The Fastest Way to Quit Porn - What the Research Shows

All right, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. Connor Beaton here. Today, we're gonna be diving into the topic of quitting pornography. There's a lot of online noise around porn. Some people say that it's the best thing ever, and you know, that it's so good, it's harmless, don't worry about it, it's not doing anything to you. And on the other end of the spectrum, people say it's destroying men, it's completely destroying relationships. But when you actually look at the research, when you actually dig into some of the research, which I have done, and which is what we're going to do today, something much more interesting begins to actually reveal itself. And if you're a man who has struggled to quit pornography, or maybe you're just somebody that's wanting to reduce your usage, the science actually points to some very specific things that matter in reduction and that matter in quitting it. So today I wanna break down 5 key points, 5 key findings from recent research on pornography use around relationships and addiction and what you as a man need to understand in order to either reduce your porn usage or kick it altogether. Because the truth is, quitting porn isn't just about discipline. It's not about your willpower, right? It's about the actual psychology, what's happening inside your brain, the relationship that you have to yourself and your partner. And it's oftentimes about your shame. So let's start with the first major finding on that note. The biggest relationship problem with porn isn't porn itself, it's the secrecy surrounding porn. So the biggest relationship problem with porn isn't porn itself. It's not actually about what you're watching or getting into. It is about the secrecy around the pornography. It's the fact that you're not telling anybody. And one of the most interesting studies followed couples for over a month using daily diaries. So each person in the couple was writing down a diary and talking about their lives and what was going on. And every day couples recorded whether they watched porn or not, whether their partner knew or not. They rated and ranked their level of relationship satisfaction. And then they talked about their intimacy in these daily journals. And here's what the researchers found, which I think is interesting. Porn use itself on its own didn't automatically destroy the relationship, but the secret about porn use did. So it's the fact that it's not being talked about, you know, what you're watching isn't being talked about, it's being done in secret, you know, in your bedroom, in the bathroom, when the other person's not home. So when somebody used pornography without their significant other actually knowing, they reported lower relationship satisfaction, less intimacy, more distance emotionally, psychologically, and sexually. But when pornography use was known about, so when it was communicated or openly discussed, the negative effects were much, much smaller. So in many cases, when the couple was open about their porn usage, there was little to no negative effects at all. And this is just a basic relationship rule, right? The basic relationship rule is you don't want to guess where the other person stands or what they're doing or a decision that they're making, right? A great sort of sentiment or rule that you want to have in your relationship is that the best relationships are the ones where there's zero, there's little to zero guesswork, where you don't have to guess whether or not the person is doing something or not because it's just being communicated. So the problem, as researchers have found it, is that it's not the behavior necessarily on its own. It's when it's not communicated about. The problem is the secrecy and the disconnection around it. And this is where porn becomes a kind of private world, where a part of you gets sequestered off and it's your fantasies. It's what you want to explore. It's your sexual identity that gets sequestered away. And what research found is that the more a man hides it, the more that he conceals it, what it does is it creates shame, it creates distance, it creates emotional isolation, it creates resentment that ends up building up, which is ironically the thing that then makes you as a man want to use porn more. So it becomes a self-fulfilling reinforcing cycle, right? You use porn, you don't talk about it, you don't share about it, it makes you feel ashamed, it makes you want to hide it, and then that charges your system to want to do it more. So the main thing here is that porn addiction and porn use often thrives in secrecy and isolation. And one of the most powerful things that you can do to begin to quit pornography is to bring it out in the open. If you're not talking about it and you're in a relationship, it's probably where you need to start. Quitting it in isolation without your significant other knowing is probably going to be very hard. But if you really don't wanna do that, then it might mean that you need to talk to a coach, talk to a therapist. If you're comfortable with it, talk to your significant other, talk to a trusted friend. You know, we have the Man Talks Alliance. It is a great place for you to do this work. We have hundreds and hundreds of men. I mean, there's thousands of men in the alliance, but we have hundreds of men that are working on this exact thing. So find a men's group. And begin to disclose what's happening and get some accountability because secrecy is the fuel for every addiction. But secrecy with porn is often one of the main fuelers. Number 2, key finding number 2 from the research is that porn actually affects men and women very differently. And this is where I think the research gets really interesting. Another study actually looked at couples who, couples and their sort of like daily, sexual dynamics, their sexual arousal, how often they wanted to have sex, et cetera, and how porn would affect your daily sexual arousal and sexual connection in your relationship. And the results were actually pretty surprising. Maybe you're not surprised, but I think for many people, they'd find them surprising. When women use pornography, it tended, tended, not always, but often, tended to correlate with higher sex drive and more sex with their significant other. So women that watch porn sometimes or regularly are more likely to have a higher sex drive and are more likely to want to engage in sex with their significant other. Whereas with men, when they engage, when we engage with pornography, something very different happens. In many cases, watching pornography regularly was associated with you having a lower sexual desire for engaging and initiating sex in your relationship and having less sex with your significant other. Now, why is that? 'Cause this is what the researchers kind of wanted to get to know. Like, why is there this big discrepancy? And researchers think that a part of the reason that this happens is because porn for many men pornography becomes a kind of replacement for sex and a replacement outlet for sexual energy and sexual desire, rather than something that enhances the connection or something that adds to it or contributes to wanting to engage with it. So for a lot of women, what it really showed, what the researchers found, was that for women, it actually is kind of like an incentivizer. They want to connect sexually more because of watching pornography. Not that we want to incentivize that or encourage it. I'm not saying what you should or shouldn't do, but what they found was that for men, it was actually a deterrent because you're getting your sexual desires, your sexual energy out in some way, shape, or form. And so over time, your brain as a man will begin to associate sexual gratification with the screen rather than a person, rather than your significant other. And this is where porn can kind of quietly erode intimacy over time, where you start to turn to pornography and, you know, whatever you watch on a regular basis instead of initiating connection. So intimacy, you know, it requires attraction, it requires effort, it requires you risking rejection, it requires emotional presence, it requires sometimes, you know, the dreaded V-word, vulnerability. Uh, it requires vulnerability in the sense that you might get rejected. So it becomes something, porn becomes something that is really a kind of dopamine hit and a novelty, and you can novelty seek, which reinforces the dopamine. And so that kind of moves you away from wanting to have sex with your significant other. So, all right guys, really quick aside. First off, thank you so much for tuning in to the show and to the channel. If you are wanting to go deeper, if you're a man that's working on himself in some way, shape, or form, you're wanting to be more self-led, you want to trust yourself more, you want to have a deeper level of self-worth, or maybe you're looking to improve your relationship, then I encourage you to check out the Man Talks Alliance. You can go to mantalks.com/alliance. We have over 1,000 men in this incredible community from around the world, men who are just like you, working to better themselves, to be a better husband, a better father, a better leader, in your own life. So check it out, mantalks.com/alliance. This leads to the third finding. So this leads to key number 3, okay? Most men who feel addicted to porn are actually trapped in a shame cycle. So the majority of men, what researchers found is that, and this is one of the most important concepts, I think, in the research, and it's called moral incongruence, moral incongruence. And this means that your behavior conflicts with your values. So what you're doing actually convicts, sorry, conflicts with your values of what you say you value. So you say you value sexual connection and having a great sex life, but you don't make any effort. And instead of risking rejection or initiating connection or whatever it is, making the effort to have that happen, you just turn to pornography. And in the case of pornography, researchers found something that I thought was really fascinating. A lot of men who say that they are addicted to porn actually use it at similar levels to other men. So it's not that men who say they are addicted to porn use it exponentially more. That's the case sometimes. But what they actually experience is that when they use it, they experience way more distress. And this is the case that I have seen so many times with the men that I work with. When we dive into it, it's not that they're using porn way more than other guys. Some guys, there's some smaller cases where it's like, yes, they really have a problem. They can't get out of bed without watching it. They can't go to bed without watching it. You know, it needs to happen 1 or 2 times every single day. Or for hours every single day. For some guys, there's a legit usage issue, but for many guys, it's not that they're watching it more, they're reporting that they're addicted because they can't stop and it's creating distress because of this moral incongruence. Because they feel, and maybe this is you, you feel that your behavior violates your morals, you feel that it violates maybe your religious beliefs, your relational agreements, your identity as being a good husband or a good boyfriend. And it violates your identity of being a disciplined man, a man that's able to say no to yourself. So the suffering isn't just about the porn. The shame isn't just about the porn. It's about the internal conflict happening inside of you that says, I'm weak. I shouldn't be doing this. I'm a failure for doing this. I'm a fuck-up. What the hell is wrong with me? And that shame is actually the thing that increases the compulsive cycle. So the more shame you feel, the more you have the urge to do that behavior to then offset some of the shame. And that shame drives your nervous system into stress, into avoidance, into emotional regulation issues, where you're constantly disrupted. And the porn comes in and operates as a temporary relief, right? It's kind of like the reset button for your system where you get a whole bunch of neurochemicals that flow through and you feel a sense of relief from all the stress. So the shame loop becomes, I feel shame, I feel stress, I watch porn, I get relief, I have shame about doing it, And the whole cycle continues. Shame, stress, porn, relief, shame, stress, porn, relief, and around and around on the merry-go-you-go, which leads to the main takeaway that I have in this section, which is that more shame doesn't help you quit porn. Shaming yourself into a behavior change here is not going to work. It is exactly what keeps this cycle alive. And so what actually helps is understanding the behavior without demonizing yourself and understanding that what you are trying to achieve, what you're trying to accomplish here is to understand why shame plays such a huge role in your psyche and in your life to begin with. So you might wanna say to yourself, it's okay that this happened, or maybe my issue isn't so bad. I just need to disclose it and talk about it. Or what I do with most men is I say, okay, what part of your identity is at odds with this behavior, right? Is it that you perceive yourself to be an extremely disciplined man, but you can't say no to pornography? Is that what's causing the shame in your identity? Is it that you have certain agreements in your relationship that you are actually eroding and going against? So find the part of your identity that porn is conflicting against. Find the moral incongruence. And if you can find that, then you can begin to unwind some of the porn usage. Number 4, this is a big one. I've talked about this one a lot. Porn for many men, the reason why they have a hard time quitting it or lessening it is that it is often used as emotional regulation. So another big theme that researchers came across was that pornography is really used for many guys when they're anxious, when they're stressed, when they're angry, when they're lonely, when they feel isolated, when they're bored, when they're anxious, when they're not really too sure what to do. And in other words, porn isn't always about sex. Porn is maybe for you about a state change, as Tony Robbins would call it, right? You feel something, anxious, bored, lonely, upset, disconnected in your relationship, and your nervous system says, I don't like how I'm feeling, or I'm feeling a charge that I'm uncomfortable with, and your brain says, let me deal with that by going to watch pornography. And this produces dopamine, which helps you reset and feel better about yourself. And so what your brain has learned is that when I feel something I don't like, whatever that state is, I can just use pornography to change that state. I can just use porn to stop feeling anxious, to stop feeling lonely, to stop feeling bored, to stop feeling so elevated. And this was the big thing for me. I have so much energy that sometimes at the end of the day, I didn't know how to come down. There's probably a good pun in there somewhere. I don't know how to come down from all of the energy, all of the excitement that was just ripping through my body. I didn't have tools to just downregulate, to slow my system down. And so I just got in a habit of whenever my body, whenever my energy just felt like it was too much, or I felt too stressed, or I felt anxious, or I had too much energy, porn was just the thing that I would go to. And it became very hard for me to quit it because that association was really locked in my nervous system. Whenever my body, my nervous system felt a certain way that I didn't know how to deal with, straight to porn. And porn in this case can also help you to numb uncomfortable emotions. So if you feel sad, if you feel grief, you know, a lot of the times this is when men are going to start to use pornography more and more. And so instead of simply saying, I should be more disciplined, I should just have more discipline around this, that which is not going to work because discipline is not going to solve the underlying issue. Because the underlying issue is you don't know how to regulate yourself in those moments, right? So you need to ask yourself a couple questions. Question number 1, what am I actually using this for? One of the main things that I've given men that I have seen to work time and time again is when the urge to watch porn comes up, you set a timer. For 10 minutes where you are not allowed to engage with porn. And what you do immediately thereafter is ask yourself, what am I feeling or experiencing right now that I do not want to feel or experience? What am I feeling or experiencing right now that I do not want to feel and experience? And that is what you are running from. Then you can sit down and you can just be with it. Be with the anger, be with the loneliness, be with the anxiety, Breathe into the sadness or the grief, whatever it is, but start to bring your awareness and your attention to the truth of your direct, what I call your direct felt experience. Bring your attention to the truth of what you are actually experiencing inside that is uncomfortable and that you have trained yourself to move away from by using pornography. Last thing, number 5, the best, treatments for porn addiction, the best treatments for reducing pornography, focus on behavior and identity. So research on treatment actually approaches, research on treatment approaches, sorry, focus on a couple main things. The first one is things like cognitive behavioral therapy, which I have seen mixed to limited results with, with many men. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, or ACT, which also is okay, and mindfulness training, which is a part of what I was talking about before. For me, what I have found is that in order to move through porn or reduce your porn usage, you have to do some things that are pretty uncomfortable, okay? Number 1, you have to be willing to come into contact with whatever state you are experiencing that you are trying to run from, shame, anxiousness, anger, sadness, grief, whatever it is. You have to be willing to confront that experience inside of you that you have been using pornography to dull or numb or avoid. Thing number 2 that you have to be willing to do, and for state number 1, that really is about mindfulness training. That really is about setting the timer for 10 minutes, forcing yourself to do it. I'm not gonna watch porn for these 10 minutes. I'm gonna sit down with a pen and paper. I'm gonna write down What am I experiencing right now that I do not want to feel or experience? And then close your eyes and breathe into it and stay with it. Number 2 is you have to address the shame, the shame of the moral incongruence, the shame of your behavior of doing something that goes against who you believe you are. And how you do that is number 3, you begin the process of admitting to some other people what your porn usage actually looks like. So many of the men that I've worked with, their porn usage reduces almost immediately when they start to talk about it, when they start to demystify this thing that has been going on in secret behind closed doors that nobody has known about. Sometimes it's that you need to talk about when you're watching porn and that you've been watching porn in the first place. And other times in order to move through the shame, you might even need to talk about the types of porn that you are watching, because this is the other thing that creates some moral incongruence for men is that what they are watching in pornography makes them feel like shit. There's no other really great way to say it, but it makes you feel like garbage. You know, I think somebody called it the regret nut. You know, it's like, we're getting, it's really clinical language today. It's like the regret nut, right? Like you nut, you get off, and then you see the tabs that you have open and you see what you've been watching and you're like, "Good Lord, like what in the hell was I just doing?" You know, and all of a sudden the regret comes in of everything that you've been watching. So for some men, what you're actually going to need to disclose, and this is the shitty part, this is the hard part, but you need to do it, is the things that you've been watching, the rabbit holes that you've gone down that are producing a lot of shame, or confusion or self-disgust. That's a big thing for a lot of men is that they watch something, they're like, I actually don't want that in my life. I don't wanna do that. I don't wanna experience that. I don't wanna go down that path. But for whatever reason, you found yourself down that rabbit hole in your porn usage. It's kinda like back in the days of the internet, you'd be watching videos or torrenting videos way back in the day. And all of a sudden you found some heinous video where some Russian mobsters found a— caught a cop and blows his head off with a shotgun or something like that. And you're just like, what the hell did I just watch? Why did I find myself on this part of the internet? So you have the regret. So sometimes what you will need to do— and that was a very obscure reference. Maybe some of you found yourself in that place of the internet in the past. What you need to do, what you might need to do, is actually have a process of disclosure. And that disclosure might be about your usage, when you're using it. It might be the disclosure that you are using it with your significant other. It might be a disclosure of what you've been watching, but you kind of need to decide. And you might need to start that process with a coach, with a therapist, with somebody that's not in your relationship, because it might feel way too overwhelming and confronting to start that process of disclosure. So here are the main points. I'm gonna summarize and wrap it up for you. You can write these all down. The real strategy based on the research, if you want to quit, if you want to reduce it, is these 5 things. Remove the secrecy, talk to somebody about it. Reduce the shame, understand the behavior that's happening instead of attacking yourself. Identify the emotional triggers. What are you feeling and experiencing that you are using porn to numb out. Build alternative strategies, build alternative regulation strategies is number 4. Exercise, social connection, you might call somebody when you feel that urge to watch porn because what you're actually experiencing is lonely. You could do cold exposure, you could do shadow work, you could do meditation practices. You need to replace that regulation strategy, 'cause that's kind of what it is for many of you, with something that's generative, with something that actually is going to leave you feeling good and positive and connected to yourself instead of disconnected. And number 5, build a life that actually makes porn less attractive, right? Purpose reduces your compulsion. A great sex life is going to reduce your compulsion. Having more openness and transparency in your relationship and more connection is going to reduce the compulsion. So the more that you can actually build the type of relationship that you want, which is hard, which is very confronting sometimes, the less likely you are to want to watch pornography. So thank you so very much for tuning in. Don't forget to man it forward. Don't forget to like and subscribe. I see you who are watching all my videos but are not subscribed for whatever reason. It goes a long way. Somebody commented on one of my recent videos on Spotify was like, Don't forget to like, like and subscribe. Classic anxious avoidant. I got a good kick out of that. Listen, it's just part of the game. You know, it's just what has to happen. If I don't ask, you might not do it. So anyway, thank you so much for tuning in. Please, please, please man it forward. If you do nothing else, share it with somebody that you know needs to watch this video. Till next week, Connor Beaton signing off.