Porn turning men off of women?

Is it possible that porn is causing men to detach from their partners in more profound ways? Though porn research is the subject of much debate and barb-flinging (with religious groups seizing on any study to prove that porn and masturbation are wrong), scientists speculate that a dopamine-oxytocin combo is released in the brain during orgasm, acting as a “biochemical love potion,” as behavioral therapist Andrea Kuszewski calls it. It’s the reason after having sex with someone, you’re probably more inclined to form an emotional attachment. But you don’t have to actually have sex in order to get those neurotransmitters firing. When you watch porn, “you’re bonding with it,” Kuszewski says. “And those chemicals make you want to keep coming back to have that feeling.” Which allows men not only to get off on porn but to potentially develop a neurological attachment to it. They can, in essence, date porn.

And as tripod-in-the-corner porn evolves into a high-def wonderland, our grasp on whether we’re watching sex or actually having sex may, with the help of oxytocin, loosen. Many of the men I interviewed spoke of the charge they get from watching their favorite porn actresses. But they also had a tendency to describe the act of watching porn as though it were a real sex act they had participated in—making their emotional investment in porn all the more concrete. “I love when Kasey [Kox] is fully clothed and smiling at me from her bed, or I’m doing her from behind,” says Ron, the architecture student. “I get one glimpse of Kasey and I’m so turned on. I get dizzy.”