The previous articles in this series established that pornography viewing is not an officially recognised addiction and that habitual viewing does not mirror the process of development of substance-based addictions. However, a man does not need to have a pornography addiction diagnosis to decide that it is a problem for him. And the job of a therapist is to help clients to resolve various issues that they face in order to live more satisfying lives (Williams, 2022).
When some men decide to stop viewing pornography, they find it difficult to follow through. If pornography is not inherently addictive, why is it so difficult to stop viewing it? This article will offer some potential explanations for why men view pornography in the first place, and why it is hard to stop viewing it.
Proponents of the idea of pornography as an addiction often cite the time spent, costs involved, and consequences of viewing pornography as arguments that it is an unhealthy addiction. However, there are other activities that meet the same criteria that are often engaged in at great cost and sometimes despite negative consequences. These are leisure activities that are done for enjoyment and pleasure (Williams, 2022). For men, watching sports is an example of one such activity; it consumes large amounts of time, can incur considerable costs for tickets or streaming subscriptions, and is often done at the expense of spending time with a spouse or family.
Viewed from the perspective of leisure, pornography viewing becomes an understandably enjoyable activity that a man may be reluctant to give up. This is especially true if he has few other forms of leisure activities that he finds pleasurable. Viewing pornography from the perspective of leisure also presents the opportunity for comparison to another form of pornography consumption that is common, albeit among the opposite sex: reading of erotic literature. Examples of such literature include romance novels and fan fiction. One researcher highlighted that in one study in the Bay Area in the US, 75% of female readers specified that their favourite genre was erotica (Fekete, 2022). Another researcher estimated that women spend as much as one day per week reading literature which feature sexual themes (Iqbal, 2014). Yet few professionals or researchers consider the prevalent and time-consuming activity of reading pornographic literature as an addiction. Furthermore, in popular culture, some women openly refer to themselves as addicted to romance novels, but not typically meaning this in a clinical sense. Moreover, there is a dearth of women seeking treatment for addiction to pornographic literature.
If we expand pornography to include not just visual material, but also erotic literature, what we find is that men and women consume pornographic material at about the same rate. And this high rate of consumption can be explained by the natural interest in sex that is wired into the human brain (Williams, 2022). As such the difficulty involved in avoiding pornographic material becomes, not a matter of the addictive properties of the material, but a product of the natural interest in sexual pleasure that can be enjoyed alone or with a partner.
Another possible explanation for the prevalence of pornography viewing and difficulty with quitting is its positive effects on the brain and body. Viewing pornography has been shown to decrease the levels of cortisol, a stress hormone (Swed et al., 2023) in men. Additionally, orgasm following the viewing of pornography was found to increase the levels of oxytocin (Swed et al., 2023), a hormone associated with relaxation and mood regulation. It is therefore not surprising that some men may use masturbation as a way to manage stress and promote relaxation.
Interestingly, the aforementioned study also found that the increase in oxytocin lasts for only 10 minutes after masturbation, which may explain why some men masturbate multiple times in a given day.
While accepting that viewing pornography and masturbating may be used as a coping mechanism, some might assert that it is a negative coping mechanism. Such an assertion might stem from a belief that sexual activity is not a healthy coping mechanism. Yet many people, including couples, engage in sexual activities when stressed (Williams, 2022), precisely because sex and orgasm promote stress relief and relaxation.
This article offered two explanations for why men might find it difficult to stop viewing pornography. Those are that: a) it is an enjoyable leisure activity, and b) it can temporarily reduce stress and promote relaxation. However, for some men those benefits are not sufficient to make them view the activity as benign. They may object to the activity for moral or religious reasons. In other cases, their partner may object to the activity and the men in question may wish to discontinue viewing pornography for the sake of their partner. The next article in this series will explain how men can successfully undertake not viewing pornography.
