High Branch, Sweet Fruit: Why the Best Sex is between Committed Partners

Porn ruins real sex. Fortunately, great sex can heal the porn-numbed brain.

It's fun to see the sexual rescusitation of men whose desire had been numbed and deadened by pornography.

First, they had to take a leap of faith. They were willing to bet that connecting with their wife would be more exciting and fulfilling, in the long run, than the thrill of porn.

That's not an easy leap for some men. When they turn from porn, with its top-of-the-scale intensity, sex with a familiar partner with a real body can seem bland. Many men find that they can't even get aroused any more during sex play with their wife. That can be scary and frustrating. It's tempting to fall back on the old standby.

Couples who patiently stay with it and push through that initial difficulty can eventually enjoy the best sex they've ever had.

Here's why: the dopamine rush from porn that deadens our sensitivity is not permanent. The body recovers. When it does, appetites can return to a healthy level. We can begin anew to want our partner deeply. Skin-to-skin contact becomes a thrill again. The warmth of eachother's bodies is immensely gratifying. We get back to where the mere scent of our partner drives us wild.

Make no mistake: this sweet fruit is on a high branch. We can't just be physically and mentally monogamous. We have to connect in a way that is different from the sexuality portrayed in popular media.

Our culture definitely has been pornified. We have come to expect intense arousal followed by intense stimulation followed by intense orgasms.

The best sex proceeds in a more nuanced way than that. It demands that we take the time to connect, express love, touch each other, hold each other. We orient toward this other human being who resides in the body in bed next to us rather than focusing narrowly on our own desires or their body parts. The best sex expands and invites our entire soul in the process rather than contracting down to the fewest ingredients that make up the easiest recipes for pleasure.

Abstain from porn. Hold each other. Speak lovingly to each other. Let your skin and her skin be the interface by which your hearts speak to each other's. Press your skin to hers; hold her skin greedily against yours. Let that most basic pleasure of contact and warmth soothe you. Be patient. Over time, it will excite you again. When it does, don't focus on the goal of the climax. Don't abandon each other chasing after dopamine. Stay with one another on that wondrous plateau of connecting and mutual pleasuring.

Have more sex. Not just more frequency, but more depth, more length, more breadth. Share that togetherness during lovemaking that doesn't come at any other time. Share that exclusivity. Be reminded of that priveleged status that each of you hold in each other's life. Let sex be an expression of all that.

The kind of connection you'll develop is spiritual and emotional, but it's not just those things--it's also chemical. With this kind of lovemaking we bathe each other's brains in oxytocin. Oxytocin bonds us more intensely to one another. It makes my partner more attractive to me. It makes us want each other more. And over time we become more sensitive to each other. Think of that! What a cool process: we are being sensitized! Just the opposite of what dopamine does to us, deadening and desensitizing over time.

So don't give up! Stay together! Dump porn! Have faith in the process! And make more love--not just more often, but more lovingly.

Here's good news: even if erectile dysfunction has been a problem, a limp penis can't stop you from this kind of lovemaking. And don't worry, it's only temporary. Your verility will return.

Your lives together will be better than ever. We see it happen all the time. There are lots of couples in the process of doing it.

Former Porn Junkie Sober 20+ Years

I have lots of spare moments, chances to brush up on my reading, as I travel around the country training therapists to treat pornography addicts. I’m knee-deep in this material all the time, but I was still a bit self-conscious sitting on a bench outside the airport thumbing through a volume, Pornography Addiction Workbook emblazoned across the front in bold red letters. There was a smartly dressed man sitting a couple of seats down from me. When I glanced up he said, “I used to be addicted to porn.” I put down my book and smiled. “Got into it in the Navy. Then I couldn’t kick the habit. My wife hated it. And who can blame her: sweet young thing, thought I would have eyes just for her. I wanted to ease her mind, but I kept falling back in. So I’d hide it. Then she’d find it and around and around we’d go again.” He shook his head. “Those were hard years. Struggled into my late twenties. Life got much better once I got that under control.”

He looked to be in his late fifties. Some quick math told me he must have close to three decades of sobriety under his belt. I’d only been in the business fifteen years, so I’d never talked with anyone with that kind of recovery to look back on. What an opportunity. Suddenly I hoped our hotel shuttle would be slow to arrive. I wondered what it was like for him now.

“It still calls to me sometimes,” he admitted. Then he shrugged and laughed. “I just take that as part of life. It’s all around us these days. I pay attention to see if there’s anything I did to put myself at risk so I can avoid those problems in the future.  I don’t watch TV late at night anymore. I bring something to read when I’m travelling, or some entertainment of my own for evenings in the hotel room.”

The airbrakes screeched and the door of the shuttle bus popped open in front of us. I realized we probably weren’t going to be talking about porn anymore. “How are things for the two of you now?” I asked as we settled into our seats in the bus and it lurched away from the curb. “The two of us are now thirteen. We have four kids and seven grandkids. We've been blessed. You’re from Salt Lake. Are you LDS?” I nodded and he continued, “I’m serving as a Stake President in Colorado. Help lots of people with this problem now. Life has been good to us. Couldn’t be happier.”

It was just a brief conversation, but I’ve thought about it a lot since. A few things were striking:

• He doesn’t overreact when porn sometimes still calls to him. He doesn’t let that suck him back into shame: “What’s wrong with me?! I’m never going to get over this! I’ve ruined myself for life!” He doesn’t sound the alarms: “Dang! I’m still addicted! Gotta fight these urges with all my might!” As a result, he doesn’t overcorrect. He isn’t hypervigilant, worried that every sexual cue might lead to his downfall.


• He seemed to be relaxed and at ease. I remember him shrugging and laughing about temptation being a part of life.


• He stays observant and flexible. As a result, he learns from experience. If something puts him more at risk than usual, he takes it to heart without panicking. He takes simple, sensible steps to make life easier for himself in the future. If his new approach works better for him, he sticks with it. He doesn’t assume that the mere passage of time makes him safe and knowingly put himself back in harm’s way.

His way is a relaxed, perceptive, easy-going, but committed one.

How different it is from the knee-jerk reaction we have when we’re fed up. We’re prone to fall into an uptight, impatient, put-my-head-down-and-do-whatever-I-need-to-do-to-put-this-habit-behind-me-once-and-for-all mode. Unfortunately, that way is inflexible and more of the same. It hasn’t worked for us before, why would it now? Even a good Navy man knows that sometimes there are better ways than “ @#!*% the torpedoes, full speed ahead!”

Talking Is Not the Only Way to Reach Out

Even after trying it for several weeks, Jay found that it was never a relief to come home at the end of the day and try to talk to his wife, Wendy. He often had a hard time putting into words why he was feeling off kilter or wound up. He came up with a blank most of the time. He just knew he wasn’t feeling at his best. He didn’t know what to talk about, but he kept trying. After he and Wendy had talked, he always seemed to feel just as stressed out as he had before.

I didn’t think Jay was just resisting something that was good for him. I encouraged him to honor his own experience and keep exploring options. Even though it didn’t seem to particularly help him to connect through words, I knew that connecting with Wendy in some way might provide what he needed at the end of the day, the very time he was the most vulnerable to the pull of pornography. But how could he let her know that he was in need when he was feeling off without talking about it? He decided that it would be easier for him to hold her longer when they hugged or give her the thumbs down about his day. He thought that when he was feeling particularly in need he might even put his head on her shoulder as they watched TV together. Then, what could they do together that would feel more natural and satisfying to him than trying to verbalize his uneasiness right when he had the least desire to talk? We came up with a short list of options:

• Sit close to each other out on the back porch swing
• Listen to music together
• Take a walk together
• Scratch each other’s backs while they watched TV
• Leave the TV off and just spoon on the couch or bed
• Turn off the phone and all other electronic devices and just sit together in a quiet, dimly lit room or out on the grass in the backyard.

I saw the faraway look in Jay’s eyes as he described this last option. It became apparent to me that he wasn’t trying to avoid Wendy. He wanted to be with her; he just didn’t want their time together to become one more situation that set him up to feel like he wasn’t doing things right. I knew that in the future, he’d need to talk to her some of the time in order to meet her need to communicate. However, if he was going to reach for her instead of reaching for his addiction, he needed to also be able to feel that, at least some of the time, he could be completely at ease with her in a way that was most comfortable for him. There didn’t have to be the requirement of and pressure to talk about things if he didn’t feel like talking.

To Break Your Addiction to Porn, Connect with Your Wife

He just knew he’d be going to hell.

Throughout almost a decade of his life, Gene had resigned himself to the idea that he was hopelessly addicted to sex and would be spending the eternities suffering for it.

A year ago he was convinced by a mentor in his church who had travelled the road before that there was a way out. It would require, however, this friend insisted, complete and utter honesty. Deep down Gene felt that what he was hearing was true. So, as painful as he knew it would be, he decided to be 100% honest with God, the leaders of his church, and with his wife. "I threw myself at God’s feet and put my neck under his heel. I was at his mercy. I opened up about everything. I half expected to be struck by lightning."

He wasn’t. Instead, his church leaders, including this mentor, were loving and helpful. They’ve also been patient, continuing to work with him regularly over the months. Compared to how it’s gone with his wife, that part has been easy.

Gene started out trying to be completely honest with Lillian, but when he’d talk to her about feeling tempted, "There would always be tears and hurt." Too often, when he wished he could report growth and successes, he had to admit faltering and failures. It became very difficult for him to open up. One day, he acknowledged to her that he was tempted: "I’m really struggling wanting to call a prostitute."
What happened to Lillian when Gene said that felt catastrophic to both of them. "I started to wonder, ‘Who is this person I’m married to?’" recalled Lillian.

Gene said, "I saw that in her eyes. I couldn’t believe I’d done that to her again, hurt her so badly. These disclosures were like a punch in the face to her, and I was continuing to punch her in the face. I thought, ‘Not only am I not getting better from this addiction, I’m hurting my wife even more in the process by letting her in on the gory details.’ I couldn’t do it anymore. I didn’t shut down completely after that, I just substituted lesser disclosures for the real ones, the difficult ones. I struggled with the hard stuff on my own after that."

Not surprisingly, his addiction took a downward turn, as addictions do. And once again, he was alone in his struggle against it. Then Gene relapsed in a very bad, illegal way. Even worse, he secretly stayed caught up in that pattern over a period of four months. It all finally came out into the open. He wasn’t discovered; he mustered the courage to break the secrecy himself. He resigned from his job, was headed toward likely excommunication from his church, and was facing the possibility of incarceration. However, his life didn’t fall apart completely: Lillian decided to stay with him and try to work through the problem.

In addition to continuing to meet with his mentor, his church leaders recommended counseling. During my second session with Gene and Lillian, I explained to them that disclosing our behavior is the top, most superficial level of honestly. Revealing our urges and cravings requires honesty at a deeper level. However, the most difficult honesty, and the most productive, is deeper still. Think of it as honesty at the tips of the roots of bad behavior. Before we act out, we’re tempted. Before we’re tempted, there’s something else still. And here’s what that something is for most of us: there’s an emotional upset that creeps in like a cloudy haze and obscures our ability to think clearly and make the best decisions for ourselves. It’s difficult to stay aware of what’s going on at such times—to be honest even with ourselves about how we’re doing. It’s easier to turn on some music or eat something or brood. All of these are easier than acknowledging that we’re feeling off, that we are emotionally out of sorts. And there’s something even more appealing than the radio or food or feeling sorry for ourselves: sex. Even if we don’t go to it straightaway, when we turn on the TV or start clicking around the internet, we’re sitting ducks at such times. Sexual content is never more titillating, never more erotic, than when it beckons us to step into its light and out of emotional darkness, into its warmth and out of emotional chill, into its blissful rest and out of emotional turmoil. No other drug can offer what sex offers at such times. And so we keep going back, despite all intentions and commitments.

Gene and Lillian have already travelled a long road. The road will be longer still. However, if they work on developing emotional awareness and expressiveness, they can be close again as a couple. Over time (and with dang good professional help) Gene can develop the ability to reach out instead of acting out. Then, feeling more connected with each other than before, more support from each than ever before, the distance of the road and the length of time it takes them starts mattering less. Patience is easier to muster. Somehow, each mile, each day, each step feels lighter and the entire journey more worthwhile when you’re walking hand-in-hand.