Exhaustion of desire
Recently a friend of mine shared with me a great article titled Exhaustion of the desire (original title El agotamiento del deseo).. It started a conversation that helped us to understand why we just don’t feel like having sex on many occasions. I am talking about those moments when the timing is great, perhaps your partner is willing and ready, you are feeling just fine, yet ‘not in the mood’…
The article shows how the world has evolved in the recent fifty years. From the uprising of free love in the 1960s, and the hippie movement who had to fight for the freedom of our desires, we transitioned into neo-liberalism, where the gigantic porn industry has transformed sexual desire into an urge. Therefore, says the author, our modern problem is not that of liberating the desire, but one of producing it.
Women get addicted to porn too
As two women in our early thirties, my friend and myself we found comfort in discovering that both of us have struggled with porn at some point in our lives. This might be shocking to some people because porn addiction is mostly assigned to men. But here’s the naked truth: women are just as prone to become addicted to xxx videos as men are. It’s just that nobody talks about it. That’s why I decided to dig a little deeper. I asked friends about their relationship with porn and I also went through the stories of my clients who have struggled with it.
After having studied thoroughly this subject, I came closer to an understanding of how the mechanism of getting hooked to xxx images works, and therefore how to revert it. In this blog, I am going to share with you some of the results of my investigation regarding this addiction. I will also present to you some real stories and how the people affected managed to break, at least partially, their addiction to pornography. I deliberately changed the names.
Instant relief vs. building authentic desire
In the article I mentioned before, the author compares the exhaustion of Earth’s natural resources – the life on the outside, to the exploitation of our subjective resources – our inner life. The culprit of that state of affairs, according to them, is capitalism or whoever creates it. The constant need for growth (production) inherent to capitalism, is based not only on the actual demand but also, and perhaps mostly, on the inner desires of the people. Or to be more exact, on the manipulation of these desires. With the superfluous nature of modern lifestyle, we are flooded with products and services. Up to the point where we are fed up and we can take no more.
Porn offers quick relief. Something we will not find that easily interacting with real people. It’s a little bit like fast food that guarantees us instant gratification. For the most part, people who fall in the trap of porn, have lost their natural ability to follow the process of building up attraction and sexual desire. One of the common things I observed in the people I interviewed is the shutting down of the heart and disconnecting it from the sexual energy coming from the genitals. They become polarized. On the one hand, they keep falling in love with someone, or create deep intimate bonds, and yet are unable to enjoy partner sex 100%. Additionally, as sexual beings who need to find sexual gratification somehow, they use a shortcut of porn. This, in turn, burdens them with a feeling of guilt and disappointment. Here is a story of William, a 38-year-old and married for 8 years.
I love my wife but I don't want sex
As it is often the case, William contacted me because, as he initially explained, he wanted to learn more about tantra and how to enrich the sex life with his wife, Alice. After the initial phone consultation and discussing the options, we decided to go for a couple consultation. On the first day they turned up with huge emotional baggage. Quickly it was obvious that this couple is in a deep crisis. I asked to talk to each of them separately, and what they told me didn’t exactly coincide. He was playing it cool telling me that he has been reading about tantra and wants to practice with his wife. She burst into tears the second her husband left the room. Alice told me that he hardly ever makes love to her, which had a devastating impact on her. But what hurt her even more, was the suspicion of him being unfaithful because of some texts messages she found on his phone.
Hiding the addiction
When the two stories were confronted, the tension in the room almost went through the roof. She was feeling very hurt while he went into kind of a ‘freeze’ state. We started by finding out what are the actual motives for both of them to contact me. Gladly, they both agreed that they love each other and want to save their marriage. Then we set on to examine the reasons behind lack of sexual interest on his side. What we learned in that first session is that he is a frequent user of porn. Initially, he could not see the correlation between porn and the lacking desire to have sex with his partner. Although he did not say openly that he didn’t find her attractive any more, he was more willing to stick to that sort of thinking rather than to admit that he might have an addiction problem.
We established a treatment plan including individual sessions for him and occasional couple consultations. Bodywork sessions, using tantric massage and energy work helped William to reconnect to his body and to re-sensitize it. We started to discover new erogenous zones. At the same time, we continued to work around the denial regarding his addiction. During his sessions, he had quite a few realizations about the relationship with his father. We learned that the emotional shutting down was a defense mechanism against an emotionally unavailable, and very critical parent. I guided him through the process of reconciliation with the inner father figure. There were tears and a heart-opening and William confirmed he felt as if a heavy armour had fallen off his back. This, in turn, helped him to become even more receptive to love and touch.
What helped William to shift the focus from external stimulus inwards, was the idea of tantric sex. Or, in other words, a conscious love-making. Throughout the following sessions, we work mostly the energy, reconnecting the scattered parts of himself. Thanks to deep emotional unblocking he found the way to revive the love he had for his partner when they were newlyweds and enjoyed their sex life very much. Free of guilt and resentment, he began to understand how to make love to his partner in a heart-centered manner, as opposed to genital-based intercourse. Slowly, the natural desire began to emerge when the two would get close. William and Alice are still learning the new ways of love making, but they are definitely on the right path that brings them closer together.
I didn't realize I was addicted
Julia is a 35 year old professional. She has been dedicating the past five years to personal growth and healing. She facilitates therapy sessions for others. She had messaged me after a friend in common gave her my contact. Already on the phone, she bluntly stated: I think I am addicted to porn, can you help me? As always, I replied that we would need to have a longer talk and to establish a treatment plan to see whether the therapy that I offer suits her. She eagerly accepted the date I proposed for the first session.
Julia had been exposed to porn through old magazines she had found in her father garage at the age of 11. She couldn’t remember whether the urge to masturbate appeared after seeing the pictures or if she’d felt sexual before that. What she did remember was sneaking out to her father’s garage, sometimes even three to five times a day to masturbate. After magazines came the era of the internet so motion pictures replaced old school ‘dirty’ magazines. When she finally started having sex with partners, she realized she had difficulties reaching orgasm. This, very quickly resulted in losing interest in having intimate times with others, especially the penetrative sex that wouldn’t bring her any satisfaction.
Julia continued living her double life, meaning she would masturbate quite a lot when she was alone, but she never mentioned it to any of her partners. Instead, she would often feel frustrated after being unable to reach climax, often blaming it on poor love-making skills of her partners. It wasn’t until she turned 30 when she realized porn makes her feel dirty, especially right after orgasming. She also recognized that the images had become way more hard-core and simply disgusting because the softer kind of porn wouldn’t work anymore.
Baby steps
She also noticed that the notorious images wouldn’t leave her imagination during lovemaking with a partner. When she decided to stop watching porn while masturbating, she discovered she could hardly get excited. And that was the moment when something clicked. She made a conscious decision of not watching porn, even if that meant no orgasms for a while. Still, the images were haunting her, making it impossible to get connected to her partner. And that was the moment she contacted me.
Julia’s case is a fairly easy one since she is totally ready for a transformation. Part of the initiation of her therapy included forgiving herself for, as she would put it, having contaminated her mind with the dirty images for such a long time. She needed to accept that the images wouldn’t go away so fast, and in fact, for now, they are her allies since they help her to get aroused. She got used to the idea of gradual transition and using the pictures (only from her imagination) when she felt she needed them. On the other hand, like with William, bodywork sessions helped her to re-discover her body. She also started practicing loving self-touch techniques.
Bodywork sessions helped her to lively up most parts of the body and to open up the energy channels. She started appreciating the subtle orgasmic waves, without the need for going ‘at it’ right away. Gradually, the temptation to watch porn online went away for good. And she reports that now the percentage of the time when she does recur to imagining porn scenes while lovemaking or masturbating went to less than 20%. For now, she is happy with this result.
Acceptance is key in healing from porn addiction
Pablo, 23 years old, contacted me recently, initially asking how he can get better control over his mind and his impulses. I asked about more clues. After giving me some examples from his daily life, I felt that he was actually avoiding to ask the right question. Eventually, with visibly quite a lot of shame, he told me about his porn addiction. He’d been using porn as visual stimulation for masturbation from the beginning, that is since he discovered masturbation at about 12. He practically initiated his sexuality through erotic motion pictures and developed a highly distorted idea of sex. He began to realize this when he started seeing someone. He thinks they are a match and yet the ‘sex thing’ doesn’t work.
Gladly, Pablo communicated clearly to his partner the way he feels. This, actually, is an exception to the rule. At least amongst my clients, the vast majority of men hides their sexual frustration from their intimate partner. Sometimes they suffer in silence for years, often faking the whole thing or directly avoiding sex. Luckily, Pablo’s partner positively received the message. She is also a bit older, which might be helpful, and is willing to give him ‘the time he needs’. From what he told me, he is unable to feel sexual with her. So his real question was how to limit the use of porn and how to instead enjoy sex with his girlfriend.
We started by exploring all the emotions that accompany his bad habit. We found a lot of resistance and inner conflict. We decided to take the inability to accept that part of his psyche which uses porn as the starting point of his therapy. After further exploration, Pablo began to understand the phenomenon known to psychology as the shadow. Eventually, the therapy focused on integrating the inner self by working with self-love and acceptance. During the sessions, we focused on making the connection between love and sexual desire.
Foundation of Self love
For the most part, we focused on pumping the sexual energy into the heart area and diverting it inwards. The more we turned away from the noise of his mind the more he was trying to play the game of hide and seek. We stumbled upon a big armour and a huge resistance to opening up. Pablo’s inner self showed signs of deep wounding potentially to be traced back to early childhood trauma. Working as a mirror, I was able to help him make a connection between that hard wall he had built around himself and the inability to fully engage intimately with another person. Slowly, he began to realize that to discover the missing puzzles to sexual pleasure with a partner. As of today, Pablo is still in his process, but unfortunately, he finds it hard to fully commit to therapy.
Breaking the silence
Three of my clients are very typical examples of porn addicts. They are often unaware of the existing problem. Porn is still a great taboo even in our modern society. People would much rather admit they have a problem with alcohol before confessing that they use porn habitually. Often they hide the problem from themselves, creating a sort of inner dissonance. Many of my clients admit they lost sexual desire within a relationship, yet when asked directly, they are very reluctant to admit that they are a regular user of porn. On the one hand, they are a loving husband and father/ wife and mother, and on the other, they feel they need to hide the so-called ugly truth about their sexuality. On a positive note, I want to add that based on the experiences with my clients, Tantric Healing Therapy brings amazing results in relatively short time when it comes to helping with porn addiction.
Tantric Healing Therapy is a holistic modality and it does not judge. Instead, a ThT therapist creates a personalized treatment plan that is suited to your needs. If you think you might have porn-related issues and want a professional help, contact Kamila Lukasik for Tantric Healing in Spain, or other therapist in your location.
Photo by Grzegorz Walczak on Unsplash
