Dear Dr. NerdLove,
I know your stance on porn already, but I was hoping to take it a step further and ask what you think about porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED)
Recently I was with my girlfriend getting intimate, and when it came time to do the deed my little friend became my little enemy. Our relationship is close enough where we brushed past the awkwardness, but I still went searching to find out if that’s something that was likely nerves or something deeper.
What I stumbled across was people talking about PIED, and the debate on whether or not it exists. I myself have been playing whack-a-mole for far too long, and the fact that I have a girlfriend meant that making the choice to kick the habit was a no-brainer for me. But reading through the champion subreddit for it r/NoFap I’m not sure what to believe about it.
I see people talking all the time about how the recovery process could take months or years. People swearing up and down that taking a shower while wearing your underwear (uh, gross) is the way to go, and questioning if seeing a Victoria’s Secret ad on TV broke their “streak”.
So how much of this is legitimate good advice and how much of this is self-fulfilling prophecy for them? Do you think the issue is just a matter of nervousness, or do you think the dopamine from too much masturbation really did rewire my brain?
Thanks for any insight you can give
-PIED in the face
So before we get into your letter, I want to remind you of three crucial concepts that will make your life much easier overal PITF:
- Correlation is not the same as causation
- The simplest and most obvious answer is usually the correct one
- Never trust anything from a subreddit that promises you that giving up masturbation will give you superpowers
#2 is especially important in your case. As the saying goes, if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
Now as for your letter:
No, this is fucking awful advice. NoFap is the spiritual ancestor of John Harvey Kellogg — yes, that Kellogg — a 19th century physician who had a LOT of… shall we say, interesting ideas about health and physical fitness. Amongst other things, he believed that undigested food in the colon was the cause of most disease, that comfortable beds, warm showers and spicy foods sapped years of people’s lives away and that any sort of emotional “excitement” was detrimental to people’s mental health. This included orgasms of any sort, whether self-provided or through sex with another person. In fact, he believed in this so fervently that he would brag that he had never, ever had sex with his wife of 40+ years — including on his wedding night. He believed in this so fervently that his various “cures” for masturbation and terminal horniness included inventing the graham cracker and corn flakes (bland foods intended to avoid provoking “passion” in the consumer), circumcision without anesthetic done in such a way as to make erection impossible, chastity devices that would stab the penis with needles when someone started to experience an erection and total clitorectomies. Following his advice would, in his mind, prevent a multitude of “nervous disorders” ranging from depression to psychosis as well as epilepsy, uterine cancer, and a host of other ill-defined maladies.
(He was also a profound racist and eugenicist who saw racial integration as destructive to the character and gene pool of America.)
It’s honestly rather astounding to see folks in the 21st century continue to make the same arguments, with “disrupting the humors of the mind” replaced by “dopamine depletion” and the like. It’s also rather annoying having to wade through SEO-bombing websites tied to religious organizations (not to mention groups like The Proud Boys) to get to actual studies investigating porn-induced ED rather than summaries that drastically mischaracterize what those studies have actually said. In fact, one of the most famous studies — a literature review of other studies involving erectile dysfunction — that gets cited as “evidence” of PIED actually says that the studies are inconclusive and more research is needed. Meanwhile, a 2019 study found that there was no likely link between porn use and ED.
Part of the problem is that penises are famous for being divas, and the slightest disruption or change can cause them to not work properly. In a classic example of “correlation is not causation”, one of the most common non-physiological causes of ED is depression… and people who suffer from depression will often use porn and masturbation as a form of self-medication. And then to make matters worse, lots of antidepressants — such as Prozac and Zoloft — will not only kill your libido deader than the dodo, but it’ll make you anorgasmic to boot. So rather being “desensitized” to mainstream porn and needing more and more extreme porn to get off, people find they have to work harder to get off because hey, turns out their SSRIs have made it so they can’t orgasm for love nor money.
Of course, all of this gets obscured or even discarded entirely by groups like Your Brain on Porn or Fight the New Drug, which are thinly veiled religious orgs dressing up their concerns in science drag, and other sites that go out of their way to try to push legitimate studies and science off the front page of Google.
As a general rule: if the site (or forum or…) refers to “porn addiction”, you can rather safely assume it has an agenda that goes beyond “following the science”. The American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors or Therapists has stated that the organization “does not find sufficient empirical evidence to support the classification of sex addiction or porn addiction as a mental health disorder, and does not find the sexual addiction training and treatment methods and educational pedagogies to be adequately informed by accurate human sexuality knowledge,” and “sex addiction” was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders in the fourth edition.
Now, if you have an unhealthy relationship with porn — you’re spending money you can’t afford to lose on cam sessions, you’re watching porn at inappropriate times (like at work or school) or you’re watching porn rather than having sex with your partner, etc. — then yes, restricting your porn consumption is a good idea. Similarly, if you’re masturbating so much that you don’t have the energy or drive to have sex with another person (and you want to have sex with them), then addressing the masturbation issue is important. But I suspect that, were that the case, then you would have said something.
Getting back to the case of “dicks being divas” — having things fail to rise to the proverbial occasion, especially when you’re relatively sexually inexperienced or you’re with a new partner is fairly common. It’s all too easy to get so in your own head about the import of it all that when the moment finally comes, your penis goes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and just fails to work. And because irony, not gravity, is the strongest force in the universe, that worry puts a whammy on your head, you get all too worried that you’re going to have another failure to launch, which makes you more concerned, which makes it all too likely that you’re going to have a third time you can’t get it up for the first time.
The key to fixing this is to break that self-perpetuating cycle. The easiest — and hottest — way to do so is actually quite simple: you take your penis off the table, so to speak. That is, you and your partner agree that you’re going to deprioritize not just penetration, but penile involvement. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have sex; it just means you put the focus on things like oral sex, using your hands and fingers, penetration toys or vibrators and the like. It’s still sex and you’re still having sex with your partner; you’re just not having penetrative sex with your penis is all. This not only takes the pressure to perform off of you, it also reminds you that you have more ways to share intimacy and pleasure with your partner than “insert tab a into slot b”. It expands your repertoire as a lover, widens the type of activities you and your partner can enjoy together and it encourages more creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking.
…er, as it were.
And the great thing is, once you’re no longer worried about needing the magic wand to be the end-all/be-all of sex and pleasure, you’ll find that you’ll be ready, willing and able to actually add intercourse back into the mix. Getting rid of the jitters is a much more reliable, effective and — importantly — fun way of dealing with stress and anxiety-induced ED than becoming a nevernude who worries that a flesh-toned bra cup is going to ruin one’s streak.
So get off the NoFap, get with your girlfriend and let your fingers do the talking. You and she will be much happier for it.
Good luck.
Hi Doc,
So, before I say anything on the topic of The Grimes Test, I must say I’m not against the idea itself. It’s accurate in every regard. The problem is in how I personally sit beside it.
I’m an extreme introvert – if you can be more introverted than me you’ll be held in a mental asylum. Right now I’m not in my best shape, neither physical nor mental. And, quite frankly, I feel stunted in my ability to have any social interactions that fulfill me. Needless to say, I hate myself and my family for everything.
I feel that the problem is mostly in them. They are themselves a bunch of losers. I don’t say that without pain in my heart but I feel it this way.
And now, about the Grimes test. I saw many people who benefit from “passing it”… but I don’t feel I’ll ever be among them. I’m interested in screenwriting and I’m good at it but I don’t think that will make any difference. I know what you’re thinking – “that means you have an emotional intelligence, yada yada yada…” but I will still object.
I can’t write comedy for example. People only want to laugh, something I’d never make them do. I’ve seen people who are extremely successful just because they have a great sense of humour and are quite open. I’m the extreme opposite of that and I’ll never have it. It’s just my nature.
Honestly, there’s a lot more to say but I’ll leave it here. TL;DR: I can’t be socially successful because of my nature and I feel miserable because of it.
Thank you for listening,
Toxic Slime Kaiju Wannabe
It’s been a while since I last brought up The Grimes Test, so this is actually a good time for a quick refresher.
The Grimes Test is a thought exercise originally inspired by NerdLove Mod Emeritus Gentleman Johnny, and goes like this:
Grimes is a 50′ tall monster made out of toxic waste and slime. He’s pretty cute as far as kaiju go, he’s got a cheery disposition, a good job and a place of his own, but he doesn’t have much of a life outside of work. He’s never hit a woman, he’s never sent pictures of his junk to anyone who didn’t want to see it (not that he has much to speak of), he’s never creeped on anyone, never stalked them or harassed them. He’s incredibly respectful of people’s boundaries and never trashes a city without its consent.
So with all that in mind: what do you have going for you that Grimes doesn’t, that would make a woman want to date you instead of Grimes?
(Also, you can get Grimes merch at the NerdLove Academy store. Just sayin’.)
The point of the Grimes Test is fairly simple: Grimes represents the baseline standard… the average nice guy, as it were. But being attractive to others means having more going for you than just “being nice”. So what do you bring to the table that would make you a catch?
Now, to get back to your question TSKW, I think that you — like a lot of folks — have forgotten something incredibly important: it’s that you aren’t carved in stone. You aren’t a statue, nor are you a fictional character who’s limits are dictated by the nature of fiction. You are a living, breathing human being, which means that you always, always have the capacity to grow, change and, critically, improve. If you feel like you don’t bring anything to the table right now… well, it’s within your capacity to cultivate those things. You have agency, you have control and “you” as a concept are a continual work in progress. There is no point where you can’t learn new skills, acquire new interests or otherwise better your situation.
You’ve made some pretty sweeping statements, man, ones that are so far off the mark that they don’t even qualify as being wrong. You can’t write comedy… ok, and? Comedy isn’t the only genre of the dramatic arts out there; there’s a reason why the two masks of drama are comedy and tragedy. Histories, thrillers, coming of age stories… those are all viable and valued narratives that people adore. Movies like August Rush aren’t comedies, nor are movies like Adaptation or Synecdoche, New York. Neither is The Last Castle, Stand By Me, Any Given Sunday, Hoosiers, 3 Days of the Condor, Thief… I could go on and on. Similarly, the whole “people only want to laugh” is false on its face. While yes, people do want to laugh, that not the only emotion people experience, nor is it the only emotion they want to feel when they go to the movies. If that were the case, people would never have gone to see Kids or Welcome to the Dollhouse. But by that same token, “…something I will never do” is a statement so broad and incorrect that the only way it could happen is if you work at it.
You have the capacity to be funny, my dude. You have the capability to write things that make people smile, laugh or say “awwww”. Declaring that you never will be able to requires that either you choose to cut off that part of your personal growth, or that you have clairvoyance to put Nostradamus to shame.
(And if that’s the case, I’d appreciate the numbers for the Powerball before end of business, Wednesday, thanks.)
However, to do any of that… well, first you gotta take care of yourself. And quite frankly, you’re kind of a mess. Leaving aside the rather radical misunderstanding of what an introvert is — trust me, people aren’t getting 5150’d for being exhausted by social interaction — you sound rather profoundly depressed. And I don’t mean that in the sense of “you have the blues”; I mean that in the sense of “your serotonin uptake seems to be having problems.” What you describe is the sort of thing that you should be talking to a therapist about, not a loudmouth with an advice column. After all, Dr. NerdLove is not a real doctor, he’s a dating coach, and what you need is a trained mental health professional to help you unpick this knot of resentment with your family as well as your self-image.
Here’s the thing: depression lies. Depression tells you that nothing can change, that nothing can get better and how you feel right now is how you will feel for the rest of your life. And I am here from the future to tell you that this is bullshit. I have been there, I have done that and I have the medical history to back it up. The fact that you feel this way right now — that you may have felt this way for a long time — doesn’t mean anything about what you’re capable of. It just means that in this particular moment in time, you have the voice of depression whispering in your ear. But that can change.
However, for that to change, you have to make the choice to change. Not “will yourself to not be depressed” but to decide that you don’t like how you feel, that you want things to be different and to start taking the steps that will empower you to feel differently. Talking to a counselor is one such step. So too is asking a psychiatrist whether an antidepressant would be right for you, if something like cognitive behavioral therapy might work better, or a combination of medicine and therapy. And while neither (or both) are magic bullets that will instantly transform you, taking those steps is a reminder that yes, you have agency. Yes, you have control over your future. No, your future isn’t written in stone, it’s written in pencil, and you can erase it and write a better one.
You feel like shit now. You feel like you can never be socially successful now. But feels aren’t reals, my dude. This is just a snapshot of this particular place and time. If you want a different future — one where you can be happy — then it’s on you to decide that you’re ready. And I’m not gonna lie: it’s a choice you have to make every day. But again, I have been in this hole before and I know the way out. So do yourself and your future self a favor: go talk to a counselor.
Your future self will thank you.
Good luck.
