn was virtually impossible. I'd basically tire myself out before cumming. It's been like that for... at least 2 years now. This drove me to consume even more porn). When I was over there, I stayed in the mountains, with no access to any internet data, and therefore, to no porn. That lasted 16 days. I shit you not, by the end of the trip, I was able to jerk off to no porn in less than 3-4 minutes. I hadn't done it at all for most of the trip, and when I did, it was rather easy.
So I'm seriously starting to think that porn is straight up ruining my life. If I am correct about this, and right now, it's looking like I am, I've literally destroyed my sex life and enjoyment for the last 12 years, on top of the distress it's caused me, and the disappointment of some of my partners with my decreased libido, and the damage to my self esteem all this time. All of that because I was using porn, and then trying to fix all of it with more porn.
The way out of this isn't obvious... I see some people advocating NoFap, but I worry that NoFap isn't going to really help. I worry it'll get me starved and more likely to feel compelled to watch porn. Moreover, I believe fapping is actually an opportunity to retrain my brain faster: by fapping while remaining disciplined about fantasizing only about women I know, and about sex acts that are realistic and within the realm of what I myself want to include in my sex life. I believe that fapping while fantasizing on porn I've seen or scenarios analogous to the porn I've watched that has made real sex unexciting will only perpetuate the problem, but that it can be used to recreate the association between some acts and my ability to appreciate them... I appreciate any thoughts or comments about that.
As the title says, I've only very recently realized that I have a problem with porn. I have discovered this because the adverse effects from porn use have, as of late, caused me troubles that finally got me to seriously online for answers, and there I came across the notion of PISD.
I'm a 36 years old, physically active guy. I run, I do a variety of sports, and I believe I am very reasonably fit for my age. I'm healthy (with no other known health problem than those I will directly touch here) and have had a satisfying love life. As I will explain here, my sex life, however, has lacked in significant ways, when it shouldn't have. The point is, on paper, I shouldn't be having troubles with my dick at this point.
To give short version of the downward trajectory my sex life has taken over the years, here's my problem: about a decade ago, a sudden change happened as I was consuming lots of porn. One day, I came, and... nothing. I ejaculated normally, but felt absolutely no orgasmic sensation at all. I was left absolutely dissatisfied and frustrated. Since that day, I have not had a single satisfying orgasm. On rare occasions, I have had a kind of glimpse of it, giving me hope that it was gonna come back, but it never has.
My sex drive had not changed, and for some time, it was even so high that it was debilitating: it was like repeatedly, over months and months, I was being teased with sexual excitation but never able to quench the thirst. I had uncontrollable erections, had to stop some activities I was doing by fear that I might get a random, unmistakable boner an that would cause me problems (grappling sports...). I even became almost a premature ejaculator. As soon as action would start, I'd just feel a little spasm in the hoses and know it was about to pop, but I still wouldn't feel any pleasure at all. My dick as a whole had become partly numb. I could feel touch, but it would be like touching an arm or a leg. No sexual sensation at all.
I still have that problem to this day.
At first, I had been able to remain sexually excited by remembering moments in my earlier sex life when sex had been amazing, and the orgasm had been memorable. By focusing on that, I was able to almost get a feel of past orgasm. But with time, it's like I depleted those memories, and forgot the feeling of sexual pleasure altogether.
Now, this had so far never stopped me from having satisfying romantic relationships. Since I used to be able to cum (by cum I mean strictly ejaculate, because somehow, I still feel the urge to do that once in a while and find some satisfaction in it now that I'm acustomed to not feeling orgasms anyway...) from penetration, I used to be able to make this problem mostly transparent for my girlfriends.
Recently, however, the number of sexual positions or practices that I find enjoyable and can make me cum has been getting smaller and smaller. Less and less things seem to excite me, and in order to cum, I have to be able to channel thoughts that excites me. I even became virtually incapable of cumming from penetration alone. I like... need the woman to jerk me off in a very specific way and then have to focus really hard on some porn scene and not be distracted, and then I'm golden if I can cum before her arms fall off lol... yep, that's my sex life for you.
Furthermore, and this is what has triggered me to do some research on the topic, I have reached a point where I believe this is starting to impact my love life. I have recently met a girl that I found really interesting and very attractive. Two times in a row now (the totality of the attempts we've had at sex together), at a rather early dating stage (4th and 5th dates), I have been unable to perform. I basically had this girl I found super hot and who was really into it right there, and although I was turned on and had a full boner at the start, I could barely feel anything while fucking, and couldn't remain turned on, ultimately going limp after a few minutes. I could feel the annoyance in her voice after the second time it happened. Now, on the 6th date, she remained mostly platonic, and told me she would prefer we just remain friends...
Now, what does all of this have to do with porn, you may ask? Well, gentlemen, I'm more and more convinced that this condition is at least in large part caused by porn.
I will now give more context as to my porn use, and how I believe it has, over time, changed my perception of sex altogether and ultimately desensitized me. But first, let me add a bit more context to this.
About a month after this numb penis thing started, I went to a family doctor. Tried to explain to him my situation. He just seemed puzzled and did not understand what I was talking about. He referred me to a urologist. This one told me to not jerk off too hard and it would all fix itself with time. Well, it didn't. Then another clueless urologist, and I was done trying for a long time. Also being unable to find anything about my problem on the internet at the time, I concluded I was just fucked and my problem was undocumented and unknown.
Earlier this year, however, I decided to see a sexologist. Early in our discussions, she told me she believed this was more than likely a psychological problem. I thought she was just touting her own horn, so I still took an appointment with a urologist in private practice. Surprisingly, he, too, told me he believed the problem to be psychological. He said if it was neurological, or due to an injury, or infection, I would've lost all sensation to my dick, not just the pleasure part. And the fact it happened suddenly with no apparent external cause hinted at a psychological cause. I left it at that, surprised, but unaware of what to do anyway, and the sexologist was kinda useless. She had me ramble about everything in my life but I never got any change...
Now that urologist asked me to do a bunch of blood tests anyway, just in case. Testosterone levels and stuff. With covid and endless wait time in the system, I put that on a shelf, until recently when, as I said, I ran into this uncomfortable situation of being unable to stay hard. I panicked and went to see a family doctor with the goal of obtaining a prescription for some meds to get hard. I had to explain my situation. That doctor agreed to give me something to help, but he insisted that in his opinion, this was probably a psychological problem, and I should find another sexologist.
That's now a bunch of different experts opinions all saying the same thing: there's something wrong in your head, not in your body. But what?
Now let's get to the porn.
When this problem started, I had been going out with a girl for a few years, with whom I could not have complete sexual intercourse (leaving out the details, but it was related to a physical problem on her part, AND she had very low libido, meaning no other fun stuff...). I was left to my own device, sex-wise, and used a lot of porn. I thought this was appropriate.
Up until that point, I used to not really get excited by girls getting plowed by huge dicks. I somehow had it stiff in my mind that the clit was what mattered and so the porn that excited me the most was about eating pussy. Lots of lesbian stuff, mostly quite soft porn... I'm all vanilla anyway.
But during that time, I came across squirt porn. Started reading about it, got influenced by a lot of exaggerated nonsense I read online and bought into the idea that huge dicks pounding a woman would essentially get her to reach climaxes unheard of, and that these women squirting were living proof of that. Of course, in time, I realized most of this was complete bullshit, but anyway. This notion changed everything I watched about porn. It also changed my understanding of how and where pleasure happened for a woman. It's hard to explain, but it feels like my understanding of sexual pleasure for women changed from mostly external to internal. I became obsessed with seeing women get pounded deep and hard.
For a long time, I remained convinced that porn was absolutely separated from my own sex life. I just didn't see it. I didn't feel like treating the woman I loved the way women were being treated in porn, I didn't act the way guys in porn acted in any way, I barely ever attempted to replicate anything I saw in these clips at all. So I thought it wasn't affecting me. But it was.
Now, the truth of it, guys, is that most women don't actually like getting "destroyed" and have a 12 inch dick rammed into them until they're senseless. I barely have 6 inches, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that I've met significantly more women that repeatedly asked me to ease off (despite me not really going hard) in half the positions we tried than women with whom I felt I was lacking. Why am I saying this? Because this means that a significant part of the women we see in porn (especially in the more amateur side of porn sites) that get plowed by a huge rod are actually hiding (with little skill) pain. And that's also a documented fact that many women report that many of their sexual encounters are painful. They just get used to it or assume it's normal.
I believe the effect this had was to slowly change my perception of what a pleasured woman looks like.
Let's summarize this part of the journey here: what I liked was to pleasure (not dominate or abuse) a woman -> believing this was better done through clit stimulation, I focused on more sensual softcore -> built the belief that in fact, real pleasure came from getting rammed by a 10 inch monster -> started watching women who were more than likely in pain and changing my perception of what a pleasured woman looks like to what are often signs of pain or distress.
Additional point: I don't have 10 inch. Meaning I can't picture myself actually effecting what I see in porn onto women. Meaning when I fuck, I had to start imagining something else going on, stepping out of my own experience, and constantly, silently, feeling inadequate myself.
That's only part of the journey. But thinking back, this, at some point, started to affect the way I had sex as well.
One thing I've often discussed with friends is how porn has changed over the years. I remember the first time I saw a girl gagging over a guy's dick the latter had just unceremoniously shoved down her throat, I was horrified. In fact, I almost puked myself. It ended my meatbeat session and I felt dirty and weird for about 2 days. I commented to my friends on how this practice had become almost omnipresent in every porn scenes today. Now I find it almost banal, and even, more than I like to admit, sometimes pretty hot. Although I keep asking myself wtf is wrong with me.
Porn, it seemed to me, had been moving away from the overly acted (ostensibly faked) orgasms by women and towards straight up abuse. Much of what I,ve seen in porn in the past years isn't at all about the woman being pleasured beyond realism. It's about the woman being degraded (generally speaking). Or at least, hell, that's what the search algorithms have been feeding me. I don't know if it's the way I did my searches or whatever, but that's what I've been seeing. Bottom line is, I've been seeing, and beating to, lots and lots of porn where the woman is just basically... not raped, but apparently overwhelmed in every way by whatever's going on. So that basically cranked it another notch: I've been used to seeing women basically looking like they're not enjoying sex. Or not actively participating in sex. Sex is being done to them, and they're taking it whatever way it comes.
Now, before this new girl I've met recently, I had spent the last... what.. 15 months? with one particular FWB who happened to give that kind of look. She liked to be the girl who being handled and "oh my god"'s everything. So I think that allowed me to get away with this growing association of sex and subdued women. But this new girl, she's not like that. She's of the "oh yes papi do me harder" type.
I hate to admit it, but... somehow, that just doesn't fit with what I've conditioned myself to like with porn. This woman is taking ownership of her own experience and she's demanding more. I just couldn't relate anything we were doing to what I had come to expect of sex.
Now let's be clear: she's not the first girl I get with who's like that, of course. And I'd never had any problem with this in the past. But now, yes. And it's fucked up that I literally can't even stay hard in the face of it. I've, somehow, through intensive porn use, evacuated the woman demonstrating willingness and pleasure from my list of expected sexual behavior.
But there's more: I went on a trip in south America a few weeks ago (I should say, I had reached the point where jerking off without porn was virtually impossible. I'd basically tire myself out before cumming. It's been like that for... at least 2 years now. This drove me to consume even more porn). When I was over there, I stayed in the mountains, with no access to any internet data, and therefore, to no porn. That lasted 16 days. I shit you not, by the end of the trip, I was able to jerk off to no porn in less than 3-4 minutes. I hadn't done it at all for most of the trip, and when I did, it was rather easy.
So I'm seriously starting to think that porn is straight up ruining my life. If I am correct about this, and right now, it's looking like I am, I've literally destroyed my sex life and enjoyment for the last 12 years, on top of the distress it's caused me, and the disappointment of some of my partners with my decreased libido, and the damage to my self esteem all this time. All of that because I was using porn, and then trying to fix all of it with more porn.
The way out of this isn't obvious... I see some people advocating NoFap, but I worry that NoFap isn't going to really help. I worry it'll get me starved and more likely to feel compelled to watch porn. Moreover, I believe fapping is actually an opportunity to retrain my brain faster: by fapping while remaining disciplined about fantasizing only about women I know, and about sex acts that are realistic and within the realm of what I myself want to include in my sex life. I believe that fapping while fantasizing on porn I've seen or scenarios analogous to the porn I've watched that has made real sex unexciting will only perpetuate the problem, but that it can be used to recreate the association between some acts and my ability to appreciate them... I appreciate any thoughts or comments about that.
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