DEAR DR. NERDLOVE: I’ve always wondered if there was a difference between feeling sexual attraction and lust. I’m 30 years old, and since I was 15 I’ve always had a porn addiction. I think it has taken a bad influence on how I view the world and how social media has become a toxic drug. After doing some self-awareness and mindfulness, I realize that I’ve been looking at female bodies instead of them as people. Soon I’ll be a month of getting over my addiction one day at a time. I continue to set small goals while focusing on school and hobbies, but sometimes I do get attracted to random women easily (not sure if that’s sexual/romantic or lust, though).
Am I on the right track? Is this what I should be doing?
Addiction Overload
DEAR ADDICTION OVERLOAD: Alright, AO, I’m going to push back a little on the terminology you’re using. I would honestly question whether you had an addiction to porn – something that psychologists and psychiatrists generally agree doesn’t actually exist. People can and do have problematic relationships with pornography and use it in ways that’re detrimental to their well-being… but addiction is a loaded term and one that tends to be misused often.
I mention this because a lot of folks toss “porn addiction” around as a part of a way of stigmatizing people’s relationships with sex and sexuality and their own their own sexual needs. The NoFap crowd is a great example of this; what may seem like a support network for people with problematic relationships to porn is often far more about stigmatizing sexuality and hating women than it is finding a healthy relationship with sex and sexual expression.
In fact, the prevalence of “porn addiction” and “sex” addiction” tend to correlate a lot to feelings of guilt and religious belief; it’s the idea that there’s a “right” way to experience sexual attraction or arousal and a “wrong” way, and experiencing it the “wrong” way makes you a “bad” person. In reality, there is no standard level of sexual desire or sexual expression. Some folks have high libidos, some folks have low ones. Some people have responsive sexual desire and others have spontaneous sexual desire and still others have very limited sexual desire that may be situational or require more than just physical attraction. When we start to pathologize sexuality and sexual expression, we tend to end up creating situations where folks feel like their perfectly normal and healthy sexuality is somehow “wrong”.
That’s actually I’m picking up from your letter; you talk about being attracted to random women as though this were a problem, instead of just a sign that hey, you’re a primate with a sex drive.
Here’s the thing: being attracted to people, finding their bodies desirable or otherwise just good old-fashioned horniness isn’t an issue in and of itself. Expecting to not be attracted to anyone until you know them as an entirely holistic individual isn’t exactly realistic. When we first encounter someone, one of the things we have to go on is how they look – and especially how they look to us. It’s not every often that you can look at someone and see that their post-graduate degree from Oxford after all, but we often can look at someone and know if we find them attractive or not.
That’s not a bad thing or a sign of disrespect. We’re not beings of pure intellect and reason, we’re also giant walking bags of meat and chemicals and sometimes that meat wants to slap up against other bags of meat in interesting ways. So it’s not inherently bad if you see someone and your immediate reaction from your limbic system is “jaw-drop-wolf-whistle-lip-bite” like you’re in a Tex Avery cartoon.
The difference comes in how we treat people. Treating people like something to be consumed is a problem. This is what objectification means – you’re treating them like a mindless object, not an individual with agency, dreams, wants and ambitions. If the only way you’re relating to women is “animated Fleshlight to crank one off into” then yeah, that’s a problem. But seeing a woman and thinking “damn, she’s hot”? Not an issue in and of itself… especially if you are able to also see that she’s an individual and more than just something that makes your penis smile.
And that’s ultimately what makes the difference between lust and basic attraction. Attraction is part of the holistic individual; you may love them for their mind but you want them for their ass. Lust is about fulfilling a desire, regardless of anything else – including acknowledging or crediting the other person’s humanity and individuality. It’s consumption and need, not something shared between two (or more) consenting individuals.
Keep that in mind and you should be fine.
Good luck.
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Please send your questions to Dr. NerdLove at his website (www.doctornerdlove.com/contact); or to his email, doc@doctornerdlove.com