He's Just Not Up for It Anymore (18 page)

Ken Search is a clinical social worker and addiction counselor at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Illinois, which admits patients suffering from obsessive computer use. He says that Internet pornography has little in common with the kind of sex we really experience, and that can be problematical. Sex with an airbrushed, collagen-lipped, breast-implanted playmate is out of the question for most guys, but sex with three of them at once is pretty much impossible for just about anyone.

The trouble with that kind of fantasy, according to Search, is it may be difficult to feel the same kind of excitement with a real live partner. In that sense, he believes, it can corrupt.

Clearly, there is nothing intimate about a computer screen, even if it is a bit more interactive than a magazine. But a
Playboy
model who moves, who moans, and who has thousands of sisters all waiting in the wings? Well, at its worst, online porn just might create a digital divide like the one Tom Wolfe mentions in
Hooking Up:
“Nothing that the wife could offer him in the way of sexual delights or food 150

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could compare with the one-handing he was doing day and night as he sat before the PC.”

Dr. June Reinisch would disagree. She argues that a wife can meet or exceed what her husband sees online, simply because she’s real. About the Internet women, she says: “They are cold. They are one-dimensional. They are not moist. Yes, fantasy is wonderful and he can bring that fantasy into bed with him.”

Janice Epp mentions that she is seeing more and more couples where a man has lost or subverted his sexual desire. “I think it’s easier for men today to retreat from sex with a partner because they have this marvelous new sexual tool to soothe them: the Internet. I can’t emphasize this enough—every single man I’ve seen has turned to the Internet when sexual difficulties with a partner have arisen. In many cases, she is unaware of his Internet use, and when his desire returns after they’ve worked through their conflicts, he is happy to be having sex with a real person.”

IF VARIETY IS THE SPICE OF LIFE,

HE’S IN THE RIGHT MARKET

In biology, the “Coolidge effect” is a term used to describe the short-ened refractory time necessary to rearouse a male animal after a new female is introduced. It comes from this old joke: President Calvin Coolidge is visiting a chicken farm with his wife, and they are given separate tours. As Mrs. Coolidge passes large coops, she is surprised to see many hens but only one rooster, and she asks the farmer if one rooster can possibly be sufficient. “Absolutely,” the man replies. “That rooster is a very hard worker.” The First Lady is surprised by this and says, “Really? The rooster works that hard every single day?” “Oh yes,”

says the farmer, “dozens of times every day.” To which she murmurs:

“How interesting, be sure to tell that to the president!” Coolidge now arrives at the same coop and is immediately told about his wife’s re-caught in the net

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mark. “Always with the same hen?” he inquires. “Heck no,” his guide replies, “a different one every time.” To which the president says, with a wink, “Be sure to tell that to Mrs. Coolidge.”

For some men pornography is supplemental sex, a way of
getting variety into their lives without cheating.

For some men pornography is supplemental sex, a way of getting variety into their lives without cheating. Online, a man can rule the roost, at least in his imagination. Some wives may be fine with this, especially if husbands bring it back to the bedroom. As a woman in her 20s said wistfully: “If watching porn could get him aroused, I’d be all for it.”

Dr. Reinisch recommends trying to understand why your partner is choosing to do this, and turning it around to make it something you do together. For example, even if a woman would never consider doing what her husband fantasizes about online, she might consider dressing up in something sexy and watching by his side, instead of shutting him out. She suggests: “You can’t do things that are against your values, but you might be able to get to the point where you can have sex with him while he’s watching sometimes. Not all the time; then that’s not fair.” In this way, her husband gets his imaginary world, along with his real woman. She cautions that putting a label on his actions may produce a negative effect. “By saying it’s an addiction, in other words causing him to feel wrong, sick, and dirty, you push him away.” She adds that it should be a signal to a woman that something is wrong in the relationship, because, she believes, any man who is feeling good about himself will prefer a live woman to an imaginary one, but if he thinks demands are being made of him he can’t deal with or fulfill, he might turn to a computer screen.

Reinisch, of course, is speaking about women aware of their husbands’ activities, and even perhaps willing to join them. Online erotica 152

HE’S JUST NOT UP FOR IT ANYMORE

may become a temporary bridge back to a healthy sex life far away from cyberspace. It may also add some seasoning and zest occasionally or on a more regular basis; these are intimate negotiations only a couple can broker.

However, there are wives who know that their husbands are viewing porn and consider it not a misdemeanor or even a felony, but an abomination. Dr. Julian Slowinski is a senior clinical psychologist at Pennsylvania Hospital and has been on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine for more than twenty-five years.

He told us that he once had a woman say that looking at
Playboy
was adulterous. Sex therapist Max Fitzgerald, who administers couple’s therapy along with his wife, Della Fitzgerald, said: “We’ve had a number of men believe that they were committing adultery because they fantasized about someone other than their wife. If you interpret the Bible literally, Christ said, ‘you are as guilty for the thought as you are for the deed.’ ” The Fitzgeralds said they worked with several men who were so guilty about fantasizing during sex with their wives, they stopped being sexual in any way whatsoever—they “pulled the plug on eroticism.” There are certainly those who, for cultural or religious reasons, think viewing pornographic material to be adulterous and therefore sinful. If a man feels compelled to watch online erotica, he may shut down completely rather than allow himself to do something he considers wicked, in his mind, heart, or bed. As Max Fitzgerald says about passionate sex: “Guilt will kill it in a heartbeat.”

What is acceptable or not is personal and unique and should be respected. If one partner or both partners feel that viewing pornography or fantasizing in other ways is a sin, but one still feels compelled to do so or is married to someone who does, it would likely be beneficial to speak to a therapist or member of the clergy. The issue, however, may be based not on religion but on feelings of exclusion and loss of trust, especially if the partner discovers the online “cheating”

accidentally. In that case, if it is at all feasible, it is probably far better to use those fantasies as playful, private erotica.

caught in the net

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That is, of course, if they are within both individuals’ area of comfort. To be simplistic, if a woman dislikes performing oral sex and her husband craves it, it is likely that he will fantasize about it a great deal, and perhaps decide to watch a woman perform fellatio online and masturbate rather than ask his wife and get rejected one more time. The fellatio-averse woman might find it acceptable, however, to join her husband in his online fantasy world as a compromise. When Bob wrote
His Secret Life: Male Sexual Fantasies,
he discovered that most men want adventures just slightly out of the ordinary (e.g., sex out of doors or light S&M) and that more often than not, if the fantasy involved two women, one of them was his wife. The book was published in 1997, with fantasies collected from 1994 to 1996, just prior to Internet sex becoming ubiquitous.

Dr. Bob Mendelsohn theorizes that sexual fantasies are determined early in life and unlikely to change. Gerald Weeks and Nancy Gambescia would disagree. They believe fantasies do change over time, influenced, in their clinical experience, by “what is portrayed in the media, especially pornography.” It is possible that fantasies will be radically altered by the ever-expanding and bar-raising quality of online pornography. Research to determine the effects of the Internet on male sexuality is just beginning.

CAN WATCHING ONLINE PORNOGRAPHY

BE ADDICTIVE?

He doesn’t smoke, drink, or gamble, but he spends hours a day downloading pornography. He may be wasting a lot of time, but is he an addict?

Although Internet addiction disorder has not yet been recognized as a psychiatric diagnosis, therapists report working with numerous patients for whom sexual activity is considered to be uncontrollable.

Some consider Internet addiction to be growing so rapidly they re-154

HE’S JUST NOT UP FOR IT ANYMORE

gard it as an epidemic. Sandra Leiblum and Raymond Rosen, in the introduction to their third edition of
Principles and Practice of Sex
Therapy,
state that what they believe to be “most worrisome” about online pornography is “individuals prone to sexually compulsive behavior who find the lures of cyberspace appealing.”

The
New York Times
reports that approximately 6 percent to 10

percent of the estimated 189 million Internet users in America are addicted to the Web, although not necessarily to online pornography.

Hilarie Cash runs Internet/Computer Addiction Services in Micro-soft’s hometown of Redmond, Washington. She and other therapists believe compulsive masturbatory fantasy can intensify due to the pervasive quality of the Internet, and that healthy people can be lured into addiction. She adds that her patients often struggle with other issues, like depression and anxiety.

The late Dr. Al Cooper, a sex therapist in the San Jose Marital Services and Sexuality Center in San Jose, California, even assigned a number—watching eleven hours per week or more makes you an addict. Julian Slowinski believes that the word
addict
is overused and often incorrect, but he notes that he has had patients compelled on a daily basis to rush home, watch pornography, and then rush back to the office and work late in order to catch up, adding: “If a person’s compulsive behavior is affecting his life, his job, and his marriage, that fits my definition.” (Incidentally, because neither sex addiction nor Internet addiction are considered to be psychiatric diagnoses,

“impulse control disorder” is frequently what therapists use when they write the bill. Otherwise the patient would pay out of pocket.) Ken Search told us that there are two broad categories of addicts: one goes from one partnered encounter to the next without any emotional involvement; the other has solitary sex almost exclusively, sometimes accompanied by compulsive masturbation.

Jay Parker is a chemical dependency counselor at the Internet/

Computer Addiction Services. He believes that pornography addicts suffer from a combination of emotional immaturity, lack of discipline, caught in the net

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and a fear of intimacy, and that the Internet has changed things in the world of compulsive solitary sex and is growing rapidly because it has what he calls “the three A’s: accessibility, affordability, and anonymity.” He adds: “It’s not your father’s porn, where he looked at a centerfold.”

A survey respondent who describes himself as a recovering sex addict told us:

I was into kinky stuff, like bondage and S&M, and heavily into porn at the same time. I really did fit the profile of an addict. I took risks that could have cost me my job and my marriage. I never was with a prostitute and I’ve never had an affair. I never did any of this stuff with another person, even before marriage.

I was terrified of STDs and very shy. I have occasional relapses where I’ll download some porn, but those days are getting rare. (Male, 30s)

Some men painfully put their wives in an untenable position, even if they offer to watch alongside their partners. The following woman said that her husband stopped being sexual with her, viewed pornography for about ten hours a week, and visited strip clubs.

The lack of libido is hard enough to deal with but the fact that he’s more interested in online porn than me is a real slap in the face. I’m 32, attractive, size 4–6, have a good personality, and am quite adventurous in bed, so I find it all so difficult to understand. I think he puts women in categories—good and bad.

He says he respects me too much to watch porn with me. (Female, 30s)

In a follow-up interview, she mentions that her husband was raped by a male neighbor when he was 8 years old. Being raped, especially as a child, is a trauma of such enormous consequence that it often 156

HE’S JUST NOT UP FOR IT ANYMORE

results in the feeling of losing power over most, if not all, aspects of life. That would, of course, include sexuality. To compound the problem, he recently lost his job. This man feels he lost the ability to be in charge of his life when he was eight, and it’s only getting worse. In his mind, online pornography may be the one thing he has control over.

The following woman (54) has been married to her husband (54) for thirty-one years. In 1989, she found plastic garbage bags filled with pornographic videos and thinks that his “addiction” has been going on at least since then. She says that he suffers from both erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation.

My husband has a sexual addiction to online pornography, and this had been a factor throughout our marriage—magazines, videos, Internet. The breaking point came in 2005 when he lost his job due to “inappropriate use of the Internet” using a company-owned laptop. I’ve tried to “fix” things over the years . . . seduction, etc., but pornography always wins. Unfortunately, the loss of his job has killed all desire to ever resume intimacy. We live like roommates, and divorce is now financially impossible.

The impact of watching pornography appears to be a matter of degree. If a man gets temporarily captivated by some online pornography sites, and his wife finds out by confession, accident, or creative investigation, this can turn into something positive—a chance to express fantasies and desires that will add some variety to a perhaps otherwise perfunctory sex life. However, there are more extreme situations, like those above, where a man shuts down completely, avoiding anything but solitary sex. A man’s penis is often a gauge of his physical and mental health. And if it can only function sexually when he is alone with his computer, it is a sign of something critically wrong.