If you’re convinced that compulsive porn use is not an addiction because it’s free (unlike alcohol, drugs, prostitutes or gambling that require plunking down cold, hard cash before you can get your fix), then maybe you haven’t taken a look at the actual costs of porn. Although these costs may seem intangible, they are very real. 

Caution: this article is pretty hard hitting, might be triggering and is designed to wake up the part of you that is done with porn. As read it, see if you can allow yourself to feel the impact of my words.

The Cost of Disconnection with Your Body

Porn disconnects you from your body and puts you squarely up in your head. While watching porn, you’re fantasizing about a flat image on a flat screen, instead of interacting with a real live woman who responds to you, someone you can feel, touch, taste and smell. Even if a sex worker performs for you in a private video chat, you can’t feel the warmth of her touch, listen to her heart beat or feel her breath on your skin. Rather than enjoying a full sensory experience, you’re up in your head, projecting a fantasy on to someone who has been paid to interact with you and pretend that she likes you and wants to please you.

The more your sex life is based on fantasy, instead of real experience with another human being, the deeper the mind/body disconnect and the greater potential for developing PIED (porn-induced erectile dysfunction) in the future. How will you satisfy yourself if you can no longer get it up?

The Cost of Loss of Intimacy

Porn is about objectification. It trains you to focus on certain body parts: big tits, nice legs, big ass. You can fetishize a body part but you can’t be intimate with it, so your capacity to feel closeness with human beings diminishes the more you train yourself to see women for their parts. This stunts your growth emotionally and mentally and keeps you stuck in an adolescent view of women. Real women can sense this immaturity and stay away.

Intimacy is about connection. Porn is about performance; it’s just an act. Ultimately, porn is an ego trip because it’s all about you and your ability to get off. By contrast, intimacy is built over time in a relationship between two consenting human beings who come to deeply trust and care about each other.

The Cost of Thwarting Your Development As A Man

Porn prevents your full initiation into manhood because it keeps you stuck in the fantasy life of an adolescent boy. Instead of doing the inner and outer work to become a man who is in charge of himself and his impulses, you are ruled by porn. The more time you spend on porn, the less time you spend developing yourself personally and professionally, especially with regard to fulfilling your purpose as a man. The cost to you, to your loved ones, to society is immeasurable.

The Cost of Raising the Bar So Real Women Don’t Satisfy

Porn depicts perfect women in perfect poses who are practiced and always ready to please. This sets expectations about real women that are unrealistic, unreasonable and downright unfair. Real women have blemishes, scars, imperfections, moods, triggers and real world problems, just like you. The danger of porn is that it raises the visual and behavioral standards by which you judge and then dismiss women who could potentially be loving partners.

The Cost of Lost Values

How many times have you lied to keep your porn compulsion hidden? Addiction thrives in secrecy. Addicts lie about their compulsions to themselves and to their loved ones. Every time you lie, you chip away at your integrity. 

The more you go down the rabbit hole of porn (and it’s designed to take you deep into that hole), the more you compromise your values. You might have promised yourself many times that you would quit only to cave in to your cravings when feeling stressed or overwhelmed. You may have cycled with porn addiction many times. Every time you cycle, you feel like a failure. In your desperation, you seek relief and so the cycle continues.

And what about promises to those you love? How many times have you promised your wife, girlfriend or partner that you would quit? How this has diminished her trust in you? Do you have a partner who has told you that if she catches you watching porn again, the relationship is over? Are you really willing to take this risk?

The Cost of Time

Time is the most precious thing you own. How much time do you spend watching porn? Do you tell yourself you’ll watch one video and then realize 4 hours later that you’ve gone down the rabbit hole of porn? Are there repairs around the house that desperately need doing that have been left undone due to your fixation? Do you have children or a wife or girlfriend who wants to spend more time with you?

Who would you be without this time-sucking compulsion? How would your life and your feelings about yourself improve if you invested your time in taking care of yourself and the people, work and things that make you feel good about your life?

The Cost of Loved Ones Blaming Themselves

Have you thought about what porn costs your loved ones? Maybe you have a girlfriend or partner who has been understanding about your addiction. Eventually, your continued use of porn will wear down even a woman who was initially compassionate and forgiving. And the problem is that no matter how much you talk about addiction as disease, your loved one will secretly harbor the belief that if only she were beautiful, sexy or exciting enough, you would not need to resort to porn. Porn chips away at your self-worth and the self-worth of your loved ones so slowly that it is difficult to recognize.

The Cost of Going Down the Rabbit Hole of Porn

The more you go down the rabbit hole of porn (and believe me, porn is designed to suck you into its murky bottom), the less the free stuff will satisfy. At this point, you’ll start incurring hard costs for premium content, private chats, visits to hookers, strip clubs and the like. In the words of one addiction expert, “You can’t get enough of what won’t satisfy you.” Read those words again. They clearly depict the cost and desperation of falling into porn’s abyss.

The Costs of Getting Caught Red-Handed

Although you may be able to hide your porn compulsion from your loved ones for some time, eventually, you will be found out. Every addict hits bottom. The questions are: when will it happen and what will it cost? Will it cost you a relationship? Will it cost your marriage? Will it cost the custody of your children? Will it cost your job? Will you end up arrested? What will it cost when someone who looks up to you wanders into a room and finds you engrossed by distorted sexual images on your computer screen with your pants down around your ankles?

The Choice

What would have to happen for you to acknowledge that you have a  problem? How many times do you need to cycle before you get help? What will it cost you to hit bottom? Would you prefer to have a low bottom (losing your job, marriage, children, having charges filed against you) or a high bottom? It’s up to you.

An Offer of Help

As a Sex, Love & Empowerment coach who helps men liberate themselves from porn addiction, one of the first things that I do in client sessions is talk about the real costs of letting yourself be ruled by a compulsion. Next, we’ll work together to help you break free using tools, techniques and practices that will help you get out of your head and back down into your body. Together, we’ll work on replacing the habitual patterns that led you to seek porn in the first place with new neural pathways that allow you to break free from shame and experience deep intimacy with self and others.

It’s not your fault that you’re addicted, but it is your responsibility to change. This is your invitation to become the man that you were meant to be. To learn more about my coaching program and how I work with men, click on Porn Free | Born Free.