From Porn to Power – Transcript
To porn or not to porn? That is the question. A recent study showed that 94% of men had viewed pornography in the last six months, and 82% considered themselves to be regular viewers of pornography.
There’s a lot of information out there on the negative impacts of porn, from the depletion of testosterone and dopamine and its impact on erections to how addictive it is.
Then there’s how porn affects a man’s relationships with women in general and a regular partner, especially. Instead of me rattling off a bunch more stats for you, I’m going to let Jonathan share his story with you directly. He started using porn at age 17 and, within a year, had erectile issues. He’s had the classic porn trajectory and now has come out the other side of it.
He says, “Quitting porn was the best thing I ever did for my sex life,” and “Since starting the Sexual Mastery for Men course, I have not even thought of porn. The fire in our relationship has exploded since we got on the same sheet of music.”
In our raw and intimate conversation, we talk about porn as a formative sexual influence in many young male lives; the addictive nature of porn; what porn does to your cock; what porn does to your relationship, to yourself, and your partner; why watching porn is akin to be a cuck or a cuckold; porn’s contribution to the beta-fication of men; the parasitic nature of porn; and the problem with depleting your fluids constantly. [Laughs] Ha!
You can tell from all that what my answer is to the question, to porn or not to porn? Abso-f**king-lutely not.
*** From Porn to Power Well-F**ked All Star Interview ***
KIM: Welcome, Jonathan. It’s great to have you here.
JONATHAN: Thanks for having me on, Kim.
KIM: So, all about porn. Tell us about your relationship with porn. How old were you when you first began consuming pornography?
JONATHAN: It was later than I think is typical nowadays. Thankfully, it was later. I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian home. So my parents did what they could to keep that stuff out of our house, and we didn’t have internet at home until I was 17, thankfully. When we did, it was not long at all, being a 17-year-old, before my curiosity got the best of me and I discovered the wild world of internet pornography.
Honestly, from there, it was a pretty fast downward spiral. Within months, it just became an obsession. The effect that it had on me at that age—I was pretty wild. Especially because I hadn’t been exposed to something like that previously.
KIM: Were you sexually active at that point?
JONATHAN: No. Not in the household; no dating allowed till you were 18.
KIM: So your first real experiences with sex overall were through porn?
JONATHAN: Yeah. I mean, I wouldn’t call them real, but yes, I get your point.
KIM: [Laughs] Right. Right, okay.
JONATHAN: I think you bring up a good point because it was the early 2000s, when I don’t feel like it was quite as prolific; especially nowadays, there are young boys, like 8, 10 years old, being exposed and finding internet pornography. I can’t even imagine what that does at that age. I’m thankful for how late it was in my life because I had already done some maturing at that point, and it wasn’t like finding it at 12.
KIM: Yeah. So when you say that you were obsessed, how would you describe that? I’m assuming that when you looked at it, you were masturbating to it?
JONATHAN: Absolutely, yeah. I think that’s pretty much universal.
KIM: [Laughs] Well, just checking. So, how many times a day, let’s say, would you masturbate to porn?
JONATHAN: Well, some of it was just when I could hide it. It was probably nightly, and at first maybe an hour and then hours after that. Quickly, it became like an obsession, where as soon as there was the possibility of a spare moment for it, it was too much of a temptation or an impulse to get away from.
KIM: How long did that go on for?
JONATHAN: It was close to a decade ago, so it’s a little fuzzy. But I went on a downhill spiral in like a year. There were some other things I didn’t appreciate at the time, like the lack of sleep that was accompanying it, from staying up after other people in the house had gone to bed. All the screen time right before I was sleeping was terrible for me as well.
And I actually developed erectile dysfunction in under a year.
KIM: When you say erectile dysfunction, how did you notice that? Does that mean that as you were masturbating, you couldn’t get as strong an erection?
JONATHAN: Yeah.
KIM: What did that look like?
JONATHAN: My arousal became dependent very quickly on pornography.
KIM: Actually viewing it? I don’t know if you tried this, but if you lay down and imagined previous porn scenes, could that have done it?
JONATHAN: No. I don’t think so. No. I have kind of an all-or-nothing personality. As soon as I started, it was all in and a very fast downward spiral. I was going through a lot spiritually at the time, deciding what I thought about the faith I had grown up with and whether God existed or not.
At first, it was a lot of religious guilt that accompanied it, but later on, and maybe due to some of what was going on. But later on, I had given up on the idea of God, and even then, when there wasn’t any sort of religious guilt around it, I was realizing the effect it was having on me, regardless of the religious attitudes around it. Like “This can’t be good for me.” Just with the shame I felt, and it wasn’t religious guilt. It was just feeling kind of pathetic, just for the time span and the private obsession. Not to mention the escalating variety that it takes to get aroused.
KIM: And that’s something that people talk about a lot in terms of porn, that what used to do it now no longer does it, and it has to be a scene that’s more intense and more provocative and boundary pushing. You’re affirming that was your experience as well?
JONATHAN: Yeah, definitely. Social media hadn’t quite gotten to the place that it is now when I was using pornography. In recent years, the sexualized media that’s prolific on Instagram or Twitter or all of these things has the same effect, even if somebody wouldn’t technically call it pornography, if that makes sense.
KIM: Yeah, definitely soft porn. I see young girls really buying into this culture and this idea that they need to be parading themselves and flaunting their bodies and their sexuality and doing things at a prepubescent age for any kind of likes or social acceptance. It’s pretty shocking.
JONATHAN: Yeah, it’s all the attention economy.
KIM: Yeah, definitely. You’ve described a bit of it, but when you say the phrase “downward spiral,” what else did you know? You might not have noticed it at the time, like maybe some of this was in retrospect, where the impacts of this were erectile issues and feelings of shame. What else did you notice?
Did you notice anything, let’s say, with physical performance? Like if you were athletic, did that have an impact on your energy levels during the day? Anything else that you would say was attributed to your porn use?
JONATHAN: I don’t think I was nearly as aware of my body back then as I am now. But I’m sure it crashed my dopamine levels, my testosterone, just due to staying up as much as I did, consuming it. I’d say I was pretty depressed, and I know that’s an overused term, but relative to how I’d been in the previous years before starting it. I was pretty depressed, and I remember a time that was kind of a low point, just not feeling very social, not wanting to look people in the eye. I wasn’t very athletic, but I was more of an artsy nerd at that time and just not feeling creative or motivated to do much at all.
KIM: During the time that you were using porn, did you enter into a relationship?
JONATHAN: I got married pretty young. I got married at 21 to my wife, Victoria. Actually, we’re coming up on eight years.
Before that, I think it would’ve been sometime like when I was 18, approaching 19. I don’t remember a specific point at which I said, “Okay, no more,” but it was just being depressed and self-esteem issues and things that came along with that.
And there was stuff I was going through spiritually too. I decided for myself whether God was real or not. It’s what I’d grown up with, and I was incapable of putting my life together otherwise. I went through a season of reevaluating what I was doing.
Again, there was never a point at which I put a date on the calendar and said, “No more after that,” but it was slower. My wife and I grew up in the same community, so I had known her, and she was a lot of motivation at a distance to get my act together. My parents had rules about us dating, so I was getting to the age where I was going to move out.
And I did move out and actually get in a relationship with her. I couldn’t imagine myself watching pornography and being in a relationship with her. I had such low self-esteem when I did and felt wrong about it. I wanted to be doing better than that.
Actually, that leads to a good place though. I think that when starting, not having been sexually active and then having so much of my mindset and experience based on pornography before entering a relationship, it was definitely the case for me—and I think it’s a case for a lot of modern men—that you develop a relationship to sex in the abstract, where it’s not a concrete or realized individual. It’s sort of a combination of the sexualized media or anonymous women that you see out, or masturbation. It’s depersonalized.
After my wife and I were married for probably less than a year, I started using pornography again, and I blame it on that phenomenon. It was like having a relationship to sex instead of a relationship to a person and having sex with them, if that makes sense.
KIM: Would you say that because of that being your first sexual experiences in the abstract, not even with an interactive partner, but the screens, did that cause an overlay in terms of your intimacy with you and your partner?
JONATHAN: Absolutely. In hindsight, I’m more aware of it, but at the time, I don’t think I was aware of how performative the sex was, where it was more acting out scenes or scenarios or different genres of pornography, rather than actually being in a relationship and having the emotional bandwidth to do the dance, if you will, that’s necessary for a good sexual relationship. Does that make sense?
KIM: Absolutely. You’re watching these things and mimicking or imitating some of these acts and scenarios, rather than, as you say, doing this innate dance. Rather than the impulses and the urges and the intuitive direction of what to do and reading that other person and yourself, coming from within, it’s coming from without.
JONATHAN: Yeah. It’s projecting all the pornographic influence onto the relationship. Pornography is so unrealistic, and there can be so many cuts between scenes and all this stuff. It’s so contrived to just drive traffic and clicks and everything.
I’ve heard guys talking about watching pornography to see how the pros do it, and it’s so wrong. It’s absolutely the wrong direction. It gives you such unrealistic expectations, and not just in being over the top, but where my wife and I are now, it can’t possibly capture how good and intimate and powerful a sexual relationship can be. It’s so visual that there are intimate emotional and relational aspects to it. They just don’t transfer through a screen to really make sex potent.
KIM: Right. I always talk about the difference between junk food sex and gourmet sex and the key ingredient in gourmet sex being that more emotional, psychological, spiritual level of connection that includes the physical but is not isolated to it.
Did you notice an influence on how you saw women? You had this person you’re in love with and involved with, and because of this overlay of porn, did you look at women differently? When you saw women out in the street and they were alluring, maybe dressed in a sexy way, what did you notice, if anything, about how you saw both your partner and any woman out in the world?
JONATHAN: Well, it definitely had more of an impact on my relationship with my wife and in the world in general, but I do think it definitely trains men to see women as objects, where the person isn’t as important as the body. Or the person is devalued.
I definitely think that comes through in sex. It’s on some porn site, and the videos aren’t sorted by personality; they’re sorted by body parts. You know? [Laughs]
KIM: [Laughs] It’s hilarious, and a very good example.
JONATHAN: Yeah, because I was hiding it too. It wasn’t like I had a conversation with my wife and said, “I’m going to start watching porn again.”
I think it’s normalized to the point where men don’t really think about how unnatural viewing pornography is. This act should be the most embodied, but viewing that through a screen, it’s not you who’s having sex.
KIM: That’s a great point.
JONATHAN: I think that has really catastrophic impacts. Even though I had quit using it for a while leading up to when my wife and I were dating and early on in our marriage, I hadn’t uprooted my relationship to sex in the abstract. A lot of our early sex life was just really using my wife in a way to act out porn-inspired fantasies, rather than learning to be the foundation in our relationship sexually, where she can be free and open. Does that make sense?
KIM: Absolutely. That’s really, really self-aware of you to say that. It sounds like she was probably not coming into your relationship with a lot of, if any, sexual experience either. But how do you think it was for her being on the receiving end of that? Did she know any different? How do you think that was for her?
JONATHAN: We’ve had discussions about it. It’s been a while, so I don’t remember exactly. I think she felt betrayed and looked past. Uncared for, in a way. Used, I guess.
KIM: Do you think she felt that in the moment, or didn’t know how to articulate it? Do you think in the moment she’d feel unsatisfied or like something was not quite right?
JONATHAN: Well, we tried to wait until marriage to have sex and, you know, we were, I think I was 19, she was 20, so it did happen. During that time, I wasn’t using pornography, and early on in our marriage, I also wasn’t. So I think she noticed a change, and she didn’t know what to blame it on exactly.
When we were dating, I pretty much just laid out my whole sexual history. She knew I wasn’t holding anything back. I was just being completely open and honest, so I think that’s what she still expected, and so she didn’t catch on for a while.
I felt so far removed, just being dishonest. I think at a certain point, I realized she probably knew something was up, and it had been building up for a while, the tension. When I finally told her, it was understandably pretty hard. But it was necessary, and any guys out there watching this—switching your body and mind over from this mode of being aroused and having more of a relationship to abstract sex and sexualized media than to a real woman … That transition is not ever going to be easy. If you are in a relationship, it’s not going to be easy.
Well, I don’t know, depending on who you’re in a relationship with, I guess. I know pornography use among women is going up too.
KIM: What made you decide to quit, and how many years into your relationship were you at that stage?
JONATHAN: The whole episode after we got married was like a year later. I think it was probably around a year that I started using it again, and then it was less than a few months before we had a conversation about it. I don’t remember exactly what the trigger was, other than just a growing feeling of unease and disconnectedness. And she and I were really close. We went through some tough stuff, actually, while we were dating. And we’d really been open books. Keeping secrets sexually is going to be one of the most impactful things. It’s going to lead to feeling disconnected. I think that was the real trigger for me.
I think the term “having” sex is somewhat hazardous because you’re always “having” a person in reality. You can’t just have sex. You’re always having a person by way of sex would be a better way of putting it, if that makes sense. I started to see that difference, and I really wanted to make that change for her and for the health of our relationship.
KIM: How hard was it for you to quit? Was it easy? Did you quit cold turkey? Did you wean yourself off?
JONATHAN: I quit cold turkey. The last time I watched hard core pornography, I think there were some times after that where I’d be on some Instagram page or something and think, “What am I doing here?”
KIM: Yeah, gateway drug.
JONATHAN: But it was a clean break from what people would say was technically pornography.
KIM: Right. Did you have any aha moments in that process? When you stopped using porn and you had a certain amount of time under your belt, what differences did you notice in yourself? In your relationship? In your erection?
JONATHAN: I wouldn’t say I noticed a difference overnight or anything like that. But over the course of a few years, it was just rebuilding trust and maintaining the honesty that we’d had earlier in our relationship, just being an open book.
I don’t know that I noticed a lot of physical changes, because I only relapsed, if you want to call it that, for a few months. I think that for men who have been doing it for years and really depleted themselves, depleted their dopamine, depleted their testosterone, there is probably going to be a really long recovery time, longer than you’d want.
For me, that second go-round, it had only been a few months, so I didn’t notice a lot of physical effects, but our relationship definitely was better for it, and our sex life was definitely better for it. And that was just an upward trend to the point where my wife and I enjoyed a really close, intimate, mind-blowing sexual relationship.
Some people have the idea that pornography sets people’s expectations too high, but I would argue it sets them too low. Because you have no idea, based on that, how good a relationship can be, or even how good an orgasm can be.
Pornography-induced orgasms are no good, really. The arousal, the potency of your orgasm, I think most men would admit, isn’t that good. There’s too much adrenaline; you’re not really present in the moment.
Yeah, our relationship really flourished and building her trust and taking things slow and providing her space to become comfortable with me and where I was coming from, proving to her that my motives were pure and that I was only in it for her pleasure and wanting our relationship to flourish.
KIM: That’s great, yeah. It sounds like you also had to tune back into yourself and your own reactions and observations within your body and then learn to read more into her. Tell us about that process and more about how you would describe your sex life now. Like you said, some f**king mind-blowing experiences. What would you attribute those to?
JONATHAN: I guess it would be just a progression. Getting more and more out of my head. And the more distance I got from those pornographic images or, you know, a sex position or some sex act reminding me of pornography, the more isolated my mind was from that, the more present I could be with what was happening at the time. It was slow and gradual.
Putting my attention on her, rather than the sexual acts or the scenario we were in or whatever. Kind of like I said previously, by realizing I was having a person on a very deep level by way of sex and thinking about it in my mind that way, I retrained my body to be more and more present, in the moment, in what was happening, and just letting go.
Almost like letting my mind and sort of this cerebral, mental noise, go in the moment. Just being fully present in my body to experience.
I think there are a lot of different hormones and neurotransmitters and stuff at play, and I think pornography really trains men for an adrenaline-fueled arousal. I think that leaves a lot on the table because there’s so much involved when you’re in a really good relationship with someone you trust, and you’ve built up trust over time and really know them.
Sadly, a lot of times, I don’t think men are in relationships long enough or get close enough in a relationship. It’s all oxytocin and serotonin, and getting to a point where you can tell when you’re in a healthy sexual relationship and really close with someone, where every day you wake up and, you don’t know how it could be the case, but you’re more in love with them. You’re desiring them more.
You’d think the more you have them, the more frequent sex becomes, the desire would drop off like it tends to with pornography, where it’s like you get less of a reward or sensation by constantly doing that.
But if you’re in a good sexual relationship, it just continually escalates somehow. It’s like a sexual escalator; you keep going up somehow.
That’s where we got to. I think it was probably two years after that experience when we rented a cabin up north for the two of us. It was the cabin that we had honeymooned in, and we went back to two years later. We had to have a sex truce because we’d been having sex so much that we were getting chafed and raw. “We’ve got to stop and give ourselves a break.”
KIM: I love it! A sex truce is brilliant.
JONATHAN: Yeah, I hope people are listening to this. Whether you’re in a relationship or not, there’s so much more than you realize inside a good relationship when you’re actually in your body and sex isn’t this weird abstract thing.
There’s so much left on the table. If you’re still pursuing this abstract sex or little one-night-stands and things, it’s junk food sex versus gourmet sex.
It’s worth whatever you have to do or change, and there’s probably going to be a period for a while, if it’s a habit you’ve had for a long time, that it’s going to suck. But you just have to get through it, because it’s so much better on the other side.
KIM: Yeah. Absolutely. So what other transformations did you experience in your sex life through doing the Sexual Mastery for Men program?
JONATHAN: Going through the course was great. It was a reaffirmation of everything I’d been learning up to that point, albeit probably better articulated, but it was just so many thoughts and experiences that I’d had when I was going through it. I was like, “Yeah, that’s true. Yeah, that’s the case. Yep.”
For instance, the clearing blocks, I hadn’t heard it described that way, but I had gotten to the point where I would try to rack my brain for, “Is there anything I haven’t told my wife?” before we had sex. Because I knew if there was anything or if I had a thought while we were having sex, it was going to throw things off.
It was just, like I said, a reaffirmation of so much that I’d learned.
KIM: Fantastic. Any advice that you’d give to men around their journey, if they’re on the fence, like, “Oh, is porn really that bad for me? It’s not that big a deal.” You’ve shared a lot of amazing stuff in your story; you’ve been very honest and vulnerable, and I really appreciate that. Is there anything else you want to tell them directly?
JONATHAN: It’s definitely worth it, and for me, there’s a spiritual side to it, but even if there’s no spiritual or religious aspect to it, just the science behind what it does to the male brain should be enough to make you want to quit. Because it does give you this boost of testosterone and dopamine in the short term, but it quickly drops off unless you escalate.
I would just put it out there: Go look at the research on what it’s actually doing to you. I think most men are probably consuming a lot of it before they sleep, and they’re hiding it. Having something to hide like that is not healthy at all.
It’s probably going to be difficult, especially the longer you’ve been viewing it, but it’s definitely worth it to reframe your relationship to sex and make it concrete. Find a good relationship, or even if you’re not in a relationship, just figure out your own body without that noise distracting you and taking you out of your body.
KIM: Great. Is there anything else you’d like to share about the intensity of your connection and what sex does for you now? In the past, you described the downward spiral, but now what does sex do? Does it energize you? Does it rejuvenate you? Having a more gourmet sex life, what does that look like for you and feel like, and how do you notice the effects of that in your day-to-day life?
JONATHAN: It’s pretty profound, really. We live in such a fake time, where there are fake versions of everything. I mean, yeah, it leaves you so much better grounded and prepared for life to have a real sexual relationship in the flesh, not being distracted by all the sexualized media or so-called fitness accounts or the complete oversaturation of pornography that’s out there.
I think there’s the idea that femininity is more innate and men have to be made, and I think men have to express their sexuality in a real way that’s embodied and in a relationship.
It can kind of sound “woo,” but it’s like you have a finite amount of sexual energy, and it’s not really woo because there are things driving that: testosterone and dopamine and adrenaline. It’s like these things are real, and pornography saps that from you and doesn’t give you anything in return.
Having sex IRL, as they say, you will receive more than you could’ve ever taken.
It’s the complete opposite of what pornography does for your self-esteem. You can be losing in life, losing in work, whatever. If you’re winning in your relationship and in bed consistently, the other losses really don’t have much of an effect on you.
It’s like some mornings, if we’ve already had sex before I even leave the house, whatever happens that day, I feel like I’ve already won, and I feel like so many men are missing that and missing these different states you can be in in your body. Just being so embodied and present in a way that’s just not possible through masturbation or pornography.
I’d encourage men to think of just having that sexual energy and only directing that when it’s going to reciprocate, because there are too many things out there. Even when it’s the so-called fitness accounts on Instagram, scrolling through pictures of ass for, you know, whatever.
It’s depleting you. It’s pulling sexual energy from you and not giving you anything in return. Actually, in scripture, there’s a verse that probably wasn’t directly written about sex, but I’ll paraphrase—“He who loves his wife, loves himself.” And it’s really true. Every bit of that sexual energy that you save from the depleting practices and give to the woman in your relationship will be reciprocated, and she’ll have a completely different view of you and where you fit into her life when you’re showing up with a full cup to give. If that makes sense.
KIM: Yeah, that’s gorgeous. I love that. That’s very deep. I agree because all these dalliances, whether it’s through hard core pornography, or even the more soft-core Instagram accounts—I love the way you describe that—it’s almost like a vampiric transfer. Like a parasitic energy that’s draining you.
JONATHAN: Absolutely.
KIM: But it’s a one-way street, and it’s also pulling that away from your relationship. If you have a really, really open connection and like you said, you’re really, really close, then your partner will feel that ripple. They’ll feel that your attention and energy are elsewhere.
Because the way that I talk about my version of conscious monogamy is the conscious directing of your emotional and sexual resources to each other. You create this really powerful container.
But when you’re letting that seep out in other places, you’re draining the potency of that alchemy you’re creating together.
Someone might recognize the feeling as being cheated on in some way, but it’s like the echo of their partner’s attention being elsewhere. Part of them is being directed elsewhere.
Is there anything else that you’d like to share on this topic?
JONATHAN: I probably rambled enough.
KIM: [Laughs] You were great. You’ve shared so many really personal and vulnerable details, and I think it’s so helpful for men to be able to hear the true impact of what these things are having on them and the opposite of that and what it can be like without them. Thank you so much, Jonathan.
JONATHAN: All right, thanks, Kim.
***
KIM: I’ve spoken a lot about the beta-fication of men these days and how I see this as a deliberate attempt to breed and condition the alpha, the uber-masculine, and the warrior out of the modern man.
I’d say that porn is a major weapon in this fight. All that porn produces is shadows of men. Flimsy caricatures who are slaves to virtual fantasies and promises of what maybe could be bought for the price of their self-esteem, their virility, their erections, and their overall power.
I often say that the lowest form of sexual energy is jerking off to porn. It’s the epitome of unconscious sex, using sex to briefly get a hit, but ultimately using it as an escape and to put yourself to sleep in every way.
Versus using sex to gain consciousness and as a springboard to enlightenment, self-adulation, and personal power. For millennia, different cultures have documented the exhausting effects of men spending too much seed. The fluids of the body are considered vital, precious, and potent, and to spill them too often leads to a depleted man in every possible way.
Even in modern times, we have the “Don’t come before the big game” concept and NOFAP. So what do you do instead?
You learn to cultivate your sexual energy. The ultimate barometric question that I always ask people is: Does sex get you high? Does it leave you feeling energized, rejuvenated, ecstatic, and like it changed your life? Do you want to run a marathon or pass out after having sex? If you aren’t feeling high and like you want to go to the gym, you’re doing it wrong.
You can use breathing techniques to build stamina; you can learn to harness and harvest your sexual energy so that it becomes your creative superpower.
Then you can use this energy to boost your business, make more money, f**k your woman into oblivion, and man the f**k up into the ultra-f**k-able and un-f**k-with-able alpha male that all women truly want.
My Sexual Mastery for Men Salon opens in late August. In this eight-week online program, you will learn everything from how to become a marathon f**ker and last for hours in bed to how to separate orgasm from ejaculation—yes, this is possible and every man can—occupy your more dominant, masculine, alpha-male self; get off porn; and exercises to increase your cock strength, length, and girth and give your woman the full range of orgasmic experiences, bringing her to G-spot, cervical, and squirting orgasms on the daily, and much, much more.
