Why I became hooked on porn – RJ’s story

My story with sexually addictive patterns has been pretty complex. I looked at countless women while they were naked without them knowing. I watched a lot of porn and even showed it to friends of my sister. Other similar compulsive behaviors have also manifested as my strong addiction to sexuality.

I started watching porn when I was a teenager. The causes are many, and I think that is the reason why it is so hard to stop. For one, it was cool to know where the good porn was. It was cool to get it for free. Some kids in school even sold passwords to porn sites. One kid made a sex film with a girl he was having sex with. Women, masturbation, porn, and anything to do with sex had an element of social bonding within the young males I was around.

Another reason was one that I am discovering lately. It is a way to escape from stressful or unpleasant work. I remember masturbating or watching porn when I was in the middle of doing homework, especially when it was boring. Lately, I have been having the same feeling. I feel the urge to escape through the stimulation of my genitals or the simulation of my nervous system by watching something sexually arousing. Both usually happen at the same time anyways. The problem, I believe, is not being skillful with handling my feelings of discomfort and unpleasantness when I do work that I do not enjoy. I am presently struggling to connect to these feelings.

This brings me to the third reason why porn has been such a repetitive pattern in my life, connection. Even when watching porn seems like an artificial way to connect with someone. It does provide a sense of being connected to something, perhaps to our sexual feelings. Perhaps looking at attractive pornstars, apparently having fun, and looking at the camera as if they would want us to be there with them gives us the illusion that we are connected to them. In reality I think that this disconnects us more than it actually connects us. I could talk about the social implications of how this disconnects us from the feminine gender, but for the purpose of this statement I am more interested here in exploring how it disconnects us from our own being, or soul.

When I watch porn, it feels painful. I meditate on a regular basis, so it could be the case that meditation has sensitized me to the dissatisfactory feeling from watching it (it has actually sensitized me to the dissatisfactory feeling of masturbation too). When I watch porn my heart rate goes up, I feel compulsive, lost, disconnected, helpless, hopeless, and encaged in a vice. I do not think that this is the genuine connection that I am longing for. It is quite strange this phenomenon: how in one part of our experience I am feeling connected to a feminine expression of reality but in another part I am actually ignoring and abandoning my own expression of the feminine reality. Insane.

And abandonment is possibly the biggest cause of this pathological behavior. I just wanted to be accepted by my father, I just wanted my mother’s protection of my father’s abuse, and I could not have any, at least during some times in my childhood. I developed a bad relationship with my mother. She became abusive too. So it was both my Dad and my Mom the ones abandoning me through their abuse. It was also them abandoning by not giving me a voice until I got old enough, rebellious enough, depressed enough, and manipulative enough to actually gain one. But of course, my voice did not properly allow me to bond with my parents. It just became a dirty way to negotiate my existence in our household. There had to be a way to escape feeling like shit, like you did not matter, and I found it, and it wasn’t Jesus. This is why porn really does not allow us to connect with ourselves, because we are actually running from ourselves. And we are not guilty. This is how we were treated. They did it to us, and now we do it to ourselves.

Lastly, once I had sex, it certainly changed the experience of watching porn. I had come to know how it felt to have a woman. I had come to know how her body feels when touching mine. What a powerful sensation, what a powerful connection with another human being, sometimes only skin deep, but powerful nonetheless. Missing such sensual experience, trying to relive it in my imagination added an extra layer, an extra reason, an extra energy to the drive that drove me to watch pornography. There was a craving in myself now powerful, that wanted satisfaction, and that wanted to be no more.

So, there is my story of my fucked-up-ness. Wanting to be cool, not wanting to deal with my unpleasant responsibilities, wanting to connect, not wanting to feel like shit, and wanting to relive the sensual bonding with my ex-girlfriends.

There isn’t one cause,
There isn’t one cure.
The battle is long,
And awareness is our sword.

Peace and Freedom to all!

Now this is absolutely spot-on. And as you say, awareness of how we arrived here is essential for understanding how to turn things around and successfully break free from porn addiction.

Thank you RJ for this excellent post, and I wish you every success.