The Internet is a wild and woolly place. A click of the mouse gives you access to millions of naked, improbably attractive people doing any sexual act you can imagine, no matter how crazy. And you can switch to a new person whenever you want.
That’s a lot of intense, rapid-fire sexual gratification. It’s also a lot of dopamine flooding into your brain.
The problem is that your brain isn’t equipped to handle that kind of stimulation [1,2]. It responds to porn much like it does to cocaine or alcohol – a big rush of pleasure, with diminishing returns over time [1,2]. And like with addictive drugs, porn seems to cause tolerance. In a survey of 434 people, half of them eventually began watching porn they used to consider disgusting or unappealing [3]. They turned to more intense scenarios to get them off.
A good theory is that the more you watch porn, the more stimulation you need to turn you on. Seems likely – regular porn users have smaller, less responsive reward pathways [4], and a study found that 60% of men who watch porn regularly couldn’t get erect with a real partner, while they did with porn [5].
In other words: when you’re used to watching three French maids in a room together, the thought of sex with your wife may stop being enough to excite you. Quitting porn can reset your arousal and get you back in touch with real, intimate sex.
Not convinced that porn is that big a deal? Try ditching it for a month. It might be more difficult than you expect.
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3960020/
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3050060/
sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563215302612
jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1874574
journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0102419