It’s two days away from my 26th birthday. Time really does move fast. I remember I first discovered what porn was right around the age of 12-13 when I was going through puberty and my hormones were raging uncontrollably. I grew 8 inches in one year and oh man was my body changing. When a young boy discovers porn at the age of 12, it’s almost as if he’s discovering what candy is for the first time.
It was right about this time a year ago that I realized I’ve been watching porn for over 10 years. At moments, I watched it more than other years, but I never totally stopped watching it. I started to look back at my previous relationships with women and realized how much of an impact it had on my relationships. Yes, I have watched porn with previous girlfriends, and it definitely was quite an enjoyable experience for the both of us. But, there were also times in my relationships that I would resort to porn and would prefer that over having sex with my girlfriend. That’s when I knew it was a problem. Now, I’ve dated beautiful women and was always physically attracted to them. But, knowing I had access to really any woman I wanted digitally started to affect me mentally. There were times in my relationships where things weren’t going so well, and now looking back I realize that I turned to porn to satisfy myself mentally and physically, but it was also just an escape and a quick fix.
Now, I’m no psychologist, but I do study the brain frequently and am always looking to improve my mental stamina. I decided two months ago that I was going to quit watching porn for good. It wasn’t as if I was totally addicted and consumed by it. I watched porn about 3-4 times per week, but I needed a change and I wanted to do it, and completely stop it. I realized it was having an impact on me in social situations when approaching women and I think many men struggle with this, without even realizing it. We think oh, “If I don’t get laid tonight or get a girl’s phone number, I can just go home and watch porn and I’ll be happy.” It’s a quick fix and we know we have instantaneous access to it. I realized for too many years I was watching people on a screen have sex and I really wondered what kind of an impact it was having on my brain. We get our fantasies from porn, and then want to act it out in real life. Porn is not real though. It’s a billion dollar industry that lures people in and gets them extremely addicted fast. It’s detrimental and I wanted to stop.
It’s now been exactly two months since I’ve watched a porn video, and I definitely notice a difference in my thinking. I still have a desire to watch it, but I’ve been surprisingly controlling my desires and working on the discipline to stop myself from doing it. I now use my imagination, which was always with me. You see what porn does to the brain is it creates these false expectations. We watch porn and then in our minds expect that in our sex life, and when it doesn’t happen we feel let down by our desires. And then we turn back to more porn. I’ve realized in the two short months, I’m genuinely interested in just talking to people in general. But, I definitely notice a difference with women. For the longest time in my life, I was always expecting sex from every attractive woman I came in contact with. I’ve been working on training my brain to not have any expectations when talking to women, and seeing where the conversation takes us. A lot of men always have an end goal in mind of, “How am I going to have sex with this girl and take her home.” Women want the experience of opening up emotionally to a man, and I think porn for me definitely had an impact on doing that properly and at the right pace.
I really do think porn is a very addictive drug and creates these false representations in our heads. And you can totally disagree with me and say porn is totally normal and I don’t think it messes with my brain at all. Great! Good for you. People will do what they want with their life, and that’s totally okay. But, for me I wanted to give up something that I realized I’ve been watching for over ten years, just to see how I felt. And honestly, after these two months so far, I don’t know if I’ll ever watch it again. I feel great, I have more energy at the gym, and my imagination is active and alive. For me, it was more about the discipline to see if I had the ability to not watch it. I enjoy giving myself new challenges in life to see how it impacts me. For now, I’m going to keep not watching porn, and we will see where it leads me.
What do you think?