If part of your reason for doing this is wanting partnered sex to feel like more, a few things worth knowing.
Comparison is the enemy, and it's usually unconscious. Porn is edited, performed, and optimised for a viewing angle. Nobody deliberately compares their partner to it — but exposure shapes expectation without permission, and the meta-analytic evidence for a small negative association between use and sexual satisfaction is consistent with exactly that mechanism. Noticing the comparison is most of dismantling it.
Presence over performance. Attention on sensation rather than on how it's going, or on a mental montage, is the shift most people report as significant. It's also just a skill, and it improves with practice.
Anxiety is self-fulfilling. Worrying about whether it'll work is the most reliable way to ensure it doesn't. If you're in that loop, taking intercourse off the table for a while — deliberately, with your partner's agreement — is a standard sex-therapy move precisely because it removes the thing being evaluated.
Talk about it. Uncomfortable, effective, and consistently underrated relative to every technique.
And don't expect a switch. Whatever's changed took years to build. Give it more than a fortnight before drawing conclusions.
Takeaways
- Exposure shapes expectation without asking. Noticing it is most of dismantling it.
- Taking intercourse off the table removes the thing being evaluated. That's the point.
- Whatever changed took years. A fortnight isn't a verdict.
Sources and how strong they are (2)
- Well establishedA meta-analysis of 50 studies (50,000+ people, ten countries) found pornography consumption unrelated to intrapersonal satisfaction (body and self), but associated with lower interpersonal satisfaction — sexual and relational — across cross-sectional, longitudinal and experimental designs. The association is small, and analyses by sex were significant for men only. Reported effect sizes include r = −.13 (95% CI −.16, −.10, k = 29) for men on interpersonal satisfaction, r = −.11 (95% CI −.14, −.07) for sexual satisfaction and r = −.09 (95% CI −.12, −.05, k = 24) for relational satisfaction.
- Wright PJ, Tokunaga RS, Kraus A & Klann E 2017, Human Communication Research 43(3):315-343, doi:10.1111/hcre.12108
- Mixed evidencePorn-induced erectile dysfunction is a clinical hypothesis supported by case reports and clinician reports. Frequency-based population studies have not produced consistent associations, and the one longitudinal study to measure erectile function with a validated instrument over a year found that self-reported problematic use correlated with erectile difficulty at any single moment, that mere use did not, and that no pornography variable predicted the trajectory of erectile function. It remains contested.
- Park BY, Wilson G, Berger J, Christman M, Reina B, Bishop F, Klam WP, Doan AP 2016, Behav Sci 6(3):17, doi:10.3390/bs6030017, PMID 27527226, PMC5039517 — carries a 2018 correction, Behav Sci 8(6):55, doi:10.3390/bs8060055, PMID 29857562, disclosing that co-author Gary Wilson is the author of Your Brain on Porn and removing the academic editor's name; see C58
- Cuts toward an association — Jacobs T, Geysemans B, Van Hal G, Glazemakers I, Fog-Poulsen K, Vermandel A, De Wachter S, De Win G 2021, JMIR Public Health Surveill 7(10):e32542, doi:10.2196/32542, PMID 34534092, PMC8569536
- A practitioner magazine commentary, not a peer-reviewed study — Kirby M 2021, Trends in Urology & Men's Health 12(2):6-10, doi:10.1002/tre.791
- Grubbs JB & Gola M 2019, J Sex Med 16(1):111-125, doi:10.1016/j.jsxm.2018.11.004, PMID 30621919
- Dwulit & Rzymski 2019, J Clin Med 8(7):914, PMID 31247949
- Landripet & Štulhofer 2015, J Sex Med 12(5):1136-1139, PMID 25816904
- Prause & Pfaus 2015, Sex Med 3(2):90-98, PMID 26185674
- Not a retraction — a published Comment on Prause & Pfaus 2015: Isenberg RA 2015, Sex Med 3(3):219-221, doi:10.1002/sm2.71
The full course is in the app.
All 41 lessons are in the app, every claim graded the same way, with the Panic button, the evening check-in and the anonymous community alongside them. Free.
Coming to iOS and Android.