Depathologizing Porn: Why Can't It Be Just an Acceptable Diversion?

Usually this site is only about straight men who have sex with men. However, I have an article featured in a national psychotherapy magazine and I thought it would be of interest to readers of this blog.

It focuses on a heterosexual couple where the husband is caught using pornography by his wife. I illustrate how I work with the couple. The way in which I treat this couple is similar to how I would work with couples entering my office for the men who are caught viewing online male on male pornography.



Depathologizing Porn
Why Can't It Be Just an Acceptable Diversion?

by Joe Kort

In more than 25 years of practice, I've heard hundreds of stories of how pornography use can damage people's sex lives profoundly and ruin their marriages. I've personally had many couples describe the shame and secretiveness of one partner's involvement with porn. Time and again, I've treated people for whom viewing porn has become a compulsion and who've come to prefer it to being with a partner. Yet I've worked with many for whom porn isn't destructive to their relationship, but, in their view, offers a source of excitement and satisfaction they wouldn't otherwise experience.

Of course, these days, it's impossible to grasp the impact of pornography on relationships without considering the role of the Internet. Years ago, finding new and titillating erotica was a time-consuming chore.In the last couple of decades, though, the range of graphic material available online has exponentially accelerated the appeal and use of porn. Trying to explain the effect of the Internet on porn consumption, sex researcher Al Cooper has written that the driving force is the "Triple-A engine of Access, Affordability, and Anonymity." While it may take alcohol 30 years to ruin an alcoholic's health, only a year's worth of heavy cocaine use can lead to a total mental and physical collapse. Now, for some porn users, the Internet has become a kind of virtual cocaine.

Yet, despite the undeniable harm that porn can do, we therapists need to bear in mind a fundamental fact: the overwhelming majority of people exposed to it don't become addicts. Patrick Carnes's research shows that sexual addiction affects three to five percent of adults, suggesting that porn use isn't about to turn us into a country of addicts glued to their computer screens. Further, assuming that porn inevitably leads to addiction can blind us to understanding its nonpathological appeal to so many people—most of them men who are quite normal in every other way.

It can make it harder for us to accept that, in many relationships, porn use may satisfy needs that have nothing to do with psychological pathology or sexual dysfunction. In fact, noted sex researcher Helen Fisher argues that the brain-inhibiting effects of antidepressants pose a much graver threat to couples' sexuality than porn. She even advises couples to go on the Internet and look at porn as a kind of hormone booster, arguing that porn "drives up dopamine levels, which drives up your testosterone."

To be sure, porn use is permeated with a sense of the forbidden that triggers intense emotion, but as therapists, we need to understand it on a case-by-case basis and be careful to separate our own biases from our clients' needs. To begin to see porn in a more normalizing light, it can be helpful to understand the ways in which porn can be incorporated into a relationship without secretiveness or shame.

To continue reading this article click here

Women and their husband''s sexuality

Husband to his wife: "Let's talk about sexual fantasies to spice up our sex lives."

Wife to husband: "Okay you go first."

Husband: "I have a fantasy of watching you have sex with a younger guy pleasing you until you scream in ecstasy."

Wife: (Angrily) "How could you think like that? Don't you have more respect for me?"

Husband: "It is not about disrespect it is just a fantasy. Even if we make it a reality it would not make me disrespect you it is just sex to me."

Wife: "Well I am no longer in the mood and I never want to hear hear you say that again."

I am not suggesting that women (or men) should be coerced or forced to have open relationships or do things that are against their will and humiliating. However, what I am saying is that spouses need to be able to talk about their sexual fantasies and desires without judgment and contempt and criticism.

Without being able to talk about this openly--especially for men--they are likely to be sneaky about getting their needs met another way through pornography, the internet, or another person.

Sexual discussions need to happen to keep a couple's sex lives going.

As a therapist I hear over and over from heterosexual men that they talk to their wives about sexual fantasies and desires only to be shamed, judged and silenced. Some of it is their own shame and embarrassment about their sexual desires and so many more are about women not being open to hearing their mate's sexuality.

Why is this?

Some marital experts say that for marriage to work in today's times men need to catch up emotionally to where their wives are. In other words, men are behind in learning emotional expression and language.

I agree with this.

However, as much as men need to catch up emotionally, women need to catch up sexually. It isn't fair for a spouse, (male or female) to say, "I won't engage in that sexual fantasy or act with you and you better not get it anywhere else!"

I understand that for many women society, religion, sexism, patriarchy and other factors have caused them to be sexually shut down, stunted and closeted to themselves. I say it is time for that to change and women to claim their sexuality with their male partners along side them and even with their male partners help.

Men need to allow for women's help to learn about attachment and emotionality as do women need to learn from men about sex and sexuality.

What do you think as readers?

Here is something to listen to on this very topic for men and women.

Differences between Women and Straight Guise

It is known that when women have sexual experiences with other women they endure less negative consequences than do men who have sex with men.

An interesting article in online ABC News tells of some of the negative labels women have to endure:

Young Women Defy Labels in Intimacy With Both Sexes
Bisexuals Take a 'Flexible' View and Don't Follow a 'Fixed Path,' Say Sexuality Experts

Young bisexual women face urban labels like "hasbien" and "Bug" (bisexual until graduation), not to mention the giddy voyeurism of male fantasies and the ridicule of their lesbian sisters.

The Good News For Women Discussed in the Article

For many of today's women in their late teens and 20s, openness to intimate physical relationships with either gender has become a way of life, rather than an "experiment." This relatively new phenomenon is likely a product of a generation unconcerned with labels.

"These young women see sexuality as a fluid thing," said National Gay and Lesbian Task Force spokeswoman Roberta Sklar. "It's not just between your legs."
"These relationships are physical, emotional and intellectual, and the boundaries are not hard set," she said.

Although there are no hard data on the numbers, Sklar said a growing number of young women have a "more flexible view" of their sexual partners, and their early choices of gender may not be a "fixed path."

Read the entire article here.

If a man has sex with another man then he is not straight!

This myth exists and is used by reparative therapies and religious programs to reduce homosexuality to a sexual behavior. There are homophobic and heterosexist individuals who are misinformed about what it means to be a gay man and believe if you commit the sexual act, than that is what you are. There are many gay men who believe the same and argue that if a man is sexual with another man he is gay. They fall into the same category of prejudice and confusion over sexual preferences and sexual orientation.

SEXUAL PREFERENCE:

One’s sexual preference takes into account the desired sexual actions and fantasies with a partner; while sexual orientation encompasses a sexual identity with all the thoughts, feelings, fantasies, and emotions that cause us to become sexually excited. Thus, there is a distinct difference between a gay man and a “straight male seeking male,” or “SMSM.”

SEXUAL ORIENTATION:

A gay man’s sexual orientation is characterized by lasting aesthetic attraction to, romantic love of, and sexual attraction exclusively for others of the same gender. A gay man’s sexual thoughts, fantasies, and behavior are aligned. It is an identity based on affectional, emotional, spiritual, psychological and sexual feelings exclusively or mostly toward men. While some gay men can include and enjoy women as part of their sexual fantasies and behaviors (for instance, being sexual with a woman while with another man and his wife), the gay man is mostly if not totally attracted to men. I often explain it to my clients this way: If a gay man were walking on the beach, he would be sexually drawn only to men; he wouldn’t notice women in such a way.


On the other hand, SMSM's might be sexual with men from time to time, but on the beach, they’re staring at women. These are heterosexual men who engage in sexual behavior with other men for a number of reasons. They are not gay nor are they bisexual. Their same-gender sex acts are about physical release and sex, not about attraction to or desire for another man.

SMSM's are often turned off and left cold by naked images of men. Instead, they are sexually aroused by and attracted to women. These men typically want to bond with and need affection from other men. Their behavior may also reflect a desire to experiment, or an expression of problems and conflicts with their sexual feelings and desires—which have nothing to do with being gay. More often than not, these are the men whom I counsel or whose wives come to me in such frantic states.