The article on not watching porn has generated a lot of interest so naturally I thought I would revisit it.
I have used pornography on and off through most of my adult life. I’m sure I’m not alone in this. What started as occasional purchases of top-shelf magazines such as Club International and Mayfair moved to hardcore pornography when I had broadband internet in the year 2003.
It was a brave new world in terms of sexual imagery and expression. The porn clips I downloaded and saved on to my computer were far stronger than anything legally available in magazines at the time. All of a sudden I was able to watch acts I could scarcely imagine before the internet.
Its been commented that before the web, porn was not so readily available. There were always dirty magazines for sale at the newsagents, but you had to have nerves of steel to go in there and buy them face to face. Sex shops sold pornographic videos, but the quality was extremely poor and so mostly I looked at magazines.
When I saw the content available on line, much of it for free, I jumped at the chance to watch it. Online porn had one massive advantage over the printed variety in that it was much easier to hide it from parents and sisters. I’ve lost count of the number of times I would go looking for a particular favourite magazine, only to find the magazine suspiciously missing after one of my mother’s tidying up sessions.
Much of the porn I viewed came in 20 minute clips. It was mainly downloaded illegally through file-sharing sites such as kazaa or limewire. I would leave the computer running overnight and return to to find all manner of porn had appeared on my computer. It was possible to download all kinds of porn, more than I really needed. Once it was downloaded, it was saved on my hardrive. Although I downloaded the clips more than 10 years ago, I’ve recently tracked down several on the internet. This is proof that you’ll never be able to hide from a porn video. I can imagine there will be old grannies in nursing homes fifty years from now who will make a point of bringing up their dirty pasts.
By the year 2006, my porn use was raising fears that I was addicted. At the time, I would spend a good a hour most days looking for the hard content, before having a big wanking session for an hour. But I still wasn’t satisfied and I would have to look for more extreme content. Which led to more wanking of course.
I’m not exactly proud of this. I didn’t want to watch so much porn. I convinced myself it was ok. I didn’t have a girlfriend so the porn seemed like the easiest way of releasing my sexual tension.
Recently I’ve come to realise that all that porn wasn’t such a great idea. Porn taught me that sex should be a certain way, one that is purely focused on male sexual pleasure. The sex I have had with women has never been like the sex I have viewed in porn.
Porn isn’t something I actively seek out anymore. I actually find it totally boring. If I want to masturbate, I will think about women I’ve been with. Or I will fantasize about the women I know. I have really surprised myself over this. After using porn for so long, I had conditioned myself to become aroused only by watching graphic clips of people having sex. The orgasms I achieve through fantasy are much more satisfying, partly becuase they are as a result of my own thoughts.
I’m not anti-porn. There may be a valid place for porn within a relationship. Perhaps that is the best place to watch it, where it can be shared so that each partner can derive pleasure from it. But for now, my life is porn free and it’s never been better.