All right, so I just got to talk with Melanie Curtin about porn and men, and wow, this is such a deep topic. We covered a lot of ground, from why it's so damn hard to quit to what's actually happening underneath the behavior itself.
You know, the thing is, most men I work with have some relationship to porn they want to change. Maybe 85 to 90% of guys in our program. And it's not really about morality for most of them. It's about choice. It's about feeling like they have control over their lives instead of being at the mercy of this habit that keeps pulling them back in.
What we talked about that really lands for me is this shift from trying to stop or quit porn to actually outgrowing it. When I transformed my own relationship to it, it wasn't because I white-knuckled my way through. It's because my life got full. I was in a men's group, I was working out, I was putting my attention on art projects and things I cared about. My connection bucket got full. And suddenly I realized, huh, I haven't even thought about porn in three weeks. It just wasn't arising because I wasn't hitting that stress trigger point anymore.
The other huge piece we unpacked is that porn for most men isn't actually about sex or fantasy or wanting someone else. It's about nervous system regulation. It's the tool we learned to manage stress, loneliness, and emotions we don't know what else to do with. That changes the whole conversation, especially for guys in relationships whose partners think it's about attraction or rejection.
If you're struggling with this stuff and want support, check out what we're doing at Evolutionary Men. We run programs specifically designed to help men seal the exits and actually deal with what's underneath. Until next time.
