REPOST: A very important driver of pornography addiction for many

This is a repost of advice I gave in the addiction forum, it was in the context of a guy who has low self esteem when it comes to women and relationships, and is addicted to pornography.

NB this is quite a long post.

NB: A lot of this post is geared towards the underlying basis behind my pornography addiction which I am now working throuh. I have had low self esteem and BDD for a large part of my life, and this is one of the deeper drivers.

--------------------

There are many reasons why pornography is addictive. Apart from the standard ones highlighted - dopamine, brain wiring, male sexuality and how it targets it, contructing a fantasy narrative that one cannot see through when addicted etc - there is one deeper reason why some have a stronger addiction to it than others.

With people with additional underlying psychological and emotional issues, pornography can become about what is called "accessing the unresolved". The usual pattern for most men is that they wish to "access" or "replace" a real life relationship with a beautiful woman because they feel that pornography will give them that intimacy. There is a need or dependency on a relationship to fill a massive gap in your life.

This is combined with low self esteem in a toxic combination and pornography is continuously turned to to try and "replace" intimacy you feel dependent on. This is a very common pattern.

Pornography is actually totally unable to replace what you feel you miss. In fact, in many cases, nothing can "resolve" that fantasy. This can be very hard to accept, and this is often the central painful truth that continuously needs to be accepted through regulation of emotions in a healthy way - the desire for a relationship with a very beautiful woman that goes unfulfilled can have very little impact on your life if it is complete in other ways. This means that you need to expand your experiences in life.

People think that getting married makes it easier. Most men will marry an average looking woman. That is often one of the underlying reasons or rationalisations that once again some will turn to porn, to make up for "what they are missing out on". Again, porn fails to do that. But they try. People will read this post and realise it is very painful as an underlying reality and try to reject it, but its true. Think about the first time you looked at porn, it was most likely curiosity, looking at softocore images to gain "access" to a beautiful woman's body, but in the end that access is voeueristic, devoid of proper context, devoid of love and devoid of communication. You cannot get enough of what cannot fulfill you. That is pornography, based on the myth that it gives you something that you cannot otherwise get.

The unresolved starts to take greater and more pathological forms as addiction escalates. This is largely because one you get desenstised to the initial images, searching for more and more intense highs due to alterations in reward circuitry in the brain. Secondly, at a deeper level you realise that the porn you are watching isnt resolving that fundamental goal, so you think more intense porn with more pathological variety will resolve it.

Sometimes the pathology behind the unresolved is different to the normative lack of self esteem that many men experience when they realise they cannot get into relationships with the most beautiful women - generally the type of women that all the guys have crushes on because they are so beautiful. Sometimes the unresolved takes on childhood trauma, whereby some sort of relationship during early adolescence was broken or hurt. Then, that desire does not move on and is unresolved. These complex traumas can form the basis behind people getting addicted to child porn or become paedophiles.

Sometimes its to do with fetishes that are unresolved. Fetishes themselves can arise due to reactions against some other internal deprivation of human need. Then, having no real life access to the fetish, pornography is turned to try and fuel the fetish. E.g. think of the man who looks at foot fetish porn whilst married to a woman who has no idea he has a foot fetish and to whose feet he is not attracted to.

Ultimately, the biggest hurdle for most men and the cause of relapse is not actually the pathological wiring to images and the urges that come during a reboot. These can be meditated through. Once you achieve some sort of abstinence most men then confront a void. If they are super good looking alpha males and pornography was functioning at a level of trying to "replace" intimacy, but then they get into a relationship with a beautiful woman its actually easier to get out of pornography (but still very difficult, in that their sexuality is still pathologised, if not at the relative visual level at least at the functional level in that masturbating ot images is far far removed from healthy sex with a real human being). A lot of men with low self esteem or who are themselves unattractive find it hard to get into relationships, and when they do, its often with an average looking girl. When this happens, its not the end of the world at all. However, getting through the pain of accepting that sometimes you desire to be with other, more attractive women, and that this will probably never happen, is a major barrier to actually leaving addiction for good. Building a healthy sexual relationsihp with such a woman will also help greatly as it opens you up to broader values around sexuality, beyond just physical visual attraction. This is very important as it rewires the brain.

Ultimately it boils down to growing through pain to give yourself capacity to cope with very real painful feelings in this world. This is the barrier that many men face when it ultimately comes to recovery. For some its not so bad, its not too painful. For others it can be very painful and thats why the addiction takes a whole new level (im talking not just pornography but also prostitutes etc.)Many, when they try to recover, will be faced with other serious underlying issues that take time to recover through. To build such capacity, you need to look at the things you have in life that you are wiling to get despite real underlying pains. You have to realise what you will miss out on by not living through the pain and trying to medicate it through pornography. You wil miss out on any chance you have at having a fulfilling a career, contributing to the wellbieng of others, contributing to human advancement, having a happy family with happy and mentally healthy children, putting a smile on your partner's face, etc. The things that you really work for in life, how much are you willing to tolerate and accept to come closer to them? How willing are you to wait a while with some pains or unresolved feelings for a while, without medicating them, and create a distance between feeling these pains and acting out with porn? IN that distance is the oppurtunity and the solution, that mental, spatial and time distance between feeling deprived of the unresolved and acting out is the time and space in which you go towards alternative coping behaviorus and alternative things in your life to give yoursel meaning, fulfillment and growth.

The paralell is of course with women who become addicted to romance novels, which is like pornography for them. The desire and rush that comes with falling in love is intensely addictive for some women, especially those who feel they have missed out on it. This is usually also because they themselves are either not as attractive as they need to be to actually get intimacy they desire, or they feel they are not that attractive.