Escaping Into Fantasy

So now that we’ve talked about the major digital red flags, there’s one last thing we really need to talk about, and that’s porn.

Remember at the start of this program when we talked about how cheating isn’t just about hooking up with someone else? It’s about secrecy. It’s when someone is giving energy, attention, and intimacy that should go to you... to something or someone else. Porn falls into that same definition.

Every couple gets to decide what’s okay and what’s not. Maybe your boyfriend watching porn is a hard no. That’s completely fine. If he’s sneaking around, lying about it, and choosing porn over being with you, that’s crossing a line, and it is betrayal.

Now, maybe you are okay with him watching it sometimes, as long as he’s honest about it. That’s your boundary, and that’s totally okay too. But here’s what I want to question in this part of the program: should you be okay with it?

How bad is porn for your relationship, and is watching it a red flag for cheating? Let’s see what the research says.

From the moment guys are first exposed to porn, often as young as 12 or 13, they start building their ideas of sex from porn instead of real intimacy. Researcher Robert Jensen found that common porn themes teach a male-dominant view of sex and can act like a “training manual” for coercive behavior. He found that porn consistently pushes three core messages: women always want sex, they enjoy whatever act a man demands, and if the woman says no, a little force will get her to change her mind.

The stuff guys learn from watching porn as teens doesn’t just go away when they grow up.

So we get that men start watching porn at very young ages, but maybe now you’re wondering why they keep watching as adults, even when they have a loving girlfriend or wife.

As we’ll learn in a later chapter, many men have very avoidant personalities. They struggle with emotions and find it hard to express how they really feel. It's honestly just easier for them to open their phone and watch porn than to lean into the vulnerability of real intimacy.

Real sex means opening up to someone emotionally, letting yourself be fully seen, expressing love, asking for affection, and that takes courage. But these men literally do not know how to do that. They were never taught. The patriarchy they grew up in tells boys to be tough, not tender. To take, not ask. To hide feelings, not express them. They are raised to believe that needing love makes them weak, and that getting sexually rejected is one of the most humiliating things they can experience.

So instead of facing that fear, they avoid it completely.

Rather than risk feeling rejected or admit they want closeness, they watch porn. Porn doesn’t say no. It doesn’t ask anything from them. It gives them the same feeling of release, but without any effort. No emotional work. No vulnerable conversations. Just quick, easy control.

But what starts as casual use can quickly become a habit. Porn turns into a coping mechanism. You have a fight, he watches porn. He is stressed at work, he uses porn to relax. He feels insecure, bored, anxious, lonely, and he goes straight to porn. It becomes the way he deals with everything he doesn’t want to feel. Instead of talking to you or working through what is really going on, he escapes into this private little fantasy world where he feels in control.

And the more he uses it, the more it can start to reshape his brain.

Porn acts on the brain the way cocaine does. It triggers a rush of dopamine, that feel-good chemical, but after a while, the brain gets used to it. What once excited him no longer hits the same. That means he needs more stimulation to get the same hit of dopamine. More porn, more extreme porn, more degrading porn.

A 2014 study showed that this dopamine cycle in porn users literally shrinks a part of the brain called the striatum, which is linked to motivation and reward. That means the more porn he watches, the more his brain gets trained to crave pictures on a screen, not real human connection.

For a lot of women, this turns into a completely sexless relationship. He stops trying. His dick literally only works for porn. You’re lying right there next to him, but he’s more turned on by pixels than by you. You start feeling invisible, unwanted, and blaming yourself for something that was never your fault.

And honestly, as painful as that is, it’s usually the better outcome.

Because the other path is even worse. That’s when he starts pushing you into things you never wanted. Choking. Threesomes. Group sex. Being filmed. Acting out whatever porn scene he’s obsessed with that week. None of it feels intimate or loving. You’re being used as a prop.

And when you say no, he guilt-trips you.

You’re frigid.

You’re boring.

You’re the reason he “has to” watch porn.

You hear things like, “If you were more fun in bed, I wouldn’t need this.”

That guilt trip has pushed so many women into doing things that left them feeling sick, humiliated, and violated.

And if you finally bring it up, if you ask him to stop watching it, or even just tell him it’s hurting you, he acts like you’re the crazy one.

“It’s just porn. Everyone watches it. What’s your problem?”

“It’s not like I’m fucking them.”

“You’re overreacting. This doesn’t affect us at all.”

But it does. And we’ve known this for a long time.

Back in the 80s , researchers Zillman and Bryant studied what happened when people watched regular porn. Nothing violent or extreme. Just normal porn. And even that was enough to mess with how people saw love, sex, and relationships.

After a few weeks of watching it, people started feeling differently about their partners. They said their partner wasn’t attractive enough. They thought sex with them was boring. They stopped being affectionate. They lost interest. They even started saying things like “I don’t think love really matters” or “I’d rather just have sex without feelings.” Some even said they didn’t see the point of getting married or having kids anymore.

Basically, porn made people numb. Numb to love. Numb to connection. Numb to the person right in front of them.

One woman in a later study put it like this:

“I am no longer a sexual person or partner to him, but a sexual object. He is not really with me, not really making love to me. He seems to be thinking about something else, likely those porn women. He is just using me as a warm body.”

That’s what porn does. It builds a wall between you and him. It replaces love with performance. It turns sex into something cold and empty. And even if he swears it’s no big deal, you will feel the difference.

So yeah, I hope you can see now how much damage porn can really do in a relationship. But like we said earlier, it’s up to you to decide what’s okay and what’s not.