7 Ways Porn is Screwing You Over (from A Woman's Point of View)
Watching porn is still a very taboo subject for most. For years accusations have flown back and forth between men and women about males and their over usage of pornography and the way women are constantly victimized by it. But is that really the case? There have been more scientific studies and articles done on pornography use and males as opposed to pornography use and females, which leaves a great imbalance in comparison as to how females genuinely relate to porn, as opposed to their male counterparts. Actually, it works out in females' favors this time around because it seems there were more downsides found to men watching porn than people may believe. Not only could it ruin his relationships and make him dumb(er), it could actually break his dick. No, seriously, it could sort of break his dick (see point 5).
1) The Double Standard Will Screw You Over
Being in a relationship is about focusing an appropriated amount of your time and attention on your significant other, but if you’re watching a ton of porn accomplishing that could become quite difficult--especially if your girlfriend starts to feel neglected. It’s one thing to have a girlfriend who is cool with your porn stash, but quite another if you begin to choose your porn stash over her, or if you make her feel insecure by negatively comparing her to your favorite onscreen X-rated actress(es).
Nobody is telling you that sneaking off into the corner of your basement to watch an x-rated vid on your phone and jerking off like a demented gargoyle is wrong, but if your girlfriend is becoming increasingly uncomfortable--not with that fact that you’re jerking off, but with the fact that you’re watching porn--then maybe you two need to have a talk. Sometimes it’s a matter of something you said or did to her that’s making her feel uncomfortable about it, and if you don’t want to turn whacking off into a full-time hobby because you lost your girl, maybe you should try to figure out what's up.
Every woman isn’t into porn, but that doesn’t mean that a lot of women aren’t up for it. Hell, there are some girls out there that could probably name more porn stars than you (and send you better quality porn links). The problem is, sometimes a girl just isn’t as comfortable with it because there is still that annoying double standard lingering that women don’t like sex as much as men, the majority of women are vehemently against porn, and since she has a vagina she’s a victim of porn in one way or another. There’s still the image out there in people's minds that if a woman catches her man masturbating while watching porn she’ll run off into a corner and cry and wonder what she’s done wrong instead of possibly joining him and both of them getting off.
There is no real evidence that directly correlates porn with cheating, although most people assume it's automatically linked because both things typically involve some kind of sexual act. You can’t use that age old argument that the majority of cheating husbands who end up in divorce court watch porn, and it was the porn that led to their cheating because that notion is completely biased. That’s not scientific evidence mainly because you're comparing a small isolated group of men to their entire gender. There is also no real evidence linking porn to men who frequent strip clubs, but again, that doesn’t stop assumptions.
However, this doesn’t give you a pass to be an asshole. You shouldn’t force your significant other to watch or do anything they feel strongly against even after you try to talk it out with them. If porn means that much to you then you need to end your relationship and settle for the mound of plastic tits and bleached blond hair and fake lips you covet, but will probably never get your hands on in your lifetime.
2) Porn makes you stupid
Apparently there are studies that show that porn makes you lose a part of your short term memory. There have been scientific studies that indicate a strong de-activation of your brain functioning while watching highly intense erotic films because of the increased blood flow to the sexual organs, but also because porn does not require precise scanning of the visual field.
The question is: How much of your short term memory is lost, and how does it effect you in the long run? There's an old joke by Chris Rock about the fact that wives and girlfriends never find a guy's porn hidden in his secret stash place, but right in the VCR because guys aren't thinking straight when they're whacking off.
So when do you start thinking straight again, exactly???...just kidding...sort of...
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“Sexual arousal interferes with working memory, an important facet of executive functioning,” study author Christian Laier, a graduate student studying under psychologist Matthias Brand, told The Daily Mail. “Sexual arousal and its impacts on cognitive processes might explain parts of these negative effects.”
http://lasvegas.cbslocal.com/2012/12/17/study-watching-porn-tied-to-short-term-memory-loss/
3) It actually becomes an addiction
With the general study of addicts in recovery over the years, it’s obvious even without extensive scientific studies to come to the conclusion that people who become addicted to a substance tend to need more and more of what they’re addicted to in order to derive satisfaction from it because they begin to build up a level of tolerance to their vice. There’s really no difference when it comes to porn. You could start out watching one or two “tame” explicitly erotic videos, but if you continue to engage in the activity (with online free porn sites) you’re likely to become naturally curious of the other x-rated video suggestions that could progressively become more and more outrageous, which could end up fueling a need within you to explore not only more porn, but more outrageous porn, just to be able to get you off.
Addictions become labeled as such when whatever is supposed to be recreational behavior begins to impede on other parts of your life that you never meant for them to interfere with in the first place, your personal and professional lives to be specific. Watching porn becomes an addiction when you're supposed to be enjoying something else that has no relevance to porn in anyway or you're supposed to be doing something and you have urges to watch porn. That means hanging out with friends or your significant other in a social (or private) setting; working on a project that has a deadline at work; reading a fictional novel that has nothing to do with porn. When porn starts to take precedence over your doing normal everyday things, that's when you need to recognize that you have a problem and it's not just that you have a healthy libido. Especially if you sometimes find yourself watching porn just to watch and it's not even about being aroused, you just want to watch it. If you have appointments to keep and you decide to cancel them in order to watch porn...buddy, you probably have some issues.
This isn't about being judgmental, but not everyone can do things in moderation. Not everyone can just have one drink, not everyone can visit a strip club maybe once a year with friends, and not everyone can just watch porn, get off, and go on about their day. But recognizing you have a problem with it is the first step to NOT having a problem with it in the future.
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This pattern of results indicates that with repeated presentation an erotic stimulus is experienced not only as less sexually arousing but also as less appetitive and absorbing.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10846806
4) You're Not Getting Any (Health Benefits)
Most of the health benefits from sex boasted on various sites are benefits from actual sexual intercourse between you and another person, not masturbation. So unless you’re being joined in your porn watching with a sex partner, then you’re not reaping a bunch of physical, mental, and emotional benefits.
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A wide range of better psychological and physiological health indices are associated specifically with penile–vaginal intercourse. Other sexual activities have weaker, no, or (in the cases of masturbation and anal intercourse) inverse associations with health indices. Condom use appears to impair some benefits of penile–vaginal intercourse. Only a few of the research designs allow for causal inferences.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01677.x/full
5) Ruins your ability to have a (healthy sexual) relationship
Most people view sex as an important aspect of their relationship and if you can’t get it up or reach an orgasm with your partner because you’re in need of additional visual pornographic stimulation that has nothing to do with your partner at all, then you need to know that you have a serious dependency issue with porn.
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Orgasmic dysfunction is the inability for an individual to reach orgasm during sexual stimulation.
For men, the disorder might present itself as an inability to reach orgasm during sexual intercourse or as ejaculation only after prolonged intense non-intercourse stimulation.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/orgasmic-disorder
6) Porn Desensitizes to you to cruelty
Years ago porn was hidden behind counters, located in nondescript specialty shops you had to venture into behind sunglasses and a hat, and it was assumed that there was only a hidden society of people (presumably all, or mostly, male) who indulged in x-rated materials, but that’s definitely no longer the case. People can have porn casually sent to them on their phones, public blogs on the internet, not to mention there are free porn sites linked to nearly every google search. Unless you’re a connoisseur of porn and see it as some kind of art form, there’s no real reason for you to pay for it. That’s not necessarily a good thing. From a very young age boys are being exposed to hardcore porn--and that includes BDSM and gonzo porn, where it becomes the norm to see violent sex acts and/or women with multiple partners sometimes seemingly being mistreated during the act (screaming from possible pain and/or crying). And unfortunately, that becomes the norm for them.
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We examined exposure to Internet pornography before the age of 18, as reported by college students (n = 563), via an online survey. Ninety-three percent of boys and 62% of girls were exposed to online pornography during adolescence. Exposure prior to age 13 was relatively uncommon. Boys were more likely to be exposed at an earlier age, to see more images, to see more extreme images (e.g., rape, child pornography), and to view pornography more often, while girls reported more involuntary exposure. If participants in this study are typical of young people, exposure to pornography on the Internet can be described as a normative experience, and more study of its impact is clearly warranted.
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2007.0179
7) It Can Make You Hate Your Junk
Guys can feel just as insecure about their penis size the same way a girl can feel insecure about her breasts or her weight. If a guy is constantly watching other well endowed men perform on camera with shlongs that are nearly a foot long he can start to feel as if he’s not good enough for the person he’s with even with their reassurance to the contrary of his thoughts. Same as a girl can feel like she’s not good enough physically, a guy can feel the same exact way, which is when watching porn can become unhealthy.
