Do women have an easier time at this than men?

Historically, it was thought that women had higher sex drives. Now the tables have turned.

 

There are more male NoFap users than women, there’s almost certainly more male porn addicts than female. I would hesitate to claim, once addicted, women have an easier time of breaking this addiction.

Plenty of the guys here journal as well. I tend to think anyone who is seriously engaging in recovery should track behaviors and experience. Use the tools to recover. Otherwise it’s a spectator sport.

 

could be that it is just easier for men to feel guilty/sad post sex as it always end up with orgasm and all accompanying hormones changes.

 

The media tends to report that NoFap is a misogynistic community and to be fair the accusation isn't unwarranted. Spend some time on this forum and it won't take you long to find someone saying something misogynistic. Now it's complicated because not everyone is misogynistic and probably most members aren't but the media doesn't do complicated. If a woman has a porn problem but has heard that this site is full of misogyny she's unlikely to come here. I know some female members have admitted they're scared to explore the rest of the site and only feel safe in the woman's section.

 

NoFap is an incredibly misogynistic place, mostly because the members who don't participate in the really insane threads are either quietly agreeing or at least not shutting down the absolutely wild discourse.

I stay because I use the openness here to keep in mind what my addict (who I'm currently splitting with) is likely keeping to himself so that I don't fall back into the trap of believing the lies he tries to sell, trying to keep us together.

If I were an addicted woman, you would not catch me on this site seeking legitimate help and support for my addiction.

 

I’m not quietly agreeing. I’m quietly widening my eyes and backing out, because there’s absolutely zero point in getting involved. As the immortal poet T-Swizzle stated in those halcyons days of 2014, “Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate.”

The boys (because they are not men) repeating black pill nonsense they were fed because the Sexual Revolution deprived them of their fathers and the Technological Revolution filled in with a toxic algorithm are beyond my help. I am a stranger on the Internet. I do not have the ability to reach them, to get them to listen, to change their minds and realize “Oh. It’s not women who are terrible. It’s the entire popular culture inspired by Marxist Gnosticism that insists on dividing us into more or less arbitrary classifications and pitting us against one another.” The only thing I’m going to do, if I respond to their statements whose meanness is rivaled only by stupidity, is to announce “You guys, you girls, I am not like these jackasses. I’m one of the good ones,” and I’m not interested. I don’t need to signal my virtue and prove myself to everyone watching. For one thing, I don’t have time. I am busy being a man playing a June Cleaver/
Carol Brady hybrid in 2023. For another thing, I repeat, I get no returns for my effort. The people on NoFap whose opinions I value already respect me. My reputation here is well established.

That’s why I don’t comment on the really insane threads. It’s not because I “quietly agree.” When people are quiet, there is no telling what they think. It is unjust to assume. As for the “silence is violence” argument, tgat it isn’t enough for men to not participate in misogyny but they have to actively shut it down every time they see it, that’s asking too much. That’s like telling people who don’t litter that, unless they are picking up trash wherever they see it, they are just as bad as the litterbugs. That’s incredibly arrogant. That’s deciding your problem is more pressing than their problems, and passing judgment before you even know what their problem is. Keep in mind, every guy here is struggling with addiction. Many of us have poor mental health, apart from the addiction and exacerbated by the addiction. I know I can’t afford yet another losing battle in my life, which is what arguing with Internet Jackasses is.

It’s probably good that you are splitting with your addict. I don’t know him and I don’t know you. I barely know the version of yourself you present here, just as people here can only know the version I present of myself and that is biased. I’m not presenting all the relevant information, I can’t, I’m blind to it. However, addiction and betrayal trauma are intense and they can be worth splitting over. That said, it’s unfair to look at what the men say here and assume that is how your former partner really thinks and feels.

I strongly support that addicts need to take responsibility. It’s never their SO’s fault. However, I find the SO support section every bit as misandrist and generally toxic as the worst parts of Loneliness, SR and Abstinence, Off Topic, and the other sections can be misogynistic and generally toxic. All of it is unnecessarily antagonistic and full of assumptions about “the enemy.” It’s bad communication.

If you are incompatible and need to split, that’s okay and if you need to think of your former partner as a bad person in order to psychologically protect yourself, that’s a choice you can make. I still say it’s unfair to apply assumptions.

 

I think more men use porn because of social reasons, and males are more vulnerable to the damaging mental health aspects for a variety of social reasons, one or two stemming from biological reasons. However, I have seen both males and females express shame and guilt post reset/slip/binge/relapse in equal measure, so I don’t think it has as much to do with hormones. That said, we can’t really study it so maybe. It’s just an opinion.

In the end, male, female, addiction sucks and porn sucks and we should help both as much as we can. There’s utility in understanding differences between males and females if it helps with recovery, but if it’s about the Oppression Olympics I’m uninterested.

 

No.
Life equally sucks and is difficult for everyone in their own way.

 

I suspect it is easier for men, since there is less shame. It is widely believed that

or even that most men watch porn, so this is expected of us. I could blame my addiction on society's expectation, or even just give up trying to quit and say my porn use is just part of being a man. (Don't worry, I won't do either of those!) But my point is that a female addict cannot do either, she may feel like a freak for being so at odds with society's expectations of her. That has got to hurt, and the shame from that will not make recovery easier. (Though, since quitting porn is so so hard for all addicts it probably is not worth trying to work out who has it easier, it's almost impossible for all of us. "Almost impossible", not "impossible".)

That's not been my experience. If you are an addict and you want to quit then you are going to have to do the hard work of real introspection. You need to journal that and reflect on what you find. Men and women need to do that. You just need to look through the journal sections to see how many men here are keeping a journal.

As @Meshuga said above

 

There is no point. The best thing to do is ignore such people. There are a number of people on this forum that I've blocked because it does me no good to see what they have to say. A lot of these people say this stuff because they're looking for attention and when they're not given it they stop.

 

I gave him a year to sort himself out and be willing to start having the conversations I was asking for. He spent the year hoping I would drop it and then used the time I gave him as an opportunity to say he "doesn't remember" the things I wanted to talk about so that he would never have to provide a full disclosure.
Splitting is hard. There's a lot of pressure to stay for various reasons. Being able to look at the thoughts of men who are being honest about their feelings and how their partners weren't enough for them or how they can't stand to think of settling for anything but the young porn standard of beauty or how they just don't feel the same about their partners as they do the porn helps ground me. He very likely felt those things, he just never gave me the courtesy of disclosing it.
He can say all he wants and deny that he ever felt that way, but in the end, the fact that he withholds talking about it and telling me how it IS rather than how it ISN'T tells me that the reality of how he feels is probably just worse.
I've gone beyond fair in this relationship. I've just reached the end of that rope.

 

Yes, I agree. I use it in the same way, but, I do have those conversations with my husband and he does answer. Some of the things I have read and then asked him about he will say yes he has felt, thought, believed those same things and then others no. This is where it can get tricky, because addicts lie. You must be able to trust yourself to know if he’s being dishonest or telling the truth. Although every addict has similarities, every addict is also different. For example my husband believed getting married would take care of his pmo. Very common thought with sex addicts. My husband never blamed me, which is not so common. So, for me, if I read something that we haven’t talked about, then I do. Things I just wouldn’t have thought about. Some of the deepest, best conversations have come from me asking if he felt what someone wrote about on here.

 

I’m female.
Psychologically, yes, it is difficult having a libido that doesn’t fit the societal norm. Despite our western, hard fought liberation, girls don’t discuss porn in day to day conversation. At least, my friends didn’t growing up. So, it does create a prison.

However, behaviourally we’re taught to bond emotionally from a very young age. So whatever shame we’re experiencing, (sexual or not) we’ve learnt how to connect with another through that, however direct or indirect. We know how to find help and talk about our loneliness with another.
We’re resilient.

On the other hand, young boys aren’t taught to reach out when they’re sad or need to cry. So, who, or what do they turn to?

Who have our grandfathers, great grandfathers turned to in times of need?

How many sexually infused images, lyrics and adverts surrounded men on a day to day basis? How many of those images show naked women, compared to naked male bodies?

It seems men are surrounded by more sexually explicit content than women. It seems they’re almost targeted and fed on this diet.

Sadly, high suicide rates aren’t found with females, but in males. We suffocate their feelings from a young age, tell them to man up when they’re sad, and as they get older we feed them on diet of hyper sexuality. They’re physical needs are met (and so they should be), yet, for all the times they have sex, they’re never truly naked. They never really feel seen.

We raise these sons and blame them when they turn narcissistic. Yet, we mothers, how have we held them when they needed to break? How have we kissed their tears through their desperation? Have we listened to their failure, their loss, their emptiness…and remained present?

Men are fed a frugal diet and deserve better. They aren’t taught how to be both vulnerable and safe. We don’t teach them how to bond in brokenness. So, they don't cultivate their own emotional resilience. Instead they remain an infant, turning to porn, to mother. Connection without failure, without risk.

You men, you are worthy. We need you.

It is definitely harder for men in this society to be emotionally resilient. But it’s not your failure, it’s from those before you. So please be kind to yourself in this journey, allow yourself to reach out when you need comfort. You deserve to be seen, understood, and validated exactly as you are.

The more you bond with others the more resilient you become

Keep being you

 

A quick Google search tells me that across the board men are more likely to use drugs than women and when they do they are more prone to taking risks (ie a heroin user who is male is more likely to inject more of it at once than a female user.) This could also apply to PMO addiction, with men becoming more deeply addicted more easily or quickly. This is all just speculation though.

 

And, out of the female and male drug users, which gender is more likely to seek therapy to get help?

 

No idea, that wasn't part of the info I looked at.

 

On this forum you're only going to get an exclusively male or an exclusively female perspective. If you really want to know the answer you need to talk to an addiction counselor/therapist who has worked with both.

 

Having a partner avoid the conversations you believe are necessary to heal the relationship is heart breaking. I sympathize.

That appears to me to be an assumption. You know for a fact he spent the year avoiding the conversations. In the absence of hard information, you can only guess why and you’re assuming the worst. It might be as bad as you think. It might not. Either way, he’s pinned down. If you ask him why he’s avoided the conversation, he’s either going to confirm, deny, or misdirect, and all will confirm your suspicions. Since there isn’t any trust, he’s dead to rights whether he deserves it or not.

I forget things as well. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter to me, and it doesn’t mean I’m manipulative. It means I had other things competing for attention, and that thing got chased out of my head. Once it’s gone, it’s difficult to get back.
All I’m saying is, there’s multiple possibilities, not just the worst one.

True, but if you’ve made up your mind to leave, and you’re inside your rights to do so in my estimation, you don’t have to justify yourself further or draw it out. Just do it because of what you know he did and said, not because of an unconfirmed assumption of what you think he feels, based on what others in a vaguely similar situation to him have said. I have a lot of respect for Roady, IGY, Hope4healing, and several others here. None of their stories or situations are the same, and none of them speak for me. We agree on most of the things necessary for recovery, but we’ve found our way to those by different paths.

First, you are listening to addicts in the earliest, denial stage of recovery. They are going to say nasty things. Doesn’t mean your husband thinks or thought them. Second, I know plenty of guys here who deny all of those things.

I just wish you’d break up with your husband, not a homonculus of porn addicts you’ve projected onto him in the absence of information. Tell him what you need and give him a deadline, and if he can’t deliver, pull the plug. Don’t assume you know him based on what others say.

 

As a guy whose relationship with my mother is "complicated" I genuinely appreciate this sentiment. But at the same time I thank my teachers (the majority of them women) for telling me that it is wrong for a man to have emotions. Why? Because it not only gave me the opportunity to build genuine character, how to endure the bullshit they were trying to indoctrinate me with, and on top of that figure out solutions for myself without letting men or women manipulate me in the process. Yes, drawbacks include not having too many friends and never having a romantic relationship but I always saw high school and middle school relationships as phases anyway. As for safety, I think that it its best to make yourself invulnerable as possible, the majority of people still see it as weakness anyway. And I believe that I am far too broken to bond with anybody. It's not like I am a guy worth getting to know anyway.