S9E10: Ask a Sex Therapist: What If I Think I Am (or My Partner is) a Porn Addict? With Dr. Eric Sprankle

This summer, we're reflecting on the ten most common questions we hear from our relationship and sex therapy clients. We often hear folks talk about their sexuality in negative ways, comparing their sexuality, consumption of porn, and masturbation practices to that of addiction. 

We self-diagnose as sex addicts, or we diagnose our partners as sex or porn addicts. And in doing so, we eliminate the opportunity for curiosity, to learn about our fantasies, our curiosities, our erotic templates, and our hopes. 

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Eric Sprankle, author of DIY: The Wonderfully Weird History and Science of Masturbation, about what we miss when we rely on the language of "porn addiction":

• Porn & Masturbation (12:00): Jeremiah kicks us off, “One of the reasons that we wanted to start with masturbation as a way of moving into a conversation about pornography is that masturbation and porn are very commonly linked from our perspective. There's a lot of negativity around masturbation, self-pleasure that's connected with pornography.”

• Historic Roots of Anti-Masturbation (16:00): Eric shares his research: “ I didn't realize how identical that is from a historical perspective as to what's going on right now. And it's just the language that has been updated. So people are online today spouting nonsense, like masturbation causes depression. Well, 200 years ago, 250 years ago, Dr. Kellogg was saying that masturbation causes melancholy. Same thing, right? People are saying that masturbation causes acne today.”

• It’s Not The Porn (20:00): Eric explains, “ Porn can definitely be a problem for people and in their lives and in their relationships. No one disputes that. But the reason it becomes a problem has more to do with the individual or the relationship that they are in than the porn itself. And that's the part that gets missed.”

• Talking to Adolescents About Porn (23:00): Julia discusses, “ We had several folks in our presentation ask about adolescents and how to talk with adolescents about explicit material, especially porn. And the conversation that Jeremiah and I had was, well, this is actually an opportunity to talk about media literacy. It destigmatizes porn because most people are engaged in media to some degree, whether that's intentional or just living in the world and looking at billboards.”

• Dealing With Disgust (27:00): Eric says, “ We certainly do not want to like over-pathologize sexual interests that don't harm anybody. We certainly don't want to institutionalize people for having kinky sexual fantasies or behaviors if it's not hurting anybody, like we have done in the past. But this idea of dealing with disgust, I think, objectively, there are a lot of sexual behaviors that are objectively disgusting. And so I think it's fine and normal. I think we can validate that emotional response of like, oh, gross.”

• Masturbation As A Scapegoat (31:00): Julia notes, “Often objections to porn are really a scapegoat to something else. And within conservative religious groups, one of the reasons, probably among many, that masturbation is so demonized is because a person is considered sinful. If they have any kind of fantasy or desire for someone outside of a very exclusive partnership, that would be lust, that would be sinful. And then if you masturbate to whatever that fantasy is, that is even extra, extra sinful.”

• Breaking An Agreement (36:00): Jeremiah says, “ That relationally speaking … really highlighting the secrecy and that the breaking of the agreement isn't really about the porn, it's about the privacy and then also the potential ensuing attempts to hide.”

• Privacy Not Secrecy (39:00): Eric continues, “Privacy is acknowledging that this behavior exists that I'm not necessarily a part of, but I don't need a full accounting of everything that's going on. I can have a certain degree of privacy around it. So for a relationship where porn and masturbation were allowed and private, not secret, but private, it would be like, yeah, I know my partner Masturbates, I don't really know the last time they did it.”

• Pornhubs Rewind (42:00): Jeremiah discusses, “ They start that by talking about kind of the 10 trends that we notice … and the pornhub people don't say that but if you're decently engaged in like current events, current politics, like you can make connections pretty quickly. They almost always have to do with something that is actively going on, some sort of active social trends.”

• Porn Literacy (47:00): Eric notes, “ Porn literacy is kind of like getting into like behind the scenes as to why some of these porn scenes are shot in the way that they are, or why certain body types are selected more than others to work better on film, but also to separate that. You know, it can just be fantasy. Right, and that we can be aroused by more than one type of stimulus.”

• Diversity of Attraction (50:00): Julia says, “ We're talking about media literacy, we're talking about solo sexuality, and we're talking about the diversity that we all have in being attracted to all different types of people. Just like if we go to an art museum, well, maybe we like modern art and also we like photography, and those don't have to be threatening to each other. Maybe there's actually something cool about having multiple, multiple different interests.”