Sex addiction is just as bad as porn addiction, if not worse

In the last month or so I've seen a noticeable increase in people on here recommending that recovering porn addicts "fix" their problem by having sex. Now this isn't a call-out post or anything, I'm not here to start drama, but I really do feel like this advice, while obviously well-intentioned, is flawed.

Now I'm not an expert on this. But in my opinion someone who is addicted to porn could very easily become addicted to sex if they were suddenly afforded the opportunity to have lots of it. I'd argue that sex addiction is worse than porn addiction because as well as having many of the same potential side effects as porn addiction, it can also be MORE dangerous. Real sex as opposed to porn could increase the ego of the addict and make them think what they are doing is less harmful, thus delaying them even recognizing a problem, let alone starting recovery. Real sex is riskier than PMO. Real sex can still lead to escalation, except worse because it's real. An addict may start spending lots of money to have real sex, thinking that is somehow a better option than PMO. They may debase their own values and morals in order to have sex, and rationalise it as "healthy." Involving another person when the ulterior motive is just sex is inherently immoral.

Now maybe this is a hot-take nowadays but meaningless sex for its own sake isn't a good thing. It shouldn't be encouraged. It also shouldn't be encouraged to seek out a relationship just for the purpose of sexual relief for a recovering addict. This is, again in my opinion, morally dubious at best, scummy at worst. Only have sex with someone you actually care about, otherwise you're using them as a living fleshlight and honestly, it would actually be LESS dubious to just masturbate.

Sex for its own sake is not the solution to compulsive sexual behaviour. It's an escalation of existing negative sexual behaviour. The solution is self-control, a strong set of morals, and the awareness that there's more to enjoy in life than animal rutting. Thanks for reading.

 

Well said. I also think it needs to be pointed out that it's very easy to be a sex addict who is also a porn addict, because if you are not able to have sex, you'll turn to porn. The answer is to stop feeling like sex is something you NEED, because you don't. You need food, you need water, you need air. You don't need to have sex all the time.

 

Thank you for the input. Your story seems to back up what I'm trying to say, that porn addiction and sex addiction go hand in hand, and the solution is to break dependency on either to be healthy. I worry that struggling porn addicts, especially sexually-inexperienced users similar to myself, will start to believe sex will fix all their problems. When the reality is becoming obsessed with sex is just swapping one addiction for another.

 

Congratulations on your success. And yes, I agree. Sex and porn both try to fill the same void, lead to the same problems.

 

It really does give me "Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps" vibes. It's well-meaning advice but becoming increasingly useless as time goes on. It's also not really advice at all, now that I think about it. The standards of many western women is insanely high, way beyond what they actually deserve. This is not their fault - they've had their brains rotted in much the same way porn has rotted men's brains. There are so many things fucked up about modern gender dynamics and relations between the sexes that I could be here all night writing it down. But I won't, because I feel like anyone who is actually paying attention, who isn't either oblivious or stupid, knows exactly what I'm talking about.

I'm glad you brought up the marriage thing, because it's true. If this were 100 years ago, even 50 years ago, chance are I'd be married by now. Probably a father. There's now a realistic chance that these things will never happen for me, no matter how hard I try. And if I complain about this, I'm ridiculed. Insulted. Dismissed with insipid non-advice. A lot of the things that are wrong in my life are my fault, but the state of modern western society certainly is not. But if I complain about it I'm an incel apparently. Fuck off.

 

That's partly my point.

 

Agreed with much of what you've said. We live in a schizophrenic society that worships sex while dismissing people who don't have it as if they are overreacting. Societal gaslighting.

 

Meaningless sex may as well be masturbation. Just with the risk of disease and harm to oneself increased tenfold. I think it messes you up mentally more than PMO does actually, it hollows you out and leaves you empty. Sex is supposed to be between people who care about each other.

 

Yep glad you see what I mean. Having lots of sex might be good for your ego but not much else, unless you're having it with someone you actually care about. Otherwise you're just projecting your PMO addiction onto someone else. To me it's just escalation.

 

I addressed this somewhat in the first post. Sex addiction works on the ego by creating the illusion that all the things you mentioned are being truly validated, but in reality they aren't, you're just falling deeper and deeper into addiction to meaningless pleasure and external validation, and it leads to self-destruction. In my honest opinion, sex shouldn't be easy to attain. It's supposed to be special, and I hate that modern society has turned it into a fast food commodity.