I am a 32 yo male, married for the past 3 years.
I have been masturbating since I was probably 10-11 years old and have had an excellent libido and sex life in my adolescent years and beyond that.
I have also had relationships with women with perfectly healthy sexual experiences. At the risk of sounding boastful, I was a guy who used to get a rock solid 'hard on' and would be able to go on for long before getting to an orgasm and ejaculating.
While I have always been masturbating at some point of time or the other both while I was in and out of relationships, what changed almost 6 years back is that I got into surfing porn on the net. What started as a normal sexual release gradually grew into an obsession.
I would initially start by seeking images and videos of women performing a variety of sexual acts. I gradually began to spend hours at a stretch looking at porn on the net.
Since I didn’t have a computer at home then, I would usually visit discreet places like cyber cafes where I could surf porn anonymously. I would get highly aroused and erect for long durations and mind you, all the time, I would be at a public place so I wasn’t exactly able to masturbate freely.
I soon realised that I was becoming enslaved to this addiction and would often lie to family and my girlfriend about where I was while all this was happening. I have also called in sick at work just so I could surf porn for almost the entire day at a stretch. Also as time went by, I would begin to seek more graphic and fetish related images of porn mainly pertaining to oral sex.
My sex life with my GF remained normal while all this was happening.. at least that's what I thought in the beginning.
I guess things took a turn for the worse when I finally had my own personal computer at home with broadband internet. I continued to spend hours at home surfing and masturbating to porn without my wife’s knowledge while she was away at work. There have been many times when I have continued to surf porn late in the night into the wee hours of morning even as my wife slept in her bed in the other room. I have gone to work looking like a zombie after spending some nights staying up and feeding this habit of mine. Even the images that I would often seek ended up getting more graphic and depraved. I would actually wait for my wife to leave just so I could surf my porn freely.
But lately, over the last 3 years or so, I have noticed that I have not been able to get full erections and I’m unable to maintain my erections for a very long time. The problem is that it has already started to affect my marriage in more ways than I can imagine. There have been numerous occasions when I haven’t been able to get a hard on even if I wanted to. I have also realised that while I do get aroused and continue to seek and surf porn, I am no longer able to get as hard as I used to. What hurts me all the more is that once upon a time, the only 2 things I needed to get a rock solid hard on would be a good sense of imagination and my hands. But all that seems like a distant dream.
I am traumatized by this and am not sure if what I have is a common condition. I’m not even sure if it is reversible.
Please help!! My life and marriage is in your hands!!

Talk to a doctor first... it is possible there is a medical reason behind this. Eliminate that a possibility first as the root causes can be life threatening in some cases.

THen attend to the addiction end of thing once you are cleared of medical conditions.

You need professional help in dealing with your addictions ASAP. You also have to come clean with your wife. You have been emotionally unfaithful for many years now, stop chasing the"high" that you will never be able to get again from the porno. Be accountable for your bad choices and start to live with the truth again.

You are addicted to porn. Like any other addiction, you know you need to stop, but you have to WANT to stop.
Next, you need to see a doctor. They can rule out any physical issue that you might have.
I hope, for your sake, that you will get help. Addictions have disasterous results.

Your porn addition may not have caused your loss of erection but rather the need for more interesting more thrilling more exciting sex did.

When you watch porn, it dulls your senses to the reality of a women. You don't want the women in front of you, you want the women on the screen. Why? Because she will do any thing you want, and can be many different women, taking it any where and every where, and doing any thing you want her to. You care in compleate control and can can keep raising the bar for novelty by "choosing" to watch more and more "forbiddon", "aggressive", "fettish saticefying", and even things like "2 girls one cup".(DO NOT WATCH THIS IT'S JUST WRONG)

You loose interest in the real experience because you've pleasured yourself to the extream girls of porn. So now you are building tollerance, and that means you need more new extream novelty, as that's when the dopamine is released in the brain. Dopamine lowers the thresh hold on our brains ability to feel pleasure, so we can accociate those things we see on the screen as pleasurable.

You either need to quit watching Porn, or find something new to give you that dopamine shot, in other words "your Fix". I strongly suggest to read the book, "the brain that changes it's self" by Norman doige chapter 4 will interest you most I think, "Aquired Tases and love." Talks about several people's issues with sexual dysfunction, and tells you what brain processes are happening and how they affect you. I think you'd benafit from reading this book.

I didn't read your thing, just the question, so I hope this helps. If not, I'm sorry, I'm acctaully helping some one else and am short on time. At any rate Yes talk to a doctor and see what he says, but I strungly suggest you drop the porn, as it's got a hold on you if you are addicted then you are going to have issues with sex.

Peace and kindness be with you.

Yay! XD some one read the book too!! Haha, I love that book, made life and people so much easier to understand. Though I admite niether is easy... but at lease I can relate to them.

Great book indeed. Look up brain plasticity on Youtube, watch the Hemisphearectomy vid with the little girl that has seisures. (sorrry terrible speller I am.)

That book taught me a lot about why I get so into things and how to let them go, but it takes practice and will power.

Peace and kindness.

P.S. Thanks Gemini54. ;)

Ugh. What you're describing is addiction, pure and simple. You know that of course, otherwise you wouldn't be writing to this forum. I suspect that this condition is very very common, especially with porn being so readily available on the internet - you won't be the first and you certainly won't be the last!

As Nestorian has already pointed out, porn de-sensitizes you to real sex. Not surprisingly, you can't get hard the way you used to. Your brain has been hardwired over 6 years to respond to increasingly "graphic and depraved" images. As you've now found, to your horror, nothing else will do the trick, not even your own hand and a vivid imagination.

Compare it to a drug of addiction. Where you get slowly hooked, change your life around it so you can access it, and require more and more of it to have the same effect. You have an addiction to sex characterized by compulsive thoughts and behavior:


Spending considerable time online visiting pornographic Web sites.
Neglecting obligations such as work, school or family in pursuit of porn.
Continually engaging in the behavior despite potential negative consequences, such as broken relationships.


You need to get help now. Immediately. You're an addict. And, you're right, this has serious implications for your physical, emotional and spiritual health. Not to mention your marital relationship and your work situation. Is this what you really want?

Unplug that computer now. Get to a professional counsellor now.

First of all, I am extremely grateful to all of you who have responded to my SOS
smoothy, lchu52, bronzebabe, Nestorian, Gemini54.. A big thank you for making me look at this situation so objectively.
You're all right - I do have an addiction problem with online porn.
And yes.. There are many ways in which it has already begun to affect my marriage and relationships besides the sexual problems that I've had.
Here's what I have done since I asked the question in this forum -

1. I have already destroyed all the porn that I had. THere was tons of stuff to be deleted but I finally got myself to do it. I'm hoping I will remain strong.

2. I met a doctor (Sexologist) for the first time today and have poured my heart out to him. After a preliminary examination, he has said that he doesn't think there's anything physically wrong with my penis. He started by trying to get me to see the issue from a psychological and relationship based perspective. And Oh yes.. I do HAVE to quit porn ASAP. His take on this was porn by itself is not bad but I should be in control with watching it.. obviously I haven't exactly been in that position for a long long time. He has also asked me to work on the 'communication' bit with my wife. Lastly he did prescribe some medicines mainly to lower my stress and anxiety levels, improve blood circulation etc. He thinks that with proper self restraint and relationship building in a stress free environment, I should be able to get back to normal in 2-3 weeks.
I'M REALLY HOPING AND PRAYING FOR THIS ONE. NEED UR LOVE SUPPORT N PRAYERS..
Hope to update this section with my progress.
Cheers...

Good luck in healing yourself and marriage!

First of all, I am extremely grateful to all of you who have responded to my SOS
smoothy, lchu52, bronzebabe, Nestorian, Gemini54.. A big thank you for making me look at this situation so objectively.
You're all right - I do have an addiction problem with online porn.
And yes.. There are many ways in which it has already begun to affect my marriage and relationships besides the sexual problems that I've had.
Here's what I have done since I asked the question in this forum -

1. I have already destroyed all the porn that I had. THere was tons of stuff to be deleted but I finally got myself to do it. I'm hoping I will remain strong.

2. I met a doctor (Sexologist) for the first time today and have poured my heart out to him. After a preliminary examination, he has said that he doesnt think there's anything physically wrong with my penis. He started by trying to get me to see the issue from a psychological and relationship based perspective. And Oh yes.. I do HAVE to quit porn ASAP. His take on this was porn by itself is not bad but I should be in control with watching it .. obviously I havent exactly been in that position for a long long time. He has also asked me to work on the 'communication' bit with my wife. Lastly he did prescribe some medicines mainly to lower my stress and anxiety levels, improve blood circulation etc. He thinks that with proper self restraint and relationship building in a stress free environment, I should be able to get back to normal in 2-3 weeks.
I'M REALLY HOPING AND PRAYING FOR THIS ONE. NEED UR LOVE SUPPORT N PRAYERS..
Hope to update this section with my progress.
Cheers...

I will add that you don't want to push yourself too the point of being injured, nor pushing too hard, or too fast. Try a program like fit for life, or fitness for life, or something like that. Find something that works for you. Further more, try going into a sport like Teakwondo/Mixed Martial Arts/Judo/Hupkido/Boxing and so on. Boxing and Teakwondo and Mixed Martial Arts are very good for physical form, and self defence. The benafits are numerous, and you get the same endorphin boost as you would lifting weights. Very fun too, I wish I could go back to them. Not a class didn't go by that I had something to talk about, but more so a pain to explain. Even though I hurt all over, I was always looking forward to my next class.

I would suggest for your anxiety, try meditation. Centering one's self is, as I find it, the best way to manage excessive stress/anxiety/anger/fear and so on. When you learn to just relax and let things happen, and learn to just deal with what you can and let that which you can't go, you can enjoy the things you are fortunate to have. Very rewarding when done right, and eases the mad rush of every day pressure. Praying works similar to that, but you'd need to be very specific and may need to take more time to pray, then you usually might, to get that relaxed feel.

To help cut back on anxiety, cut back on Caffine/Sugar. These two things by themselves are like poison to us, but most don't see it as thus because it's like a slow poisoning. But it does affect how we feel, act, react, and even how we think. If the body is not functioning properly then the brain can not function properly. So try to cut back on those, and hopefully that helps.

Good luck brother.