“I don’t know what watching porn regularly means anymore. But addiction is when you look forward to watching porn more than having sex with your partner.” Self-declared porn addict Matt Green, 34, opens up about his addiction…
Matt Green, 34, has been a porn addict for the past five years.
“Interestingly, it arose more after my first sexual experiences with women, supplementing what I felt was an ideal sex life with other women with increasingly outlandish fantasies. It gave me ‘ideas’ of how to please a woman and made me think about idealistic ways of how I wanted my own sex life to shape up.
I think being an addict means you start to look for some replication in real life with new sexual partners (or existing ones) then feel disappointed when you realise that actually most women don’t act like porn stars and don’t do the things you want them to do. And so you return to watching porn addictively as a failsafe, in a strange way. It’s a failsafe way of getting pleasure because you buy into a very arousing (but false) idea of sexuality.
I don’t know what watching porn regularly means anymore. But addiction is when you look forward to watching porn than having sex with your partner. Or it’s an addiction when you want to engage in short term sexual relationships with no strings to match the fantasies you admire in porn.
It’s strange because some types of porn repulse me – the cheap, shoddy, bargain basement type stuff. However the glossier, glamourous versions are the ideal kind of fetish and you feel excited as you’re seeing something that you normally wouldn’t see and it’s a wonderful kind of forbidden fruit.
However, when your libido isn’t raging and you’re not very enticed and you’re just watching it for the hell of it, you feel a tremendously ugly guilt about it and it makes you feel cheap and devalued.
It has radically changed the way I view women/sex, I think. Even in relationships with current or past partners, I would expect them to ‘step up’ in the sex department in my mind, thinking unrealistic things and expecting unrealistic things.
When you’re watching it in two-three hour stretches, something is very wrong
Now, while there are women who are happy to fit into men’s fantasies of what they expect and are more than happy to ‘deliver’ – the fact is most women, I think, simply don’t view sex the way you see it as being portrayed in porn.
It’s surprising today how many ‘normal’ looking girls are in porn and are adult actresses, they’re not just big breasted blonde bimbos or women who look like prostitutes. This means that I can see any ‘normal’ woman in the street being a potential knockout in the bed department. The reality is that these women are being paid well to make fantasies come true on screen.
I’m in a relationship now and my partner doesn’t know about my addiction but is aware that porn has impacted my sexual appetite. Certain activities are ‘no goes’, because you can’t expect all women to just mirror what excites you on screen.
I almost had counselling but didn’t in the end. I am keen to combat my porn addition but at the moment I don’t attach negative morality to it as it hasn’t corrupted my existing relationship. It has, however, certainly affected the way I look at women.
I’m definitely a naturally addictive person. I know other men who are not addicted to porn but addicted to the point that, like me, they are willing to pay for it, which I think is a sign of addiction or potential addiction.
My advice to the parents of a boy showing a keen interest in porn: encourage your children to look for real relationships first, that porn should come later. And to the boy himself, I’d say: date, see girls, have a normal sex life with real women.
I think porn corrupts your moral balance; I love my partner but that doesn’t stop me wanting to watch porn when she’s not around. It’s almost like I need it; like a quick hit of a drug and then I can move on. Maybe that’s the male anatomy but I know that when you’re watching it in two-three hour stretches that something is very wrong.”