Is Porn to Blame for Your E.D.?
That’s the million dollar questions isn’t it? Well, I can tell you this…almost all, and I mean almost ALL, of my twenty year-old gents who walk into my office due to erectile issues started watching porn around the age of 10 or 12 and frequently masturbated to porn starting around age 13. Of this group, almost all of their porn was consumed online and almost none had an underlying medical issue that would be contributing to their E.D.
How did it get this way?
Well, remember the US Supreme Court in 1997 struck down the Communications Decency Act for violating the First Amendment for censoring of the internet. That meant that the powers that be of the porn industry really moved in online and started to walk away from Pay-Per-View mediums in droves. Since about the year 2000, online porn has gotten cheaper to produce, with better recording quality, and easier to deliver to eager customers. Today, any young person can google a word like “breasts” or “tits” and click on images to be taken to a buffet of sites that they can see and find what they want.
For a young adolescent mind that is developing its natural sexual neuropathways, this does pose a problem. Porn is just too “easy,” too “intense,” too “controlled,” and several other things for this stage of the developing sexual mind.
In preadolescence and adolescence, we need our developing sexual minds to create their own unique, realistic, age-sensitive, and slowly seductive neuropathways. It;’s absolutely vital for the brain to go through this process, because it’s the foundation for the mind and body connection needed for successful connection and control of performance during intercourse.
Without going through this developmental stage many young men end up in my office not able to get and maintain and erection for intercourse with another person. When they are alone and happily masturbating to porn there is no erectile issue. Once they don’t have the safety net of porn and are wanting to physically be with another person, the problems are very present.
But why?
There is a myriad of factors for porn interrupting one’s ability to sexually perform with a partner. The most common thread is that the level of expectations and understanding of what sex actually is has been altered. When porn is the main source of sexual education (yes, even as a fully grown adult) and experiences, we lose touch with what reality looks like. Whether that reality is a fully-formed human being that has beautiful imperfections, or the feel of being in another body, or even understanding the limitations of what a partner would like to perform during sex.
Porn has proven time and time again to be incredibly detrimental to one’s healthy sex life if it is used or watched in excess.
If you are experiencing E.D. symptoms, call for a free 15-minute consult.
As always,
Gabriela