Does Porn Affect our Sex Lives?

A month back I was having a discussion with one of my female friends regarding the ban on porn, every now and then, in India. We debated on various aspects of it and after some time, as usually happens in a friend’s group discussion, other friends pulled us out of the discussion and our discussion remained unfinished. But during the discussion, there was a question- “How does Porn affect our sex life?” While having the discussion over this question I realized that the majority of the people present there haven’t even thought from this perspective! It’s been mostly liked or disliked based on the grounds of moral, social, freedom of choice, pleasure, etc. but no one had stopped and pondered for a moment — is porn affecting our actual Sexual life? Upon discussion, we found out various points in which porn does affects our sex life and it’s not that I forced my view on them but they knew it deep down, it’s just they never thought over it. This made me curious and I decided to actually go-over and have an informal discussion with people in person or over the internet to understand the impact of porn in our lives (I ended up discussing with 100+ people). This article is just a summary of those informal discussions, some research on the internet and my own thoughts. Hence, this post should neither be taken as representative of the Indian population in general and nor should be considered as exhaustive research on the impact of porn in Indian people’s sex lives.

Types of Sexual content

We commonly use the word porn but sexual content can be divided into 3 categories :

• Sexually Suggestive: Objectification and erotic content but not involving any sexual acts.
• Sexually Explicit: In addition to objectification and eroticism, it also includes explicit sexual acts.
• Paraphilic: Like the previous types of media, paraphilic sexual media contains scripts of eroticism, objectification, and specific sexual acts. It also adds portrayals of fetishes, coercion, and dominance, thereby distinguishing it from explicit mainstream sexual media (e.g., Bridges et al., 2010; Hald & Štulhofer, 2016; Klaassen & Peter, 2015).

Impact of Porn on Sex: One Taboo to Another!

Now let’s talk about the impact of one taboo topic — Porn, on another taboo topic — Sex.

One of the most frequently cited impacts of porn is the miss-match of the expectations. This miss-match can be at various levels. In general, but especially in India, the actual experience of sex comes much after the exposure to porn. As per one of the internet reported data 93% of the boys and girls have watched porn, at least once, before the age of the 18. The one, who has never experienced sex, in reality, starts building a mental image of how it will feel based on what he/she views in the porn which is far from reality!

• Sizes: Men or Women, in terms of penises, vagina, and breasts, both shown in porn are not the representation of the common population and most of the time are not natural. But as a viewer knowingly or unknowingly you link those sizes to the sex.
• Opposite Sex: If you are a man, your brain builds an expectation for a hot curvaceous woman with big breasts and/or asses or whatever you chose to like from the long list of available options. If you are a woman, your brain builds an expectation for a ripped, well-toned man with decent size and girth of the penis or whatever you chose to like from the long list of available options. But when these men and women have an actual physical experience of intimacy, the reality is most likely going to conflict with their expectations. This is one of the aspects and it happens most of the time unknowingly. There are various researches on this aspect but here the idea is just to point out the tip of ice-bergs not fully decode it.
• Same-Sex: At one place porn builds up expectation from the opposite sex, at the same time it creates a sense of insecurity among the same sex, for example, a man becomes more concerned about his looks and especially the size and girth of the penis, and a woman becomes concerned about her breasts and ass size and many times even for how her vagina looks like compared to the adult performers. This can instill low-confidence in them and they may even feel they are ‘not good enough’ for their partner or to have a partner!

In a country like India, where there is no Sex education, and sex-related topics are taboo, this situation becomes worse. Because these teenagers (most of the time) don’t have anyone experienced to talk about these things and the only reference points they have is the porn which can skew them for the reasons discussed above.

• Reactions: Men and Women in porn are ‘adult performers’ which means they are getting paid to ‘act’. So, most of the time the reactions we see from them are not a genuine cry of ecstasy but they are delivering what is expected from them. But once again, viewers don’t consciously realize this and they build up an expectation. Especially men, in porn they get used to females moaning and screaming in ecstasy and when they have experience with real women they may find the experience a little dull from the expectation. Women too can build up the expectations, though much less compared to men (at least in admitting), regarding the men’s reaction during the sex.
• Intensity and Stamina: This is one of the most commonly cited impacts of porn from the women’s side ( at least with whom I interacted ). The passion and intensity vary among the couples and in fact even in the same couple it varies across time. But even if you want and like having passionate sex, in general, and on average, the physical built doesn’t support many of the heroics shown in porn. One of the females mentioned she saw one of the poses in one porn and had kind of fantasy to try the pose which required her to be lifted in air but her male partner couldn’t — it’s not that she got offended or she broke up with him but it’s important to understand that the intensity and stamina showcased in porn are much above the normal human level — many times they are on steroids or some performance enhancer drugs. Another anecdote is from a couple where the man came much earlier compared to the woman and both of them were expecting to have the sex last for the duration shown in the porn. As per one of the research, as large as 40% of the young men ejaculates in under 15 proper penile thrust in the vagina. Even though our lifestyle is very much to blame for the same but building a wrong expectation based on porn is also not right.
• Building liking for specific types: Not many but few men and women accepted they build liking for certain skin tone or breast shape or penis or vagina lips shape. We can’t generalize these but of course, there are possibilities.

Real vs Virtual: Apart from the expectation, porn gives, in a way, much more options and frequency to choose. You go to porn site search for specific type even in that if you don’t like it you switch to others and maybe then another and so on. But in real life, even in case of a one-night stand, you take a certain leap of faith and it may or may not be exactly as you expected. I am not saying even if you don’t like a woman go with her but What I am trying to say is that even a good looking woman may appear boring to you because you don’t have the choice to hop around or keep changing different features of her. This is one of the common issue reported by the teenagers when they get to indulge too much into porn the actual interactions with their partner becomes less spicy and boring. I am giving an example of men to women because the majority of porn viewers are male.

Orgasm: For men, orgasm is not that a mystery or hard to achieve but for women it is and much research has shown as large as 75% of women can’t reach orgasm just from penetrations. But porn depicts, almost every time, the guy stopping only when the female orgasm, and/or ejaculates which in itself is a debatable topic among the researchers. Man, in general, will consider female orgasm or ejaculation as the confirmation that she had a too good time with him, and porn in a way reiterates the same for him. So, when in reality female partner doesn’t achieve the orgasm that can create various doubts in the mind of the male partner — am I not good enough? Is she not into me? Maybe it is penis size or maybe she is attracted to someone else etc. etc.

This actually leads to another problem ‘Performance Anxiety’: Even if the previous incident didn’t happen. Men can have performance anxiety if their reference point becomes porn. Normal men can’t go that long and that frequently — as we already discussed earlier under intensity and stamina.

Learning from Porn: In India, we don’t have sex education and society is also not so open to talk about sex-related topics. In such a situation, porn movies become a good reference point to learn from. It has its own pros and cons but at least to start with and in the short term, researchers have found it helps.

This can be taken as silver linings across the clouds because learning from porn can have a drastic impact in the long term depending upon the type of content being watched. If someone gets too much into rough, fetish, extreme contents their real sex life starts having impact of the same because the common . Especially in today’s time when content showing rape, torture, BDSM, incest, etc. are growing, in which women are treated in extreme conditions, learning from porn is also becoming dicey in long term. Also, it’s human nature we get saturated with things we do again and again and try to improvise it to keep the fun going — with rough sex this can become dangerous for the couple as well as for the society (if not controlled). There are chances, women might condition themselves to be treated that way, even if they don’t like it if their only reference point is such kind of porn.

Lack of Emotions: Even if we remove the extreme contents, mainstream porn never depicts the emotional component of the sex. If someone learns from these movies they will never understand the importance of being considerate about the other person’s feelings, the tenderness, the true intimacy. As per famous American neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, for a woman to orgasm, it’s more about foreplay and what happens within 24hours before the actual penetration. Hence, we can see porn will actually screw up the men if they learn from it and become rough and dominating always. Women can also push themselves to discover orgasm from the rough sex as they can see the female on the screen can then why can’t she?

An easy way out: More and more guys become addicted to porn and it hits their dating spirit, as porn addiction will decrease your motivation to go out there and find a real sexual partner. With a quick fix so readily available, why go through all the trouble, the potential of rejection, the hurt, the tension, the painful desires and the insecurities of trying to get it on with someone real?

Dead Man’s Grip: Last but not the least, guys watching too much or porn and masturbating will start having problems in getting complete erection & ejaculation during the real sex. Apart from many other reasons discussed above and our modern lifestyle & lack of physical fitness, ‘Dead Man’s grip’ is responsible for the lack of complete erection and ejaculation. This means that you can’t ejaculate so easily from penetrating a vagina anymore, you need a very hard grip on your penis to be able to get erect and ejaculate. Hence the term ‘Dead man’s grip’.

There must be many other impacts but these are the few I found during my interactions with people. It may seem this article is against porn and I am painting a completely negative picture of it but it’s not like that — I have just mentioned the various possibilities and what commonly people reported while discussion. And the impacts mentioned above are not applicable for occasional watching, to have some deep impact from porn you need to be watching it regularly in an almost addictive manner. One can watch porn but if they are aware of the difference between reality and porn; they are much better equipped to avoid the negative impact of porn in their sex lives.

Disclaimer: This post is just a casual analysis of the impact of porn on sex life with no intention to hurt anyone’s emotion. Neither this article is in support or against porn watching or any sex-related activities — everyone has the right to make their own choice within the legal boundaries.