Serious effects of porn on women

[ladysudan]

I'm glad I found this platform where people are honest about their problems and are willing to support each other. I never knew about effects of porn on men until I had joined here.

But one question that still remains unanswered is... What are the serious effects of porn on women?

Both men and women have some common problems when it comes to porn like:
1. Trying to Find (unattainable) perfection in their partners in terms of body, looks, appearance and sexual performance.

2. Normalising the things shown in porn even though it is actually abnormal, rough and unhealthy.

3. Going through a never ending cycle of craving, watching, feeling guilt, trying to quit and then surrendering. This kind of experience leaves us with low self esteem. Also low self esteem can arise in opposite partners when one of them is more satisfied in watching porn.

4. Mental health problems like anxiety problems and some abnormal sexual behaviours.

5. Giving importance to porn more than anything else.

But I would like to know if there are any health issues seen in women if they engage themselves in PMO too much? If no one is aware about the answers...is it because of the fear of facing extreme amount of insult and shame because of which they are not going to talk about their problems ?

Please reply!

 

[Carl_Smith]

You might be interested in this poll I ran https://medium.com/@c_smith/charting-the-porn-addiction-epidemic-2022-c05357ac1f62

500 people, 290 were women. I found the results very fascinating. For example, more women than men said they talked to someone about reducing their usage or quitting, but was still only a minority.

Also a lot of women cited "physical problem" as a reason for wanting to quit, but I'm not entirely sure what that entails.

 

[downhillfromhere]

If the effects on women are anything like they are on men, I would guess a lot of women experience problems reaching orgasm. I have been having problems with delayed ejaculation, and I can imagine that a similar effect can occur for women as well. I mean - chasing novelty, waiting for the perfect moment etc.

I don’t know if this is what you mean by health issue, but I can see that like men, women might begin to doubt themselves, experience depression or anxiety, might start to think there is something wrong with them and so on.

 

[SalientY]

My sex life has been influenced a lot by (hardcore) porn, but the trouble is that it's hard to tell wether that's part of me or not. You might consider certain things as abnormal, but I'm not sure if that's a negative thing in itself. After all, there are people that are into pretty rough stuff without being influenced by porn. I have to say that this is something I kind of struggle with. My therapist says my sex life is rather deviant and I have to admit certain things have gone a bit too far perhaps, but other of the abnormal stuff I do enjoy a lot. Then again, it does effect my life in negative ways, so perhaps it is kinda unhealthy.

To me my problems with porn are mainly numbing my emotions and giving too much importance to sex and porn though. I use to escape and I escape a lot. That's not healthy. Personally I haven't had any issues with reaching orgasm.

"Giving too much importance to sex." 100% exactly. My emotions are more of a wreck and I'm more anxious than I have been in a couple years just from withdraw, including other addictions and habits. Bad sexual habits and diefiying sexualitly is so difficult to overcome, but everyone must fight for their life. I know everyone here can do it.

 

[Jlied]

My sex life has been influenced a lot by (hardcore) porn, but the trouble is that it's hard to tell wether that's part of me or not. You might consider certain things as abnormal, but I'm not sure if that's a negative thing in itself. After all, there are people that are into pretty rough stuff without being influenced by porn. I have to say that this is something I kind of struggle with. My therapist says my sex life is rather deviant and I have to admit certain things have gone a bit too far perhaps, but other of the abnormal stuff I do enjoy a lot. Then again, it does effect my life in negative ways, so perhaps it is kinda unhealthy.

To me my problems with porn are mainly numbing my emotions and giving too much importance to sex and porn though. I use to escape and I escape a lot. That's not healthy. Personally I haven't had any issues with reaching orgasm.

I was listening to a podcast once several years ago, I can’t remember for the life of me the name of the podcast, however the therapist had a discussion about whether porn influences our tastes sexually or if our bodies were somewhat prewired to enjoy such things we just didn’t know it because we weren’t exposed to it. He used food as an example. There are plenty of dishes of food that you’ve never had, yet some you will like right away and some you will not and you won’t grow to enjoy the dishes that did not taste well to you no matter how many times you try to eat it.

now i find some truth to that but some false to that too. I know personally I experimented with things sexually that I was never into and felt uncomfortable with, however once my porn behavior got to the point where I couldn’t control it I started leaning towards those things that I didn’t agree with before hand. I do think there is an influence that porn has, it may not fully change you in terms of sexual preferences but I do think it can influence you to at least go against your morals.

I also noticed that as I’ve been away from porn and thinking with more clarity i identify more with my feelings before porn than during porn. Just my thoughts, I found the discussion interesting and thought provoking at least.

 

[Jlied]

Hey Dark, thanks for your thoughts. I think you are right in that sometimes our morals are good, but I’m not sure that they are ever ridiculous as long as they are morals you’ve created based on your life and experiences as opposed to morals that you are told you should adhere too. I do think morals are ever changing just like we are as people, the more you learn the more you may realize a set of morals you adhered to we’re out of ignorance or for the sake of making others happy, but I do think morals are important and giving yourself a basic outline as to who you want to become as a person. Without them we’re lawless and it makes it easier to do whatever we please without having to be responsible for our own actions. Porn certainly makes it easy to detach from reality and responsibility and go against the way we want to be. Thanks for the thought invoking reply you gave me.

 

[Daybyday1988]

it may not fully change you in terms of sexual preferences

perhaps not. But you also have to remember what porn addiction entails. Specifically, it causes you to search for novelty. I think all of us here that are addicts will tell you that eventually, after you watch porn for awhile, you will find yourself "escalating". This may be M'ing for longer or "edging" to the same material, or commonly, people go to different genres of P.

Pretty typical of this behavioral addiction really. First it can start with nude magazines and images, maybe even swimsuit model videos etc. Next things its sexual scenes. Next thing you know, a person is visiting tube sites and is getting into fetish videos or things way out of their orientation or normal taste but M's to it and gets a stronger buzz.

often times, people find themselves M'ing to things that they don't even like in real life. For example, a straight guys M's to gay or trans material. eventually, he tries out being with a man/trans in real life only to be disgusted by the experience and really feel no pleasure at all or very little. it certainly happened to me.

You stop watching porn, im willing to bet that most people will eventually go back into "default" sexual tastes and maybe, just maybe, even go back to enjoying the emotional aspect of intimacy just as much as the physical. just my $0.02

-DbD

 

[Jlied]

Hey DbD, I can attest this to be true and is almost the blue print of how things went for me. In my late teens I started to look at porn with regularity and my early 20’s I was defiantly escalating what I was looking at as I needed the new content to make because the usual stuff became relatively boring by comparison. So I went online found someone near by who was looking for the same thing and we met up. When we were done I left feeling gross because I knew it wasn’t for me, it was a sexual urge that I carried out but it wasn’t what my heart wanted. Unfortunately because of the rush I got I met up several more times only to leave feeling the same way each time. Eventually I started dating my now wife and the urge for that kind of encounter went away. Fast forward almost 20 years and I’ve been off porn for almost a solid year now and I can say I’m back to the point where the “mundane” content is enough to get my heart racing. I take this to be a good sign that my system is getting back to normal and hopefully with another strong year or two I won’t feel the tug of porn and I won’t have to worry about riskier content to get the buzz I used to get without porn.

 

[Daybyday1988]

That is certainly the goal for all of us, to be able to have a normal arousal system. Congratulations on one year of heading in the right direction! I'm sure it wont be long for your brain to get "resensitized" fully as you are already seeing a ton of progress in that category. When just the idea of sex gets you hard then I think you know you're back to normal!

 

[Jlied]

Thanks, it took a lot of work and patience to get here, m by no means perfect but I am much happier with where I am and who I am today vs who I was a year ago. I’ve got work to do still, and perhaps always will but I much prefer this calmer less stress life than the previous one.