Clare Faulkner, a psychosexual and relationship therapist based in central London, is among those who link ED and pornography use. “I now have ED clients in their early 20s,” she says. Part of the problem with pornography is that it is “a very dissociated experience. Stimulation is coming externally, which can make it very hard to be in your body.” It also perpetuates the myth, she says, that “men are rock hard and women are ready for sex all the time”.
Lone viewers of pornography become accustomed to being fully in control of their sexual experience – which again, says Faulkner, “isn’t replicated in the real world”. Being faced with a real, complicated human being, with needs and insecurities, could be deeply off-putting.
In online forums dedicated to porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED), tens of thousands of young men share their struggles to stop using pornography, their progression from soft porn to hardcore and the barriers they face in forming real-life romantic and sexual relationships. It is hard to prove outright that pornography causes ED, but these testimonies replicate findings from the clinical literature: that if men can kick their porn habit, they start to recover their ability to become aroused by real-life intimacy.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member