JAMES: Currently, my wife is out of town. We’ve been married for seven years. For the past 20, I have been addicted to pornography.

(opening theme for Death, Sex & Money)

This is Death, Sex & Money.

 The show from WNYC about the things we think about a lot…

 …and need to talk about more. 

 I’m Anna Sale.

(end of opening theme for Death, Sex & Money)

JAMES: Hi. I’d ask that you not use my name or my location. I would like to remain anonymous.

We got this voice memo in the spring of 2016 from a listener I’ll call James. He’d stopped looking at porn months earlier, at his wife’s urging.

Now she was away, and those old cravings were coming back.

JAMES: It is hard as fucking nails for me to want to not do anything about it. She’s going to be gone for another 11 days. I’m afraid that I’m not strong enough to make it on my own. I hope I am. We’ll find out.

(music starts)

Hearing this message made us wonder how more of you feel about porn. So we asked you. And a lot of you responded.

LISTENER: Porn? (Gasp)

LISTENER: My husband and I both watch porn.

LISTENER: We almost didn’t get married because of it. 

LISTENER: I was living this double life of being a goodie goodie church kid and getting just depraved as hell on my computer every night.

LISTENER: If I’m not having sex, I’m definitely watching all sorts of porn.

LISTENER: It’s very hard for me to watch porn and not feel like i’m watching women get raped.

LISTENER: I would watch it, I would masturbate and then afterwards I would just feel gross.

LISTENER: Even though it confused the hell out of me, I’m still thankful for it.

LISTENER: I swear, every time that I do look at it, I really believe it’ll be my last time. But then sometime within the next week or so, it creeps back and lures me in.

You told us about when you first learned about porn. What turns you on. How you use porn. And why it’s caused real problems for some of you. 

Porn is also very popular. This episode, in fact, has gotten more listeners than anything else we’ve made in our nine-plus years of the show’s existence. So we thought we’d share it with you again. 

Something else we learned about porn? It is hard to talk about. We use porn in our most private moments. So when I asked you about it, even my most basic questions could sound really intrusive.

ANNA SALE: Do you watch on your phone or your laptop?

MICHAEL: You know, it's like desktop. I need to be comfortable. 

JENNIFER: Phone is the easiest.

ANNA SALE: Do you hold your phone up while you're watching? 

ANTONIO: Um, with my left hand. 

JAMES: [Laughs] This is a very technical--technical question. 

(music stops)

At their request, we changed all of the names of the listeners in this episode, including this woman, who asked to go by Rose. It wasn’t until she was in her 30s that she first came across porn on her smartphone.

ROSE: I was looking at Tumblr and it popped up to my surprise.

ANNA SALE: And what--what'd you see?

ROSE : It was a scene of two people coming into a room and they had oral sex and then they had traditional sex.

ANNA SALE: Did you like watching it?

ROSE: I did. I was — at first I was kind of shocked. And I was at my mom’s house. So, you know, I had to put it away. And then I went back and looked at it. And well, the first part of it they were just so, like —they were in love, and I was also going through a heartbreak at that time and really craving affection and love and desire. And seeing that acted out, I found it satisfying.

ANNA SALE : Did you discover things by watching porn about what turned you on?

ROSE: A little bit. I did get dissatisfied that the camera was always focused on the woman and I was like, “I want to see what the guy is doing. How is he reacting to this?” But I would notice that there was one girl and she just looked to be enjoying herself so much that I was like, “Wow! I would like to experience that."

(music starts)

Rose spent a lot of time with porn that weekend, but after that, she says it started to feel boring and scripted. She doesn’t watch much anymore.

Antonio, on the other hand, told us he's relying on porn more than ever.

ANTONIO: The first thought that comes to my head is "Thank god for gay porn, that I didn’t do anything because I would feel so horrible if I had."

When we talked, Antonio had recently moved in with his boyfriend of two years. They were monogamous. But that wasn’t always easy for Antonio. 

(music stops)

ANTONIO: You know, I’ll have these thoughts. And these thoughts will start growing, and getting close to the surface and bubbling. I think most of my friends, when we talk, it’s a pretty general term—that you get thirsty.

ANNA SALE: [Laughs]

ANTONIO: And everything triggers a thought.

ANNA SALE: So when you’re feeling that way, do you go back to certain scenes or certain videos you know have turned you on before? Or is it always kind of something that’s novel and different?

ANTONIO: No, there’s definitely themes to the types of videos that I watch. 

ANNA SALE: What’s your type? How would you describe it?

ANTONIO: It’s always -- mostly scenarios where there is a relatively older man with a younger man. Doctor-patient, teacher-student, best friend’s dad with best friend’s friend. Um, there’s definitely some sort of authority thing going on — some sort of generational gap. You know, old leading the young.

Before he started dating his current boyfriend, Antonio experimented with trying out some of these fantasies, in real life.

ANTONIO: I was interested in knowing, if I actually lived this in reality, will I want it a lot in reality. And will I really wean myself off porn if I have this. And maybe that’ll be my thing.  And then I’ll know that I want to be with a man who's older. And I had a couple of real life experiences and they were great, they were fantastic, but they were still not realistic. There was this disconnect where I liked them, I enjoyed them, I fantasized about them, I don’t know if I want to have them in my real life. I want my real life to be what I have now. It’s just two guys in their early thirties and there's no stereotype or archetype. 

Figuring out your relationship to porn when you’re in a relationship with another person is something a lot of you have tangled with.

LISTENER: I think I hide my porn watching from him... 

LISTENER: Anytime we’d have sex, he’d have to watch porn to get going, which was a real kick in the balls.

LISTENER: You know, it makes me feel inadequate. And it makes me feel like you're looking for something that I can't give you. 

LISTENER: In a married relationship with little to no sex at all, I needed some sort of a release.

LISTENER: I would watch with boyfriends. Or, you know, my husband now. 

LISTENER: This was a secret thing he did. And the only reason I found out was because I caught him one night when he wasn’t in bed with me.

MARTIN: She doesn’t care too much. Like she’s OK with me watching it. She just doesn’t watch any on her own that I know. Or maybe she does but I don’t know. 

This is Martin. He’s open with his wife about how he uses porn, but when he got a letter in the mail that threatened to reveal his habits publicly, he panicked.

MARTIN: I was frightened. Like, very frightened.

Martin had been illegally downloading porn. A company tracked him down with his IP address and demanded $1000 for every video.

MARTIN: That’s actually like a really, really big number. Like in my case it would have been over $30,000. Then the attorneys said why don’t you offer them $10,000 and let's make it a deal and they accepted.

ANNA SALE: That’s a lot of money.

MARTIN:  It is a lot of money.

ANNA SALE: Did you have the $10,000 to pay a lump-sum?

MARTIN: I did. I was lucky enough to have it. It’s money I have from my emergency fund, and if something goes wrong with me or with my family then the money isn’t there. Like, my wife and I want to have children and, you know, like all that money would have been very well employed into medical bills or anything for the kid and it’s not there.

ANNA SALE: When did you tell your wife that --  

MARTIN: Immediately. 

ANNA SALE: Was she angry with you that you were going to lose this amount of money because of illegally downloading porn?

MARTIN: Luckily, no. She actually was very supportive of me, which, I mean, sounds weird because it was such a stupid way to lose money and it's enraging.

ANNA SALE: Do you still have the porn that you downloaded before?

MARTIN: Well, they make me pay a lot of money for those movies, so yes, I kept them and --

ANNA SALE: [Laughing] It’s your $10,000 collection.

MARTIN: [Laughing] I mean, I never watched them because it's painful to think about this. But they’re there.

(music starts)

Martin says he still watches other porn. He streams it now. Most evenings after work, after he walks the dogs and before his wife gets home. He says it’s relaxing. 

Coming up, we hear from people for whom porn is the opposite of relaxing, including James...the listener who was trying to resist while his wife was away.

JAMES: I love her more than I love porn and eventually that was one of the largest motivators for me to want to get clean and start talking about this.

(music stops)

This is Death, Sex & Money from WNYC. I’m Anna Sale.

One of the things we heard from a lot of you about porn is how it’s shown you what you like and what you don’t like.

(music starts)

LISTENER: I am an avid porn watcher and I have been for many, many years.

LISTENER: I’ve been able to explore my sexuality with it and kind of hone in on what it is that I like and what it is that turns me on.

LISTENER: I’ve definitely noticed that my taste has gotten more extreme over the years.

LISTENER: She has sometimes the role of the kind of assertive, dominant person. And sometimes I do.

LISTENER: One of the things I do really enjoy are lesbian porn videos. Which is funny because I'm straight identifying. 

LISTENER: I think we have a very fulfilling experience because of knowing what we want and asking for what we want.

LISTENER: I've never really watched it with a lover but it's something I would be open to. But it's very, very personal to me. 

(music stops)

A listener named Michael has been watching porn — and collecting it — since he was teenager. He sees it as the ultimate form of self-care.

MICHAEL: You know, there are days where everything goes wrong, and it's just like, "You know what, I'm going to give myself this and it's going to feel good. And, uh, I'm going to use this beautiful material to love myself for 20 minutes."

Michael’s married now and he watches porn a few times a week. He keeps his collection on a special hard drive that he hasn't shown anyone.

MICHAEL: My porn is really, really boring, you know. It's like these videos of domestic couples making breakfast together and then having sex, you know, and it's beautifully lit and shot. And so, it made me realize, OK -- this more sadomasochistic stuff is not -- is not for me.

ANNA SALE: You were drawn to like domestic scenes.

MICHAEL: Oh yeah, yeah, isn't that funny? [Laughs] And also it was an affirmation, I think, of who I was as a person. I had a lot of questions about -- or, I didn't have questions, let me rephrase that. I didn't have questions about who I was sexually as a teenager and you know I've always been attracted to girls. But when people meet me, their first assumption is that I'm gay, because I have this feminine... these feminine gestures about me, the way I carry myself. And so I think watching porn completely in private and investigating what aroused me gave me a very safe space to figure out and affirm, "Yup, this is what I like."

ANNA SALE: Hmm. Was that comforting?

MICHAEL: Yes. [Laughing] Absolutely.

ANNA SALE: Have you ever felt like you're using porn too much and you need to let go of it?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I do, I've -- there have been times, um, you know, well when you're a teenager it's like all night. But you know in my mid twenties or so, it would be like, "OK, I've done this for three hours, that's probably too much." [Laughs] But then deleting the collection is like a gut reaction -- it's like a knee-jerk reaction to go extreme in the other way. And --

ANNA SALE: Would you delete it?

MICHAEL: Yeah! But then of course, I always have a backup.

ANNA SALE: You always have a backup, and you know you have a backup.

MICHAEL: Always have a backup, Anna. 

ANNA SALE: So you would delete it because you felt ashamed?

MICHAEL: Yes. And then I would say, "Wait a minute. Where is that shame coming from? Why do I feel shame about this when it feels so good?" I think, "All right, what would happen if I died and, you know, my wife's rooting through and my family is rooting through my belongings and they find my hard drive full of porn." Were they going to think, "Oh my god! My son, how could he? Look at all this porn?" Why is it not accepted to be attracted to beautiful images? I don't have shame in it, like, I'm happy to admit it.

ANNA SALE: But you think about what will happen if you die suddenly? And what people will find.

MICHAEL: Yeah, if they -- they're going to find this collection of high art erotica that I tend like a rose garden. [Laughs] It's highly curated. 

(music starts)

For Michael, porn is precious. Something worth protecting. But for some of you, porn feels like a major threat. It’s taken you to dark corners of the internet...and of yourself. Like for Daniel.

(music stops)

DANIEL: When it got really bad, it would be several times a day. And I was looking at it outside of the house, like on my cell phone at work. Like in the bathroom and stuff.

ANNA SALE: Like, you would take your phone into the bathroom at work and watch a video?

DANIEL: Yeah. Yeah. Mh-hmm.

This was years ago…and it was not a good time in Daniel’s life. He was drinking too much. He gained a lot of weight. His relationship with his long-time girlfriend was fraying.

DANIEL: And, you know, it kind of all just culminated into this giant ball of shit where I just started feeling really disconnected and ended up like in the hospital, like in the psychiatric ward.

Daniel has OCD, obsessive-compulsive disorder. One of his symptoms is intrusive, recurring sexual thoughts.

DANIEL: My OCD kind of all started with these sexual thoughts about children. And I've never hurt a child, never been inappropriate in any way, it's just, those thoughts have popped into my head when I'm having sex and those are -- that's another thing I've had to talk myself down from. 

ANNA SALE: That must be terrifying.

DANIEL: It sucks, you know. And… it was really terrifying for a long time.

Daniel says he’s never looked at child pornography. Just having those thoughts about children was deeply upsetting. He says he was using other porn to escape those thoughts.

Daniel’s getting therapy regularly now. He’s on medication too. And he’s completely eliminated porn from his life. But he says, it’s hard to stay away from it.

DANIEL: I still think about it on a daily basis, and I would definitely say it's kind of like a craving.

ANNA SALE: Do you think it's because of your particular mental health makeup that porn is difficult for you?

DANIEL: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know why it wasn't something else. I just feel like that was honestly the best sort of vice that was suited for me.

ANNA SALE: Mh-hmm. Yeah. Was it a problem in your relationship?

DANIEL: It wasn't one we talked about but it was definitely a problem. She would say that when we had sex sometimes it felt like I was looking at her like she was an object, just taking in her body, not taking in her. I can kind of, I mean, I know what she's talking about, just like kind of a disconnect.

ANNA SALE: Hmm. Is it possible to have sex that doesn't feel hard now with your girlfriend?

DANIEL: Sometimes, yeah. I mean, is there ever a time where we have sex that I don't have to talk to my brain? Like, use my conscious part to talk to my sort of unconscious part? No. But it doesn't mean it's not good.

ANNA SALE: So like, what's a sentence you have to tell yourself?

DANIEL: I'll be like, "That's not real. That doesn't mean anything. It's -- that's not really what you want. Think about what you really want. 

ANNA SALE: Has it gotten simpler since you've eliminated porn from your life?

DANIEL: Yeah, yeah.

ANNA SALE: In what way? What's changed?

DANIEL: I don't go down that rabbit hole. I know it's like an addiction, but I want to pull myself. I know I can't look at it. Like if I go on the internet I'll start typing into a browser and I will want to type in the address to a porn site. I can feel it. And I'll just breathe. I'll know how terrible it will feel if I went to one. How bad it would feel even just going and looking at it. Even if I opened it and closed it, I would feel so bad. It’s hard because it gives me a really intense feeling. A really intense sort of, pleasurable feeling, but it’s also usually followed by a lot of shame too.

(music starts)

Daniel describes a rush, followed by regret, then the urge to do it all again. Like an addict. But the idea of porn as something you can be "addicted to" is a controversial one.

The American Psychiatric Association has not classified porn addiction as a mental disorder. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists spoke out against the idea of "porn addiction" saying scientific evidence is lacking and the term can "unduly pathologize" sexual problems.

But understanding porn as an addiction has been useful for James, the listener who was waiting for his wife to get home from her work trip.

(music stops)

JAMES: I’m afraid that I am not strong enough to make it on my own.

ANNA SALE: Were you strong enough to make it on your own? 

JAMES: I did. I was in a place where that feeling of, of being overwhelmed by loneliness was a really bad trigger for me. But I pulled myself out of my own head. 

ANNA SALE: When was the last time you consumed porn?

JAMES: Somewhere in the range of about a month ago. I relapsed, yeah. At the time I relapsed I was about 380 days clean. And I was very upset with myself, that I allowed myself to cross that line.

Porn has been an issue in James' marriage for years. He and his wife were both virgins when they got married. And his wife told him, his porn habit made her feel inexperienced and inadequate.

JAMES: Finally my wife looked at me one day in the car. We’d just had a big fight. I told her again that I’d looked at pornography and she said to me, "I’m done." She says, "I have nothing left. You’re either going to find a way to walk free of this or I’m walking away."

ANNA SALE: So it was an ultimatum.   

JAMES: Yeah. It was a very clear ultimatum for me.

ANNA SALE: What do you do to try to control the enticement to just go to a porn website?  

JAMES: Well, I’m very open about talking with my wife. I actually have software that monitors my web usage and submits a weekly report to her and to other individuals.

ANNA SALE: Wait, to your wife?

JAMES: To my wife, yeah. That’s my choice. So she receives a weekly report of you know, websites I visited. If she sees a trend, you know, she’ll approach me about it. In the past year, it’s been less than three times that I’ve had issues with porn and, like, my wife has turned to me and said, you know -- and she voluntarily just came out with, you know, "I feel like this is the best year of our marriage that we’ve ever had." And we’ve been married, you know, for a while. And you know, full disclosure, I’ve had some of the best sex of my life in the past year.

(music starts)

No matter what — whether you use porn, or you don’t — talking about it makes you get really honest. About what you wonder about, and what feels like a step too far. Sharing your browser history can be more exposing than sharing your sexual history.

JENNIFER: Actually, I wouldn't mind if somebody I was dating found out what I was looking at, I'd be like, "Go for it." In fact I'd share it with them, I hope I'd share it with them.

(music stops)

Jennifer says, when she’s dating, it’s helpful to bring porn up because it quickly reveals someone’s personality and values around sex.

JENNIFER: I'm like, "When do you watch porn? What kind of porn do you watch?" And I feel like it makes guys so uncomfortable. And it's not that I'm trying to push their buttons but I, in a way, I want them to be comfortable with talking to me about it because I think it's important to just get it out of the way and you can have kind of a better sex life, I mean not kind of a better sex life, you can have a better sex life when all the cards are out on the table and people are willing to discuss.

ANNA SALE: What did you learn from porn about what you like? 

JENNIFER: I can get really psychological about it. I think a lot of people, you know, my tastes have definitely changed and then I'm like, "What does this mean about me? Trauma in my childhood?" You know, just psychoanalyzing yourself. It's easy to just, you know, kind of explore, especially on Tumblr, and be like, "Oh, this is -- I can get down with this today but maybe not tomorrow." And see something that might be a little too extreme and backpedal, like "I'm not going to go down that road."

ANNA SALE: You mean, it's sort of like, there's the one part of you that's exploring, maybe this is going to turn me on, and there's  the other intellectual part of you that's like, "Is this healthy for me to be indulging?" Is that what you mean?

JENNIFER: Totally. And then when you orgasm, you're like, "Who cares? It's over!"

Both: (Laughs)

(end theme for Death, Sex & Money)

Thank you to so many of you for sharing your porn stories with us.

Death, Sex & Money is a listener-supported production of WNYC Studios in New York. This episode was originally produced by Chester Jesus Soria, Katie Bishop and me in 2016, with help from Destry Sibley. The Death, Sex & Money team today includes Liliana Maria Percy Ruiz, Zoe Azulay, Afi Yellow-Duke Lindsay Foster Thomas and Andrew Dunn.

Our intern is Christian Reidy. And this week is his last week with us on the show – thank you, Christian and best of luck for all that’s next. 

The Reverend John Delore and Steve Lewis wrote our theme music. Thanks to Hannis Brown for additional original music and scoring in this episode. 

I’m on Instagram @annasalepics, that’s P-I-C-S, the show is @deathsexmoney on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

And thanks to Emily Pearce in Portland, Oregon for being a sustaining member of Death, Sex & Money. Join Emily and support what we do here by going to deathsexmoney.org/donate. 

Most of the stories you shared with us were about internet porn, but some of you took us back to simpler times, when you’d wander into the adult section at the video store, and admire some of the great titles of yesteryear….  

LISTENER: You know, like Shaving Ryan’s Privates was one of my favorites. Mr. Holland’s Orifice.

I’m Anna Sale, and this is Death, Sex & Money from WNYC. 

(end of end theme for Death, Sex & Money)

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