Who Is Vulnerable to Porn Addiction
Erin Snow
The first question that almost any person who is struggling with pornography asks is, “Why me?” Rather than focusing on the fact that porn use is creating significant problems in their life and they need to do something about it, they want to know how and why they got this way—if there is some external source they can blame for their struggles.
From an early recovery and healing standpoint, why a person struggles with pornography is less important than the fact that they are struggling. Still, these folks will ask, “How did I get this way?” And sometimes they’re unable (or unwilling) to move forward without an answer. Thus, I will address the topic here. But please understand that knowing why you are struggling will not help you much in early recovery.
Generally speaking, addictions, including porn addiction, arise through a combination of nature and nurture. Consider the stories of Miles and Jeremy.
Miles and Jeremy, childhood best friends now in their early 20s, discovered online porn when they were 12. At that time, they lived in the same suburb and attended the same school. They both got good grades, played sports, and were starting to get interested in girls. One day after school, Miles’ older brother told them how they could access an online porn site. Curious and excited about what they might find, they both decided to look at porn that evening for a few minutes before doing their homework.
Since then, Miles has occasionally viewed porn for sexual stimulation, but he has not demonstrated any signs of addiction. He just logs on occasionally and quickly masturbates. And when he is dating someone he likes, he doesn’t look at porn at all, preferring to stay focused on his real-world romantic partner.
For Jeremy, however, viewing porn quickly became a habit. By the time he was 14, he was looking at and masturbating to porn for at least an hour almost every day, and usually more than that. His grades dropped, he isolated himself from friends and family, he quit playing sports, and he lost interest in the girls at his school. In short, he experienced many of the hallmark consequences of addiction. Today, his porn use is completely out of control and ruining his life. He has failed out of college, can’t keep a job, hasn’t dated since high school, and hates himself.
So why was Miles able to experiment with porn and move forward into a healthy life when Jeremy was hooked almost from the start? Surely there is some obvious difference between the two, some tell-tale sign of what drove Jeremy but not Miles into addiction.
Unfortunately, there isn’t. You can’t just look at someone and say that person is or is not likely to become an addict. On the surface, Miles and Jeremy were so alike they were practically twins. They lived in the same neighborhood, took the same classes, earned the same grades, played the same sports, and hung out with the same kids. They even started viewing porn on the same website at the same time in their lives. From every outward appearance, there was no way to know that one boy was predisposed to struggle while the other was not. If we could see beneath the surface, however, we would likely find some important genetic and environmental differences.
At the end of the day, porn addicts, like all other addicts, are subject to a combination of genetic and environmental risk factors. For instance, a combination of genetic predisposition, alcoholic parents, childhood trauma, and early exposure occurs relatively often, nearly always creating a witch’s brew of ongoing life problems—not just addiction but numerous other emotional and psychological issues. As such, any discussion about the possible causes of porn addiction is not so much an argument of nature vs. nurture as an examination of how the two factors come together to influence individual behavior and response.
At the end of the day, addictive disorders of all types—porn addiction included—can be driven by either genetics or environmental factors alone, though more often they are influenced by both. And when early-life sexual trauma is part of the mix, the odds of sex/porn addiction vs. other forms of addiction are greatly increased. Unfortunately, as stated at the beginning of this chapter, knowing what causes an addiction does not in any way control or cure the disorder.
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If you or a loved one are struggling with sex, porn, or substance/sex addiction, Seeking Integrity can help. In addition to residential rehab, we offer low-cost online workgroups for male sex addicts and male porn addicts new to recovery. Click HERE for information on our Sex Addiction Workgroup. Click HERE for information on our Porn Addiction workgroup.