Temple of Zagan

A woman writes about the changes she observed in a male friend before and after his regular consumption of pornography.  Very fascinating:

The Difference: A totally unscientific observation from a lady point of view

Thought I would share this story. Might be of interest, might not. I’m not making a judging on porn or porn use, but just an observation I had on a recent experience in regards to a fella.

So: I move in a shared house with two other people, guy and a girl. The house is pretty bare, and due to a mix-up with  providers, we don’t get internet for almost two months. Let’s call the man K. K and I get on like a pair of things that really, really get on. We have so many ‘in sync’ moments (‘hey, I have the back catalogue of Babylon 5 too!’) it is slightly sickening. He makes me laugh. He laughs a lot. He looks me in the eye when he talks to me. He looks at everyone like he is interested in them, and listens intently to their thoughts and views. When he comes home from work (he works as a maths teacher) he talks with such enthusiasm about his job I can almost see the appeal of maths myself – no mean feat for someone who got an D at GCSE and still uses her hands to count.

Alongside all of this, there’s almost an instant physical and incredibly powerful attraction. It’s unusual for me to feel such an instant and strong attraction to a guy. There’s just something incredibly and alluringly masculine about him, like he’s set off some primitive hindbrain jabbering LIKE THIS MAN THIS MAN GOOD LOOK AT HIS MAN ARMS AND MAN CHEST AND MAN FACE MAN MAN MAN in my subconscious. Looks wise, he’s kinda on the rotund side, glasses, slightly unkempt beard, and probably a bit too much skull for his face (he probably needs it though for keeping all his maths brains in). He’s not objectively speaking, the most physically attractive of men. But for some reason he is to me. Everything about him leaves me smitten. Here’s another thing. He smells really good, although I can’t define the scent or put my finger on it. He doesn’t wear aftershave. I think it is just something about him. I make excuses to hang out with him and be around him, which is pretty easy when you live within ten meters of each-other. And I think he might like me too. I’m an old-fashioned kind of girl, plus I know that any sort of relationship with a housemate is disastrous for a shared house, so my rational and controlled self stops me from flinging myself into his manly man arms but wow. It was kind of enjoyable – and odd as it sounds, wholesome – just to be attracted to someone in such a spontaneous and natural way.

Then we get the internet.

Over the next month or so, things change so drastically it is weird for me to think about how I used to feel about him. He spends more and more time in his room, door locked, getting up later and later for work. He doesn’t look anyone in the eye – in fact, he doesn’t meet mine or anyone’s eyes much anymore. He doesn’t laugh much or seem to take enjoyment in anything, The interest and enthusiasm he had when talking to people, or about maths, or nineties sci-fi has disappeared. He’s made occasional but incredibly inappropriate comments about myself and my housemates to us that seem out of the blue and out of character. His skin looks grey and greasy. He was fast tracking his career and now he seems to be falling further and further behind. And for some obscure reason, streaming tv shows at about 8.30 pm becomes an absolute nightmare for me or my other housemate.

The indefinable attraction I felt for him disappears. He doesn’t smell good anymore. His eyes look dead. In fact, my bodily instincts have taken a U turn – instead of encouraging me to scoot up to him they are subtly warning me to stay away.

This could all be coincidence, of course. He’s still essentially the same guy and a good one, and I’m not suggesting porn has turned him into a bad person – just a less good and less attractive version of the man he could be. I’m not a scientist or psychologist or anything sort of ‘ist’. But I don’t think it is any accident there’s a correlation between getting the internet and this undefinable aura of man-ness disappearing. It makes me think porn is capable of altering a person’s body chemistry and bearing. I guess what I am trying to say is that I’m starting to realise how many people I’m surrounded by losing out, myself included, because of porn. I wonder how many missed chances there have been, because something is repressed or used up or changed by watching it.

TL:DR Was smitten by man with invisible manliness hormones, internet

EDIT: Trousers! Thanks for all of your replies. I’ll try and answer things more thoroughly tonight when I get home from work. To quickly answer a few recurring things:

“How do you know it’s porn?” – short answer, obviously I can’t know for 100 percent for sure, and I’m not sure shouting ARE YOU ENGAGING IN THE SIN OF ONANISM YOUNG MAN at his door is going to come under the auspices of ‘reasonable behaviour’ on our housing contract. However, I can say a) he’s not actually a big computer / internet user and he doesn’t play computer games. b) It’s mostly instinct…he just seems….off and kind of repellent in those times – like he stumbles out of his bedroom, won’t look me in the eye if I’m in the corridor at the same time, and rushes into the shower. c) when I have gone into the bedroom asking about general housemate stuff (always knocking first) I can see him hastily clicking and the screen is always a blank webpage when I go in…while he is sprawled with his laptop on the bed. Maybe he just has a thing for blank webpages, who knows. d) my housemate has picked up on the same ‘vibe’ e) his poor computer is riddled with malware, I keep offering to fix it (I work as a tech monkey) but he won’t let me near it. In my experience fixing computers, most of the time people get lots of malware and viruses is through porn pop-ups or internet incompetence. f) zombie eyes, weird ‘smell’.

A bit more explanation: I’m not making a moral judgement on porn or porn watching, or masturbation. It’s actually something I don’t think about much. I don’t look at porn but I guess that lots of people do either in the form of videos or erotica. For my own personal reasons, I haven’t had sex and I’m not sexually active in any way, as mentioned, I’m kind of old fashioned. Although there are always challenges to that, I’m actually very happy, and waiting for the right person and right situation. A note on the attraction I was trying to describe: I’m a bit concerned that some people are suggesting I tell him I was ‘super horny’ when I first met him and he should give up porn so we can get together. That’s a bit much. As weird as it sounds, the attraction wasn’t exactly a sexual one (although I’m sure it would have been the essential element developing sexual attraction), it was even more basic. It felt natural and non weird and very instinctive, operating, to invert a phrase, a ‘Me Jane, You Tarzan’ level. It was very much ‘You smell good. You are nice. For some reason I am besotted with all your manly manliness. Look, I’m wearing a dress, it’s nice, I like you. Look, I made you something with potatoes in. You smell good. Hi.’ Obviously, I like his personality and had fun with him when we were hanging out, but I’m talking about something at a super basic level – something you could almost ‘smell’.

Edit 2: Work break! Some comments have asked how do I know about r/nofap? I read r/getmotivated and it was mentioned. I remember reading some threads on here and being fascinated by the male perspective on it all. Then I forgot about it, had this experience, and decided to post about it. I’m also starting to get interested in what internet pornography might be doing to the current generation in terms of relationships and attractions between the sexes.

Porn use definitely affects people as the author of the above writing observed.  The human animal have been the same way, biologically speaking, for the past 10s or possibly even 100s of thousands of years.  There are certain modern things we are not wired to handle in a manner that’s completely beneficial to us.  Internet porn, which provides an endless harem of photo-realistic, animated women on demand to one’s exact specifications/fetishes, is one of them.

From my own personal experience, regular porn use has a way of leaving me weirdly drained.  Almost like I’m mentally shriveled up, and instead of walking with a swagger in my steps, I walk as if I’m timid and afraid of something.  Completely staying away from pornography leaves me feeling better, and curiously, gives me more vivid dreams.

I was raised in a generation where psychiatrists and Hollywood types gleefully described pornography as harmless and even healthy.  Looking back, I can’t help but feel deceived and betrayed by them.  For what reason did they encourage porn use, was it profit or mere political correctness?  Ultimately, I don’t care that porn exists and is used, but it should not have been blindly paraded as a perfectly healthy thing to consume.  It’s ironic that the few sources that did try to warn of the potential ill effects of pornography from my youth were mostly denigrated as puritan, prudish or otherwise overly religious, when they were right all along.

 

 

 

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