You might be surprised, maybe even shocked, to find out how often a man comes into my office and asks, “In sex, how are you supposed to get excited if you’re not watching porn?”
That’s right—he’s facing a friendly naked woman who wants to have sex, but she doesn’t like porn, so he has to get excited without resorting to familiar fantasies. What’s a poor guy to do?
Yes, partly this is a porn issue: for most men (and tens of millions of women), over 90% of their sexual encounters involve masturbation. And for most men today (especially those under 40), that may involve porn 99% of the time. So most men become accustomed to porn as the first step to arousal.
But beyond porn, most guys (and everyone else) spend too much of their lives looking at a screen. Think zoom, social media, texting, AI, gambling sites, maybe even dating apps. When people do congregate in person, they inevitably look at their phones instead of each other. You saw this the last time you were in a restaurant; in fact, you probably did it the last time you were in a restaurant.
FUDDY-DUDDY?
So what’s the problem with this? Or I am simply an old fuddy-duddy? (Hmm, perhaps the expression “fuddy-duddy” suggests that I am.)
Today, Americans don’t much learn the skills (and thus the pleasure) of being connected with another person face-to-face in real time. As our century unfolds, we’re watching a downward spiral in human knowledge and behavior: people are less skilled in person, so they choose more time online. This makes them less relaxed in person, so they choose even more time online.
Now back to sex.
As you’ve probably discovered for yourself, sex with a real person in real time in the real world—i.e., physically—is never perfect. It may be wonderful for a few moments, but sooner rather than later, the real world intrudes: your shoulder hurts, she bites you too hard (or not at all), a car alarm goes off outside, you need more lube, your period starts ahead of schedule, you didn’t orgasm when you thought you would, somebody farted.
None of these has to ruin sex—although if you lack certain emotional skills, you’ll blame things like this whenever you stop enjoying it.
Which leads us back to porn. Or, more precisely, masturbating with porn—because virtually nobody just looks at porn without eventually stroking themselves. And why do people like looking at porn when they masturbate? Because it leads them closer to a perfect sexual “experience” than they can have with a partner. They select the porn, the time and place, and the exact manual stimulation. And unless responsibility turns someone on (now there’s a fetish), while masturbating with porn they can enjoy not having to care about a partner’s experience.
I’m not endorsing this arrangement, I’m just reporting on the human species.
So back to our initial question: is there a problem with people (OK, men) retreating from partner sex into masturbation with porn? (Note: if a partner complains of being sexually deprived and blames porn, this couple doesn’t have a porn problem, they have a mismatched desire problem; porn consumption didn’t cause this, and eliminating his porn consumption won’t change it.)
100 MILLION FREE PORN VIDEOS
There’s now over 100 million free porn videos online. And if someone can’t find exactly what they want, they can now use A.I. to custom-design the porn they want. How can imperfect sex with an actual imperfect person compete with that?
Of course, porn can’t hug you or kiss you. But with the skillful use of one’s hands (with or without toys), people can have a darn good physical experience masturbating, while porn provides the gateway to the emotional “experience” a given masturbator wants.
Which brings up Aristotle. While establishing the framework for Western logic, science, and ethics (and tutoring the teenage Alexander for three years before he became The Great), Aristotle found time to be a theatre critic. He said the role of tragedy was “catharsis”—giving audiences experiences of intense emotions, supposedly leading to psychological balance and heightened empathy.
One could argue that this is what separates great art from pop culture—when consuming the Merchant of Venice, or Guernica, or Psycho, or I’d Rather Go Blind, we actually FEEL the feelings of the protagonists. That’s true for joyful great art as well, such as Rodin’s The Kiss, Roy Orbison’s Pretty Woman, or The Shawshank Redemption.
So is it too high-falutin’ to ask what emotional “experience” is the goal of someone masturbating to porn? Since people are increasingly turning away from real partners, and will do so even more as A.I. beckons, this is actually a crucial question.
ONE OF MY PERKS
If you have the privilege of asking a few thousand people this question (a perk of being a sex therapist for 44 years), you’ll hear that people want to feel, variously, capable; manly; dominant; accepted; submissive; attractive; desirable; normal; calm; complete; confident; and that they live in a world of erotic abundance, not scarcity.
Many people would love to get these emotional experiences from partner sex. Alas, they can’t—they don’t know how, they don’t feel eligible, their partner doesn’t want to, they don’t have a partner.
The way to have emotionally satisfying sexual experiences with a partner—which includes getting aroused without porn—is to focus on two things: (1) one’s sensory experience, and (2) the connection with one’s partner. Under the right conditions, our body wants to get aroused, and our mind wants to experience desire.
The right conditions include being present; liking and trusting the other person; accepting one’s body exactly as it is; communicating one’s desires and experience; paying attention to bodily sensations; and having reasonable expectations.
Remember: sex is not primarily about what the bodies do; it’s about how the people feel.
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