This is a very different question from the standpoint of the person using the porn versus the standpoint of a spouse, partner, boyfriend or girlfriend of the porn user. Spouses and Partners may be worried about something the person is doing that makes them uncomfortable. Porn users are worried about whether being a sex addict is something they need to worry about at all.
I know of no hard and fast rule about how much porn viewing makes you an addict. And it is sometimes confusing because using internet pornography may be the addict’s primary and sometimes even their only behavior, but more often it is part of a pattern or set of behaviors. Some porn addicts may have other sexually compulsive behaviors like seductiveness, affairs, online sexual hook-ups, use of prostitutes or visiting sexual massage parlors. Viewing internet porn may exist along side one or more of these as a part of an overall sexual addiction. Nevertheless is is possible to look at what factors do and don’t make porn an addiction.
It’s not the exact number of hours per week
If a person is a “recreational” porn user and has no other addictive sexual behaviors they may not have any problem at all. However, this assumes that they can stop if they want to and that they can honor their partner’s feelings if their partner wants them to stop. It also assumes that they are capable of being honest about what they are doing and are not leading a double life. Further it assumes that the use of pornography is not interfering with their having a relationship life in the first place.
So searching for an exact number of hours of watching internet porn is difficult. It is like the question “How many hairs do you have to lose before you are bald?” But at the extreme end of the scale where the person is watching porn several hours a day or 20 hours a week it is clear that there is some kind of a problem.
It’s not the content
Some people might think that if the content of the pornography being used is especially bizarre or violent or even illegal that this means the person is an addict. Such people may have problems or fetishes but they may not act them out in an addictive way. Likewise the fact that a porn addict only looks at “normal” heterosexual scenarios does not mean that he or she is not a sex addict.
It’s how you do it that makes it addiction
- Addiction has been described as a pathological relationship with a mood altering experience. The use of porn as an addiction involves the use of sexual arousal and gratification as a way to escape from unpleasant feelings in the same way that using alcohol and other drugs is a way to numb out or escape.
- Another of the key features of porn as an addiction is that the addict continues to engage in the behavior even though it has negative consequence. Like a drug addict, a porn addict will take extreme risks such as viewing porn on his work computer even though it may mean losing his job. And the addict will not stop there but will continue to use porn despite what it costs in terms of the damage it does to his life or livelihood.
- A distinguishing feature of porn or sex addiction is that it goes against the addict’s basic value system. If there is no effective intervention the porn or sex addict continues in the addiction regardless of the harm to himself or others he is close to. The addict does not like what he or she is doing and often feels very bad about it. The fact that it continues is evidence that an addiction is present.
- Porn addicts are also people who want to quit at various times and who have every intention of quitting. Sometimes these are merely cynical ploys but very often they are real intentions. And yet the fact of doing something despite the intention not to do it is a sign that addiction is present.
- Lastly, any sex addiction including porn addiction is distinguished by the fact that it involves the avoidance of intimacy. The addict removes part of himself from the relationship with a significant other and compartmentalizes it in a particular sexual activity. This is the intimacy “disability” or intimacy avoidance that is present in some form for most sex and porn addicts.
So to sum up: If the person is not using pornography to medicate anything, is feeling fine about it, is able to be honest and open about it with a partner, is able to maintain an intimate relationship in which he shares all parts of himself, is not taking risks, losing jobs, going into debt or otherwise ruining his life for the sake of porn and is able to make a decision to quit and stick to it when there is good reason to do so then the person is probably not a porn addict.
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