I was at a juncture in my life where I desperately wanted to be in a romantic relationship. It had been some time ago that my last relationship had ended. I was impatiently craving love and sexual intimacy.
That’s when I met him.
I was new in town and didn’t have any friends. We immediately formed a casual friendship based on similar interests we had. I was happy to find out he was my neighbour.
Soon it became our daily ritual to hang out and have a chat by the seaside in our neighbourhood.
It didn’t take long for me to start developing feelings for him. I wanted to be more than friends. So I made my intentions clear, but he held back.
He told me there were a lot of things I should know about him before I decide to jump into a relationship with him. He also said that after he told me about his life, I probably wouldn’t like him anymore.
It turned out that he did have a scarily dark and violent past. However, his complete honesty about it and him wanting to not be that person anymore convinced me that it was a risk worth taking.
He also told me he had not been with a woman for five years because he was too scared of himself and too scared of getting hurt.
It was always a bit awkward when we tried to get sexually intimate. It was strange because he said he had not been with a woman for five years, yet he was very restrained when it came to sex.
Every part of his body seemed to stiffen up, except for his penis. We tried over and over again, but it just didn’t happen.
It was not only sexually frustrating but embarrassing as well. On his part, I think he felt emasculated and not manly enough. On my part, I felt inadequate and undesirable. I felt like I wasn’t good enough in bed and not attractive enough.
Trying to have sex left the both of us feeling terrible about ourselves. However, I think that was just a reactionary irrational emotional response to the growing frustration building up inside us.
My rational brain suspected that the problem was a symptom of his diabetes. So I urged him to talk to his doctor about it, but he was reluctant. It seemed like he had something else on his mind which he couldn’t quite get himself to say.
Finally, one day he told me that he had a problem – he was addicted to porn.
He suspects that is the reason behind our non-existent sex lives. He admitted he watched porn at least 3 times a day and had no problems getting an erection or ejaculating while watching porn.
We had only known each other for about a month at that point, and I can imagine it must have been really hard for him to come out and say that. We were still trying to impress each other and were far from the comfort zone couples get into where you just fart in front of your partner and don’t care.
The whole situation was really taxing on a new relationship.
I still couldn’t quite believe that porn could lead to erectile dysfunction, so I googled it, and to my surprise, I found out that it was quite common. What was even more shocking is that it affects a lot of young men with little or no previous sexual experience.
In his case, it was clear that his decision to stay away from any intimate relationships with women for 5 years after separating from his ex-wife somehow led to his porn addiction. He used porn to avoid being sexually intimate with women and then when he finally wanted to, he couldn’t, because his brain had been wired in a certain way already.
After reading through several articles about porn-induced erectile dysfunction, it finally struck me what powerful impact porn can have on sexual intimacy and relationships. It suddenly felt like I was living in a cold, dystopian world where porn had destroyed all human intimacy. It was disturbing and sad.
Come to think about it, real sex could never live up to the expectations of porn. Firstly, most men and women don’t look as good as porn stars and can’t perform as well either. Many people may also not be comfortable with sexual acts which are normalized in porn.
Actually, porn doesn’t even come close to resembling real sex. It’s so far removed from the real human connection during sex. Basically, a porn addict’s brain has been wired to get off to porn sex, not real sex.
I’ve always thought the sexual aggression directed towards women in porn is unsettling and so is the exploitation and objectification of bodies, but I never imagined that porn could actually destroy sexual intimacy between human beings.
It took us both some time to digest all the information properly.
He was devastated by the sad reality of the situation and told me he would completely understand if I wanted to break up with him. I didn’t want to give up on us. Sex was important, but our relationship was more important to me. So we decided to give it a try.
Once we knew what the problem was for sure, we were keen on trying out the solutions recommended. We learned that porn-induced erectile dysfunction can be cured in a few months by not watching porn and spending more time being sexually intimate with a partner instead.
His only access to porn was his smartphone, so we exchanged phones since I had a “dumb” phone which can’t be connected to the internet. We also spent more time in bed being intimate.
Finally, after more than 3 months, we could have sex like normal people. It was such a relief!
We came out feeling like a solid couple although we were still a relatively new couple. Overcoming that difficult situation together made our bond much stronger. However, in the end, the relationship failed for other reasons.
Although this particular experience has made me more wary of the effects of porn on human intimacy, I wouldn’t say no to porn altogether. I still think porn can be a great way to spice up sex with your partner once in a while.
It is the addiction to porn that makes people dysfunctional, not only biologically but also emotionally and mentally.
For more articles like these, read Weird Online Dating Encounters, and I Had a FWB and It Was Good. Here’s What It Was Like.
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