Is Porn Addiction Real?

Kevin Anthony 0:12
Welcome to the Love Lab Podcast, a safe place to get real about sex. Whether you’re a man, woman single or couple, this is the show for you. Because well, sex matters. We are your hosts Kevin Anthony and Céline Remy.

Kevin Anthony 0:28
Welcome back to the love lab podcast. This is Episode 81. And it is titled is porn addiction real? This is going to be a deep subject. There are really strong opinions on both sides. We have a ton of notes here that we’ve prepared. So if you see us looking down at our, at our cheat sheets over here, it’s okay because we have a lot of good content that we want to share with you.

Céline Remy 0:53
And this episode was actually stirred from one of our listeners, Ryan. So thank you, Ryan, for reaching out with a good question that helped us come up with this awesome episode today. And Ryan’s question was about what are your thoughts on Nofap? Do you think it’s healthy or not? And that’s what started this whole rabbit hole that we went into.

Kevin Anthony 1:19
Yeah. So first, let’s explain to people what no fat is.

Céline Remy 1:23
Absolutely. And before we explain “NoFap”, Let’s shout out to our sponsor for this episode. Let’s give this shout out to power and mastery because this is for you, all the men out there, whether you want to have harder, stronger erections, whether you want to last longer, or expand your sexual skills and move beyond your basic masturbation and actually learn how to take that to the next level, power and mastery will teach you that so check it out at powerandmastery. com.

Kevin Anthony 1:50
You know, I just realized at this moment as you were reading that, that what you learn in power and mastery is directly relevant to what we’re talking about today. I won’t go into it right now. But when we get to the end about some of the sorts of negative things that can happen, power mastery can help actually fix all those. So anyway, so let’s tell our listeners what exactly NoFap is.

Céline Remy 2:14
Okay, so NoFap is technically a website and a community forum that serves as a support group for those who wish to avoid pornography and masturbation. And I was curious about where the heck does that name come from? And it comes from a slang term fab from like the manga thing, and it’s referring to the male masturbation to the sounds of the masturbation I get five

Kevin Anthony 2:45
guys masturbating. Yes, apparently the sound they think it makes. Yeah, so So basically, just to kind of sum up, no fat, no fat bubbles believes that porn addiction is real and they believe that one of the ways to solve that is to not look at porn or not masturbate. So of course, this has been hugely controversial because, you know, the porn industry doesn’t agree with that. And not everybody who studied it agrees with that.

Kevin Anthony 3:16
But there are people that do agree with it. So it’s kind of a controversial issue. And we don’t really want to focus too much on the NoFap movement. That’s not really what this is about. But that question got us really into thinking about, okay, is porn addiction real? And if so, you know, what are some stats? What are some consequences, and we have our own personal experience because we’ve worked with quite a few clients.

Kevin Anthony 3:40
And we have seen this issue come up over and over again. And so we’ll get to that a little bit later about our personal experiences with clients. But anyway, that’s kind of how we got on this subject.

Céline Remy 3:53
So to answer Ryan’s question, you know, hey, do you think it’s healthy or not? I think that anytime you interrupt a negative pattern that has not good results for you, it’s probably going to be healthy. And so depending on where you stand in your life when you start the practice of NoFap, and what your intentions are, and that it could create good results, but it all depends on your wise and on where you’re at. So again, it’s more of a case by case.

Céline Remy 4:24
One thing that I do find positive about the NoFap movement is the whole social forum that’s on it, because as you will see more when we go through this episode, the loneliness and the not belonging, and the lack and connection can cause a lot of issues. So nofap creates a forum a place for men to gather together to talk to bond, and that alone in itself, I think is probably the most powerful of the entire practice.

Kevin Anthony 4:59
Yeah, and move gets to that more when we get a little deeper into addiction itself. How that really factors in. But let’s so if we start with the question is, is porn addiction real? Like is it actually a real thing that happens? Well, the people that say that it isn’t real often refer to the fact that porn addiction is not listed in the DSM. And the DSM is an acronym. It refers to the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Kevin Anthony 5:30
So it’s kind of like the Bible in the health and mental illness, you know, industry. Now, I will state upfront that even though something is listed in the DSM doesn’t necessarily mean in my opinion, that it’s all that real. There have been things that have been listed in the DSM that the people who were responsible for getting them listed in the DSM, later on, said You know, it now that really shouldn’t be there. So, but it is what the psychological world sees as the final decision.

Kevin Anthony 6:02
So what does the DSM say about porn addiction? Well, nothing. It’s not listed in there at all. It’s not in the most current version, the most current article I could find referencing and I don’t own a copy of the DSM, although one of my ex-girlfriends did, she’s a psychologist, and she was always like, I see if it’s in the DSM. I don’t own a copy. So I just had to search on the internet. And in 2019, they were saying it still was not listed.

Kevin Anthony 6:31
But the people who do believe that porn addiction is real will often cite a different manual, one that is used internationally, the International Classification of Diseases and related health problems. The ICD is the international standard diagnostic tool for epidemiology, health management, and clinical purposes. It’s maintained by the World Health Organization, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. We’re going to skip through some of that.

Céline Remy 7:03
We don’t want to bore you here.

Kevin Anthony 7:05
Yeah. So they actually list in the ICD, something called compulsive sexual behavior disorder. And that includes a bunch of different things, one of which is porn. So some people say, Well, just because in the US DSM doesn’t recognize it, the ICD does sort of not directly

Céline Remy 7:25
so now we’ve shown you that there are two camps those who believe that it’s really those who believe that it’s not and you can find proof to correlate like both ideas, right? where it’s like, yeah,

Kevin Anthony 7:41
There’s a truth bomb, right? It’s like almost no matter what I do, you have you can find one person that has proof for it. One person has proof against it.

Céline Remy 7:49
So that led us to want to go deeper into addiction. And there is a man who really does a lot of research around addiction and came up with some fantastic ideas around reframing really what addiction is, he’s an expert in it. I’m gonna let you pronounce his name because I don’t want it. I butchered it.

Kevin Anthony 8:12
I believe that it’s Dr. Gabor Mate. Mm-hmm. I think that’s how you pronounce it.

Céline Remy 8:17
So one of the first things that Dr. Mate says is addiction is not a choice anybody makes it’s a response to emotional pain. Okay. So I love that in terms of like, that means that there’s something deeper underneath that you’re trying to solve for the behavior. So let’s go a little further there. He says that addiction meets some essential human needs that weren’t met in that person’s life. Okay. All right. So now we starting to understand that deeper.

Céline Remy 8:51
Now. He’s also saying that addiction is manifested in any behavior that a person finds temporary pleasure relief in but suffers negative consequences as a result, and does not give up or cannot give up despite the negative consequences. Wow, that’s big. And let’s just add the last sentence before you come in Kevin that virtually according to Dr. Mate, virtually any area of human activity can become addictive, depending on the person’s relationship to it.

Kevin Anthony 9:27
Absolutely. I mean that that’s, that’s huge. And this is more cutting edge research on addiction. Because the old researchers just used to say things like, Well, it’s because there’s a physical addiction to the substance like when it comes to alcohol or drugs, but what the new research is really discovering is that there’s a lot more to it than just that physical addiction. And that literally anything can become addictive.

Kevin Anthony 9:54
Because it really comes down to the person itself and I love the way that that document tape but it is that anything that a person finds temporary pleasure in but suffers negative consequences. So it got me thinking like, I know I personally know people who have suffered from other addictions that you wouldn’t necessarily think of as things that you could become addicted to. So I just want to look up as a couple of examples of that.

Kevin Anthony 10:20
So for instance, video games, right? There’s no real physical substance that’s going into your body that you can become addicted to. Do you have withdrawal symptoms when you don’t hold the video game in your hands? So I just want to look up some numbers on video games and one article I found stated that an estimated 72% of American households play video games, and an estimated 9% of the 3034 participants in this study showed signs of video game addiction.

Kevin Anthony 10:53
So 9% of the people that play video games show signs of video game addiction. Okay, Well, that’s interesting. Here’s another interesting one. workaholism. How many of you know people who are addicted to work?

Céline Remy 11:08
How many of you are addicted to work? I know I’ve been at a certain time in my life nuts, not under long-term. But I’ve noticed the effect when I focus on a project to get it done. And that becomes my sole focus and I breathe live dream it and it’s like nothing else exists. And it’s like it’s compulsive that you get up you have to get it done. You have to do this. And I feel lucky that it was only for a short period of time for something specific that I was trying to accomplish. But I do know people who it’s their lifestyle,

Kevin Anthony 11:39
we know lots of people because being entrepreneurs ourselves, we tend to hang around with this entrepreneur kind of circles and people and we see these people that will work seven days a week 12 hours a day and if you’re not doing what they’re like What’s wrong with you? What kind of entrepreneur Are you know, so they’re addicted to work now according Are you

Céline Remy 11:56
meeting in like social circles and all they want to talk about is work.

Kevin Anthony 12:00
Yeah, that happens too. But according to some statistics that I did find when researching this is that workaholism affects an estimated 30% of the general population. 30%. So that’s huge. So we’ve got video games, we’ve got workaholism, social media. This was an interesting one, because, and I find there’s, there’s probably a reason for this. And it’s not just a coincidence, but when researching social media addiction, I found it very hard to find any studies or any relevant articles passed about 2014 2015.

Kevin Anthony 12:40
This is interesting because social media is so much bigger now than it was in 2014 or 15. I’m guessing that there’s been some suppression of that data, but even with what I could find searching around, from back then they were estimating 350 million social media users suffer from Facebook addiction syndrome. They even called it Facebook addiction syndrome. And that was just Facebook, I tried to find some more recent numbers for Facebook couldn’t really find anything. I mean, obviously it maybe if I keep researching, I dig deep enough, I’ll find it.

Kevin Anthony 13:14
But that wasn’t really the focus of this show. I tried to find some good numbers on Instagram, and nothing current. It’s all old stuff. But even at those old numbers, you’re seeing massive amounts of people that are addicted to social media. So the point that we want to make here is if we’re going to discuss a topic like is porn addiction real, especially when you have two camps very much entrenched in their thought of whether or not it’s real, the absolutely not doesn’t exist in the DSM. It’s a fake thing. And then the absolutely it does, and it’s massively harmful cancer and relationships

Céline Remy 13:49
and men’s lives and women’s lives. Yeah. So

Kevin Anthony 13:52
So again, what is the answer? Well, they’re kind of both right, in a sense that you’re not necessarily addicted to the porn, but anything that you find temporary pleasure in that that can have negative consequences can become addictive

Céline Remy 14:07
and anything that you can’t seem to stop like that whole, like, you know, some of the clients that I’ve worked with for his like, yeah, it’s like two, three times a day. But then what he was noticing and I think we’ll go more in that later, too was for him, he was realizing that he was reaching out to porn when he felt anxiety. So that was a way to ease his anxiety, or when he felt not really motivated.

Céline Remy 14:35
And so some of the things that we walked him through was like, Hey, what are other activities that can or your anxiety? Like meditations, like taking walks in nature, deep belly breathing, I mean, so many different things, you know, it has to be tailored for the person, and what are other things you can do to pick yourself up and one of the rules that we put in place was also that he was not to go on watch porn and masturbate online with porn on this he was feeling good.

Céline Remy 15:05
If he wasn’t feeling good first he had to tend to that. Then if he still wanted to, he would then get porn.

Kevin Anthony 15:13
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I forgot one more on the list of things that I was researching that people can become addicted to you wouldn’t think of. This one I’ve personally experienced not because I was addicted to it because I worked in the industry. And that’s exercise. Exercise addiction is really a real thing. And you know, in the stats that I found they’re estimating about 3% of gym-goers are actually addicted like they show signs of actual addiction.

Kevin Anthony 15:39
But those numbers ramp away up when you look at different sections of the exercise population. So among Sports Science University students that jump to 7% so it more than doubles. When it comes to runners. Some research was showing 25% of amateurs qualify as exercise addicted along with the person Was doubling to 50% in marathon runners and I trained with and I personally trained people who were into like triathlons and stuff like that. And I can tell you, they absolutely exercise addict.

So just a few more things to kind of throw out there that, that addiction isn’t so much about the thing itself, you know, excluding, you know, something that has a physical effect, like, you know, a drug or you know, even sugar or something like that.

Kevin Anthony 16:29
But outside of that, it’s actually more of the person and what they gain from it, like, you know, because often people say I exercise. So what’s the big deal if you’re addicted to exercise? Well, they’ve done studies that show that these people that do these excessive marathons all the time, they’re actually not healthy, because something is healthy for you to a point. And then past that point, it actually has a negative consequence so you can actually over exercise and harm your body in some pretty serious ways. Not Just like your warrior, your joints out or you have pain here, they’re like you can actually literally shorten your lifespan from over-exercising.

Kevin Anthony 17:09
There are people that get addicted to water, drinking too much water is a big problem too, because it’ll flush all the minerals and vitamins out of your body and cause all kinds of deficiencies. And so if we go back to Dr. Mate, and how he says, anything that brings temporary relief and pleasure, but can have a negative side effect is something that you could potentially become addicted to. So then the question is, and I’m going to, I’m leading you into the next part here is, is what is it about porn that makes people addicted?

Céline Remy 17:40
And I can’t wait to get to the part where we also reframe some of those words and see how we’re going to say that but right now let’s look at what this could act as a cover-up for something much deeper. So people could be medicating their depression and anxiety just like the client I mentioned earlier. That was self-soothing practices, that People can be acting out a hostility that they can’t let into their consciousness. Or, you know, they could even be explained like not just the hostility, but also maybe the fantasy or some sexual things that they might think is deviant or out of the norm or whatever that the judging, it could be an arousal disorder.

Céline Remy 18:22
It could be something around a denial of a disturbing sexual preference or orientation. Again, like not owning your kings or what you like, it could be a fear of getting too close to a primary partner. And I think that’s what a lot of people are afraid of, because that has been the experience for some couples where the woman’s like, he’s choosing porn over me. And so, ultimately, it’s not porn. It’s he’s fear of intimacy. Really, that’s the issue that’s what we need to tackle. But anyway, let’s move on. It could be a recurring sexual dysfunction with a partner. It could be inadequate. reaction to or even have unspoken resentment towards a primary partner.

Céline Remy 19:05
I mean, these things are real, these things are deep, and some people are very, not comfortable bringing these to light. So they’d rather like put this band-aid or use porn so that they don’t have to feel or acknowledge or act on what’s truly going on, because that’s painful, or that can be scary. I mean, especially if you are in a committed relationship and you lost the attraction. I mean, how do you go and say, I’m not attracted to you anymore, like you like maybe it’s easier to just have watch porn to get me going so that I can still have sex with you when we have to have it. And so I see why people would choose that at a certain time.

Céline Remy 19:45
But ultimately, and by the way, I want to, I want to, I don’t want to, I want to bring in somebody new here in the equation. It’s Marty Klein, who’s a sexologist, and really author or books I mean really fascinating man. And what he says is that no one lives a vibrant, intimate marriage in order to consume pornography. Most married porn users are in positive, satisfying marriages. Others are unsatisfying marriages caused by depression, anxiety, selfishness, poor communication, alcohol abuse, or conflicts about parenting money. religions in-laws and sex. I mean, you name it.

Céline Remy 20:25
And these are as documented by the Bible, the Greeks, the Koran and checks are as people have had marital problems for these non-porn reasons since ancient times

Kevin Anthony 20:36
Oh shocking.

Céline Remy 20:37
Yes. So I love what he’s saying. Like it maybe it seems like it’s porn who’s doing that’s doing that, but it’s really it’s not. It’s not the cause. It’s the symptom. The causes are all these other things underneath the depression, the anxiety, the resentment, the fears, the disconnect, all of that are the True cause that then pushes people towards having compulsive behavior.

Kevin Anthony 21:06
Yeah. And like anything else, it can be used therapeutically. Mm-hmm. And it can destroy you give somebody too much of a medication that’s supposed to cure them and it’ll kill them. And it’s very similar here. There are actually circumstances when doing coaching work with people around sexuality, that you could use porn as a therapy.

Céline Remy 21:29
Absolutely.

Kevin Anthony 21:31
And there are times in which, for instance, when we’re working with men who have premature ejaculation, one of the common things that we see with those people is that they masturbate frequently to porn, which then trains them to ejaculate quickly. And so in a case like that, we would tell them we would recommend that they temporarily stopped porn until they can retrain their body again. function the way that it should. So it can go either way.

Céline Remy 22:04
And you know, we’ve already done episodes on porn and stuff. But I want to mention that again, in case you haven’t listened to our episodes on porn before, remember that porn is not a place for education for is entertainment, it’s fiction work. And it’s just if you view it as entertainment, it’s a very different experience. And also remember that you don’t have to masturbate to watch porn, you can just watch porn for the sake of watching porn.

Céline Remy 22:30
Like they don’t have to go together. And that’s maybe is one of the issues that happens for most people who choose to masturbate to porn is that when they do that, they put all their power outside of themselves to something out there and they have no more connection to their body. They don’t know how they’re moving their body, how they breathing wherever they are in their arousal scales or anything and then lose that connection with themselves.

Céline Remy 22:53
And that truly is where the problem lies. It’s not in fact that they’re watching porn. It’s in the fact that they’re not connected to what they’re doing. You can’t be doing it well like, like multitasking is a myth. You can only do one thing at a time. So you masturbate or you watch porn. You don’t do them together.

Kevin Anthony 23:10
Yeah, we’ll talk more at the end about some of the negative side effects that we have personally seen with clients who use too much porn but we’ll get to that in a bit. Okay,

Céline Remy 23:21
So there were a few things that I wanted to add from Marty Klein that he was bringing into light and his opinion was that none of the hallmarks of true addiction are found with pornography use okay. So this includes the need for increased doses over time because of tolerance, a measurable change in the body’s response to the substance and awful withdrawal symptoms when the substance is decreased or removed.

Céline Remy 23:46
You don’t find that in the porn addiction. Really, that that is happening. The concept of biological addiction to pornography has been rejected by professional groups like lots of groups basically. Now, one of the things that this leads us to is another study by Joshua grubs. And basically, what the summary of that study which was done in 2015 and studied like thousands of people is that seeing oneself as a porn addict was predicted not by how much porn one views but by the degree of religiosity and moral attitude towards sex.

Céline Remy 24:32
And that people who believe themselves to be porn addict need help with understanding what their use of porn means, you know,

Kevin Anthony 24:39
Can we just go back to that first part that you talked about? Yes. Which was showing that seeing oneself as a porn addict was predicted not by how much porn one views but by the degree of religiosity has moral attitudes. So basically what that saying is, it’s all relative. In other words, if you’re a deeply religious person, you could watch just a little bit of porn, and you would consider yourself a porn addict.

Kevin Anthony 25:04
Or you could maybe not be religious or have different moral standards and watch a ton of porn and think I just love sex. There’s nothing there’s no addiction there.

Céline Remy 25:15
I have a healthy sexuality and healthy sex drive.

Kevin Anthony 25:17
So, but here’s the thing, if we’re talking about is something truly addictive, we have to have an objective measure. Hmm. And we can’t have it be subjective based on your religion or your morals or whatever. And I think that’s partly why this debate keeps going back and forth with both sizes.

Kevin Anthony 25:38
There’s no way to really objectively measure whether or not this is actually addictive. least not that we found in our research so far. Maybe we have some people in the industry listening or like yes, there was a study. Okay, let us know that would be interesting.

Céline Remy 25:52
Okay. I want to share about what they found, though again, at this, this study by grabs, they were saying that by telling people that their use of born institutes disease, they are promulgating suffering and anxiety instilling into people that their use of pornography means that there is something wrong with them and that this use has potentially dire consequences.

Kevin Anthony 26:14
Yeah, this is the reverse placebo effect. Right. So this is one of those things. And we this has been well documented in medical science, like the even during the big HIV crisis, they found that just simply giving people the diagnosis of being infected with HIV, their health immediately declined, and they died.

Kevin Anthony 26:33
So it’s a similar thing here. Whereas when somebody goes out and gets a diagnosis of being a porn addict, all of a sudden that then causes all of this anxiety and depression and other negative symptoms that come with it.

Céline Remy 26:45
Yeah. And so basically what that means is using the term porn addiction is a term that we don’t use in our practice when people come until last I’m a porn addict and like, okay, okay, well What does that mean to you? And then we break down how do you use porn? Why do you use porn? What are you trying to get through that usage, and this is really how we can dive into the real cause of it and not just stay on the surface.

Céline Remy 27:16
And the more you will go around diagnosis, people labeling them as porn addicts, the more you are going to shame these people and continue enforcing something that’s not working. And it’s not helping. It’s not helping you if you are the person who is in the relationship with that person, it’s not helping them to see themselves that successful. I’m not saying like, Hey, don’t look at it and bury your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist.

Céline Remy 27:45
But like don’t give this shitty diagnosis half-asses just because you’re judgmental of their ways of doing sex. Maybe acknowledge that why you’ve got a really different sex drive and I can’t really relate or since you’ve been focusing so much On watching sex with other people, I don’t feel connected and intimate with you anymore. Like this is more real than saying, Oh, you porn addict you Oh poor me.

Kevin Anthony 28:13
So, let’s talk a little bit about our personal observations and experience with porn and its potential negative side effects. So, I have had even before I started doing this work as actual, like, legit work, I would have male friends come to me and ask me questions about well, you know, how can I last longer and, you know, I want to get better and every time that we would start to go down that road, we would always find at the bottom of a bunch of layers of stuff that they would spew out is that they had a porn addiction issue.

Kevin Anthony 28:54
I mean, almost every time that was the case with all of these guys We’re coming. So we would start talking about Okay, well, you know, how long can you last and bold? And then eventually you get down to? Well, yeah, you know, I masturbate like every day to porn. And what I found is that was a big contributor to the premature ejaculation if they were experiencing because, and we’ve given you stats on this before, like how long the average person watches a porn video. It’s a couple of minutes, you know.

Kevin Anthony 29:27
That’s why these sites that have just short little clips are so popular because most guys don’t get more than a couple of minutes into it. The problem with that is, is that you put on a super hyper-stimulating porn video. Then you start masturbating and then two or three minutes later, you ejaculate you’re like, Damn, close the computer, okay, I’m out here, you know, but if you do that enough, over time, you’re literally training your body to ejaculate faster. So that’s definitely one of the negative side effects that I’ve seen, some men have with porn use.

Céline Remy 30:06
Another one is a loss of desire for sex with actual humans. And you know, it’s an interesting one because as I was reading this, I thought, well, I also see a loss of desire for connecting with human beings just by being online. And so it’s not just with pornography, I think it has to do with this whole online world that we’ve created, where people have such a hard time not looking and ever being in, in their eyes, I can be with somebody, and somehow, I don’t know if it shields you when you’re behind a screen.

Céline Remy 30:44
And whether it’s through watching porn, whether it’s through being on social media on hundreds of different forums or whatever it is. The lack of interaction with other human beings starts to be very evident and you are inability to really connect can be reinforced by that. And then the whole thing too about story, one more thing is to remember about expectations.

Céline Remy 31:12
We did a whole episode on expectations. And if you only look at things that are not real, like we mentioned earlier porn is fiction, but you think that this is real life, you’re in for a surprise with reality, it’s not going to match up the expectations and the whole scenarios that you’ve created in your head.

Kevin Anthony 31:36
Yeah, and that’s basically exactly what I was going to share next is that the other thing that we find a lot is that and this actually really factors in with some men who are experiencing Ed, part of what happens if they reach that level of you know, quote, unquote, porn addiction is that they’re used to seeing these and I’m going to say women because I’m promoting primarily talking about men right now.

Kevin Anthony 32:00
But it does not only men you know who are watching porn with women, but it can also go the other way around just as well.

Céline Remy 32:06
More and more women are watching porn,

Kevin Anthony 32:07
But you’re seeing these exaggerated bodies, right? Giant Boobs, giant penises, you know, super skinny waist, like all these, you know, perfect this perfect that and you’re seeing them do things that well really, this is not most people’s experience in real life. And that’s why we say it’s entertainment. Right? And it’s fiction.

Kevin Anthony 32:30
The problem comes in, is when you watch lots of that, and then you go to your real-life scenario. And you’re kind of like, there are wrinkles and cellulite and they’re a lot smaller, it’s a lot smaller or Oh, my scream like that.

Céline Remy 32:48
Some foreplay or attention or affection before I put it in.

Kevin Anthony 32:55
The real experience doesn’t match the fantasy experience that They have when they’re important and that’s where a problem can come in. And so they find themselves, you know, in the bedroom with their partner not being super turned on because it’s not what they’re used to seeing.

Céline Remy 33:12
And the last thing that happens with heavy users of porn. See I’d rather say heavy users than porn addiction. There is a decrease in sexual pleasure doing actual sex. And the reason is exactly what I explained earlier because you’ve totally disconnected yourself, you desensitize yourself because you’re always watching on the outside and you’re not connected with what’s happening inside.

Céline Remy 33:36
Then if you’re not tuning in, you have no idea where you are on your pleasure. And then it makes it really hard to feel things and that’s another thing that we deal with, especially that I work with hands-on with my clients that have lost sensations ability to feel anything like you mean you’re touching me and I’m like, Yes, I’m touching you like, they don’t even feel it.

Céline Remy 33:56
We have to reconnect these like Different nerve pathways in their bodies for them to start to feel things again. And that’s, that’s really what’s happening there.

Kevin Anthony 34:06
Yeah, so so those are some common things that we see that are potentially negatives if you use porn too much, or you use it in the wrong way, but to be fair, and as I mentioned earlier, sometimes it can be used in a positive way. And there are definitely times where maybe a couple they have kind of lost a little bit of that spark, maybe they need a little help getting in the mood, you know, watching a little bit of porn can then suddenly get them super jump-started, and then they tackle each other, you know,

Céline Remy 34:35
yeah, I can help them have a deep discussion that creates intimacy because they’re witnessing a scene, something they haven’t done, or they could watch something they’re thinking about doing like a threesome. I mean, there’s so many things.

Kevin Anthony 34:46
Well, it’s sure and that’s, that’s another good point, too, is that we’ve talked about this many times, especially in our episode about fantasy versus reality. One of the things that we talked about in that episode was that this is true. A lot for women, but it could be true on both sides as well is that a woman might fantasize about something but that doesn’t mean she actually wants it to come true.

Kevin Anthony 35:08
But say using porn could be a way that you could experience that thing you’re fantasizing without actually doing. For instance, the threesome is a great idea. Right? So, some women you know, I mean, men love threesomes. Women love threesomes, but not everybody loves threesomes. And so a woman might be fantasizing about having a threesome, but at the end of the day, she doesn’t really want her man to fuck somebody else. Right?

Kevin Anthony 35:32
And so one potential way would be to watch a threesome in porn. And that can kind of simulate the experience without actually having to do it. So there are positives and negatives. And it’s not as simple as Yes, it’s evil or No, it’s not. It’s really all in how you use it. And it’s really up to the person itself, and what they’re trying to get from it.

Céline Remy 35:56
Yes. And so if you come from a place where you’re healthy, where you get needs met where you know how to self soothe and you just want to enhance your life This will have benefits for you. If you come from a place where you traumatize you carrying deep shame, you have all these hang-ups, this will only increase whatever is already there. So be very aware of where you’re coming from.

Céline Remy 36:20
And so too tie it all the way up as we are ending this episode to Ryan’s question about the nofap some of the things that they do recommend is to turn off porn to stop masturbation and it’s like, you go out, socialize, you exercise, you feel your body differently, you probably start to eat better. I mean, these are all different things that will make your life better. So I see a lot of benefits for that and you should be doing that anyway, whatever not to watch porn,

Kevin Anthony 36:49
whether you’re masturbating or not. You know, we talked just a little bit about some of the newer studies but one of the big things they’re finding with addiction is that one of the primary things that cause addiction is lack of Yes, there’s a great TED talk out there. I don’t remember who gave it, but you can go find it. And they’re really finding out that addiction is often the result of a lack of connection, trying to make up for that lack of connection.

Céline Remy 37:14
So go find real connection, connect with yourself, connect with others. And that’s really that the beauty in life, that’s really what matters.

Kevin Anthony 37:26
All right, there you have it. All right, everybody. That’s all the time we have for this episode. And we will see you next week. We hope you liked this episode of the love lab podcast. If you enjoyed this show, leave a comment and share it with your friends.

Céline Remy 37:47
And if you want more, we have an entire digital library with the best sex tips and Relationship Advice at Celine Remy that’s CELINEREMY.com so Join us in the sex vault to continue this adventure.

Kevin Anthony 38:04
Thanks for listening,

Céline Remy 38:05
and remember, you’re amazing