Our Pathological Incuriosity About Porn

And the men who compulsively use it.

Image provided by our benevolent AI overlords at ChatGPT. The article, however, is human-made.

Our culture is inundated with porn. We’ve all seen the gargantuan stats on porn consumption, so I won’t regale you with the numbers here. Of the many who watch porn, a sizeable minority will struggle with compulsive use in a way that causes tremendous suffering for themselves and others. And yet, we seem to have a pathological incuriosity about porn use and these men (and they are mostly men) who experience tremendous anguish.

It's worth noting from the very beginning that “problematic porn use” and “sex addiction” are surprisingly sticky wickets. This is because, from the first-person perspective, a high sex drive feels indistinguishable from addiction. In much the same way some girls in conservative settings mistake their first period for a fatal wound, many men — particularly religious men — engage in an identification error, pathologizing their natural sex drive and behaviors as an unhealthy sex addiction. The immense distress they feel is not because they are compulsive, but because of a mismatch between their drives and values; between their bodies and their worldviews.

So, when I’m referring to problematic use, I’m referring specifically to people who are using porn excessively in such a way that it disrupts their functioning: their work, relationships, sleep, and so on. These are the guys staying up till 4 AM watching porn, who keep telling themselves that they will control their use and failing to do so.

Sexuality is a language, and it speaks continuously to us about human needs, desires, and quandaries. When it comes to porn, we get caught in extremes: total indulgence or total abstinence; condemnation or permissiveness; moral panic or turning a blind eye. But we never stop to listen to it. The sexual behavior of these men is telling the world something crucial, and we aren’t listening. I find this exasperating. It’s like Merlin is wandering the street in his blue robes and wizard hat in full daylight, ready to dispense enormous wisdom to those who have ears to listen, and no one is paying attention to him.

I’ve experienced this pathological incuriosity myself. When I was going through a bout of struggling with dysfunctional porn use, I confided in a friend. Their immediate response: “eww”. As you can imagine, this crushed me. I needed someone who could empathize with what I was experiencing and would nonjudgmentally look me in the eyes and tell me they saw me. Instead, I was left feeling all the more revolting. Once again, the voice of sexuality was silenced.

Since porn is a controversial subject, I need to remind you that I’m writing a blog post, not a dissertation, and I probably won’t get to your most pressing concerns and hot takes about porn in this article. You may want to argue in the comments about the exploitation in porn, or its intrinsic immorality. Those are interesting and important, but also speak to the exact point I want to make. In this article, I want to put all that aside and focus on the men who are experiencing compulsive use, and what that use might tell us. We will have plenty of time to argue about the ethics of porn later.

What is a better way? Suppose a man comes to me to confide that he feels completely out of control and paralyzed by his compulsive porn use. He feels ashamed, embarrassed, broken, and furious with himself.

Obviously, I will listen to him. I won’t tell him he’s gross. I won’t tell him to just stop it — he’s already tried. I won’t tell him how bad and corrupt the porn industry is — he already knows. I also won’t tell him it’s fine and to not worry about it, because something deep in his internal system is sending up an error code that needs attention. Instead, I will tell him that I understand, that I’ve been there, that he isn’t alone.

And then, depending on circumstance and appropriateness, I will ask him this one crucial question:

What’s going on in your life?

When I’ve asked this question, extraordinary things come out. One man was his dying sibling’s sole caretaker, and he was watching his sibling wither away before his eyes. Another had just lost his job and entire religious community overnight. Another was struggling with debilitating stress at school. Another had lost his father to brain cancer.

We get so dazzled by the sex part that we neglect the human. Men traditionally have smaller support systems, a narrower range of coping mechanisms, and fewer opportunities to express their emotions. But nature has given a man at least one coping mechanism, and it is built directly into his body: his penis. Masturbating and sexual stimulus flood the body with feel-good chemicals, and it provides a narrow sliver of time where he finally doesn’t have to think. It turns down the volume on all the things that frighten him, that make him feel hopeless, angry, and depressed. Is it any wonder that a man reaches for his penis and porn when he has so few coping mechanisms? When he has so few friends to talk to? When he doesn’t even begin to know how to be vulnerable in the first place? When he can’t get loving touch anywhere other than sex? When he can’t rest in the arms and presence of someone he trusts?

At its worst, compulsive porn use is a manifestation of despair, hopelessness, rage, and loneliness. Many are uninterested in this fact in the same way they are uninterested in the heightened suicide rates among men. Paying attention would mean talking about the inner lives of men and the limited skills they have to cope with suffering. It’s easier to berate or moralize than to look into the abyss of male agony. We readily admit that opioid overdoses are “deaths of despair”, but we don’t even begin to apply the same logic to excessive porn use, acknowledging that it is a compulsion of despair.

I happen to think it’s great that sex, porn, and jerking off feel good, and I think it’s awesome that they turn down the volume, and I don’t think there’s anything wrong in principle with making use of that fact. I deliberately use exercise to turn down the volume, using my endogenous chemicals to work their healing, feel-good magic. I see absolutely no reason why one shouldn’t do the same with their genitals. The problem is when that’s the only coping mechanism guys have, and when it becomes compulsive and deranging. I’ve known athletes who are so pathologically dependent on exercise for their well-being that they will push through stress fractures just to get that hit. That’s bad, but running five days a week to feel good isn’t.

I also think it’s fine that people occasionally use messy means to cope with pain. I think back to some rough times in my life — like the years after I survived a shooting and watched two friends get murdered in front of me — and I'm grateful that I had less-than-ideal coping strategies to retreat to like alcohol, porn, Grindr, and cigarettes. It might be ugly, it might not be ideal, but who cares? I’m not the Pope, and it’s ok to stop taking ourselves so seriously.

This is what George Bonanno calls "coping ugly" in his book The End of Trauma — using potentially destructive means to deal with grief and loss. Is it ideal? No. Will it wreck you if you keep doing it? Yes. Should you set up hard boundaries so you don’t goon for weeks and lose all your relationships? Probably. But, in the same way I won’t blame someone for getting shit-faced drunk with his fellow soldiers after experiencing warfare, I won’t blame a guy for self-medicating with porn after a messy breakup or a job loss. Coping ugly isn’t ideal, but we are not an ideal species, and a little grace is in order. What matters is getting through the night with minimal harm, and sometimes porn is exactly what the doctor ordered. Again, the problem is when it becomes excessive, and when the underlying distress is never heard or managed.

Other times, the suffering beneath excessive porn use might be of a different kind altogether. Hypersexuality can be a symptom of underlying conditions like OCD, Bipolar, ADHD, and autism. Excessive porn use might be the mind crying out for help, communicating that something deeper beneath the surface needs attention. For me, that was bipolar.

In my 20s, I thought I was a sex addict. I found myself sitting in 12 Step recovery groups drinking bad coffee, chainsmoking cigarettes, and reciting the Serenity Prayer. While the 12 Steps were excellent for my spiritual development, they offered me nothing with regard to sexual compulsivity. Doing a fearless moral inventory and turning my life over to God are fantastic and help a lot of people, but they didn’t shed light on the underlying mechanisms of my compulsions.

It wasn’t until my pastor — another gay man who was diagnosed with bipolar I — pointed out to me that he saw all the signs of Bipolar in me, and that I should get assessed. I was furious with him. “I’m not fucking mentally ill,” I raged. But, looking back, I’m so grateful to him that he gave me another option. My wild sex benders in my 20s were, in addition to a cry for care, a manifestation of hypomania, and I experienced enormous relief when I was finally put on mood stabilizers and antipsychotics.

I’ve reviewed a lot of material about sex addiction since then. While there are a few exceptions, the vast majority of sex addiction information never suggests that men might be experiencing compulsion due to neurodiversity or psychiatric conditions and that assessment is an option. I consider this near-criminal malpractice.

Men who are struggling with compulsive porn use need support, and it is incumbent upon us, as friends, to not be mesmerized by the porn part, but to listen to what the sexual behavior of these men is telling us. When a man tells you that he can’t stop watching porn, here’s the translation: “I’m afraid; I’m lonely; I’m feeling overwhelmed, powerless, and angry.” What would you hope a good friend would say if you told them these things?

One of my best friends once showed me this exact sort of care when I confided in him that I was going through a challenging patch with sexual compulsion. Instead of being embarrassed on my behalf, he nodded. “You’re looking for connection and vulnerability; I’ve done the same,” he said immediately, without an ounce of shame or embarrassment. Those simple words lifted a burden from my shoulders; his recognition allowed me to recognize myself. Yes, I thought, I was. I was lonely and scared and uncertain about the future, and I was finding shelter in the animal comfort of bodies. Of course. Of course. It took a friend who knew me well to show me to myself, who could lift my gaze above my shame, and above the sex, to be able to see my own needs, to see the frightened and hurting man desperately in need of support and direction.

You don’t need to be that friend to someone. Talking about porn and sex is awkward and triggering, I get it. But if you can be that friend, please do so. At its best, a friendship is a mirror of a man’s soul. A close friend will bring out self-knowledge in the other and help them see their flaws, strengths, and condition more clearly, not with judgment, but with compassion. You could be that friend.

But that’s just me. What do you think? Let me know in the comments section, and if your comment is excellent, I might feature it in an upcoming post.

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