How Addiction To Porn Destroys Sexual Health

couple free that used to have addiction to porn

If you’re addicted to porn and masturbation, then you may not be able to enjoy sex with your partner as you used to before you became addicted. Perhaps your sex drive isn’t very strong and you can’t get an erection, or maybe your preoccupation with porn and masturbating has led to trouble in other areas of your life, including your relationship with your wife. 

But what exactly happens in the brain when you become addicted to porn? How do you know if porn addiction has affected your mind? And how can that change be dealt with?

Secret Habit Podcast: How Porn Destroys Sexual Health


What happens in the brain/body when you become addicted to masturbating and porn?

This amazing computer system built into every human is incredibly malleable, for good and for bad. With an addiction to porn, it’s for the bad… For men, porn atrophies the part of the brain that is vital in helping you get and stay erect (Porn Induced Erectile Dysfunction). This has much to do with your dopamine receptors and how they shrink with porn consumption. When they shrink, you need more dopamine to get the same effect. And this means that real sex just won’t cut it for your pornified brain. Of course, women have the same dopamine issues, but I was talking strictly about erection issues. 

Now let’s look at an issue that affects men and women alike. This one happens if you’re addicted to masturbation (which 99% of the time goes hand and hand with watching porn). If you struggle with porn and masturbation together, you will likely experience one of two things: Sensitization or desensitization. Basically, your body gets used to your way of pleasuring yourself and this can cause you to experience Delayed Ejaculation and Premature Ejaculation as a result. This means that you will struggle to last longer than 30 seconds or orgasm never seems to come.

How do you know if having an addiction to porn has affected your mind?

Porn has a way of causing us to adopt thought patterns that are toxic and harmful to ourselves and others. A common one I hear is a “less than” pattern. When we see ourselves as less than the actors in porn due to penis size, sexual longevity, or size of breasts, our confidence will drop and our sexual health will suffer. When we see others as less than in value, in looks, or in whatever else while compared to porn, it’s easy to begin treating others like objects.

If your mind adopts toxic and harmful thought patterns, your brain and body will begin to respond to what your mind is feeding them. This is one of the biggest reasons people end up going down the road of the hookup culture, prostitution, and even human trafficking. The mind is a powerhouse that must be tamed… We are called to “take every thought captive” and to do that, we must begin realizing how porn has formed expectations, judgments, and even fears.

Man holding his head in deep thought. The word of God calls us to "take every thought captive" when fighting porn addiction. We should capture our thoughts before they become sexual. Here's how addiction to porn destroys sexual health
If your mind adopts toxic and harmful thought patterns, your brain and body will begin to respond to what your mind is feeding them

When your addiction to porn grows, these sexual issues and thought patterns can cause tremendous strife between couples. We have seen so many couples in devastation over their failing sex life, and sadly, just a few years ago, we were there too.

Thank God that He made our sexuality to be so good, and from that, He made sex to be something beautiful and satisfying. This gave us hope as we were healing and we hope it can offer you hope too.

However, we can’t deny just how much porn is destroying so many Christian’s abilities to experience God’s love, grace, and purpose. And when this happens, their ability to live in sexual health is hindered.

Why can’t I find a solution to my addiction to porn and masturbating? 

1. Men and women who have an addiction to porn often suffer in silence

Yes, there’s a deeper problem here with the silence of the church (ill rant on that another time), but for now, we need to see that porn goes against God’s design and naturally creates shame inside of us as a consequence. We can see right back in Genesis when Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves out of shame… It’s not that God didn’t want them to enjoy the natural beauty of sex… It says they were “naked and unashamed” earlier in the text. But when we do something against God’s will, aka. sin, we often want to hide from God. And this is where shame grows and festers. And this is the very tragedy of why so many Christians don’t know the love of God but stay stuck seeing Him as an angry dictator.

2. We don’t understand God designed sex to be beautiful, fun, satisfying, and good. 

I have heard it said that God is way more sexual than we think, and that porn is trash compared to what God intended sex to be. If we look into the Song of Songs, we will see a true love story, full of anticipation, romance, and sexual pleasure. When we look at porn, we see aggression, coercion, fake bodies, and degradation. Comparing the two, I think we would all agree God’s design wins. We need to start trading our lies in for truth and seeking the God who created all things that are good, and that starts with His design for sex. RETHINKING SEXUALITY: GOD’S DESIGN AND WHY IT MATTERS, By Dr. Juli Slattery

3. We confuse identity with action

Someone who is sexually immoral, in the Bible, will not inherit Eternal life. Well, I believe the word is saying that this person must be someone whose in full agreeance with their sexual immorality and sees it as part of who they are… The person who is trying to follow Jesus but struggles with an addiction to porn and maybe even an addiction to masturbation is in a totally different boat… Same actions, different identities.

One IS sexually immoral due to their agreement with sexual immorality, while the other is struggling with sexual immorality while confessing and repenting every time they act out with it. Sadly, the second person here is the one who suffers the most. They question their salvation, they wonder if God loves them and they live in fear due to misreading scripture. This keeps so many good men and women so far away from the love of God that wants all to confess, repent and come back to His loving embrace every time they fall short of His glory.

Man in deep thought. What exactly happens in the brain when you become addicted to porn? This is how addiction to porn destroys sexual health
They question their salvation, they wonder if God loves them and they live in fear due to misreading scripture

As you can see from these 3 ideas, there are some deep lies many Christians believe. What are these for you? It’s important to begin to pinpoint the lies, the thought patterns, and the ways you’re living apart from God’s truth that is hindering your ability to live in a direct relationship with Him. Take heart, my friend, His grace is there to draw you back to Him so you can experience all that He has for you and your sexual health.

How can the negative change to my sexual health be dealt with?

We believe that satisfying and fulfilling sex is holistic – mind, body, and spirit. This is exactly why pornography destroys your sexual health. Porn only focuses on the physical aspect of sex and completely misses the mark on the elements that make sex truly satisfying. On a neuro, physiological and spiritual level, porn not only misses the mark but also causes incredible damage to the very fabric of what makes sex holistic and fulfilling.

If you are addicted to masturbating and pornography, I highly recommend listening to our podcast and reading this next article: Can You Recover From Addiction To Porn?

We love guiding people to find sexual healing and freedom from addiction to porn and masturbating. You can read here more about the steps of healing or chat with Shawn here: Porn Addiction

Conclusion

It’s becoming mainstream knowledge that an addiction to porn is harmful. However, one of the greatest harms that often goes undetected is the deterioration of your sexual health. 

Pornography, at its core, is fake sex. It’s the spoiling of what was made to be beautiful and special… It is something that was once good made bad. Sadly, this means that the most common educator of sex in today’s day and age is promoting a false reality. And what that means for the men and women of today is that their ability to have healthy and satisfying sex is hindered due to the very idea of what they think sex is. Read about the 8 Benefits Of Quitting Porn to see the contrast of what can happen when we no longer pursue fake sex,

In closing, I think it’s vital to go to the source of how porn destroys sexual health. Going straight to the Creator’s design to see how porn is contrary to what He made is going to be one simple solution to debunking all the porn myths out there. However, for those who need to see further evidence of how porn affects the mind, brain, and body, I hope this has offered you some important insight to help you see that this isn’t some moral religious problem, but one of great significance that affects your whole life – mind, body, and spirit.

Shawn Bonneteau

Shawn Bonneteau

Author of this Article

Shawn is the co-founder of Secret Habit. He loves to write, speak and coach men. He has a story of addiction to porn and masturbation, as well as a struggle with Erectile Dysfunction that haunted him for many years into his marriage. He feels called to use his story to bring hope and healing to those stuck in sexual bondage.

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