My boyfriend during freshman year had 100 gigabytes of pornography on his computer. To put this in perspective, most computers don't even come with 50 gigs of total space, but my ex was able to store 100 gigs of random people screwing. If you had asked what my opinion on watching pornographic material was before this revelation, I would have said that it was a harmless and healthy activity. But since my discovery, an endless number of questions keep going through my head. Is there such a thing as too much porn? Can porn alter your views on sex? Can it influence your views of the opposite sex? Or is pornography absolutely harmless and I've been worrying for nothing?
Addiction
In less than one year, Matthew Pool says he not only started watching porn, but also became addicted to it. What started out as something to watch with a group of guys a couple times a month turned into something the Lawrence sophomore had to watch daily to get his fix. It got to the point where porn that used to excite him became dull. The positions, the plots, the orgasms... they were all the same. So Pool started increasing the intensity levels of the pornography he watched — from the soft-core porn on HBO to the more hardcore — until he ran out of choices. Pool says pornography became repetitious and boring. But even though the steamy action never changed, he had to keep watching it because it had become his outlet and he needed that release. Pool also avoided relationships during this time. He didn't need one; porn was his new girlfriend.
This is one of the symptoms of porn addictions, says Lawrence certified sex therapist Dennis Detweiler. If you are watching porn for an orgasm, that's OK. But if you're watching it to have an orgasm that you should be having with a partner, thus substituting porn for a relationship, he says you have a problem. The term "porn addiction" has become