My new (and first) sub has a porn addiction

bonheurdujour • Jul 12, 2023

My suggestion is to work on practicing mindfulness to raise awareness first. So questions like:
"What contexts/situations lead me to want to consume pornography?" (Trigger)(Bored/ free time, feel bad, horny, stressed out, not having a direction in life etc.)

"How do I feel in the moment leading up to consuming?" (Description of physical sensations)
"What happens when I just sit and wait out the urge?"
"How do I feel when I'm consuming porn?"
"How do I feel after consuming?"
And to at first not try to answer at first but simply listen to and accept what the body is telling without judging. It's important to be kind to yourself.
Having a place where they can write down, record and share their thoughts could help. Both for emotional processing and to be able to look back at it later from a different perspective.

Building awareness also gradually helps resist giving in to urges.
Practice delaying the instant gratification and try to sit with the urge. Observe how you feel. If you don't feed it, it will eventually calm back down.

Then you can have other self introspection questions:

"What does porn provide me?"

"When did I first start using porn? How was that like?"

"In what way is porn affecting my daily life? How deep does that really go?"
(could be social interactions, how they view sex or their partners, any expectations they might have, self image, what they find or no longer find arousing)
---
I think it's better to gradually add a healthier habit before reducing or suddenly drop the consumption. If the process is painful or too hard, the habit is not going to stick and the brain is not going to want to continue. Brain prefers what it is used to rather than what is good for it.
Whatver it is, Start small. Should be doable under 5 minutes. If not, break it down into smaller parts. So that even if they are tired at the end of the day, they'll have consistently built a healthier habit that they can fall back on. But it needs to be a challenge they chose for themself.

I'd also suggest having a look at the youtube videos on reflective listening by healthygamergg.

House Talion​(dom male) • Jul 13, 2023

Restrict his porn to magazines only provided by you. He's given a week with each new mag, then you (without letting him see you do it) cover over each face in the new mag with your own.
This way his addiction is slightly limited and completely controlled by you while ensuring he always sees your face when he cums.

Miki • Jul 13, 2023

I am not a mental health expert by any stretch, but I can venture a mere opinion.

While it may do no good to try and "fix" the guy, you have to look out for yourself and where you want to go with this relationship.

A well known side effect of porn is desensitization. The stories of boys in the school yard who get their hands on a "girlie magazine" (this was long ago, before Internet porn)

it was once a thrill to just see tits.. Then asses, then pussies.. then sexual positions without showing genitals, then full-on penetration pics.

The progression goes on.

So to wrap this up quickly, one who is deep into porn, usually as a masturbation aid.. needs something a little more involved after a time and, well, if you include sexuality in your relationship, there will be a time when you want to be intimate but no matter what you do you won't be able to get a rise out of him; He won't "stand up and be counted" ; His resolve won't be firm. ----This might not be the road you want to go down.

As always just my humble opinion. As I wrote on another thread, all I have to go on is the information provided and I'm sure there are other aspects of your new relationship I am unaware of.

So this only boils down to just "what I would do" in your situation.


M

Oneironaut L​(dom male) • Jul 13, 2023

Slight wall of text incoming.

First I would say be aware of the incentives you are establishing. Without knowing you both personally we are all kind of shooting in the dark, but punishing a "bratty" sub for unwanted behavior can actually incentivize more of it if the punishment is what they consider the fun variety. So you have to tailor any rules and such you make to incentivize the behavior you actually want.

As you said it is mostly up to the addict to kick something like this, so anything you do should be from more of a support mindset. There was another good point made earlier, bad habits are much easier to replace with better ones than they are to break entirely.

So my general advice as someone who doesn't know you would be to not make rules or anything about the behavior itself. For instance instead of making a no porn rule and punishments, make the rule that they have to keep a journal about when they watch it. Include what they were doing at the time and how they were feeling, then at agreed on times you will sit down and go over it together and see if something can be set up to change the habit.

My 2 cents, take with a grain of salt and call me if symptoms persist.

Miki • Jul 14, 2023

Wall O text truncated for focus.

First, not a wall of text.. When I refer to those, it's to posts that take up a whole damned forum page and don't have paragraph breaks or spaces. makes me even more cross-eyed than I already am (very slight, hardly noticeable unless I mention it.)

Anyway, people who use up a whole page on a thread for one post remind me of those dorks who take a shit in a public or workplace shithouse--- and use up a whole fucking roll of ass paper cleaning up.

Not a very close comparison but the cause-of-annoyance is the same.

Now to the point. SHOOSH ! Don't be exposing us brats' M. O.!!! Of course I'm a brat and when active I did things to earn a good paddling or a trip to the whipping post or whatever. Thrills abound, at least before getting flogged. During my punishment, it's thrilling only if stimulated at the same time.

As for trying to break the dude's "addiction" to porn.. it's not something easily done or in some cases not even possible.

As I said, porn is usually a whack-off aid.

To be honest, I look at porn every so often and I use it while I masturbate and it accentuates my orgasms effectively-- so I get where the new sub "Jerry Jerk-Off" is cumming from.


I don't spend a ton of hours in front of a computer-- or a video on the computer cast to my TV while I rub a few off, but it does help me be "inactive" as far as meeting the meat goes. So the O P's guy does have issues, but solutions for that can prove to be rather elusive.

tallslenderguy​(other male) • Jul 15, 2023

Thanks for weighing in with your perspective Craven Object, i think you make some great points.

i'm a critical care nurse and psych is part of the mix in my practice. One of the things that often frustrates healthcare workers are patients who self diagnose. It takes a lot of years and education to qualify as a healthcare professional, there's ongoing education to keep us current, certifications that we have to renew/requalify for. i used to be in executive management. i did a complete lane change 12 years ago when i went to nursing school to get a BSN. One of my big surprises was coming to understand the foundation that healthcare is built on is extensive and the process of diagnosis is intricate, complex. i had a patient the other day who was in the hospital for his heart, being cared for by cardiology (i'm in a teaching hospital, so the care is given by teams of long term doctors with residents at various stages, with 1,2,3, years of experience). The cardiologist heading the team is a favorite of mine (pretty sure He's a Dom lol). i witnessed what looked like a siezure with my patient and passed the info, detail along to them. He turned to His team and said: "what do you think? What do you want to do?" Each commented and then He made the final decision saying: " We're cardiologists, let's get general medicine to consult on this." This Guy is a brilliant cardiologist, but has the humility to punt when He knows He is on unfamiliar ground, which makes Him a better care giver in my opinion.

i also admire and respect You posting this and asking flamegoddess, to me it shows care and maturity on Your part, i think Your sub is in good hands. i also think You have gotten some great input from The Cage community, probably most of what i add will be redundant, or affirming of what others have written.

i appreciated that Craven qualified re porn not being an addiction in a clinical sense. i think it noteworthy that certain groups who present it as such are very much about control and use such terms to assert and promote their particular agenda/s. As kinksters, being labeled and treated as "sick" is nothing new for us, in subtle and overt ways. i think the most damaging influences are often unconscious.

i'll share some of my story because i think it has some similar elements and may help. Not suggesting i will apply or making it into some sort of standard to be followed. I was raised in a religious culture that conditioned me to believe that my being attracted to the same sex was "sick, broken, sinful." When i became an age where i realized i am gay, i already had been conditioned against myself. i fought and tried to 'de-gay' myself alone from about puberty till age 19. i "failed." I.e., not unlike Your sub, i saw my lack of ability to change as "failure" and that i needed help. i got up in church and "confessed" my attraction to Guys. Of course, they simply affirmed my already conditioned belief and emotional disposition that i was "broken." It took me a few decades to completely see through and process out of that conditioning.

Hopefully, You see where i am going with this? The fact that You find elements (if not all) of Your subs porn use as "Hot," to me could be a lot more helpful than his getting "help" to quit. i'm (not saying it is, but that the question isworth considering. The people who i went to for help (eventually) labeled me a sexual addict when i didn't (could not) change to meet their expectations of who and how i should be. What kept me trying to change was i was already preconditioned to believe i was broken, so shame and guilt of failure to change got added to the list.

i go the same place as some others who have commented. Your sub has opened up to You. To me, this speaks well of both of you and your dynamic. To me, a hallmark of a good connection is this kind of intimate openness, vulnerability. Some more of my story on that count:

The first time i shared ("confessed") my attraction to Guys that i noted above, it was a small in home religious group (retrospectively i have come to realize it was a cult really lol). my future wife to be was present. Of course, no one really knew what to do, so they all circled around me and prayed 'for' me and against stuff like "demons of homosexuality." None of us (myself included) believed there was even such a thing as "being gay," that it was a "choice" and "sinful." Nothing was ever said to me about it after that day, and i realized i was still alone in my "fight" against my "same sex attraction" (we didn't call it "gay"). It took every ounce of courage i had to open up, and they didn't even begin to get it, or want to it seemed, so i went back to being alone. Two years later i married the woman i mentioned a few sentences ago. A couple of weeks into the marriage i opened up (naively) and again expressed i still "struggled with same sex attraction." my naivety was thinking my wife would be an ally in my struggle, instead, she just freaked out and i retreated big time... reassuring her that "God" had everything under control and it was nothing really.

i was barely 21 and very idealistic and immature. i repressed and suppressed my attraction to Guys. Well, i tried. i used porn and masturbated... a lot. And that just compounded my guilt and shame, my sense of failure. What made it worse was being alone with it, just me and "God." When i was 27, i had my first actual sexual experience with a Guy. Ironically, i got sort of seduced by a Guy one a religious missionary hospital ship lol (maybe there really is a "God?"). That essentially let the cat out of the bag for me. my story is long and complicated, but that started and compulsive use of anonymous hook up sex for me that i (and eventually others) labeled as "sex addiction."

And honestly, to this day, i think it was an accurate label. i will spare the details of all the "reparative therapy" i went through to try and get that under control. i no longer was even trying to 'de-gay' myself, i just wanted to not feel compelled to have sex with Guys. And i was. i literally could not help myself. Again, i'll spare the copious, endless details of what i tried to prevent myself from having sex with Guys. It didn't work.

Fast forward. After decades (a lifetime really) of torturous struggle, i finally accepted that i'm gay and not able to change. i told my (former) wife that i still love her, but if we were going to remain married, she would be married to a gay man, that that would not change. i asked her to go to a therapist with me, and that was sketchy since she was still deeply religious, and i no longer accepted those beliefs. But i found someone who was religious, but also legitimately licensed. We went for a year, and then she asked for a divorce when she realized i no longer believed i could change and be straight.

Sorry, a lot of weeds here. What i wanted to relate was after decades of compulsive sexual behavior, with constant efforts to stop, that compulsion instantly stopped when i accepted who and how i am. It was mind blowing for me and took me about a year to realize it was real. i eventually came to realize that my sexual compulsive behavior was the only affirmation i had for being gay. It was the proverbial "self medication."

What i suggest is the possibility that Your sub may have his own particular needs of self acceptance that he only finds relief for using porn and that finding and identifying that/those may be key to his compulsion?

kaoh • Jul 15, 2023

This to me seems extremely off putting. What I got from this was "I don't believe in Porn addiction. You shouldn't either. I bet he's doing it as a way to get off. You should use this thing against him"

Not all subs are looking to be punished in the way you are thinking. It is in poor taste to treat the situation that way, by going off what they said in the post. Just going off the post, he clearly wants to break the habit and they want to help.[/quote]

You could very well be correct and my references to jizz, chafing, and pegging were very immature. Many others are in a much better position to offer advice (I admit I only skimmed the advice from the healthcare pros due to length).

The point I was attempting to make was that there are often subtext and hidden agendas when any two humans interact and it may be a good idea to take a step back and consider everyone's motivations. My personal opinion is that if he has a problem, he is the one to take action. Everyone else can attempt to be supportive but you can't force or even, to a large extent, encourage an addict to do anything. The choice is their own and often the choice is the addiction over people no matter how much the people care. This is coming from someone in a very painful relationship with someone with substance addiction.

My poor "humor" and shock-jock response are most likely a defense mechanism. I apologize to those I offended especially if it was the OP.

kaoh • Jul 16, 2023

Above is my make nicy, nice response to Little Vixie and everyone else. In good conscience though I also feel I must also offer my gut response. If you are really only into a few weeks into this relationship, cut and run. Again this is coming from someone in a very painful relationship with someone with substance addiction. Said addiction was in "remission" or at least well hidden for 20 years. Within the past three years or so, the wheels have come off the train and our son is also having to deal with the outcome. Today is our 23 wedding anniversary and I have not seen her in a week nor do I know when I will. Hunter S. Thompson said, "You can turn your back on a person but never turn your back on a drug" (addiction). I know finding someone is difficult let alone someone in this lifestyle but if you value yourself, run, and don''t look back. People fuck up their lives everyday and he is not your problem, yet.

jildo • Jul 29, 2023

Yes. Well said now.

Owen Dan Happi • Aug 4, 2023

My understanding is "porn addiction" , as others have said, is not an addiction in the clinical sense. Dopamine is not an addictive substance. "Porn Addiction" has little to do with how much porn one watches and much to do with how much guilt one feels. It is strongly associated with a strict moralistic or religious view of sex. The continued propagation of the idea is tied to the profitable Porn Addiction Treatment industry. I recommend researching Dr. David Ley, PhD. to get some more solid information about this.