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I started watching a lot of pornography and the pornography that I was watching had to fit in with that. I can’t just watch anything. I became very limited to watching a very specific type. And I read the book, The Brain That Changes Itself by Dr. Norman Doyle. And I could see that exactly. So even though I knew that the more times you give in, you’re building up the circuitry and the less times you give in, you’re getting better. I’ve had issues with that. That’s what I’ve recently done. I’ve stopped watching pornography for about a month now. So let me ask you about that. Because there’s a big underground conversation about pornography that’s happening on the web. And with many men, and it’s hard to tell how many, deciding to stop using pornography. And I’ve made some comments publicly about pornography use being, let’s call it suboptimal. Because I think that it isn’t good for the women who are involved in it. And it’s not good for young men. Because it gives you access to something, it gives you access to part of something, but denies you access to all of it. And I think it’s dangerous because of that. Because it offers immediate gratification. But no medium to long-term development of character or life. I guess that’s it. And that seems to be a dangerous kind of trap. And the other thing is that it’s also, and Norman has talked about this, Dr. Deutsch, we don’t know what that kind of massive exposure to multiple virtual sex partners does to the development of the sexual behaviour and sexual gratification and sexual impulse and relationship in young men at all. So it’s a technological marvel that’s very dangerous, I would say. Or at least it has the potential to be. So what do you think the pornography use did to you? And what utility, if any, has there been in stopping? I found that, well, it’s just that one issue that I’ve had, or a major issue that I’ve had in many different facets, has been looking for instant gratification. It’s been food, marijuana, TV, pornography. And I just found that my thoughts would be always just looking for one of those. And as soon as the experience was over, you just have this little quick release where you feel good and then back in pain. And I sort of realised that my pleasure was just getting rid of pain. And pain and pleasure were two sides of the same coin. And I was just flipping the same coin over and over. And how I felt now without doing it… When I first decided to stop, I thought I’d try writing down every time a thought came to watch pornography. And I couldn’t believe it the first day. Like it seemed like almost like once a minute, like I just have a thought saying, watch it, watch it. And my thoughts would try to trick me and say, just by observing… And I don’t know what you think about this, but what I would do is when I’d get the thought to do it, I’d bite down on my thumb in one particular spot. And then I found that the next few days, the thoughts were just coming less and less. And now that it’s been a month, I rarely have the thought. And the benefits I find is that I just feel so much more aware and I’m not seeking pleasure as much. I’m just enjoying going for walks and being in nature. Well you know, your report is really quite reminiscent of an addiction actually. And you mentioned this and you did a good job of explaining it. You know, if you engage in a behavior and then it’s followed by a burst of pleasure, like an orgasmic release, then that behavior is going to be powerfully reinforced. And the circuitry that drives you to that behavior is going to become dominant because behavior that culminates in a reward tends to become stronger. And that includes attitudes and ideas and thoughts and impulses and rationalizations of exactly the sort that you were describing. Then you said that it really plagued you badly for the first day or two and then started to decrease quite precipitously after that. And that’s a good example of how behavior extinguishes if you cease rewarding it. And what does that free you up to do? And what do you think that’s going to do in terms of your willingness or ability to pursue a long-term relationship? Well for free time, I made a schedule after watching your personality lectures and I just Obviously I have a lot more time on my hands to do those things. And in terms of finding a partner, since I’ve been back in Canada, I haven’t even, for a lot of times I haven’t approached women because I just feel that no matter what it leads to, I just have difficulties. Like on one occasion there was a girl who was hitting on me and we went on a couple dates and it went great. She was attracted to me, I was attracted to her, we had a great time. But when it came time to be intimate, I was shaking like a leaf. Because I was so used to using the same stimulus of imagining, I had a very strict thing that I can imagine in my mind. I don’t know what most people, for most guys, what they have to think of when they watch pornography. I had to imagine an entire backstory because I had this issue with trust because of what happened. And I think, okay, where are we? Why did we meet? What’s going to happen after? So because of all that, I’ve just sort of been avoiding it. So let me ask you a question. I’ve been trying to figure out what reasonable guidelines might be with regards to initiating sexual activity with a new partner. And it seems to me that you probably shouldn’t initiate anything that you wouldn’t talk to the person about. Because what that might mean is that you don’t know them well enough to go that far with them physically. And there’s dangers in that. You outline some of them. Sex is powerful and especially when you’re inexperienced, it can hurt you. The hurt can be long term or permanent. And that’s kind of what you’re relating. And so one of the things that I might suggest is that when you initiate the next relationship that you… I mean, I’m not saying that this is an easy thing to do because it’s not, but there’s nothing wrong with not moving forward sexually until you’ve been able to discuss what you’re like personally in relationship to sexual behavior. Because you might say, well, maybe you shouldn’t be engaging in intimate behavior with a person before you can tell them the story about what happened to you in the South Pacific and lay out your personal history and be comfortable with that. That sort of emotional intimacy seems to be the proper precursor to physical intimacy. And I know that our culture has pushed really hard probably since about the emergence of the birth control pill. It’s pushed really hard on this idea that casual sex is, first of all, possible, that it can be casual and also desirable. But I think that that’s a big mistake. I don’t believe either of those. I don’t think that there is such a thing as casual sex. And I don’t think that it’s desirable. I think it causes people a lot more trouble than they realize.