The ONE THING No One Talks About When Quitting Porn

All right, team, welcome back to the Mantalk Show. I am Connor Beaton. Today we're going to be talking about the one thing that I haven't heard anybody talk about when it comes to why porn can be so addictive and why it is so hard to quit when you decide to stop watching it. I haven't seen one YouTuber, one psychologist, one therapist, one coach talk about what I am about to talk about. And I have scoured. I've watched a lot of videos on this topic and this content before we dive into it. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel. Don't forget to man it forward and share this video with somebody that, you know, could use it, could enjoy it. So let's dive in. All right? Porn has been one of those things for me that played a very large role in my life for a long time. I watched a lot of it when I was younger, and when I decided that I wanted to stop watching it, it literally took me years to let go of it, and I couldn't figure out why. And so I spent years researching what the impacts of porn are on the brain, on the body, you know, how it's similar, can be similar to, you know, any other addictive behavior. And I've since worked with a ton of men over the years. I've been working with guys specifically for the last decade, but I've worked with a ton of men who had relatively the same issue, right? They were watching porn. Maybe they didn't really have an issue with it. You know, they just watched it once in a while. But when they went to quit watching porn, they couldn't, or they felt like it was very challenging. Now, one of the things that's obviously harder about letting go of porn than maybe not drinking is, you know, you can empty your house of alcohol, you can order a different drink when you go to the bar, but with porn, you literally have basically a liquor cabinet in your pocket at all times, right? The. The menu of pornographic content that you can consume is at your dispos all the time. But that's not the one thing that I want to talk about. The one thing that I want to talk about that I haven't seen anybody else address, and I'm going to be talking about this more in the coming weeks and months, is that porn is and creates a pseudo attachment. So porn creates a pseudo relationship. So if you're in a relationship, if you're married, you can kind of think of it as this sort of like, mistress that you go to once in a while. So a couple things about attachment, and this is based off of the work of a gentleman named Dewey Freeman. Dewey Freeman has been doing behavioral psychology, gestalt therapy, equine therapy for about 40 or 50 years. He's got 90,000 clinical hours under his belt. He also happens to be my friend and colleague and mentor, and he has done extensive, extensive work and research in the field of attachment. He's actually built his own attachment model, which we'll be talking about in the future. But attachment is the foundation of our relationships. So here's the simple thing that I want you to know, and I'm going to break down when it comes to why porn is so addictive and why it can be so hard to quit if you don't have a deep sense of security or trust within your primary relationships with your girlfriend or wife or, you know, your. Your significant other or your friends or your family. When those things seem like they're a little unstable, a little untrustworthy or lacking in security in some way, shape or form, what we'll do is cope with that by creating these pseudo relationships with objects, substances or behaviors. Right, objects like, you know, cars or material items, behaviors in terms of, like, you know, watching porn, which can become very ritualistic in nature, and substances, which, again, porn, booze, weed, et cetera. So we will create these pseudo relationships, these pseudo attachments to fill in the gaps that we feel like are lacking in our primary relationships. So you build a relationship with pornography. You build a relationship with pornography. What do I mean by that? Well, if you are somebody that's watching porn, paying for cam girls, maybe you subscribe to OnlyFans, and you have this kind of pseudo relationship, there's this pseudo exchange. There's an energetic exchange. There might be a financial exchange, there's an exchange of time, there's an exchange of, you know, emotional exchange sometimes. And so for a lot of guys, the real reason that it becomes very challenging to let go of porn and the real reason why it's so sort of addictive in the first place and can catch us, you know, using it more often than we want, is because it's providing something that we're wanting out of a relationship but don't feel like we can get in our primary relationships, whether that's energy, emotional conversation with our friends, whether that's a certain sexual experience with your partner, what will happen is, again, if we feel like, oh, my friendships in my. My relationship with my girlfriend and my wife, I can't seem to get the things that I want from them, we'll go and look for it in other places. And what will happen is, is that we'll start to form this pseudo attachment, this pseudo relationship with pornography with a cam girl, with an only fans girl. And this is why when you look at something like OnlyFans, the most popular only fans, whatever label you want to put on them, but the most popular onlyfans, women that are out there, they're maybe not the most attractive. They're maybe not the, you know, the. The most attractive women that are doing the sort of most scandalous sexual things. A lot of them are like the girl next door, you know, they are providing a kind of. Yes. Sexual experience, but they're providing almost like a girlfriend experience. Right, the gfe. And they're doing that because for a lot of men, they're lonely in their life, and they're using pornography as a means of feeling and creating some type of relational connection. So the real reason why it's hard to let go of porn is that you've created an attachment to. To it. You've created a relationship with it, whether you know that or not, right? Even if you never use cam girls and only fans and that kind of stuff, and you're just watching pornography, notice that you probably go back and watch a very similar kind of pornography on a regular basis. And maybe that goes through phases, right? You might watch one type of porn for a few months and another type of porn for a few months. But for most guys, they're returning to. To a similar style of pornography for an extended period of time, for a repeated period of time. Why is that? Well, there's a number of reasons. One, it can be what's going on within you psychologically in your life, you know, depending on what you're experiencing emotionally. But two, it's that you feel some type of attachment and connection to that specific style of porn. And so what we have to do in a very simple way, and I'm condensing all of this to make this very sort of quick and direct, but what we have to do is, one, we have to start to look at what's the relationship that you've built with porn? What's the relationship you've built with it? Is it something that you use to console you when you're stressed out or overwhelmed or lonely or bored or angry? Is it something that you use when maybe your partner doesn't want to be sexually active? Is it something that you use when you kind of feel just alone and you're not really too sure how to get yourself to feel better? So one is to get to understand what is your relationship to it and when are you using it. And then secondly, we have to insert other relationships into the fold. So instead of turning to porn when you feel lonely, when you feel bored, when you feel angry, when you're anxious, when you're overwhelmed, having other tools to move towards can be good, right? Breath, work, meditation, all the stuff that everybody on the Internet talks about. But the big piece is being able to turn to a meaningful, depth oriented relationship, being able to bring that energy and that attention that you would normally be bringing to pornography into some type of a relationship. And that doesn't have to be sexual, right? It might be that you're just feeling lonely and you need to go hang out with one of your buddies. It might be that you're just feeling anxious and you need to call up a buddy and say like, listen man, I'm, I'm just stressed out. I'm overwhelmed. Do you have a couple minutes to just talk about what's going on in my life? Right. It can be that simple. So instead of turning to this pseudo relationship, this pseudo attachment that you've built with pornography, you begin to slowly reestablish and reinforce the healthy relationships that you have in your life. And you start to rely on them more. You start to build, build out more robust relationships with the people that are in your life. Your partner, girlfriend, wife, et cetera, your buddies, your friends, your family members, people in your community. And as you start to do that, as you start to have more meaningful relationships with those people in your life that are safe, that are secure, that are trustworthy, what you'll find is that less and less you will need pornography, and more and more it will be easier to let go of porn. So it's not just about dopamine detoxing. It's not just about, you know, filling in the habit of watching porn with a different habit. It's also about, and this is the most important piece in my opinion, reorienting your behavior patterns towards relationship towards people that are in your life. Because you have a relationship with porn, it plays a role in your life and it is oftentimes there for you when you need someone to talk to, right? To tell about what you're, you know, how you're stressed out to talk to in terms of feeling overwhelmed by something you might be dealing with in your relationship or your business or your finances, right? So starting to reorient away from the relationship to porn, that pseudo attachment, and towards your relationship with people that are in your life and look, there's many. You might be thinking, well, I'm not in a relationship. I don't have a lot of, you know, men in my life that can go and talk to like that. What I would say is, go find a men's group, right? We have hundreds and hundreds of men that are in the Man Talks alliance that have done this work. Lots of them are in the process of quitting porn right now, or, you know, they're going on that journey, or they've already been on that journey. And there are hundreds of men's groups that are out there, men's communities, where you can have these types of connections, relationships, and transparent and honest conversations. So find one that works for you, find one that is right for you and. And find some accountability so that you can build those healthy attachments, those healthy relationships instead of needing and depending on. Because that's really what porn is. Porn becomes a dependency. It's like a codependent relationship. You need it in order to feel better. So instead of having that codependent dependency with pornography, you actually have a healthy, structured, grounded relationship with another human being. So comment below, let me know what you thought about this video. Don't forget to man it forward. Share it with another man. This is important, important information. I think hopefully you agree with me, but I'm curious to hear what your thoughts are. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.