Why is porn so interesting?

Everyday this week I'm saying one positive thing about myself, to myself, in the mirror. Maybe this will help you with your confidence.

The way you perceive yourself, often influences the way others perceive you as well.

 

Could not have said it better myself.

 

Please don't be so harsh with yourself. I can certainly empathise with your situation (from what you've said). Life is a learning process and there are bound to be ups and downs.

I haven't had a relationship (short or long term) either, at least not in an intimate sense.

As to why porn is interesting? Well, it is easily accessible, allow for instant gratification and there is a multitude number of it. The problem is that we are stimulated by them, thus our body releases chemicals in our brain that makes us feel "good". We become habitually compelled to seek out more. Plus it taps into our primal and biological side. That's the gist of it.

There is hope, like the others have said, be good to yourself and there is still time.

 

Definitely an upward spiral, the better you feel about yourself, the better others will see you. Btw, it takes time. So start now. Set small goals and as you accomplish them, gradually make them bigger.

 

bro don't worry. Some people find love or a bedpartner later then others. Go out, do stuff, join clubs and meet new people to interact. You will find love, but be patient.

 

When you've seen what goes on 'behind the curtain' and all the lies, manipulation, deceit, betrayl, and much much worse, including heavy involvement of organized and underground criminal organizations, there's nothing interesting about that. Unless you find such hellish things 'interesting'.

What you see on screen is not reality. The producers, at least of some of the biggest porn companies in the world, not all of them but they are affiliated with the top 3 in the world, are very twisted sick individuals. They act on behalf of major crime families, and all you see on screen is meant to tempt you, make you lust, make you believe the actresses are enjoying themselves, dressed up in bright colors and exquisite costumes, in gorgeous mansions with the most beautiful contemporary furniture, or whatever sets you may be watching, but I assure you when you know what's happening off camera, it's unreal. I've had my soul torn apart by porn, and I pray everyday that I won't turn into a homicidal menace, because there's alot of people I would like to kill in the porn industry. But what would that really solve in the end?

 

The reason why you like porn so much is because it is a huge "state break", see people are always looking to reach higher states of feelings and consciouness and the high and energy burst you get from watching porn gives you - or puts you into that state, what you need to do is do things like art, painting or something which puts you into deeper states of happiness and contentment

 

Porn is unbelievably boring. There is nothing interesting about it. It's just addictive, similarly as alcohol, drugs, gambling, etc.

 

I am uncertain how to address you. I think I will just call you Mr. Love.

Mr. Love, let me save you months or even years of learning the hard way. Porn is boring. Absolutely boring. The fact that you ask the question means you probably don't understand what is really going on in your head. Do you want to know what is really interesting, what is just about one of the most interesting thing in the world to us? I'll tell you: Dopamine. Porn is not your problem, it is just the needle, the problem is in the needle. You, and I, and just about every other guy on the planet seem fascinated with porn because porn caused a dopamine release, a dopamine high. Dopamine is the best drug in the world. That is what we become addicted to. There are two things I want you to look at.

First, take 15 minutes and study your problem. Watching this video will be the most important 15 minutes in your recovery.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSF82AwSDiU

Next, read this.

http://www.nofap.org/forum/showthread.php?2402-Get-educated-get-tools-and-learn-to-love-withdrawals

I also want you to consider attempting the hard 90. 90 days no porn, no PMO, no MO, and avoiding hypersexual thoughts. Oh, install K9 NOW. It won't stop you from accessing porn, but it will act like a tap on your shoulder reminding you of who you are. And who are you? If you take my advice, then for the next 90 days you are "a guy quitting porn."

Good luck to you.

 

Porn is not really the main issue.

The main issue are all your fears and doubts, which consequently lead to a life in loneliness and with low self esteem.

To fill this lonely life, people start to take drugs. And what is nature's strongest drug? Yes: ORGASMS.

An orgasm is giving you an immense feeling of happiness.

The only issue is that nature has intended that you should experience together with a partner.
Masturbation is not on nature's plan, neither is it porn.

Porn is a way to stimualte you to an orgasm, without needing a partner. And here, the issue begins.

Instead of "avoiding porn", it is better to focus on your social life. Focus on dealing with your fears and doubts. If you have real goals in mind, and you follow them, then porn and masturbation will fade away automatically. They are simply not an option, because you have higher interests.

 

Porn is the main issue. That's the sole reason I was addicted to masturbation and orgasms in the first place.

 

For me, I had a problem long before porn was easily available on the internet and before the internet even existed. I used television in the same way I would later use porn. MTV or any other channel or show where I could find sexy, attractive, or preferably half-naked women. Even when that wasn't available, I would indulge in lengthy fantasies that resembled porn scenarios, again before I had ever seen anything other than soft core porn.

So, for me (I can't speak for anyone else), I know it's not just porn. It has more to do with an addiction to sexual fantasy as a way of escaping reality.

 

In your soul, you have a WOUND, which hurts you a lot. And you are filling it up with porn, so that you don't feel it hurt. But if you had no porn, you would have a lot of affairs and prostitutes. Or you would drink. Or gamble. or be a workoholic.

Or ... you would take a step forward and try to HEAL your wounds. But this takes a long time. And the healing process itself also hurts.

 

IMO, lust itself is the main issue. The more you let it burn within you, the quicker your heart beats and the more intense the dopamine rush gets. Porn is just simply designed to cause this to happen at ludicicrous speed and unnaturally high levels. It's more powerful at doing it and faster at it than any other source.

It is possible to look at a beautiful woman, be sexually attracted to her and refrain from lusting. With years of PMO though, it's nearly impossible for me to look at P, lingerie, or swimsuit pics/videos without lusting. My brain is so messed up by having trained it expertly that it happens automatically at every decent looking woman I see, real, fantasy, printed, pictured, videoed, or otherwise. I work to avoid triggers to eliminate as many seeds of lust as I can because they instantly grow like hell. When they're unavoidable I use the 3 second rule. When it's really bad I run, mentally or physically. So far refusing to lust out of the gate has made giving up P much much easier this time.

 

True that I use PMO to artificially "heal" my wounds... sometimes. Most of the time though I'm just horny as fuck and want a fix. I certainly didn't start PMO because I was hurt emotionally or otherwise. I'm just extremely attracted to naked women and the activities they engage in.

 

Great post. Good video. Watch a few more Tedx Talks videos. They're so good.

 

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 romanc 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.

So, to the OP, I will ask you. How much pain are you willing to tolerate to recover from pornography completely? Are you willing to sit through days or even weeks of feeling inferior to other men who are in relationships with attractive women? Are you willing to try and learn how to get into a relationship and face rejection? Are you willing to mindfully move away from uncomfortable trutsh about yourself when it comes to women and how attracted they are to you so you can focus on other elements of your life, and regulate emotions in a healthy way? Are you willing to get into a relationsihp with a woman just as average as you are given that you may very likely miss out with very attractive women that you may have had crushes on or desire before because they reject you? This is the underlying pain of low self esteem. Some of it can be corrected with CBT in that it is irrational, but other parts of it will require acceptance and then commitment to something larger. I would recommend reading "The Happiness Trap" - a book that focuses on acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) which will help you work through your self esteem issues, which very likely fuel your pornography addiction at a baseline level give the tone of your voice.

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.

 

CommittedtothePath, you sir, should write a book on this topic. What a great, insightful post!