Porn is past reality when it comes to anything sexual; it's any fantasy at the click of a button. I know that porn has desensitized my brain. I have trouble finding women to be attractive and have difficulties getting it up because of this. Also, porn stars wear like a pound of makeup lol

I agree with Anonymous.

Also, do you know what a fetish is? A fetish is like the bell in the Pavlov's dog conditioning experiment. In this experiment, Pavlov started out with a normal dog who salivated when food was brought to it. Then they started ringing a bell every time food was brought, so the dog began to associate the bell with food. Pretty soon the dog would salivate every time they rang the bell, even when there was no food.

ok, so, say a man starts out normal. He gets aroused by certain women, and the sight of the woman's privates. Now a relationship with a woman can be complicated and a guy has to go to the trouble of seducing her . With pornography, the woman doesn't bitch, cry, manipulate.. she opens her legs seemingly happily, and then the mb gets him off. No fuss, no muss, no bother.

Problem is that this easy pleasure gets to be like a fetish, and, at the same time, the guy gets less and less motivated to go to the bother of trying to seduce a real woman, and might get more and more alienated from real life struggles of normal relationships.

The principle is the same for women who find the much easier fantasy relationships than putting up with the problems of working on real normal relationships.

Funny thing is that most who get into the fantasy come to think and try to make the fantasies come true,, so they might plan to hook up with someone online, which almost always ends in disaster. But then,, there's the alternative, which seems so disappointing, of the boring, demanding obligations of real life.

It was only after I'd stopped the internet fantasies for a while that real normal people became anywhere near worth bothering with in there 'averageness'.

This is a long way to say the same thing Anonymous put so concisely.

From the first time I ever saw it, it made me sick to my stomach. I'm ever so glad it did.

To have such an adverse reaction is kind of unusual. Many who don't like it just don't have any reaction at all.. like hohum. I'm not sure what kind you saw or why your reaction was SO negative, but, everyone reacts in his/her own way.

x: You obviously would not know the why I feel that way. And you don't need to know that. I had and have my reasons, none of which would be of any affect to you.

I have never seen the appeal, my thought was sadness...that these women in porn would allow themselves to be so degraded,used as objects for money. It was so fake to me, like every single small touch would be so oversensitive, fake breasts, fake moans....it was just sad to me....I am thankful for me that it caused me to feel that way.....

2earlyriser,, my husband says the same thing now...the thought it repulses him and even more so the thought that he turned to that for a release makes him disgusted

I cannot even imagine a purpose in it at all...none. I think that what should be a sacred thing between folks in love, turned into a sick, fake, twisted, cold, cynical, convoluted thing. Oh sure, there's really something real going on there, right? Wrong. Folks paid to act that way, a camera or several, A director, well act this way, say that thing, pretend this thing, etc. And, sure there's lots of love going on there? Degraded people doing phony degraded things. I fail to see any attraction to that at all.

I can only speak for myself obviously. But if I'm passively watching, it turns off the fantasies I would have had without it.

In context, I have OCD with intrusive thoughts/images. When they were especially awful or disturbing, I would use porn to block them out since it was one of the few things that would. It's why I'm not 100% sure I'm a porn addict. If watching POKEMON cartoons blocked the OCD thoughts, I would have been a animation addict, maybe.

But I've always wondered how many other porn addicts used it to stop thinking about something "worse" and it eventually became a serious problem? Anyone else or is it just me?

Richard: I have full blown PTSD, which comes with many flashbacks. But, I never even thought it would be a good idea to address a bad situation with something even worse. I think on good things, or view good things, when I have flashbacks. Hopefully, over time, that strengthens positive images instead of more negative ones.

Learningskills; well yes in HINDSIGHT I wish I'd gone with cooking shows or Disney films. But that's hardly relevant to the current situation now is it? :D At the time I assumed "Hey, this works, it's free, so it's better than *hideously painful and disturbing TW imagery.*

Talk to enough people and what I did, going from one problem to another that SEEMED like a fix for the first one is pretty common. Someday I expect to meet someone who got into meth to get over their eating disorder.

Rich: Well, you'll likely find them! HA! Yes, when we choose to do something that we know is not wholesome, we can hardly expect a good outcome, could we?

The lesser of two evils can STILL beat you senseless :)

Hmmmmm....the lesser of two evils? I think that losing that propensity would be far easier for me than losing my mate, my respect, my home, my financial status and maybe even my job. That doesn't quite feel like a fair trade to me.

Everyone's answer to that question is probably a little bit different, with some common themes always present at least to some degree.
The more I search for my own answer to that question (something that I have been really trying to be completely honest with myself about), the more ashamed I feel. I wish I found something deep that would somehow justify it, that I could recall some traumatic experience that I had no control over, which left me with no choice but to struggle with porn addiction. I find no such thing. I might have had some self-esteem issues as a teenager and young college kid, may be some embarrasing moments from sexual inexperience, unwanted rejection from the opposite sex, something I'm trying to overcompensate for, who knows?? but that at the end of the day there's just no excuse. What I find when I search myself is that I've repeatedly chosen to lose myself into a pleasure of the body that is essentially inhumane. The appeal of pornography is one that I'm truly afraid to admit, even here, anonymously. At the very root of it I find elements of sadism, an occult desire to feel empowered over another human being, all of these dark things somehow fulfilled through the act of emotionless sex. There's not only an overpowering temptation but also the ability to give in to it, all right at your fingertips and not have anyone know. Initially the mind screams at you that its wrong, but the more you do it, the less you can hear your mind reprimanding you. Its like a callus has formed there where your conscience used to live. I've come to understand, like many have mentioned here in their posts, that this is a desire of the flesh that can never be satisfied, and the more we indugle it, the more we are enslaved.
Someone told me once that the mind can work the same way in the opposite direction: The better you behave, the guiltier you feel.
That is to say, the minute you start listening to the voice of reason in your head, the louder that voice becomes, and lesser transgressions suddenly seem more egregious, and by that process your moral compass is renewed and strengthened, and you become a better person. I used to have no tools against the urges in my head, and the imagery, and the people that I would see, everything and anything triggered my addiction. Now, it all still happens (even more intesnely sometimes, this is me abstinent for one week now...) but I instantly recognize it as my sickness, and I am more disgusted with myself than tempted. One day at a time for me, but I have to keep saying this, sharing my struggle has given me an out when i had nothing to turn to in my moments of desire. I've got a long battle to fight, but right now I'm feeling good.

" Initially the mind screams at you that its wrong, but the more you do it, the less you can hear your mind reprimanding you. Its like a callus has formed there where your conscience used to live." I have heard that from people who had gotten very deep into 'kink'.. that they found themselves doing things that they never before thought they would ever do, but that gradually they became desensitized to things that were more and more kinky.

There is a movie that demonstrates this, though not sure if it would be more a trigger for some than anything. I think the spouses may benefit from the perspective. It's about a young and nave woman who begins dating this guy who slowly and gradually 'trains' her, 'conditions' her to accept first slightly kinky pleasures and then very kinky things, until he brings in another woman for a threesome.. then she decides to leave, but it's not easy cuz she is hooked.

At the time I first experienced porn, well, it was my parents' in the basement, in a trunk,, and so indirectly it had a stamp of approval. I did not feel what Learning felt,, that it was so disgusting and evil.. I felt I was getting a sex education, and the arousal, with the endorphins it stirred up was a great 'high' and pleasure that I wanted more of, ,, simple as that. It wasn't till much later that I found that I felt 'guilty'. So, I was confused.