22 reasons why you should stop watching porn

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More than anything, pornography is a billion-dollar industry, with virtual-reality adult content expected to be the second biggest content on the medium by 2025 just right behind video games.

It is undeniable that the business is progressing to be something very advanced –and also very easily accessed – today. A couple of search terms and mouse clicks are all it takes for you to get in one of the 4% of the internet that’s dedicated to pornography.

However, in a Cambridge University study dedicated to seeing the effect of pornography addiction, it is revealed that porn addicts share very similar neurological activity with drug addicts, leading to the conclusion that the two addictions are highly similar. Today, we’ll be taking a look at 22 psychological, physiological, and spiritual reasons why you need to stop watching porn right now.

1. Watching porn develops inferiority complex

It is no surprise that pornography sets very high – even unrealistic – body standards. However, reality is way less flattering than porn. In our world, not every girl has a supermodel’s vital stats and not every man has six-pack abs. When you watch porn regularly and see these unrealistic body standards every single time you do, it could lead to feelings of inferiority. You might start thinking that you never look good enough and that you need implants or cosmetic surgery to start looking as such. The porn industry is designed to have perfect looking figures and faces. Don’t let these standards make you think less of yourself!

2. Porn addiction could lead to abnormal sexual perversion

Just like marijuana and alcohol, porn could be a gateway drug that eventually leads to higher dosages and more messed up fantasies. Porn-watching as a habit could lead to rape, bestiality, sadism, and other unthinkable perversions. The flesh is never sated, and when you keep on feeding it, you might eventually go down a self-destructive void that would ruin you and your morals.

3. Porn can burn out the pleasure of regular intercourse in your marriage 

Just like the first time you try alcohol, porn-watching can start out as a seemingly harmless and easily stopped habit. However, over time, you start craving weirder and weirder porn. The porn you used to watch no longer gives you that “buzz” and you start tolerating more unconventional porn.
This can all stack up to you setting another realistic standard – this time for regular intercourse. You get used to porn which focuses on the body and the pleasure solely that over time you lose track of the essence of sex itself: intimacy and love.

4. Porn can emotionally hurt your partner

Studies show that most women see no acceptable role for porn in their relationship. Even in relationships where the woman believes that pornography use is generally fine, they still share the sentiment about porn and its role in the relationship. Porn sets very unrealistic standards and about sex and the human body in general. This could lead its way to the relationship itself. Most women even believe that porn has changed the way men expect women should look.

5. It could lead to relationship problems and eventually: breakup

The place of porn in a relationship, such as in the previous point, is irrefutable. In cases where the woman is okay with the man watching porn, there could still be negative effects! Women are more likely to view porn for the intimacy and lovemaking while men are more likely to do so for solo masturbation and pleasure. This clear divide could lead to fights in the relationship and can even drastically affect it!

6. Porn is linked to sex trafficking

In general, pornography is consensual. However, this is not always the case, such as in cases of child pornography and sex trafficking. In other times, such as in rape accusations to pornstar James Deen, pornography might be consensual but rape could still happen. Deen was accused of rape both on and off-screen.

The thing is, although most of porn is consensual, are you willing to take the risk and be part of a service where you’re not certain of whether it is or isn’t?

7. Porn is an industry of lies

Porn is a product. It’s specifically engineered to do its purpose by making everything as perfect as possible. Every detail in their work – from direction, lighting, editing, plastic surgery, and camera work – is designed to be the most profitable, most beautiful, most sexually arousing. As such, it’s an industry of lies. Why go down the rabbit hole of lies and obvious facades when there’s a world of genuine love and affection waiting for you?

8. It could affect your social skills

For men, porn addiction could lead to a significant shift in attitude and social skills. They could become awkward and shy. This is because they could be so used to the standards set by porn and get engulfed by it that reality becomes distant to them. This porn addiction could even make them feel unaccepted in society and even among their peers.

9. Could lead to prostate cancer among young men

A more practical reason to stop masturbation and watching porn is that frequent masturbation could increase the risk of prostate cancer among men between 20 and 30. For this study, “frequent masturbation” meant two to seven times per week.

10. Inability to relate with opposite gender

Similar to the previous point, frequent porn-watchers may develop attitudes of only keeping to themselves. When it comes to relating with the opposite gender, they lose interest and become even more awkward because they get used to simply objectifying the opposite gender such as in porn.

11. Erectile dysfunction

Doctors have noticed a recent finding: young men failing to get an erection with a live partner because of frequent porn use. Studies have also shown that porn is related to problems with arousal and sexual performance. Despite being seemingly ironic, frequently watching porn can actually lessen sex drive!

12. Premature ejaculation

Adding to the previous point on this list, frequent pornography watching can also lead to premature ejaculation. This in itself could lead to even more trouble in relationships but that’s a topic for another time. Those with the experience of sex mostly being digital and simulated, sexual intercourse with a real person could be overwhelming and could lead premature ejaculation (and even other performance issues!)

13. Selfishness and egocentrism

Porn’s undeniable core is this: men’s pleasure. It shows that most women just go with the flow and whatever the man does is fine even if it’s violent or degrading. This is just one of the lies that the porn industry sells! This very thing may lead to the man being self-centered and selfish especially in sex, thinking that it is sex is all about their pleasure while in reality it’s supposed to be a shared and mutually pleasurable experience!

14. It promotes adultery

When you get used to the many choices of pornstars and porn categories as well as the complete lack of stigma against polygamy in the porn industry, it could be very tempting to go the same route in your relationship. Adultery is a real concern because the vast number of choices in porn can make monogamy seem bland and boring, despite being anything but!

15. Loss of focus in life

When you get addicted to porn, you start to lose track of more important things in life. Instead of productive articles to learn from, your internet history becomes plagued by porn. Instead of focusing on the long-term goals you have, your mind wanders off to when you could next masturbate. And most importantly, instead of building loving, intimate relationships, you get stuck watching porn and digesting all the lies the porn industry is pushing to you!

16. Porn can make you violent

Porn – even the non-violent kind but most especially the intense and forceful ones – can promote violence. Porn portrays men as being in charge most of the time and women as submissive. This normalizes sexual aggression and abuse! Studies have even been done on this matter. In one study in 2016, a team concluded that “…on the average, individuals who consume pornography more frequently are more likely to hold attitudes conducive to sexual aggression and engage in actual acts of sexual aggression.”

17. Loss of attraction to partner

Even if adultery is not in play, addiction to pornography can also make arousal to your partner decline. In biology, Coolidge effect is a phenomenon wherein males of a species exhibit renewed sexual interest and arousal when introduced to a new receptive partner. For porn watchers, this “new receptive partner” can be the pornstar they’re watching. This may leads to a weakening of arousal to their partner.

18. It could drain you of energy

In a survey conducted on the Reddit community NoFap among 1500 members who have vowed to stop masturbating, 67% reported an increase in productivity as well as energy levels when they stopped masturbating. On the other side of the spectrum, we could assume that frequent masturbation could lead to decline in efficiency and energy levels!

19. It’s (very) time-consuming

In the same survey on Reddit, 12% of the community report having watched five or more hours of porn every week. A staggering 59% reported having watched between fourteen and fifteen hours of porn every week! Imagine all the productive things you could have done instead during that time!

20. Porn addiction can lead to depression

“Any time [a person] spends much time with the usual pornography usage cycle, it can’t help but be a depressing, demeaning, self-loathing kind of experience.”
– Dr. Gary Brooks

This self-loathing and depression could turn to an endless, cruel cycle of watching porn then getting depressed over it and then having no one to turn to besides more porn. Porn, to them, is both a curse and a comfort. Because of their inability to relate with a close person – a partner or close friends perhaps, they rely on the only source of self-validation that they can: more porn.

21. Getting feelings of guilt

It’s not surprising to get feelings of guilt when you watch enough porn. Your eyes start to open up to the cruelty and abuse of the industry that you consume on a frequent basis and you start seeing things for the way they are. It is a horrible consequence and one that shows exactly how unnatural it is to live a life centered on pornography and masturbation.

22. It is against the will of God

Marriage should be honored by all, and the marriage bed kept pure, for God will judge the adulterer and the sexually immoral. Hebrews 13:4

Sex has and should always be confined within marriage. To defile the very act of sexual intercourse is against the word of God, and even more so to commercialize and build an entire billion-dollar industry on it!