The Great Porn Experiment and Porn Addiction

2018 Dec Update: Such a great angle or way to look at porn from – The Truth About Masculinity and the Value of Tribalism with Jack Donovan. Jack Donovan says you’re basically training yourself to cuckolding where you are the spectator ‘screwing yourself’ while watch the women that you want or desire get herself satisfied by another man. So you want to be a spectator in the sexual fun the woman you have the hots for is having. (Knowledge for Men is a Podcast by Andrew Ferebee who has also released a book called The Porn Pandemic: A Simple Guide To Understanding And Ending Pornography Addiction For Men. Click the link to check it out.

The Great Porn Experiment and Porn Addiction
Note: Below I’ve also included 7 Reasons You Don’t Want To Learn About Sex From Porn (Thanks Joe Allen)

Porn Addiction
A science teacher explains the evolutionary forces behind porn’s appeal, how the brain changes in response to super-normal stimulation, and what makes today’s porn different from static porn of the past. Paras note: Basically a longer detailed version of the vid above.

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Updated: Your Brain on Porn: How Internet porn affects the brain

Porn Sex vs Real Sex: The Differences Explained With Food … thanks Rahul and Claudia

Why I stopped watching Porn

Porn is called many things.  Some call it art, others call it evil.  Some call it liberating, others call it shameful.  There’s one thing that every one can (or should) agree on.  Porn is recorded.  And like other kinds of recorded film, porn bares about as much similarity to our real sex lives as a Hollywood movie does to our daily life.  Which is to say, not much.

Yet many of us confuse what we see in adult films with what we expect to happen in our own sex lives, or what we imagine happening in the lives of others. This makes some sense. For starters, many people’s earliest exposure to sexual material is through pornography. Add to this the fact that as adults most of us don’t get the chance to talk honestly and openly about sex with a diverse group of people, and you can see how easily porn becomes a kind of sex education.

Of course there’s an important difference between sex education and good sex education and with very few exceptions porn rarely fits the criteria of the latter. People may watch adult films, get ideas from them, and mimic those ideas in real life, but that isn’t the same thing as good sex education and it’s debatable how much one sees in pornography represents common sexual practices.

Here are just a few of the significant ways that mainstream pornography does not represent most people’s sexual experiences. These differences are not meant to suggest that mainstream pornography is good or bad, right or wrong. Most sex therapists and educators agree that watching adult films can be a very healthy part of adult sexual expression.  You wouldn’t find many professionals who would tell you to stop seeing Hollywood movies, but most would likely suggest you not try to model your life on them.

Porn Isn’t Made for the Actors
While sex should be all about what gives the people who are engaging in it pleasure, porn is the opposite. When people have sex on camera for money they’re doing a job, and what they do isn’t designed to turn them on, it’s designed to turn on the viewer, to somehow be cost effective, and to make the director and editors jobs easier. Porn is almost never a document of two (or more) people having pleasurable sex, it’s one person’s idea of what will titillate millions of other people.

Most Porn is Made in a Vacuum
Real life sexual experiences happen in a social context. Whether it’s your first or thirty-first time, every time you have sex you bring your past experiences and your values to bed with you. Porn has none of this. The vast majority of mainstream pornography is made by a small, insulated, and surprisingly sexually unsophisticated group of people in southern California. Sexual behavior can be an incredibly complicated form of human communication and interaction. Pornography isn’t.

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Porn Bodies, Hollywood Bodies
You should never compare your body to what you see in porn. For starters, porn actors are chosen in part for their physical attributes. The average penis size among male porn stars is not representative of anything in the general population. As well, because many female actors still make the majority of their money by stripping, plastic surgery remains ubiquitous in the adult entertainment industry.

The Pornographer’s Smoke and Mirrors
In addition to the plastic surgery and bodies that can only be maintained by working out seven days a week, adult filmmakers use other tricks to make porn stars bodies appear much larger, smoother, and “prettier” than what you see in real life. Lighting, camera angles, make up, and even pubic hair design changes the appearance (and apparent size) of porn star body parts.

Sex Positions for the Camera
The sexual positions you see in porn are chosen for a few reasons including visual variety and what will allow the camera greatest access to all the hidden parts. Sex positions in porn don’t represent what’s most popular in the bedrooms of America, or even what is innovative in terms of offering more sexual stimulation. In fact some sexual positions you see in porn are clearly uncomfortable for one or both of the performers.

Porn is Meant to Shock and Excite
The kinds of sexual behaviors you see in porn are not based on any idea of what people actually do in their bedrooms, they are based on what will excite and often shock the porn viewer. They are also based on the pornographer’s need to “prove” to the viewer that actual sex is taking place. Thus external ejaculation is a required element of visual pornography, even though this is not necessarily a common part of the sexual repertoire.

Porn Editors Have Their Work Cut out for Them
Most porn scenes are not shot continuously from the first ring of the doorbell (enter the pizza delivery boy) to the last silly line “Next time I’ll remember to order extra sausage!”). There are constant breaks and interruptions during the shooting of a single scene, and they may even shoot some elements out of order. The end result is that what you see, the order you see it in, and how long it all takes, is often determined by the editing and not the actual sex that took place.

Extra reading:

Pornography Can Ruin Your Sex Life – Thanks Lenny

This Is What Happens To Your Brain When You’re Watching Porn – Thanks Mufu

 
What Your Mates Don’t Tell You About Porn – Divine Feminine Collective Interview

Click to get the free ebook they talk about in the video

Summary:
– First thing is not to shame anyone who is addicted to it or watches it. Everyone has their own story.

– 97% of men are watching porn and having unrealistic expectations of women in real life to do what they watch.

– If you can’t masturbate without porn then you have an addiction.

– Within a week of watching porn, happy chemicals are released and you start getting addicted.

– Nobody has had a proper sex education. It’s something that has been shamed. Imagine 11 year olds talking about watching porn and that is where they learn from. Most adults are not conscious of their own sexuality so they have the shame.

– If you’re not being conscious about watching porn and only find stimulation by watching then you need to take the journey to get back to self. First thing is to stop so you can rewire your connection to yourself. You can stimulate yourself without external needs.

– Men are ashamed because the conversation isn’t there. They’re watching it next to their sleeping partner. There has to be honest and authentic communication of what they want and don’t want. The need to communicate desires openly and without judgement. Create strange awkward communications.

– Porn has led to other behaviours so the ebook is helpful for partners to show each other and that makes someone else the person having the awkward conversations. Just talking about masturbating or masturbating with/in front of each other.

– The woman finding porn on the man’s laptop or phone should not make it personal. It’s not about her and that she’s not enough. It’s got nothing to do with her. Sometimes it’s just a release for guys how women like reading fantasy novels.

– Change masturbation to ‘self-pleasure’. From shame to enjoying some pleasure. Honey I want to have a self-pleasure evening with you.

– Transparency. You need to open and communicate and be vulnerable. The more you get into your feminine the more you’ll integrate your masculine. Paras note: I really support this as I feed that the guys who are too scared to go into the feminine end up over compensating with the wrong kind of masculine. What I’m not going to hug another man, that’s gay, I beat up gays kinda thing. (Just and exaggerated example).

– Be careful not to replace your porn addiction with women when you stop porn. Love yourself, touch yourself, discover yourself without porn. Paras note: They’re not talking about how long it will take but it can take a long time, you can relapse and there are bumps on the road but don’t give up on yourself. Make sure you find the right person too as they’ll make the journey more fun and you’ll not find that person in the pub or club.

– Try to stop ejaculating and take that excess energy back to self.

– Talks about men’s multiple orgasms that last hours.

Aaron Kleinerman

Bonus: How to Quit Porn
Summary:
– Reboot. No artificial rewiring.
– Rewire. Replace the action with a better one.

Mindset:
1. Don’t Give Porn More Power Than It Should Have
2. Accept the Fact That You’re the Kind of Guy Who Looks at Porn (And Understand That the Goal is to Become the Kind of Guy Who Doesn’t Look at Porn)
3. Address Underlying Issues
4. Believe You Can Change
5. Don’t Beat Yourself Up If and When You Backslide
6. Find Ways to Conserve and Strengthen Willpower
7. Strengthen Your Resilience

Actions:
8. Get Rid of All Your Porn
9. Hack the Habit Loop
Here are some activities that produce dopamine:
– Eat a carby snack
– Exercise
– Play video games
– Take a nap
– Work on a goal
– Call a friend who can make you laugh
10. Have Implementation Intentions at the Ready
11. Install Blocking Software on All Your Digital Devices
a. Use Your Computer’s Parental Controls
b. Change Your Host Files
c. Web Filters
d. Blocking Sites On Mobile Devices
12. Don’t Go It Alone: Get an Accountability Partner
13. Track Progress (Or Not)
14. Fast and Exercise