Im in my early 30s and married. I am old enough to remember seeing the internet start and young enough to start using it when it exploded in the mid-90s. I remember the first porno images I saw and thought it was a lark. I remember the first porno movie I downloaded off of newsgroups and usenet. But the quality sucked and it was too much effort. Besides, I had better things to do...

I quit smoking 3 years ago. I stopped using hard drugs years ago. But nothing is as difficult to stop as getting free DVD-quality porno from anything that turns me on.

Like the article states, I was introduced to sex in graphic manner at a shockingly early age-and loved every second of it. I remember, with clarity, in 2nd grade when my younger brother raced up to me after school and told me what he found under our parents bed. It was a box with about 20 porno magazines ranging from Playboy to Hustler, with Penthouse and Oui! in between. They were from a tenant of my Dads who moved out and left them behind. I actually remember some of the cartoons featured to this day. I also remember the images of tits and pussies and girls on girls and omigosh - dicks in mouths and pussies! Within an hour every kid in the neighborhood from ages 6-12 were thumbing through them. However, we got busted and the parents (ours and others) came down on us harshly. However, we managed to smuggle a couple out into various hiding spots and safe houses, eventually the last of which were stored in a fertilizer bag which was held in a fort we constructed in corn fields behind our neighborhood. They were lost to elements and wear and tear within months.

Back in the day, when the internet connection was 14.4 bps and descent porno was hard to come by, simple economics kept me from viewing alot. I couldnt conceive spending alot of money for so many titles of crappy VHS porno. Magazines always required to much imagination for my tastes and the poses always seemed so fake. As the article states, the thrill of anything I did have (1-2 tapes) got stale real quick. Besides, I was young and single and I had the real thing most anytime I was horny.

I have been seeing my wife for over 10 years now. When the relationship started, we did it alot. Also, I have a unique situation where my wife is incredibly hot (she has a body like a pornstar and blonde hair and big lips to match) and has kept up her appearance over years (i have too btw) At first, a little hit and jerking now and then was really a nice little tide me over until the main course. The sexual experience I was having in bed was parallel to what I was watching so who cares? Im a lucky SOB. For me it was never about "i want to fuck someone new" it was simply "i want to fuck!" The objectification of my wife was starting to creep its ugly head.

I started my little compulsion in earnest after I upgraded to broadband. Soon downloading movies that took hours took minutes. P2P sharing sites allowed me to download entire images of DVDs. Soon, dedicated P2P sites started popping up. Now entire communities of pervs share files for anonymous download. Hundreds and thousands of movies and pics. Everything grouped into what ever you felt like getting off too. The Golden Age of Internet Porn. Our ancestors could never have imagined such sights and delights.

Its easy to get wrapped up with this unending supply of sexual imagery. Imagine, if you were an alcoholic, an open bar in which whatever top-shelf booze you desired was at your fingertips. Imagine being a smoker sponsored by Philip Morris with a lifetime supply of smokes. Why would anyone quit?

I soon started jerking it almost every evening. It was like my nightcap. If I went to bed without it, I couldnt sleep, I would sneak downstairs and quickly pound one out. Released, I could sleep like an angel. However, because of my late night escapades, sometimes doing 2 even 3 times, I had to do it AGAIN in the morning in order to wake up. Like doing a shot of espresso! Ok, now Im ready for a new day. From my knowledge of addictions, this habit started to creep into the "physical" type.

Sometimes I would watch some tantalizing television show or see some fantastic looking woman and my heart would start racing. I would get an "urge". Great, soon I will be sporting a tan trench coat prowling the streets. I wonder if my activities has thrown my testosterone levels out of whack trying to compensate for overproduction of jack-off juice. I would think, is my increased aggressiveness a result of my hormones working overtime?

Also, I started to jerk it after work alone in my office, though only a couple of times. I felt that had really crossed the line. Getting busted by my wife is one thing but by my co-workers, thats the worst. Another thing that started happening was reading "casual encounter" classifieds on craigslist. Now we all know most of it is spammy BS, but once in a while I picked up on details which sounded so real I couldnt help but imagine actually meeting someone, fucking them and then getting the hell out of there. Reading them while watching crappy quality amateur porn put together an erotic image in my head which was quickly approaching the "dont go there zone" Im not sure, but I think chatting online in a sexual manner (which Ive never done) is what got my cousin divorced. I dont want my ass divorced or fired over porn.

Speaking of which, my wife, I have been caught, at least a half-dozen times in our 10 year relationship. She gets extremely upset, which to me is always very odd at first but eventually makes sense. First off, shes quite possessive and while I have NEVER cheated on her, she knows Im a catch so perhaps she feels threatened by these unknown women. She's as hot as any porn star so Im confused by that, really. Plus, I havent had sex with any other woman in 10 years so the "feeling" reference point is completely related to any fucking we have done. I dont even remember anymore any details being with other girls - it mostly foggy one time hook ups or drunken bar time sex so its mostly forgettable anyways.

But in anycase I get the whole book thrown at me and our intimate relationship correspondingly suffers. In fact, issues like breaking our trust between us is the big victim. Our intimacy suffers immediately and probably for the long term. For that I feel terrible. I cant help but think sometimes when we have sex she thinks this is just another ego-driven attempt to get off. I try to explain, for men, masturbation is another thing we gotta do, like shit or shave or shower. Nothing personal, baby...

Perhaps her revulsion to porn stems from her past long term lover, who worked at a video store and amassed a huge collection of porn. He sometimes couldnt get it up and had to sexually satisfied with ass play and eventually other more extreme sex stuff Im still not privileged to know. Did this guy do a number on her so now she thinks Im eventually gonna require a strap on inserted in order to be satisfied? God, I hope not! Also during this time, they made a sex tape which I guess he showed around and that was a huge catalyst of them not working out. I have to admit, the subject of us doing one is a bit taboo, but honestly if I had a really great one of us I would never need another lick of porn again! Really!

However, since probably because we now have a child and that our schedules are busier than ever, having sex has been a weekly if not bi-weekly event. To my (un)natural this is unacceptable. So the subsidization for this has been porno and until I truly try to kick the habit its gonna have to be. Believe me I tried, though not like the effort I put in to quit smoking or the urge to do a bump of coke. But I do try to limit masturbating to the point when I cant stands it no more. I do morning yoga routines and exercise instead of a wake-and-shake session. And I dont visit the casual encounters section on craisglist to play "what if?" Im just trying to be thankful for what I have and hope eventually my overblown sex drive will wither out, hopefully before some irreconcilable event happens because of my little "addiction"

Oh yeah, been there done that with my hubby hitting 150 sites in one night while I was at work...he was totally in denial...our sex life had dwindled to twice a year. He was secretly doing this all the time. We got help in therapy but the fire of his lies never burns out for me. He wasted a lot of years doing porn and making our relationship suffer. I was looking for another man to be with for one purpose only. He would have never known because he was not aware. Think twice before you sneak and do this stuff guys. I have a friend whose hubby orders pizza on a Friday night and spends the entire night surfing porno sites, chatting with those available and spent 1500 dollars on porn in one month. Needless to say the wife has literally checked out waiting for this guy to just die....she does not want a divorce as she feels she could not make it on her own. The hubby is obese, smokes, inactive except for his athletic ability while in front of the computer....that is very sad. So to those who think they are getting away with it, think again, you are hurting your wife, your kids, your family and yourself....

Jilly

i not addict but like 2 jerk off to internet porn everyday

internet porn is cheaper and easier to hide than mags or vidieos fro the gf.

Nice article. Watching porn sites at first glance seems fun but you will not notice until you get addict watching it. You must control yourself while watching porn sites and responsible enough not to get hook to it.

"A 24 year old single man living with his girl friend (Dora) of four years " - sigh....

The link from another article said "cybersex addiction". This article was not about cybersex. Cybersex is 2 consenting parties typing about sex either in a story or telling one another what to do to themselves. My guess is that the person who linked the article didn't know the subtle difference in the language. Porn consumption has a number of other descriptions, so confusing this habit with cybersex waters down the word/slang and leads to confusion particularly when it makes educated psychologists sound less savvy of the other internet habits and phenomenons, and less apt to deal with them.

I can't tell you how much it hurt me when I found over 100 emails from my boyfriend to "sluts" on craigslist asking if they wanted to screw, etc. I came across this when he asked me to go into his email account when I was at work to retrieve information from an email and apparently must have not remembered that these emails were RIGHT THERE!

The fury that light up inside me was insane. I had to step out of work to basically talk to him on the phone and at first got denial from him, then he admitted it and I wanted to know WHY? why? why? why?

I have sex with him whenever he wants, however he wants, and vice versa. I LOVE SEX. In my mind, he violated the boundaries of "looking" at porn and "acting" on porn.

He was never into the porno videos, but liked Playboy (in his words, "classy photos" of naked chicks). After 4 years of sharing a computer, the only thing I had ever seen was links to playboy and that was it.

But then, I guess stupid freakin' craigslist gave him the idea and fantasy and drive to email strange women and invite them over while I was work - Oh by the way, this all happened when he was UNEMPLOYED and I WAS SUPPORTING THE BOTH OF US, paying the mortgage, paying all the bills, buying HIM clothes, oh my god..

Finding out that he had sent those emails basically has forever ruined our relationship in terms of internet trust.

And to the first poster, I will say that when we have sex now I just do not feel the same about him. I would imagine it would hurt him if he were to see me writing emails to guys like that. He probably would have dumped me over it. I however, kicked him out of the house for the night and basically could not talk to him for 2 weeks out of pure disgust. These emails were so pornographic in nature and he denies having ever met anyone from Craiglist, but I can't be sure. In my heart I want to believe that he was playing into a fantasy like the poster above described - the "what if" fantasy.

What is different though, is that there was no cyber porn addiction before jumping head first into the craigslist thing. He wasn't watching porno videos everyday, but something made him click that link for casual encounters and start emailing.

My personal stance is that there is way too much porno out there in every media format and that it is unhealthy to look at it more than two to three times a month for about an hour at a time. I think porno has really ruined a lot of relationships, as I know it has mine, and makes men want more sex with different women when they "hide" it from their girlfriends. I just can't seem to trust men after an incident like this. This man was my "everything" and now we are trying to repair things in therapy (it's been a year) but I still can't feel the same true, pure love I did for him before I saw those dirty filthy emails.

My issue is the following....I have had some treatment for sex addiction and it hasn't worked - a main reason is that I quit therapy too soon...my wife thinks i have quit it and its gonna be tough to tell her that I need more...shame? I guess so. So to anyone out there at the end of their first 6 sessions of therapy and think they have it nailed...trust me..stick with it because it's not.

I have been reading up on the addiction and I came across an interesting element - see below

"Psychologists explain the seduction and addictive nature of the Net primarily in terms of a behavior modification process called a variable reinforcement schedule. That means you don’t know how much of a reward you will get and when for your behavior. A variable reinforcement schedule is the most addictive reward system. Slot machines are designed and operate in the same principle.

When you keep playing a slot machine, the odds are that you will eventually loose everything. But the human brain loves the possibilities and excitement of "winning" in the moment and it ignores the long term consequences. The occasional win doesn’t make up for the overall loss. People play anyway because the occasional win is highly rewarding for those who play long enough. Some people can walk away and stay away. Other can’t walk away or they always come back"

so this is me all over...i have given up paying for porn and spend a lot of time looking at free stuff - just enough to get me to ejaculate and then onto the rest of my life...the problem is that getting to that point can involve hours of looking on webcam sites, chatting, looking at pics...to the extent my dick physically hurts the next morning..but as it gets harder and harder to get me off, I reckon I could end up paying for it again soon...and there is the covering up of credit card bills etc.....

So you can imagine that as a parent of 2 small kids, i wake up tired, fried, short tempered and generally narky anyway - when you add mimimal sleep and a hectic job on top of it I become a complete prick altogether...and that part is hurting me most.

But I wonder if the addiction is not only linked to porn....the compulsive checking of email, facebook, news, youtube whatever....does it effect the brain too? I have the added burden of working fr a technology company and the internet is at the heart of what we do....mobile email, working from home...constantly online which eventually you get a bit fried during the day and instead of closing the laptop and walking away you reward yourself with a glimpse of porn...If I could I'd kill the internet off in the house, but I don't have the self control to do it.

It's interesting that my wife would spend alot of her downtime looking up family websites and shopping online in a similar enough pattern but I'm not sure if that's a problem as yet.

Suggestions???....I think I may need to go back to therapy.