Pornography is Harmful for Some People
TL;DR
The use of pornography is an individual choice, based on your belief systems. For some people, pornography is harmful. It can negatively impact sexual functioning, emotional intimacy, self-worth, and relationships. It may contribute to shame, escalation of arousal needs, confusion about sexual identity, erectile dysfunction, and the erosion of trust between partners. Based on my clinical experience as a certified sex therapist, pornography requires mindful use, transparency, and clear boundaries—especially in midlife relationships.
Proceed with caution.
For many years, I remained largely neutral on the question of whether pornography is harmful. As a certified sex therapist, I believed there was a place for erotica in some individuals’ and couples’ lives—if it was used intentionally, openly, and in moderation.
But over time, my clinical experience has shifted my perspective.
Pornography itself is not inherently wrong. It is designed as entertainment, not education. The problem arises when people begin to rely on pornography as their primary source of sexual arousal, stress relief, or understanding of what sex should look like between partners or when it is done in secrecy. In those cases, pornography can gradually reshape arousal patterns, expectations, and emotional intimacy—often in ways that undermine real-life relationships.
Our Beliefs About Pornography
I remember growing up with the idea that porn was dirty. I can see myself finding my stepmother’s playgirl magazine in the bathroom and being shocked by the pictures. I also remember accidentally clicking into a porn site years ago and having window after window of erotic images open up on my computer. It felt unnerving and embarrassing. All of those feelings were because my family taught me that pornography was bad. As I got older, I learned porn is neither good nor bad. It impacts people differently.
The media often presents porn as the default source of blame for sexual problems and as a cause for divorce and sexual violence. None of this has been proven true. If porn is your sole source of sex education or you expect partners to look and act like those in porn videos or your porn use impairs your ability to work or be in relationships, then you may need help understanding how it is impacting your life. However, porn use can be positive for many people. Research has found that couples who are the most sexually satisfied are more, not less, likely to use porn as part of their sex lives. For some people, porn adds variety and for others, it’s a way to live out fantasies.
I grew up in a conservative household, attended a military college, and served in the military. For much of my life, I held conservative views. However, one of the benefits of becoming a certified sex therapist is the depth of training required—not just clinically, but personally. That training helped me grow into a more open, curious, and accepting person, particularly toward people whose sexual preferences, belief systems, lifestyles, and approaches to sex differ from my own.
During my journey of becoming a sex therapist, I explored my own values and beliefs about sexuality and pornography more deeply. And I became more open-minded and liberal in my thinking.
Despite my commitment to openness, remaining neutral about pornography has become impossible—because of the impact I’ve witnessed in my clinical work.
Pornography Is Entertainment—Not Sex Education
Pornography is designed to entertain, not to teach people how to have mutually satisfying, emotionally connected sex. Unfortunately, many people unconsciously absorb pornographic images and scripts as templates for what sex should look like. They think that’s how their partners should look and act.
In reality, pornography often portrays sex that is performative, exaggerated, emotionally disconnected, and focused on visual novelty rather than closeness and connection. It lacks what therapists call relational attunement - being in emotional sync with your partner. When people mistake porn for a model of healthy sexuality, problems often arise.
Why Neutrality Became Impossible for Me
After working with hundreds of clients across different life stages, I’ve come to a clear conclusion: for some people, pornography is harmful—not only to their sex lives, but to their sense of self and their relationships.
While some people use pornography occasionally without significant consequences, others—most often men—experience escalating use, feelings of shame, sexual dysfunction, and problems in their relationships. The rapid evolution of online content and artificial intelligence has only intensified these risks.
AI Enables People to Create Custom Pornography
AI has blown the possibilities for custom erotica out of the water: with the right prompt, you can create customized pornographic images, videos and audio erotica. You can design the features of the people in your custom pornographic to look, act and talk the way you desire, and you can even include yourself in the content.
Imagine a teenager 5 years from now have an online love affair with their AI bot and exploring a sexual relationship with their bot through custom pornography. This idea frightens me to the core because it has the potential to create a subset of society that chooses to live in an AI fantasy world versus engaging in real-life, meaningful relationships. How isolating and shallow that would be.
Research shows that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of our relationships. It’s challenging to imagine AI providing the same level of quality relationship that we find in real life when we connect with others and feel a sense of belonging to a community. We already have a loneliness epidemic, and this would create even more isolation for some people.
How Pornography Becomes Harmful for Some People
There are several reasons pornography can become problematic:
It can spiral into out-of-control sexual behavior
It often elicits shame and secrecy
It may create confusion about sexual identity
It can escalate arousal needs over time
It can contribute to erectile dysfunction
It can erode trust and emotional connection in relationships
Let’s explore each of these concerns.
Out-of-Control Sexual Behavior vs. the Addiction Model
I have worked with clients who spend six to eight hours a day masturbating to pornography. This level of use affects their work, relationships, and ability to function in daily life. Many sex therapists conceptualize this as out-of-control sexual behavior.
Some Christian therapists frame this behavior as sex addiction. I understand the comparison—both addiction and out-of-control sexual behavior involve craving dopamine, escalating stimulation, and diminished self-regulation.
However, I disagree with two central aspects of the addiction model.
Why the Sex Addiction Model Can Cause Harm
First, addiction treatment often emphasizes abstinence. While abstinence may be appropriate for substances like alcohol or drugs, I do not believe it is realistic—or healthy—to prescribe abstinence from sexual activity or masturbation. I‘ve even heard some therapists claim that masturbation constitutes cheating, a belief that often contributes to unnecessary marital rupture.
Most pornography users are not attempting to betray their partners; they are seeking arousal, relief, or escape.
Second, I find the addiction model deeply shaming. Shame communicates “I am bad,” rather than “my behavior is causing problems.” Shame drives secrecy, isolation, and hiding.
Healing from out of control sexual behavior requires compassion, curiosity, and openness—not moral condemnation.
Pornography, Shame, and Sexual Identity Confusion
Many of my heterosexual clients began viewing pornography at a young age. Over time, they became desensitized to mainstream heterosexual content and gravitated toward increasingly diverse or extreme material, including gay, BDSM, kink, or transgender pornography.
This often led to confusion and distress about their sexual identity. Some feared they might be gay or transgender simply because they were aroused by these images. I even had young clients develop erectile dysfunction because they began to question themselves when they were with heterosexual partners.
Therapy helped them to understand that escalating novelty is a common response to frequent pornography use—and that arousal to diverse content does not necessarily indicate a change in sexual orientation or identity. This realization often brought profound relief.
How Pornography Can Rewire the Arousal System
Certified sex therapists frequently help clients explore their erotic templates—what turns them on and what turns them off. One helpful framework is the dual control model of sexual response. Educator and researcher Emily Nagoski, Ph.D. created a spin on this model that made it much more understandable for people.
She compared arousal to driving a car: some things press the gas, while others press the brakes. To become aroused, you have to first take your foot off of the brake. What that means is that you have to eliminate the things that kill.your arousal and create a context where the things that rev your arousal up are present.
When pornography is used excessively, it trains the brain to require higher levels of stimulation to activate arousal - aka to hit the accelerator. This conditioning can work during solo masturbation but fail during partnered sex, where stimulation is more nuanced and relational. Everyday sex with a partner with an average body may not be as much of a turn-on.
For example, someone accustomed to highly stylized, exaggerated pornography may struggle to become aroused with a real-life partner whose body, behaviors, or sexual expression differ from those images.
The good news is that you can retrain your brain if erotica is a problem for you. Taking a break from erotica or watching pornography with less aggressive sex and more realistic bodies may be helpful. There are sites that host videos with real people having real sex.
Pornography, Erectile Dysfunction, and Performance Anxiety
The research on the link between pornography use and ED is mixed. Because reported cases of ED amongst younger men seemed to be rising at a time when pornography became more available, some people assumed that it was contributing to ED. However, recent studies have shown there isn’t a relationship between the pornography use and ED.
Some of the assumption that pornography use causes ED is because more men with ED masturbate (and use erotica to stimulate arousal). They are using it as a coping mechanism for their ED; the pornography use is not causing ED. This is because they are able to achieve an erection through masturbation eventhough they have difficulty achieving one in partnered sex.
Given the complexity of ED, it’s important not to jump to conclusions about erotica and to consider other factors which make pornography use a risk factor for some penis owners. Other relevant variables such as age, relationship satisfaction, medical issues, anxiety/depression, and sexual interest/desire are stronger predictors of sexual dysfunction than pornography use or masturbation frequency.
Masturbation Technique Can Be a Problem
I am seeing increasing numbers of men experiencing ED linked to heavy pornography use combined with problematic masturbation techniques—fast motion, no lubrication, and excessive grip. I am careful to not blame the erotica but instead to uncouple it from the ED because the majority of existing research shows that masturbation techniques are what contributes to ED.
When a penis becomes conditioned to the high levels of stimulation from a tight grip and fast stroke with lots of friction, partnered sex may feel insufficient. In fact, there’s no way a woman’s soft sexual parts can provide the same level of stimulation. This reduced stimulation results in erectile difficulties. And when penis owners experience ED, they feel shame and anxiety that reinforces an ongoing cycle of performance anxiety and sexual avoidance.
If you want to learn more about this pattern, you may be interested in my online workshop: The #1 ED Culprit: Mastering Performance Anxiety.
How Pornography Can Damage Trust and Emotional Intimacy
Pornography use—especially when hidden—can severely damage relational trust. I’ve worked with many couples whose relationships unraveled after one partner discovered the other’s pornography use through browser history or digital footprints.
Partners often experience shock, betrayal, anger, disgust, and grief. In relationships where sexual communication is limited or sex is fairly vanilla, exposure to a partner’s fantasies can feel destabilizing and deeply threatening.
They are especially upset when they discover that the partner they have trusted for years has been secretly viewing erotica. They start to question what else their partner might be doing, and this erodes trust in their relationship.
Rebuilding intimacy after such discoveries is often slow and complex, similar to rebuilding a relationship after one partner has an affair.
When Pornography Impacts Self-Worth in Relationships
Some partners are unbothered by pornography. Others feel deeply wounded by it.
Common concerns include:
“I’m not attractive enough.”
“I wish he could desire me instead.”
“I feel compared and inadequate.”
These emotional injuries deserve attention and care—not dismissal.
Pornography and Midlife Couples
For midlife couples, pornography often carries added weight.
Midlife intimacy often changes because relationships are already navigating menopause, erectile changes, health concerns, caregiving stress, and shifting identities. When sexual connection feels vulnerable, pornography can intensify insecurity, avoidance, and emotional distance.
For some men, pornography becomes a refuge from performance anxiety because they can maintain an erection during solo masturbation, but not with their partners. For some women, it reinforces feelings of invisibility or replacement. They often feel like their midlife bodies are not attractive enough and find the idealized bodies of women in pornographic material threatening, which leads to them feeling insecure about their attractiveness to their partner.
Healing in midlife often involves honest conversations, reducing shame, addressing sexual changes directly, and rebuilding erotic connection in ways that feel mutual and safe.
Pornography has a Place
For many people, viewing erotica is not harmful and actually helps their sexual expression. Research shows pornography use is linked to greater levels of arousal and desire for partnered and solo sexual activity. And women who use pornography often have less difficulty becoming aroused and having orgasms. They also have greater sexual pleasure during masturbation.
I believe there may be a time and place for pornography—but it has a slippery slope. Your beliefs about erotica and how intentionally and transparently it is used determine whether it enhances or undermines your relationship and sexual health.
My advice: proceed with caution.
