We Asked Men And Women On X How Porn Destroyed Their Relationships. Here’s What They Said

In just two days after my call for testimony submissions, I received stories from women whose husbands had turned so abusive they tried to burn the house down with their children still inside, to stories about men who had become so addicted and masturbated so often that they may have done permanent damage to their penis. Unfortunately, I received so many stories I couldn’t even include them all. Porn is an issue that has touched more lives than we could ever comprehend. 

Because of that, there is something that needs to be urgently addressed. The manosphere and porn stars alike are fond of parroting that if men felt fulfilled in the bedroom, the porn industry would vanish overnight, but since these women obviously aren’t caring for their husbands correctly, they deserve whatever abuse and infidelity comes their way. 

This is a villainous, idiotic claim for two reasons:

1. It’s a lie. In the majority of the stories I received (from men themselves, no less), many of them had been consuming porn from ages as young as 6 years old, up through college. None mentioned turning to porn due to a lack of sexual gratification from their wife. However, I’m not so naive as to say this phenomenon is nonexistent, which leads me to my next point. 

2. The acts of abuse men and women commit are the fault of the perpetrator alone. The men I spoke to readily admitted this themselves. Even the ones who were victimized by the porn industry as minors. They all agree that if you, as a human being, wrong someone, the fault is yours and yours alone. 

If you’ve outsourced your thinking to these modern-day philosophers, I suggest you get your money (and your brain cells) back.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for readers 18 years old and older. This article contains graphic descriptions of a sexual nature.

Now, let’s dive in. 

Porn Opens the Door to Physical Infidelity 

Many men sent me stories about how easy it was to cheat when porn was in their life. This was because they had become so accustomed to instant sexual gratification and already regularly engaged in psychological infidelity by viewing other women in sexual situations while stimulating themselves that the leap to physical infidelity wasn’t all that hard. 

One man told me, “I had watched porn at a young age. Never thought there was anything wrong. I met my wife while I was in the military. I also had a friend I had known for a long time who was starting an OnlyFans. I looked. Never really thought anything of it. Well, I got out of the military, and my wife and I moved around a few times. I moved to a different state to start school, and she stayed in our original home a few states away because she couldn't leave her job yet. I started talking to that same friend with the OF account. One thing led to another, and we started sexting. I had a secret relationship, I ended up sleeping with her, and my wife found out. Obviously, she was devastated. Years later, she is still recovering. The one good thing to happen is it brought me back to the Catholic Church. I can certainly tell the difference when I stop watching it. I feel much closer to her.”

One woman told me how her husband’s taste and preference in women took a drastic turn due to porn. She tried to make it work, but ultimately, he didn’t want to. She said, “I met my now ex at 16, right before my mom passed. I first found out about his porn addiction when I was 8 months pregnant with our second child. To say I was devastated does not match the crippling hurt I felt. He promised to never do it again. I stayed for 25 years thinking I would be enough for him. I realize now I would never be.”

“I’m so sorry. What officially ended things?” I asked.

“A woman three years older than our oldest son,” she replied.

Once their dopamine circuits are fried from porn use, some men find themselves turning to prostitutes and other illicit activities in order to feel something. 

“I had a 40-year addiction to porn that started when I was 10 years old. It ruined my first marriage and very nearly ruined a second marriage. Once I got older, with more money, soon the porn was not strong enough, and I needed more. That's when I would search out women to pay for sex. That led me to a hotel room in Chicago in Feb. 2020, where I was blackmailed by a prostitute who called my wife. Through an incredible act of obedience to God, my wife (and Jesus) forgave me for my actions, and I have been porn-free ever since,” Neil Getzlow told me. “As you can see from my X account, I am very open about my past in an attempt to help other men understand the dangers of porn. I'd be happy to attach my name to any comments if it helps. ” 

Porn Can Cause Erectile Dysfunction

Many of us have heard how porn can cause erectile dysfunction (ED), but before receiving this next story, I had never heard that chronic masturbation could actually cause irreversible damage to penile nerves.

One man shared with me, “I may have fertility issues down the line due to it destroying my sensitivity down there. I’ll spare you the entirety of my history with pornography and just start by saying I was exposed at way too young an age. I started masturbating at 14. Then, I got my first girlfriend at 21 and lost my virginity to her. To my surprise, however, I wasn’t able to achieve orgasm. I chalked that up to nerves and the condom I was wearing. But during the entirety of my relationship with her, no matter what we did, condom or no, I was only able to orgasm by my own hand. Same happened with my second girlfriend. The only time I came with her was when I did it myself or when we did anal. I wasn’t made aware of the nerve-deadening effect of masturbation until I saw a post about it on 4chan a few years ago, but even then, I kept at it. Now that I finally stopped, I’m hoping and praying the nerves are functional again by the time I get married, whenever that is. It’s going to be a painful conversation to have with my future wife, but it’s going to have to happen.”

Erectile dysfunction is usually a condition we associate with old and overweight men; however, the condition can also be caused by an inadequate amount of neurotransmitters and other psychological factors. In porn-induced ED, the solution is not as simple as popping a pill. The problem can even be so severe that it causes infertility.

This is one man’s account of experiencing porn-induced ED for the first time at just 17. Again, Reddit, and not a doctor, helped him understand, diagnose, and treat his condition.

He said, “The first time I had sex at 17, I had so much trouble getting hard, but it stood up like a rock to porn the next day. I thought I was so f*cked up until 2013 when I found the Reddit group NoFap and Dr. Gary Wilson’s work. I was so insecure for so long about having ED issues that were 100% porn-induced. It certainly made my teenage and early 20s way worse than they would’ve been had porn not existed. According to Dr. Wilson, it’s all due to ‘screen novelty.’ Males are very visual, and when we see sexually attractive images/videos, we get a dopamine release in the reward circuit that travels to the sexual centers of the brain and causes N02 release which triggers erections. Well, when a male watches a lot of stimulating images/videos, there’s a lot more dopamine that’s released. The sexual center now becomes desensitized to these high levels of dopamine, and it takes watching tons of scenes to get erect. In one study, it took a man 2,000 images to get hard. Wilson calls it a ‘digital harem’ – really drives the point across.”

Porn Can Cause Behavior Disorders 

I found the following story especially compelling as this man dealt with depression, as well as possibly OCD, due to the damage chronic porn exposure does to the brain.

He said, “I'm 40. I started masturbating when I was about 12 years old. Then, I discovered pornography, and I became addicted to both things. I never had a stable relationship; I saw women as sexual objects. I fell into depression and loneliness; I lost all of my adolescence and part of my childhood. My conversion was at 29 years old. At that time, I was physically and emotionally unwell, my mind and body were exhausted, I felt like I was going crazy, I was very thin, and I did it sometimes up to three or four times a day. But God rescued me – I attended a spiritual retreat, and my life changed. Now, I have my wife and my children.”

Porn Can Lead to Psychological and Physical Abuse

Porn leads to abuse, it’s just a statistical fact, but few seem willing to acknowledge this inconvenient truth until they’ve lived through it, either as the abuser or the abused.

One woman wrote to me, “Porn destroyed my marriage! My now ex-husband started cheating on me, became physically abusive, and tried to burn down our house with our six children and myself in it. I was forced to take my children and leave. It has been a nightmare.”

Another woman found herself victimized by a friend who fetishized her and posted the secret video online so other fetishists could watch as well. She said, “There’s a genre of porn where guys take pics or videos of sleeping women. They call it somnophilia. I'm a sleepwalker, and before I made it physically difficult to access the internet while asleep, l'd message people on AOL instant messenger (in the Stone Age). There was this scrote who was, like me at the time, in high school, and we were internet friends who bonded over student projects. But once, I messaged him while sleeping, and usually it's barely legible gibberish about whatever stressful thing is going on at the time, but one time, he led me on while I was out of it. We went from talking about my friend's parents’ divorce to me taking pictures of my chest on webcam, where I'm clearly incapacitated. He kept getting me to do more, and I have very vague memories of it, but later that night I woke up and immediately knew something was wrong. However, after that, he blocked me, and I couldn't send him any messages confronting him or asking him not to show anybody.”

She continued, “A couple of days later, some other internet friends told me he had put me on this fetish message board for people with somnophilia. I looked it up, and there I was, a teenager, along with all these other pictures and videos of sleeping women with hairy knuckles or the tips of penises in their mouths, and girls waking up from wisdom tooth surgery. I saw wife after wife on there too, and now that I'm older, it scares the sh*t out of me to think about how many women are living with somebody who gets off on taking pictures of you sleeping, then shares those pictures of you at your most vulnerable to other guys who get off on it. That whole experience changed me.”

It Causes Brain Damage, Which Causes Rage

Porn fries the dopamine circuits of the brain, we already know that, but one of the other neurological effects it has is to create an overactive amygdala. What does this mean? The porn addict is in a near-constant state of “fight or flight,” and many men choose fight, due to their high levels of testosterone. 

The men who are able to get a grip on reality before completely unraveling are generally able to recognize that they are less quick to anger when not watching porn.

One man said, “I've struggled with porn for almost the entirety of my teenage and adult life, well over 20 years now. And for many of those years it was an obsession, one that I honestly couldn't satisfy or shake. There's a great deal of truth to porn addiction leading to more and more hardcore stuff. It's also caused an immense amount of pain and suffering in my marriage. Infidelity is one of the few things I wish I could take back in my life. I've lived out the reality that porn warps your mind and perception of people. And for most of my marriage an unspoken truth of mine was that my wife was simply there for my pleasure. She still struggles with feeling inadequate because of it, and I'm fortunate that it didn't completely destroy my marriage. Plain and simple, porn rots the soul. It's caustic and corrosive. I've never experienced rage with my family and others as often as when I was mired in it. It's left a long-lasting scar that has taken years to slowly heal. A scar that could easily be torn wide open with a few clicks.”

Another man told me, “Every time I watched it, I became very angry afterward. Especially toward my wife. Highly irritable and quick to anger. Every time I stop for a week I become a different person and start to feel myself again. Every time I go months without it, I am like a completely different man. I count my blessings. Treat my wife and child the way they deserve. I foster relationships and am more social. Closer to God as well. All the second I stop watching porn.”

Porn Is Addicting 

It’s probably obvious from all the previous stories that porn is addicting. Sadly, for many men, porn addiction begins incredibly young. The average age of first porn exposure is 12 years old. And by innocently clicking on a single curious-looking ad, the entire trajectory of their life changes for the worse. No human deserves that. 

One man said, “I was first exposed to porn when I was 6 years old. I was alone in my parents’ office and I was researching something for school. I clicked on a pop-up ad, and it took me to a porn site where I saw porn for the very first time. Because of that, I became addicted to it. By the time I was 16, I realized that I needed to stop. I tried quitting many times, but I always fell into temptation after two or three days. I tried to ask my parents for help, but the only thing they told me was, ‘Why don’t you just stop?’ The problem is that trying to quit porn while having a phone with you at all times is like trying to quit smoking while having a pack of cigarettes with you at all times – the temptation is always there!”

He continued, “I’ve become an English tutor online, and I teach kids from around the world. Watching porn has become the norm for 10 and 12 year olds, I genuinely believe kids should not be allowed to use the internet because of what I experienced.”

Closing Thoughts

At the end of the day, the only logical conclusion is this: There is no such thing as ethical or safe porn consumption. If your boyfriend or the guy you’re interested in watches porn, it needs to be a dealbreaker. It’s not just something that “all guys do,” and it’s certainly not “harmless.” It’s a real issue, and a dangerous one at that. And there’s absolutely zero reason you should open yourself up to that risk.

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