I Know That Only Through Jesus I Am Saved

I'm currently 20 but my history with pornography is complicated. It began when I was 11 or 12, I was attending a relative's 21st party and a stripper had been hired to perform, of course all the children were put in a separate room but I sat behind a partition wall where I could watch without it being obvious that I could see. This is the first time I was exposed to sexual images and the first time I was interested in them. Although I had discovered sexual arousal I still did not fully understand how it worked, fortunately the sex education classes at primary school informed me in that regard.  It wasn't until the next year in high school when I first had access to sexually explicit images through the internet (during the time of dial-up), the site I most often frequented was all about women covered in mud (although not strictly pornographic) and I printed out a whole bunch of pictures from this site and left them in my bottom drawer (I still can't believe I was that stupid).

At this time I still hadn't ejaculated yet and I mostly just looked at the pictures out of interest. Of course my parents eventually found the ones in my drawer and warned me about pornography (my parents are christian so it is expected) and my dad mainly told me that he didn't want me to think of women as objects. I still continued to view pornography more stealthily and eventually discovered the "end result" while veiwing some relatively tame bikini-pictures. From then on I would often stay up late and download explicit pictures on Kazza when everyone had gone to bed (it was a family computer). I remember being quite addicted to self-satisfaction during these years and for a while I would do it once a day. However during the summer when Year 9 had just started I stopped for some reason.

But after a while I stumbled across some arousing images of comic book characters on a counter-strike website and I went back to viewing pornography. Although this time was different, first of all I began collecting images but I was also uninterested in anything explicit, most of my collection was erotic fantasy artwork.  That collection has been continued by until today and but for the hentai section, I would say it's largely not pornographic.  

I only really seem to find depictions of sex attractive in an illustrated form and even then I only view pictures that are not extremely explicit, which is rare in the hentai genre, I remember once sorting through and saving about 70mb of 2Gb of hentai images I had downloaded, because my taste is so particular. The problem I have with most hentai is that after a while it simply becomes a jumble of limbs and orifices and it realy dehumanizes (asthetically as well as morally) the women involved. Also it often verges on a medical diagram which just isn't attractive at all. This is the same problem I have with actual pornography, the explicitness seems more gross than anything and the pleasure felt by participants isn't really obvious, whereas because in hentai you have to create narrative of sexual arousal in one image, it is more evident and relies more on facial expression than genital contact.

In general like to view pictures of women who are happy in exposing themselves and I like the accentuation of the curved female form and the artistic merits of the setting, costume and makeup which pornography at large mostly destroys. Because of my particular taste, I don't see women as objects, rather I adore their physical beauty in a context that is natural. This mainly is how I reconcile my desire to view these images with my Christianity.

Everything else in my life is still exactly as it would be, I don't even drink or swear and I still wish to remain a virgin until marriage. I still believe that sex is the ultimate form of intimacy and should not be entered into without genuine love. I have never yet had a girlfriend mainly because I'm very shy and polite but I want nothing more than to hold hands with a girl and I intend to stop viewing my collection the minute I find a partner.

This is because I place love over lust and although my sexual urges are satisfied by the images I view I still feel a yearning to connect emotionally with a woman and I know that having sex with a woman I love will be infinitley more fulfilling then self-satisfaction. I see sex as a shared experience that benefits a loving relationship and I know that the way I satisfy my self now is only a shadow of that. After being satisfied sexually I often feel the strong urge to have someone beside me and I imagine cuddling up to a future wife in bed after-wards and that is the true pleasure of sex.

Also I keep my collection completely private and I find it acceptable to view alone but I still find fault with the increased amount of sexual images in the mainstream media. I sill believe sex is a private matter between two people (I fully accept homosexual relationships).

Mostly however I know that only through Jesus I am saved and that viewing erotic images and self-satisfaction are simply sins like any other, after all Jesus came to heal the sick not the healthy. For all these reasons I draw a line between myself and the majority of people who view pornography, however pretentious that may seem. 

I Started to Use Porn as a Tool to Test Myself

Being a healthy 30 year old guy, I thought that the answer to this question was pretty simple. I was originally going to say that I use it to come to climax, but there have been many times that I have been able to do that without the use of porn. As I thought about it some more, I thought that I use/view it in order to fantasize, which is half true. Initially, I would use magazines like Playboy, Hustler, Penthouse, or Glamour. I would imagine myself having sex with the women, as I'm sure most men do at these times. Being young at the time, I knew only the basic mechanics of sex, so it was never anything to adventurous. Then I began to imagine the females in my life were these women. Not in any kind of stalker way, but I would imagine their faces on these beautiful, naked women, posing erotically just for me. These fantasies then evolved into the women I knew personally, engaged in the mundane sex I was having with the women in the magazines (in my head, obviously).

Then I "graduated" to soft-core pornographic movies like the ones that are on most cable channels late at night. Something about actually seeing these women "in action" was like discovering Playboys all over again. It was exhilarating. Plus, I was able to expand my extremely limited, mental playbook as I thought about having sex with the women in the magazines and movies that I would never meet, and the women I was surrounded by, that I would probably never be able to "have" sexually. Still, these movies, despite their "insert tab a into slot b" narratives, never fully allowed me to realize what happens during sex (physically) between two people.

My brother was the one that actually introduced me to hard-core porn. This seemed like the holy grail to me. FINALLY, I saw, and heard, what was going on. This allowed me to open my mind to so many different things. Now the mental picture I had in my head wasn't missing anything. I actually began to tell myself erotic stories as I masturbated. It seems like that would be self defeating, since I knew what was going to happen, but it wasn't. Some of these stories involved me, others didn't. Some were about specific people, others were merely descriptions of people that never existed (as far as I know, anyway).

Eventually, I stopped "writing" these stories, and opted instead to just watch people have sex, instead of imagine it. At this point in my life, I was dating, and I discovered a whole new way to use this fantasy part of my brain. As I would watch a porno, I would imagine myself and my girlfriend doing the things on the screen. It doesn't sound like that much of a difference from before, but it kind of made the whole process easier. Instead of inventing the scenario, it was there. Instead of imagining the positions, they were there. All I had to do was substitute in my mind's eye who it was, doing it. It got to the point where I had to ask my girlfriend if she would watch it with me, which surprised me when she said yes. On these nights, we would try to match what the actors on the screen were doing, which I'm happy to admit I was able to do most of the time. Almost as if everything up to that point had been practice. We didn't use porn every time we had sex, but when we did, it made it much better for me because, now the mental images I had in my head, of all of the women I had ever pretended to have sex with over the years, could be taken from the pretending part of my mind, to the memory part.

Then I started to use porn as a tool to test myself. I didn't really know where I was going sexually. For a short period of time, I found myself focusing on the men in the images and movies, and thought that perhaps I was gay or bisexual. But I tried masturbating to homosexual pornography, and it just never really did anything for me. So although I knew my sexual appetites were more advanced than just switching positions, I didn't really know how to go about expanding my knowledge about my sexual self. As my "library" of porn grew, I started to discover that I was more turned on by some of the weirder aspects of the sexual fringe. Nothing too extreme though. For instance, I knew for a fact that I was not interested in anything that involved urine or feces, although I did try to watch 2 girls one cup, just to see the perversion in it. I didn't make it past the first 10 seconds.

This experimentation led me to a few interesting things. I never would have thought that anal sex would be something I would be interested in, and yet when I watched it on video, I had an almost immediate reaction to it. This was yet another activity that I asked my girlfriend to take part in (both watching and doing), and once again she said yes. As I said, I never would have imagined that it would be something I would do, and yet without seeing it, I never would have known I enjoyed it. With this particular experience, I was the one performing the act on her, it wouldn't be until years later that a different girlfriend would attempt a similar act on me. Once again, I never would have imagined it would be as enjoyable as it was. Another time, I found myself watching a lot of group scenes involving anywhere up to 15 people. Something about this seemed so enticing to me, and yet I never was able to bring myself to pursue it. I did find my self in a few situations involving myself, my girlfriend, and another friend (sometimes male, sometimes female). Another thing I learned from watching porn was that I was apparently into light S&M. I found myself asking to be bitten, scratched, slapped, and choked. At first I thought it was purely masochistic behavior, but when I was asked to reciprocate, I did happily. The reason I know my interest stops at light S&M was because I was asked to take part in a rape fantasy, and as my girlfriend and I were attempting it, I just found my self getting nauseas. The most recent discovery I have made about myself was an intense interest in lesbians having sex with each other using strap on dildos. Like a lot of men, I have always found multiple women having sex thrilling, but the addition of this particular sex toy sparked in me a behavior that I was concerned might become a full blown fetish. I was so taken with the thought of a woman with a penis that I watched a few shemale/hermaphrodite pornos and I am still currently on the fence. I do not enjoy watching men performing with shemale/hermaphrodite actresses, but I can enjoy watching a woman having sex with a shemale/hermaphrodite.

So, basically I would have to say that my reasons for watching pornography are the fantasy aspect, but at this point in my life, it is all in regard to my own sexual experiences. The other reason is to learn more about myself and where my sexual desires lay.

I Never Talked to Anyone About It

Male, 45, married.

My history with watching porn is long and complicated, but I'll try to keep it as concise as possible. My first exposure with porn was finding a few copies of the now-defunct magazine, Players, in a trash can while walking around the neighborhood I lived in as a teen. Players was like Playboy, except it featured pictorials of beautiful black women only. Once I made that discovery, I was hooked on porn because it was the only sexual outlet I had at the time. Not long after that, I found out that a close friend at the time, had access to his father's immense collection of porn mags and films. Once in a while, four or five of us would go over to this friend's house to hang out and watch reel-to-reel porn films (this was the '70's, before the rise of vhs players and everything since). I always felt a little weird watching porn with my male friends because I knew we'd all be horny with no way of dealing with it until we were on our own. We were all straight and not the circle-jerking types.

Once exposed to watching porn on film, the still shots in magazines were not enough because I craved hearing the sounds and watching people having sex, no matter how staged it was. When I turned 18, I moved into the realm of adult book stores and into the video booths, where I would spend a lot of time watching all sorts of porn, depending on the selections. It took me a while to get up the nerve to venture into the viewing booths, but after a while, it was nothing for me to go right back there with no pretense armed with quarters and one dollar bills.
 
At first, I'd watch the videos, get horny and leave to go home and 'finish off'. That changed once I figured out that all I needed to do was to take napkins with me and keep quiet while getting off. Around that same time, I discovered what I liked and didn't like in porn. The 'yes' column included, straight fucking, 'lesbian' sex, anal, female masturbation, interracial (black men and white/asian/latino women), some S/M, and even gay sex once in a while. The 'no' column included: beastiality, violent sex, extreme gaping anal scenes, scat, and a host of other things I prefer not to watch. I also never got into the convention of 'facials' in porn. They just never did anything for me. I made weekly trips to different adult stores to get my porn fix until I finally got my hands on a vcr and was able to stay at home and rent vhs tapes and later, watched porn dvds and now on the computer. 
 
Porn has always been a very private thing for me. I never talked to anyone about it and saw no need to. I kept my use of it hidden from girlfriends because I knew that most of them didn't like it and I wasn't going to force them to see otherwise. There were a lot of times when I felt that I shouldn't be supporting the porn industry because of the negative aspects that go into the production of much of it, including some women and girls being forced to participate in porn and other kinds of sexual slavery. That, and the fact that some literature I read from hard-core feminists like Andrea Dworkin equated the viewing of porn to rape. I didn't really believe that, but my sensibilities caused me to back away from my consumption of porn for a couple of years. I returned to it during a four year period where I couldn't get a girlfriend and didn't have any opportunities for sex, otherwise.

I keep on looking at porn partly for the visual thrill of seeing women I don't know nude or partially nude and it helps get me off when the mood hits. I also love that people have been able to explore their sexuality on their own terms via the internet, for better or for worse.

The variety and accessibility of porn on the 'net has also allowed me to indulge in my exhibitionist tendencies a bit. I've taken and uploaded artful adult self-portraits to blogs of my own over the past few years. Some of the home-made porn is as crappy as the mainstream stuff, but, on the other hand, there is a lot of good, low budget porn out there. For example, one of my personal favorites is watching videos of women masturbating. There's plenty of that on the mainstream side, but it's all very faked, which does nothing for me; the faked moans, the scripted looks at the camera and bad dialogue (I know we're talking about porn here, but it really annoys me) is enough to make sure nothing hot happens. Then, I found the site, [redacted], which features very sensual videos of everyday women masturbating, either in a studio setting or in a location that they feel comfortable in. I love [redacted] because it depicts women really enjoying themselves and their bodies. That's what turns me on more than the usual stuff you see all of the time. I'm constantly on the lookout for sites like [redacted] because they show what the true erotic possibilities are for porn.

One of the things about my relationship with porn is that I never took it's attitudes about how women act sexually to heart. I never expected women that I would meet in real life to act anything like porn actresses in their videos. Keeping a strict line between reality and "pornality" has been a blessing and a curse at times because I find myself picking apart porn scenes unnecessarily. Most of the time, when I come across the dreck of the internet, I just keep moving along until I find something that clicks with me.

I Was Gonna Explode

I started consuming porn at a very young age. As a budding 10-12 year old boy, it was quite a surprise to find my dad's dirty mags under his nightstand. I didn't even know how to masturbate back then. It was through some friends at school and my brother that I found out what I was "supposed to do" with this pictures. There was no turning back then, I guess. I would scour the whole of my house looking for porn, and found it. The magazines were never in short supply, usually staying in their spot for a month or two before being replaced by new ones. There were also a couple of betamax tapes that I would be itching to watch when my parents were away. I gradually became picky and started to hone my preferences and my taste. When I turned 18 I couldn't wait to buy my very own porn. I remember buying my first magazine, in a comic book and used books store. I couldn't even look at the cashier (a woman), blushed like I was gonna explode and one of my legs started trembling uncontrollably. At this time I also had my first job, and it was in an office. The office had internet connection and I could be left alone for long stretches of time. You know what happened then. I would frantically try to watch as much as I could and often jacked off in the very office. By this time, finding porn had become an obsession, I needed to find as much and the best porn available. I had started a collection. I would cut up the magazines I bought and pasted the pictures that turned me on the most and made a scrapbook. I also kept the very best digital pics I found and load them up to a slideshow viewer, you know, for easier masturbation.

Now I must mention what my sexual and romantic life is like. In a word, nonexistant. As I am writing this I am 27 years old. Virgin, never had a girlfriend, have been on a total of two dates, never even been kissed. I absolutely love women, find them fascinating, intringuing and stimulating. Yet I am a complete failure in social skills. I am incredibly shy, have very few friends, spend most of my time alone and freeze to a standstill when someone tries to socialize with me. Is consuming porn the cause or a sympton of this problem? If I had a girlfriend and a healthy sex life, would I not need to watch porn anymore? I don't know, and it's these kind of questions that are always in the back of my mind. To be sure, porn has had it's benefits. Thru amassing and sorting the collection I've learned first hand lots of skills that are useful in my career, as I am a librarian. Simply by searching for porn I've become a better librarian and able to find stuff for my users in ways that otherwise I wouldn't consider. Porn has been a distraction and a company thru all the lonely nights. And it's also brought me an unxpected and pleasant connection.

About two years ago I started blogging my porn, just to see if there was anyone out there that liked what I liked. Imagine my surprise when not only did I find someone, but it was also a woman. A middle-aged mom in a completely different country and with a taste for porn, started to comment on what I posted and it slowly evolved into an online friendship. Then we started e-mailing and sending each other semi-nude photos. She is now one of my very best friends and we still connect thru porn. I send her pics that I come across which I think are stimulating or that I think she'll like and she answers me back with her thoughts and sometimes a question or two. My life is not fascinating or exciting, but it's also far from miserable. I walk thru the street and fell jealous of the couples I see kissing or holding hands. I want to experience that, but in the meantime I am happy with what I have and I enjoy porn as a means of entertainment and self-discovery. Am I addicted? Yes, probably. But I would rather say that I'm addicted to the world and to beauty. And while not all porn is beautiful (believe me, I know), sometimes a glimmer shines thru it and that is what I'm looking for.

I'm 18

I'm afraid my girlfriend might see this...

I'm 18 and have been watching porn since I was 16. It's kind of a hobby now. Trying to find the next website to masterbate to for a month before moving on to the next one. I like watching older and bigger women. There is something about a woman with meat on her bones that drives me wild. Ever since I met my girlfriend though, I've toned it down a bit. But every once in awhile I'll hit up some BBW thumbs or something.

It Was My Friend

I currently see myself as an attractive, mid-twenties young man, with a creative job i love with a steady and good income. I have my first novel under my belt, a reasonably individual dress sense, a good sense of humour and i'm pretty confident to boot. I've come to love women and the female sensibility very much, and enjoy going on regular dates and occasionally falling in and out of love, but i've not always been like this.

I was expelled from school at 14 for drug related reasons, and immediately became a very angry young man, i started writing ridiculously right wing manifestos and generally was full of hate and bile toward the world and the way it had treated me for experimenting with soft drugs. I became lonely and introverted and that's where my healthy / unhealthy relationship with porn came in.

I had recently acquired my first modem, 14.4k, and did not need anyone or anything else. My parents were technophobes at the time and didn't know how to operate the computer my dad had bought for word processing, and i basically went to town looking for and easily finding porn.

I delved deeper and deeper and as my connection got faster and faster i became more and more hooked, until i was only looking for the most perverse and often degrading forms of porn i could find. I came to rely on porn, it was my friend, it made me feel good through the actions of others. Although i was still socially quite active, my friends were racking up notches on their bed posts whilst i stood in the side lines getting drunk and never really meeting any girls. I had lost my virginity at 14, and although i did have a string of - very - short term relationships in the mean time, i didn't  have penetrative sex again until i was 21, and i largely put this down to a mix of confidence issues and the growing porn obsession. I feel, looking back on it, porn stopped me understanding what 'real sex' was like, and put the act in a very weird place in my mind, it made it something sex is most definitely not, and almost made me think that it was a terrible, degrading act.

Porn was my solace and nemesis at the same time. I loved it and if affected me from growing sexually. Today, i still revert back to my old friend and still have a large digital collection of all sorts dating back from over the years that i keep saying to myself 'i'll delete it soon' but never do. I came out of my 'porn shell' through the love of a good, sexually active and knowledgeable girlfriend, without which, i feel i'd still hold sex as a strange, difficult entity in my head. I'm so happy that i have come to understand and enjoy sex more than looking at porn, i thought for a long time that i might never get over it, and i feel for the men that never do - i'm sure they're out there.

although now i'm dating and it doesn't matter so much, i think i know and realise that when i do eventually meet a girl i would like to settle down with, my life partner, that they will have to appreciate the fact porn and i are in it for the duration, i don't think i could every fully give it up, it's just something i need every now and again off the back of my youth. I think convincing her that it means nothing other than a quick release, however, might be more difficult than i imagine. life takes funny turns.