Porn addiction is a serious problem for thousands of men around the world. I know this is true because I’ve worked with many of them in my almost 15 years of building the Porn Reboot program. It’s something that can destroy a man’s life and strip him of everything worth living for when it gets bad enough.

Pornography is a growing issue, especially for men who are exposed to it during their younger years. Excessive porn use alters natural brain chemistry and causes a wide range of negative effects. Are you wondering whether your pornography use might be a problem? Over the next few weeks, I want to cover 10 of the most common porn addiction problems I see among men seeking help in the Porn Reboot program. These include:

• Loss of concentration
• Depression
• Lack of romance
• Lack of achievement
• Low energy
• Erectile dysfunction
• Premature ejaculation
• Unusual porn fetishes
• No attraction to real-life partners
• Loss of ability to orgasm during sex

Pornography functions by constructing a false world. It’s one where people (mostly women) exist solely as objects for the pleasure of those watching the videos. The vapid, shallow “storylines” serve as a vehicle for the entire point of porn: sex. There is nothing romantic, loving, or intimate about pornography. It’s an imaginary illusion that holds little to no weight in the real world.

But compulsive pornography use puts you in this false reality day in and day out. Your constant consumption of these videos warps your perception of how relationships and sex work in real life. Most women aren’t actually interested in doing the things you see depicted frequently in porn.

Frequent pornography use also exposes you to unrealistic standards of physical beauty. Most women in porn pump themselves up with implants and fillers, sculpting bodies that don’t typically exist in the real world. When you see video after video and image after image of these Barbie doll bodies, though, you begin to think that every woman should look this way. 

Losing interest in real-life partners is a telltale sign of pornography addiction. This was the biggest indicator that porn was a problem for me. As my porn use escalated, I completely lost all sexual interest in the woman I was with at the time. The more I sunk into my porn addiction symptoms, the less I found myself aroused by any of the women I saw in real life.

It also warped my expectations of what women should look like and the types of women that I deserved to be with. Never mind that I had no dating skills or much to offer; I believed that I needed to be with women like those I saw in the pornography I watched at home.

I see this a lot in men I work with in the Porn Reboot program. They develop unrealistic standards for the women they date while bringing little or nothing to the table. If you find yourself holding these high standards or wholly losing interest in real-life women, your porn use may be a problem.