With Episode 253, we just crossed the “One Million Downloads” threshold! And we’re in 204 Countries/Territories worldwide! Thank you to all of our PBSE listeners across the planet! None of this is possible without YOU!

In this episode, we address a betrayed partner's questions about the role of pornography in a relationship. Here's what she submitted—

Hello, I know you talk about how porn isn’t healthy or true intimacy, but what happens when your partner says they use porn to better learn how to please their partner? I ask because I’m a part of a couple of support groups, and there are a good number of women who share that this is the approach of their porn-addicted partners. I know it’s an excuse, which if anything is an understatement. Is it to possibly do a podcast specifically on this? We all know porn is NOT how to learn how to please your partner, and ultimately it’s a cop out to continue in addiction. In other words, their porn brain justifies it. I do want to note thankfully this isn’t my husband’s mindset, and have to thank both of you for the podcasts you post. My husband has shared it has helped him not feel alone, or attacked, and has helped him stay in active recovery. 

Over the last couple of decades, we have run into this rationale too often! Where does this come from?

• Our heavily “sexualized culture” is a “grand set-up” from our earliest youth!
• Sadly, too many of our teens look to porn as their primary “sex education”
• Teens and young adults feel “pressured” to “be in the know”
• There is the whole “addiction pandemic” at younger & younger ages—and then all of the “defense mechanisms” to protect that addiction

What role do you want “sex” to play in your relationship???

• What is “holistic intimacy”? 
• How does “porn” get in the way of that “intimacy” and healthy sexual intimacy as a part of that “whole”?—
  • Because this is all being “dictated” to you, you nearly completely miss the whole communication, exploration, and collaboration experience!!! In essence, it is NOT “sex your way,” it’s “sex their way”—from an “intention” that is entirely manipulative, usury and ENSLAVING!  
  • Porn as a “source” of so-called information and instruction is a WHOLLY distorted, fake, inaccurate, filled with lies & manipulation and BASED ON THE DEEPEST FORMS OF HUMAN EXPLOITATION & ABUSE KNOWN TO MANKIND!
  • In other words, not only is it poisonous, it isn’t even accurate or “educational”! And has NOTHING to do with “true intimacy.”

Porn has the potential to impact your capacity for feeling happiness in general!

• A brief discussion about the hedonic set points & the rewiring of the Dopamine System:
  • Recurrent, compulsive exposure to selective, isolated elements can begin to manipulate and change the way you feel pleasure, and how much of it you are able to feel
  • On a chemical level, it can become more difficult to experience pleasure, more difficult to overcome sadness, etc. 
  • Radically alters the focus of the coupleship, and imbalances the priorities that introduces instability, emotionally and otherwise.

Take back ALL sexual aspects of your relationship! Do NOT allow it to be highjacked & manipulated by outside sources. Make it what the two of you want it to be; a healthy, connecting part of your overall WHOLE relationship intimacy!

For a summary article from the transcript of this podcast, go to:  "I Use Porn to Learn How to Please my Partner. That's Healthy . . . Right?"