Where does porn fit in to your life’s narrative? That is, with you not being a guy who’s content with mediocrity but instead a man who has a fundamental understanding that we have one, brief life that’s but a flicker of light in the story of eternity, giving us a responsibility to make the best and be the best with our time on this planet, where does watching porn fit in this story that you’re writing, if it fits at all?
We’ll find the answer, but first, this article isn’t written by an accuser, someone who will point a finger and stand in judgement. No, it’s simply written by a guy, and as a guy who has been blessed with a little head and a big head, and it’s the little head that often seems to hold the rest of the body at ransom. Thus, we’ll delve into this question as equals fighting the same battles with a similar goal lingering in our future: a legacy, living a life and writing a story worth reading from our own eyes. With that…
Let’s first state the obvious: women are beautiful creatures, the most beautiful. Would it then not be a good thing if we can enjoy them with our eyes whenever we please whilst experiencing pleasure whenever we want without having to move from our chair or bed or couch? ‘Tis the question…
Does porn benefit the man you are becoming by giving you this pleasure you seek, or does it destroy the man you could be?
In this article you will find the answer. You’ll discover how porn effects you mentally, how it effects you physically and hormonally, and how it effects you, as a man with a warrior’s spirit, spiritually. The focus is, does it make you better and stronger or does it make you weaker?
What’s left is a real, raw look at porn and where it belongs in your life – good or bad.
Porn and Sex
Porn makes you want less sex in the real world.
Sex is a great thing and its something that all guys should want and want a lot of. To want sex means your body is working as it should, with it’s hormone levels optimal and working efficiently. It shouldn’t be on your brain every waking hour of the day, that’s psychotic, you’ll get no work done. But damnit, you should want it!
So you want sex, but there’s none to be had with a lady so you open the ol’ computer up and start searching. You want to see some sex so you can rid your balls of the blueness that has engulfed them. You want to clean your pipes and cleanse yourself of this desire to bed a broad immediately so you can get back to living, or you just feel down in the dumps and you want something to pick you up, who knows.
You find a video that peaks your interest when in reality almost any video would do (for the moment, that will soon change), and you have at it. What results is the release of a wonderful chemical that your body naturally produces called dopamine. You’ve just essentially created your own high by watching porn and “finishing”. It felt great, after, however, it doesn’t feel quite as good – this is the ensuing crash or the after-effect of the dopamine release.
One time watching porn isn’t all that bad, right? But you enjoyed that feeling so much and it was so damn easy to create that the next time you sit down at your computer you do it again. Then again another time. You’re now training your body to seek porn for pleasure and for this “high”. You’re creating your very own kind of chemical dependency.
Initially you’re watching relatively tame videos of a man and a lady, a beautiful lady, possibly with very large breasts, doing the deed. But that “high” and pleasurable experience you created watching relatively normal sex begins to fade, now you need to up the anti; thus, the Coolidge effect is born.
The Coolidge Effect is simple, when given the same stimulant, men tire and our sexual performance can flutter. When that visual stimulant is changed – ie. an upgrade in the “degree” of porn we’re watching – we’re once again stimulated as we originally were. Thus, to continue to get stimulated by porn we have to continually change and “upgrade” the kinds of porn we’re watching. Things need to get raunchier and dirtier and, well, more disgusting.
This also changes our tastes for sex in the real world by dramatically changing what we want from our partner. What we see in the porn we watch becomes what we want in the sex we have in real life. Now think about the kind of woman you want – and most of you will want a strong, self-respecting woman to walk with you on your epic journey in life. No honorable woman would want to go through the humiliation and subordination that these porn stars are subjected to. And as an honorable man, even if she is willing, you shouldn’t want her to.
Back to how porn ruins your desire for sex in the real world…
As you continue to watch porn your tastes in the kinds of sex you want to have change, but your appetite for real sex diminishes as well, as you’ve now programmed yourself to be stimulated by the visual and not by the contextual. You now need to see those massive boobs and those perverse acts to get off, and as we mentioned with the Coolidge Effect, the escalation in taste will never quite be quenched, it always needs to change and evolve. So as you watch more porn you become less able to have real sex or be stimulated by a real woman.
In short, porn makes you impotent.
With our value as men placed so highly on our ability to perform during sex, if we’re unable to get or sustain an erection with a lovely lady, our value as men is crushed, our self-worth is diminished, and feelings of depression and inferiority soon follow. What started out as a seemingly innocent activity has now made us into less of a man, almost over night.
With continued use of porn you can expect the following changes”
- Goodbye morning wood and all other spontaneous erections.
- Impotence – as already mentioned, you become dependent on the visual stimulation of porn and are completely unable to perform with a real partner. I don’t know of any man’s life narrative that doesn’t include bedding his dream girl.
- An inability to ejaculate with a real partner – let’s say you can get it up with a real woman, you may now have to fake an orgasm.
- No longer effected by pleasure – your braciole is no longer sensitive to touch, it’s purely depended on the visual of porn, but not for long…
- As you continue watching porn and the Coolidge Effect is doing it’s thing, you’ll run out of porn that stimulates you. With an inability to perform with a real partner and an inability to get it up with porn – no matter how weird the porn is – you’re rendered useless.
- Solution? ED drugs like viagra won’t work because the problem isn’t the penis, it’s the brain.
If you want to learn more about how your brain is effected by porn, leading to impotence, check out yourbrainonporn.com.
Porn and Culture
Porn is an industry that’s feeding a niche and dramatically changing the way we look at sex. It’s changing the way young men look at women and it’s changing the way young women look at themselves.
There is no ‘real world sex’ in porn, and if you find some and it suffices for stimulation, as we’ve already discussed, that stimulation won’t last for long and you’ll have to “upgrade”. In porn the man is basically using the woman as a form of masterbation, there’s no kissing or touching or caressing, just pumping and humping and finishing in places that further demean the lady. Sadly, this is how young men are being introduced to sex. They see sex as a punishment towards the lady where she is the object for his satisfaction and for him to do what he will, rather and an equal partner in an act that should be wonderful and beautiful and incredibly passionate and pleasurable.
But this article isn’t an attack on porn from a cultural standpoint, so I digress. Though it is important to understand how porn is changing sex for the worse and whether you’ll be a vehicle for change or fall into its trap.
We’ve already covered how porn makes you want real sex less in the long term, but what effects does porn have on your hormones?
Porn and Testosterone
There are a couple of studies that are showing that while porn won’t crush your testosterone levels, it will, in sort, hold them ransom, halting their increase, disabling your ability to produce optimal testosterone levels.
According to a study published in the “Journal of Zhejiang University,” ejaculation may set off a subtle hormonal cycle. Ejaculation that is followed by 6 days of abstinence may contribute to peak testosterone levels on the seventh day of after ejaculation. The Zhejiang University researchers discovered that abstaining from ejaculation for 6 days after orgasm has little effect on testosterone levels, but testosterone levels reached approximately 146 percent on the seventh day.
This, to me, makes sense. When you’re constantly watching porn you’re ejaculating daily, if not a couple times a day. Side note: this can lead to zinc deficiencies which can increase estrogen in men. But a normal “sex cycle” of say a week to 10 days makes sense. You have sex with your lady, it’s glorious, then on the 6th day you experience a massive boost in testosterone, likely making you crave her body once again, thus, babies are made.
They key is abstaining from ejaculation. You need to stay away from the computer to experience this boost in testosterone that will help you in a multitude of ways already covered on this site. So yes, even masterbating without porn has a negative effect on your testosterone levels.
An excerpt from another study:
This current study examined the effect of a 3-week period of sexual abstinence on the neuroendocrine response to masturbation-induced orgasm. Hormonal and cardiovascular parameters were examined in ten healthy adult men during sexual arousal and masturbation-induced orgasm. Blood was drawn continuously and cardiovascular parameters were constantly monitored. This procedure was conducted for each participant twice, both before and after a 3-week period of sexual abstinence. Plasma was subsequently analysed for concentrations of adrenaline, noradrenaline, cortisol, prolactin, luteinizing hormone and testosterone concentrations. Orgasm increased blood pressure, heart rate, plasma catecholamines and prolactin. These effects were observed both before and after sexual abstinence. In contrast, although plasma testosterone was unaltered by orgasm, higher testosterone concentrations were observed following the period of abstinence. These data demonstrate that acute abstinence does not change the neuroendocrine response to orgasm but does produce elevated levels of testosterone in males.
Alas, that dirty word abstinence creeps up as something that actually helps us produce more testosterone. But if you’re watched porn or are watching porn, it’s not that easy to simply quit and abstain so you can naturally increase your testosterone levels. So what do you do? We’ll cover this moving forward. But there’s yet even more damage that watching porn can create in your life.
For more on Testosterone: How to Naturally Increase Your Testosterone Levels
The More You Do it The Less You’ll Want a Partner
The real dangers of porn and solo masterbation pertain to how they effect your life and the meaning you give your life in the long term. Every guy I know – and you may differ – wants to get married to a woman he loves and have kids with that woman. He wants to carry on his name. He wants to have that incredible feeling of playing catch with his son. Porn slowly chips away at that natural desire for a man to plant his seed in the woman he loves and have a family.
As you sit in your “area” and watch and tug, this becomes the focus of your desires for all of the aforementioned reasons we’ve already covered. And yes, this includes masterbation without porn. If you’re constantly yerking it, repetitively more than once a week, you’re negatively effecting your hormones, which sucks and which will lead you to want less sex, but you’re also training yourself to want more masterbation and less real sex.
This isn’t something to take lightly. It’s not a fad or something you’re going to grow out of, as I’m sure many of you know. From that first moment you click on an image of a babe that leads to videos of said babe having sex and you experience that release in dopamine, you’re now training yourself to want this visual stimulation more and more and it becomes harder and harder to stop.
A Note On Porn and Morality:
Articles on porn hammer home the science, which we’ve done. Porn does you no good in your desires to have sex in the real world, it leads to impotence and diminished hormone levels. But what about morality? Forget about religion, that’s not where I’m headed. We, as a society, and as a group of honorable men, need to have certain morals of goodness and honor and justice.
But articles on the interwebz shy away from the morality issue with porn because morals just aren’t cool to talk about. However, it’s maybe the most important issue to talk about.
Why?
Thus far we’ve covered personal reasons as to why we shouldn’t watch porn. And that’s what guys typically care about, or that’s what people typically care about: themselves, their journey, the effects on their body and their future. But we are not necessarily what’s most important. A man who simply lives for himself will live an empty life.
Enter, morality.
Is porn good?
Of course not. But who’s effected most by this evil? Is it you or I? Well, yes, we’re effected greatly by it, but what about your daughter or your sister or your niece or even your nephew or son? What about them? How will they grow up having been educated about sex through porn? Will there be more rape? Will there be more abuse?
Will your daughter go through life never experiencing the beauty of sex as we’ve known it for thousands of years and only as it’s shown in pornographic videos? Even by watching porn we’re perpetuating and enabling a market to thrive, and where porn thrives, prostitution soon follows, and where tastes in pornography develop, those tastes are brought into the real world of prostitution. So as you start watching younger girls have sex in videos, some guy out there is renting a young girl to fulfill this desire in the flesh. Where you start watching bondage, some innocent young lady is being convinced by her porn-addicted boyfriend to get tied up and punished in the name of pleasure.
Don’t think about yourself for a second, think about your daughter or your friend’s daughter. Think about your son. Will he go through life not knowing the sensuality and passion of real sex?
So where others say “I have nothing morally wrong with porn, but it’s just not good for you”, I say think for yourself and think as a man of honor, there is something morally wrong with porn, and it may have nothing to do with you but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about it or do something about it.
“Morals” have become a faux pas word that people want to shy away from. But where would our society be without morals? What great men would exist if they weren’t centered and grounded by a good set of morals? So YES, porn is morally wrong, it is not “good”, and if something is not “good”, it needs to be defeated by strong men who are good.
Ease and Women
With that discussion about porn and morality, let’s cover an aspect of porn that I haven’t come across in the research I’ve done for this article. It’s something that isn’t talked about because it’s so integrated in our society and in our lives, and that thing is ease, and it has no place in the life of a guy who’s trying to become better.
Ease is creeping its nasty head into our lives in more ways that we can imagine. We don’t have to get up to turn the channel, or off the couch to buy a shirt, or out of our bedroom to ejaculate. It’s this ease that’s destructive. It’s lazy. Instead of having to get out into the real world and meet a lot of women, a lot of women, before we find that one that we may want to spend the rest of our lives with, we can just open up the computer and have at it.
You become a better man when you have sex with an even better woman, when you love that woman, cherish her, treat her like a princess and actually care for her. She’ll teach you how to love, and how to make love. Sex isn’t always an aggressive thing where the guy lasts for 45 minutes and the woman always asks for it harder. Sex, when done properly, should look like there’s some love in it. There should be touching, caressing, and some damn kissing! You can go slow or go fast, whatever, you can role play and use your imagination, of course, but the object isn’t to inflict pain but to perform something that your words can’t describe, something that can only be conveyed through the act of sex.
Sex with someone you truly love is indescribably better than the nonsense they show in porn. It doesn’t even come close. But that incredible form of sex is something you have to work for. You have to get off your ass and out into the world and meet women and put yourself out there, extending yourself, getting uncomfortable, looking and feeling like an idiot, but learning and fighting and failing and growing until you meet the right girl.
It takes work to have sex in the real world and you become better because of it. Porn takes nothing and gives you nothing, actually, it takes away a whole lot.
It’s also changing the way we look at women.
I have a buddy and he has a brother who’s 4 or 5 years younger than us, or something like that. Anyhow, he and his pals grew up watching porn. They learned about sex from porn, not from dating and figuring things out on their own and naturally, and it’s greatly effected the way they see women. To hear these guys talk about women isn’t so abhorrent as it is sad. They don’t see a potential wife or mate or someone they’d actually love and die for – which should be all of our goals one day to wed one of these women and to feel this way about one of them.
They see a number, again, a physical being that exists only to help them get off. Their relationships reflect this. Rather than being about growth and love and experience, their relationships are an exchange of goods. I pay for this and treat you like this, you stick around and let me do that when I want it done. They’re incapable of deep conversation or of meaningful sex. And they’re not alone.
Porn isn’t just making guys lazy, stopping them from venturing outside and finding a real, beautiful woman to bed, it’s changing the way they look at women and it’s changing the way they look at sex. It’s also changing the way women look at women, but we’ll leave that for another article. So porn is standing between you and the life you once wanted, do want, or will want one day. But what if you’re already married?
Porn for Married Guys
No matter how ludicrous it seems for a married guy who has a woman he can have sex with living in his house, I can see some reasons for married guys wanting to watch porn and yerk it. It’s convenient. As we’ve already discussed, it takes no work. No matter how tired you are, if you’re a tad horny, or if you’re down in the dumps and you need that little dopamine boost, you can open your laptop and wham, boobs, bums, and babes.
Porn, for married guys, however, is just as dangerous as it is for the single guys. The more porn you watch and the more you become dependent on more and more grotesque acts and “elevated” degrees of porn, you begin to become less attracted to that stunningly beautiful woman you married and are – hopefully still – in love with.
By watching porn you’re slowly training your brain to need that same visual stimulation which will lead to the following…
Porn and Impotence and a Lack of self Confidence
There are greater things here at stake than you realize. The way you see yourself, your happiness, the man you’re trying to become, they’re all at jeopardy when you turn on that computer and watch porn. It isn’t a debate whether it’s good for you or not or whether or not you should have it in your life.
If you want to be a great man porn has no place in your life, whatsoever. Your friends may say otherwise, the forums may as well, and this isn’t a religious condemnation of porn, it’s merely looking at what it does to the brain and your desires and your view of women and sex and your development as a man and your view of yourself, and a conclusion that porn is incredibly destructive and also addictive.
There are reasons why porn is so closely linked to depression and feelings of worthlessness. It makes you feel good in the moment, but that moment soon passes and as time goes on you realize that you’re not wanting to get out in the real world and after real women any longer, you realize that you’re spending just a bit too much time with your right hand as your only companion, but it’s hard to quit, damn hard to quit.
So what do you do?
How to Stop Watching Porn and Stop Masterbating.
Many of you, after reading this article, will want to stop watching porn. But it’s not that simple. You’re programmed to want it and you’ve become dependent on it. This is also where the fun begins. This is where you have an opportunity to become tougher, stronger, grittier, and more resilient. The battle lines are drawn, now we can do as men are supposed to do, fight.
1. Identify the triggers.
Figure out what typically leads you to watching porn. Is it seeing a beautiful lady on TV? Is it sitting alone in your room with your computer? Identify what the triggers are, then fight those. Some you won’t be able to remove, and you shouldn’t, you just have to be aware of where they can lead. Other’s, you’re going to want to remove, like getting your computer out of your room. Know where the urge starts so you can start your battle there.
2. When you get the urge, do something!
Get up, go for a run, push-ups are awesome. A cold shower is another great option. It is, however, a battle in and of itself to do this thing rather than the easy thing: watching porn. Find one thing that takes the place of porn and do it every time you get the urge.
3. They say it takes 60 days to form a habit and just as long to break one, but let’s simplify.
Set a goal of one week and take it 1 day at a time. Tomorrow doesn’t exist, just today. Get through one day at a time and mark the week off your calendar, but the bigger focus should be re-forming this habit, which is where the new act or replacement comes in. Replace porn with something beneficial, like push-ups or reading or a cold shower (which will increase your T levels).
Can we do something more?
Yes.
There’s another great article on the effects of porn over at High Existence. At the end of his article he introduces his members to the 30-day no porn and no masterbation challenge. I think it’s a great idea, and I’ll take it and run with it. We have a different crew here, different topics, different guys, so I figured why not start our very own 30-day challenge?
Let’s use this article as the base. This comments section as the identifier.
30 Day No Porn No Masterbation Challenge
To add some accountability, in the comments section simply say you’re on board and you’re going to give this a go. Put it out there in the world and be held accountable. Or, head to the Fan Page and make it known there (I’ll put up a section to do this). Just say you’re there, identify the date, then by all means come back and tell us your struggle or your triumphs. Let it be known how it’s going.
What else:
We touched briefly on testosterone, but it really is an important hormone for men and becoming optimal or better. As an upgrade to the Man Diet I’ve also included the Man’s Guide to an Epic Sex Drive which you can only buy along with the Man Diet. In it, I cover porn but also different ways to boost your libido and get your johnson working at full capacity.
Check that out here: Man Diet + Man’s Guide to an Epic Sex Drive
With that. What’s next? Are you going to join the challenge?
