As a young woman addicted to pornography, I'm starting to scare myself - AC's story
I am a young woman who has recently started being 'sexually active'. I keep trying to pressure an older man into having sex with me but he's afraid that he's taking advantage of my naivety. Because of his reluctance I have taken to satisfying my sexual needs via internet pornography.
I was recently banned from all local internet cafés and libraries. I am also in the process of trying to persuade a family not to press indecent exposure charges after I inadvertently exposed two very young children to hardcore pornography. Porn has taken over my life. I can't go near a computer without trying to download excessive amounts of porn. I have to break free of this addiction as it's alienated me from society. I am starting to scare myself.
Hi AC,
Thanks for getting in touch here.
Your experiences demonstrate how compulsive porn use has the potential to spiral into all kinds of emotional and social problems. It also shows that it's not just young guys who find their interest in porn starting to control their actions.
I wonder whether there's someone you can talk to about this - a close friend or family member. You might also find some counselling helpful. It will help you understand why you feel such an attachment to porn, and explore events and learning from your past that may have contributed. It may be that you have aligned your sexual desire with your need to be validated and noticed, which is resulting in some rejection and confidence issues. This is very common.
I'm not going to lecture you about pressuring someone to have sex with you or exposing young children to unsuitable material. You have recognised that this isn't how you want to live, and sharing your story here shows your determination to change.
I wish you every success, and please feel welcome to share your thoughts here.
Porn Game Over is Jason's self-help plan for quitting the habit. Click here for a fresh approach to internet pornography addiction...
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I'm assuming this was a
I'm assuming this was a babysitting accident? If so, I hope the parents go easy on you but you might have to assure them that you are getting some help.
Either way, this is a clear signal that you need some support. Make this your "rock bottom" stage and don't let things get any worse. You are young and have your life ahead of you.
My feeling after reading your
My feeling after reading your story is DON'T underestimate the power of puberty (I've just become sexually active) its completely normal during puberty which is a rite of passage to become highly aware of your sexuality, and to be fascinated with sexual matters. Its normal to want too explorer the whole issue of sex & sexuality, sadly many young people turn to on-line porn for some of their learning. The problem is that porn gives out highly misleading & distorted ideas about how to be sexual with another person, you know men always want to do this and women should always be like that!! etc.
I think what drives & motivates young women to be sexual is different from drives & motivates men to be sexual. May be the ends are similar but the means of arriving there are different.
Its very important not to confuse the need to love & intimacy with just having sex. Although both love & intimacy can be intensely expressed during sex if you love that person. Sex itself doesn't always guarantee the experience of love or intimacy though, yes! sex can be quite a confusing experience and sex can be a very powerful experience too so it leaves deep impressions on us.
What really fuels a porn habit in my opinion is denial & often denial linked to feelings which are painful or distressing or just hard to face up to. Porn is a way to numb those emotions, the numbing is a way not to feel something. Sadly though the more we use porn for denial the worse the porn habit becomes. Emotional denial is the fuel that powers our porn behavior.
See: The link to "don't let porn get the better of you" top right.
In my opinion & based on
In my opinion & based on experience, using internet porn actually IS a choice we make. YES! OK it might be a choice you make at a deep level, unconsciously or subconsciously, or it might be a choice you make consciously. However, its my strongly held opinion that anyone driven to use porn obsessively, then what really motivates us is actually the desire to avoid our own pain & distress. This sounds contradictory or paradoxical but using porn is actually a kind of pain killer, using porn creates a numbing effect, this numbing effect acts like a kind of anesthetic.
It means we avoid feel the feelings we cannot deal with in an easy or straightforward manner, it means we push away the hurt, the distress the pain, we try to distance ourselves from these things. We use porn to deny our deepest pain because we don't really want to face those emotions, we might fear that we will be overwhelmed by such deep emotions. The irony here is that to gain freedom from the quick sands of porn we need to face our feelings full on without numbing ourselves out. Thus freedom from porn is through the escape hatch of our allowing our emotions, & letting out our pain. But paradoxically you can only do this when you are NOT numbed out by porn. Its healing through feeling as it were!! Porn is very very paradoxical and often not at all what it appears to be superficially.
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