[New York Post By Rikki Schlott]
Porn, Gianfranco Martinez admits, “completely ruined my life.”
“I wasn’t really motivated to actually pursue a real relationship or even talk to women because I was just getting my fix [through porn],” he told The Post. “It was impacting me socially, it was impacting me in my relationships.”
It was also keeping him from being able to get it up in real life.
Martinez, now 22, is one of a growing number of Gen Z and Millennial males who grew up consuming internet porn from a young age only to experience “porn-induced erectile dysfunction.”
Clinical sexologist and psychotherapist Dr. Rob Weiss has watched the phenomenon explode over his 25 years of experience running a Los Angeles-area treatment center for sex addicts.
“Porn addiction can lead to desensitization to sexual stimuli, which can decrease arousal and lead to difficulties achieving and maintaining an erection,” Weiss explained. “If my primary source of arousal is constantly looking at 50 images a day or 1,000 images a day, I no longer become that interested on an individual basis.”
Meaning, a real partner can never live up to nonstop porn-star performances.
Said Weiss: “Nobody compares with that.”
Porn-induced erectile dysfunction is an epidemic plaguing young men who grew up with unfettered access to internet porn.
One 2020 study found that 23% of men who use porn often and are under age 35 — young men who should be in their sexual prime — reported having erectile dysfunction with partners.
Martinez said he experienced it when he began engaging in real-life sexual relationships in college.
“It was pretty embarrassing,” the Texan recalled. “When I would go back to my porn I had no problems, but every time I would try something [with a girl], it just didn’t work. I didn’t know what was going on.”
Chris, a 22-year-old college student who asked that his last name be withheld out of embarrassment, has been there, too.
Most young men like Chris first encounter internet porn in their pre-teen years.
“I feel like the porn industry took my ability to love earnestly, and that’s the most despairing feeling I’ve ever felt,” Chris told The Post.
He first saw porn at age 11, in his hockey team’s locker room — then went home that evening and searched the internet for more.
“It was so intense, I had to search for a more vanilla video than what they were showing me on the front page of PornHub — most of the things disgusted me,” he recalled. “But I’ll never forget the dopamine high that came the first time I watched it.”
Within a matter of months, Chris said, watching porn became “like a ritual” that he engaged in at least once a day.
He didn’t think much of it until six years later when he first had sex with a girlfriend at 17.
“In my first serious relationship, I really wanted to be fulfilled sexually by the woman I loved, but I needed porn to be aroused and felt so guilty for it,” Chris said. “My mind had been so captivated by needing intense porn at all times to maintain arousal.
“Even if I deeply cared about the woman I was having sex with and loved her in every sense possible, her body was not enough,” Chris said. “It got to the point where the most beautiful woman could walk into the room right now and tell me she wants to sleep with me, and it would do nothing for me.”
According to Weiss, researchers have determined that somewhere between 17% to 58% of men who identify themselves as heavy or compulsive porn users experience some form of sexual dysfunction with a real-world partner.
Consuming endless pornographic images, Weiss said, leads to “desensitization to sexual stimuli.”
The 2020 study, published in The Journal of Urology, found “a clear trend” between the amount of time men spent watching porn and taking longer to reach orgasm with a partner.
More porn use was also associated with reported dissatisfaction with real-world sex.
The researchers found that the average man who reported never or rarely experiencing difficulty reaching orgasm with a partner watched an average of just over an hour of porn a week.
Those who reported having trouble most of the time consumed an average of 92 minutes — and those who had trouble all of the time, 111 minutes weekly.
Weiss said there’s still a lack of certainty about how common the phenomenon is because researchers are just beginning to study a generation of young men who grew up with unfettered access to internet porn.
While much research remains to be done, Weiss says he has counseled countless young men struggling with porn-induced erectile dysfunction: “It’s still a very new thing, but we have thousands and thousands and thousands of men saying, ‘I’m not getting erections, and I don’t know what to do.’”
Peer support groups have sprung up across the internet, like No Fap which is run by young men for young men and has accrued north of 1 million Reddit community members.
Martinez now runs a program, The Retention Formula, for men with porn addictions. He accrued more than a quarter of a million followers on Instagram after opening up about his own experience with porn-induced erectile dysfunction.
Like Chris, Martinez first came across online porn at age 11.
One 22-year-old college student told The Post that he felt shame over needing porn to be aroused.
“It kind of scared me,” he recalled. “I just stumbled across it, and I didn’t even know what it was.”
According to a Common Sense Media poll, the average young person today first encounters porn at age 12, and 58% find it unintentionally.
“It distorted my view on what the real thing actually is,” Martinez told The Post. “When you’re inexperienced, your brain can literally rewire itself to think a video of two random people is the real thing.”
But after having so much trouble connecting with actual women, he decided to quit porn entirely. Gianfranco said that pulling away from his addiction helped resolve his sexual dysfunction — and pull him out of his social rut.
Porn “distorted my view on what the real thing actually is,” Martinez said about sex.
“It changed my whole life,” he said. “I was like, wow, more people need to know about this. And I started making videos about my experience.”
Weiss says Martnez’s recovery isn’t uncommon — and young men experiencing porn-induced erectile dysfunction should hold out hope
“What is often the case with these people is that, when you take the porn away in a reasonable period of time, they begin to get aroused by individual situations and relationships again,” the doctor explained.
More than a dozen states have declared porn a public health emergency, and Louisiana has even gone as far as to require proof of age to access internet porn.
It is possible to recover from porn-induced ED.
But, since porn access is largely unregulated, Chris, Martinez and Weiss all agree that parents are the first line of defense in protecting young men.
“Parents have a responsibility to teach their children about human sexuality and porn,” Weiss said. “I think they also have a responsibility, especially before age 16, to block and to track porn use. I wouldn’t let my kid go to a drug dealer’s house, so why would I give my kid permission to look at as much porn as they want?”
“You’re 11- or 12-years-old and naturally enticed by sex,” Chris said of his own early experience. “The problem is not you. The problem is the porn.”
;