Monday, January 31, 2011

Your Relationship on Porn

[In case it isn’t clear, my  title is a play on the tag line in an old anti-drug ad. The ad showed an egg being fried in a frying pan, and described it as: Your brain on drugs. Here’s a link]

As it happens, I have written about this topic before. Link here.

Today New York Magazine offered up an article by Davy Rothbart about what happens to a couple‘s sex life when the male partner spends too much time looking at porn… and does what many men do when they watch porn. Link here.

Yesterday I wrote about the fragile mental health of college coeds. It seems fair to point out that while things are better on the other side of the barrier that divides the sexes, they are not that much better.

Young men in college today enjoy a decided advantage over young women in the dating marketplace because they are a relatively scarce commodity. Isn't ironic that these same young men has become the most porn-addicted generation in human history.

Clearly, pornography is an addictive substance. This does not mean that it should be banned-- that would be like closing the barn door after the cow has escaped-- but it does mean that it should only be indulged in limited quantities.

Because if you get addicted to porn, you will need, as Rothbart suggests, and as others have said before, to go cold turkey.

Your sex life, and your marriage, will depend on it.

People do need to be aware of how an excessive indulgence in porn damages sexual relationships.

When a young man becomes addicted to porn, it effects his ability to respond to sexual stimuli.
Responding to an image is not the same thing as responding to a woman. And it is certainly not the same thing as responding to a woman who is attracted to you.

Porn addiction resembles having a fetish. If specific circumstances and/or objects become  uniquely arousing, no real woman will be able to compete. Porn as fetish is always there, always available, always ready to get it on or get it off.

No woman can compete with that.

As New York Magazine suggests, and as I have argued, once a man’s sexual responses become modified by pornography, his woman will feel that she is competing against porn stars for his attentions. And if he has fetishized certain kinds of behaviors, she will feel compelled to re-enact them with him, lest he lose interest or fail to find sexual release.

It gets worse. Rothbart explains that when either member of a couple is acting a role that he or she has seen or heard about in porn, then neither is really having sex with the other person.

If two people are not making love with each other, but are each acting roles in porn scripts, both will be alienated from their own sexuality. It is not a formula for a good sex life.

A woman who is being forced to do what porn stars do, to follow a script that her man has found on Xtube, will feel that she no longer owns her sexuality.

It does tell us one very good reason why women do not like pornography, and why they are offended  by its widespread availability.

Today‘s women do not protest and do not call for porn to be banned. They are too cool for that. But they are not less offended for as much.

But men ought to recognize, that when it comes to their natural desire to enhance their sex lives, pornography is not their friend. It is their sworn enemy.

7 comments:

Johann Amadeous Metesky said...

But is men expecting their wives to act out porn fantasies really any different than women expecting their husbands to act like men in their favorite romance novel or chick flick?

When women use fiction to arouse themselves or fantasize about romance, it's not considered pornography. Do an experiment, have a man read a copy of Playboy at his desk and a woman read a copy of Cosmopolitan and see who will get disciplined.

Sites catering to women like XX and Jezebel are full of sex "advice" or other posts that are pretty sexually explicit. But nobody will dare call them porn.

That's because the definition most people use for porn is stuff guys find arousing.

Anonymous said...

Porn is not addictive.

And men have the upper hand in dating in the US....so what? Women have completely screwed up courtship and marriage and have destroyed the domestic lives of countless men.

It's time they had their control over dating, etc., taken away, given the mess they made.

Anonymous said...

Perhaps women are addicted to romance novels and cheesy American movies such as Eat, Pray, Love.

They rhapsodize about controlled, rigid, hyperromantic environments where feelings take precedence over reality and their dopamine highs hinder their judgement.

Deprogramming? Forced viewings of John Rambo movies? How can we cure the afflicted?

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Thanks, Johann. I agree with you that women have their expectations formed by romance fiction, though sometimes by Cosmo and other magazines.

I would just add a couple of questions. First, the women I am writing about here, the college coeds, seem more to be interested in hooking up than in living out a romance novel. And this does not seem to me to bespeak a very feminine sensibility.

Secondly, as a point of observation, in the old days men who were in the business of seducing women studied these novels and magazine articles religiously, because they wanted to be able to act out what was in them. They knew that women would then find them irresistible.

From a woman's perspective, finding such a lover, who is more likely to be a Don Juan than a PUA, is like feeling that she does not have to compromise... perhaps we can say that she will become addicted to such lovers, in a similar way that she might be addicted to romance novels.

Just a few thoughts...

Robert Mitchell Jr. said...

I don't know. There is much of the dead horse, "Men are Pigs!" here, and also, the whole point seems to be that men need to stop using and looking at porn so that women can get better porn. No talk of children or homes or family, just "Sex! Don't you want Sex?". It would seem the problem here is that men are not piggy enough, and if the only reason to deal with women is to get sex, it's a bad deal. Porn is sex without the risk of a STD or debtor's prison, the risk of "Let's just be friends".

There has been much talk about men's responsibilities with the success of the Feminist movement. But Marriage was a partnership, with each side bringing something to the table. What do women bring now, that men should deal with them, in this age of no fault divorce and abortion on demand?

Stuart Schneiderman said...

Thanks for your response, Robert.

I was trying to say that an addiction to porn will be detrimental to one's sex life.

This does not mean that everyone should give up all porn, but that those who are addicted to it, to the point where it is interfering with their sex lives, should consider this option.

Since I was really addressing only adolescent behavior, I did not make any mention of the possibilities for home, family, or children.

On those accounts I would certainly agree with you. Better character, more commitment to marriage and to children would be a great thing for everyone involved.

I have argued long and hard about the negative influences of feminism on relationships and marriage, so I do not feel that I have to defend myself on that score. And I have also argued against women who think that hookups are a good way to express their sexuality.

In many ways, the path of hookups is not really going to lead to more responsible adult behavior. It is traumatic for women, especially, and the effects of the trauma will probably be played out with other relationships.

I think ultimately that less self-indulgent behavior and more responsible behavior would be a step in the right direction.

Robert Mitchell Jr. said...

"I think ultimately that less self-indulgent behavior and more responsible behavior would be a step in the right direction."

Yes, quite so. The point I am trying to make (poorly) is that perhaps porn is now the "less self-indulgent behavior". Porn is certainly better the "Hook ups", yes? Less pleasure, but no risk of STDs or murdered children, no risk of "Basic Instinct" and other charming moments this most dangerous of human activities can bring. Sex is dangerous, dangerous, dangerous. There were good reasons for all the oppressive rules the Feminists/Left got rid of. I don't see (at this point in time) any legal differences between hook ups and Marriage. And with the death of Marriage, the courts deal with many things they aren't really equipped to oversee. Such as child support. To deal with "deadbeat dads" we have brought back debtors prison, where they are held hostage by the government until someone pays their fees. Who would that "someone" be? Probably someone who cares for you, probably family. We are at the point where a moment of weakness could bankrupt three generations of your family. It would seem, with the current legal setup, the mature thing to do is to avoid women as much as possible. If porn helps that goal, is that a bad thing?