Using Sex to (try to) Satisfy Emotional Needs
When a child is deprived of receiving the social education required to develop empathy and emotional connections with others within their family, they suffer from their inadequate education in their adult relationships. This might be compared with the plight of an immigrant to a country where everyone speaks a completely unfamiliar language. No matter how deeply the person desires to communicate and to connect emotionally with others, the 'how-to' part is missing from their education.
Children need to be convinced that they are important, loved and valued - just for existing and for being part of the family. In the safe environment, children are taught about emotions - how to manage emotions, how to enjoy emotions and how to communicate with empathy for others and themselves.
When a child is deprived of a loving and emotionally supportive environment, attachment injuries can be formed that have life-long effects on the person's relationships from childhood and persist into adulthood. The parents'/caregivers' failure to educate children in a safe and nurturing environment can be truly devastating to the emotionally deprived person.
Emotionally injured children typically develop attachment injuries that result in certain predictable patterns in regards to 'managing' emotions in relationships, primarily being afraid of emotions - so they cope with emotional discomfort by suppressing, avoiding, escaping and ignoring emotions that arise.
Children who have learned to suppress their emotions and who do not develop empathy tend to develop an avoidant type pattern. Other children develop an anxious type pattern and these two types are often 'attracted' to each other in a pathological kind of way.
As adults, avoidants often end up with a porn addiction. This is because porn 'provides' an opportunity for these injured people to experience through fantasy, the 'feeling' of being loved, desired, and nurtured in an emotionally safe environment that they create in their minds with the porn actresses/actors.
Unaware of their emotions which they have learned to suppress since childhood, avoidants are drawn to porn like bees to a honeypot.
They learn that the only way these emotionally deprived people can safely access those missing emotions is when they can create a sexual fantasy that is triggered by a porn actress or perhaps by someone who is 'kind' to them. This fantasy grows within the privacy of their mind. They comfort themselves with thoughts of, 'she likes me,' 'she's kind,' 'she wouldn't ever criticise me,' 'she is submissive (emotionally safe)' and thoughts of this nature. The missing character traits that are vital to ensure the viewer's emotional safety, are added into the creation of the fantasy of the naked female whose body the man is viewing. He only sees an attractive body, but his mind fills in the blanks about her character. She is virtuous, kind, smiling at him, desiring him, never turning him away, never rejecting him or laughing at him. She is connecting vulnerably with the viewer on a deep level - in the viewer's mind. The emotionally deprived, porn addict MUST have this emotional fix in order for the physical act to follow. This same strategy can instantly be utilised if the same man is treated kindly by a female in real life. He might meet a pretty shop assistant who smiles at him and seems cheerful when she hands him his items, but while she is just doing her job, the porn addict has already created his fantasy and wondered if the cashier is married, got a boyfriend etc. It is very common that this same man will dream he is having sex with that woman, later that night. By allowing himself to believe the fantasy that this female likes him, values him and respect him, the man gets his emotional needs 'met' in a psuedo-kind of way. Since the brain cannot distinguish reality from fantasy, it believes whatever it is programmed to believe. The emotional messages calm the 'emergency' signals that are created when our emotional needs are not met and the porn addict's mind knows exactly how to recreate that fulfilling solution again. It becomes an automatic response - "see an attractive woman, create a sexual fantasy and get emotional needs met."
In reality, if the avoidant-type, emotionally injured porn addict was to think logically about his addiction, he would see how ridiculous it is for him to invest so any time, funds and energy into developing fantasies with women. He knows that he will never meet these women. He knows that if he did meet these women they would likely not be interested in him unless he agreed to pay them a lot of money. These women are in reality, prostitutes. They are not loyal, wifey-type kind of females that he creates in his fantasies. They are not - one-man-women. They have multiple, paying partners who they manipulate into thinking they are the 'only' man, or at least, the most 'special,' the 'best' etc. It is his continued belief in the fantastic lies he has created in his mind, that keeps this man stuck in the real world of his dysfunctional relationships.
Children need to be convinced that they are important, loved and valued - just for existing and for being part of the family. In the safe environment, children are taught about emotions - how to manage emotions, how to enjoy emotions and how to communicate with empathy for others and themselves.
When a child is deprived of a loving and emotionally supportive environment, attachment injuries can be formed that have life-long effects on the person's relationships from childhood and persist into adulthood. The parents'/caregivers' failure to educate children in a safe and nurturing environment can be truly devastating to the emotionally deprived person.
Emotionally injured children typically develop attachment injuries that result in certain predictable patterns in regards to 'managing' emotions in relationships, primarily being afraid of emotions - so they cope with emotional discomfort by suppressing, avoiding, escaping and ignoring emotions that arise.
Children who have learned to suppress their emotions and who do not develop empathy tend to develop an avoidant type pattern. Other children develop an anxious type pattern and these two types are often 'attracted' to each other in a pathological kind of way.
As adults, avoidants often end up with a porn addiction. This is because porn 'provides' an opportunity for these injured people to experience through fantasy, the 'feeling' of being loved, desired, and nurtured in an emotionally safe environment that they create in their minds with the porn actresses/actors.
Unaware of their emotions which they have learned to suppress since childhood, avoidants are drawn to porn like bees to a honeypot.
They learn that the only way these emotionally deprived people can safely access those missing emotions is when they can create a sexual fantasy that is triggered by a porn actress or perhaps by someone who is 'kind' to them. This fantasy grows within the privacy of their mind. They comfort themselves with thoughts of, 'she likes me,' 'she's kind,' 'she wouldn't ever criticise me,' 'she is submissive (emotionally safe)' and thoughts of this nature. The missing character traits that are vital to ensure the viewer's emotional safety, are added into the creation of the fantasy of the naked female whose body the man is viewing. He only sees an attractive body, but his mind fills in the blanks about her character. She is virtuous, kind, smiling at him, desiring him, never turning him away, never rejecting him or laughing at him. She is connecting vulnerably with the viewer on a deep level - in the viewer's mind. The emotionally deprived, porn addict MUST have this emotional fix in order for the physical act to follow. This same strategy can instantly be utilised if the same man is treated kindly by a female in real life. He might meet a pretty shop assistant who smiles at him and seems cheerful when she hands him his items, but while she is just doing her job, the porn addict has already created his fantasy and wondered if the cashier is married, got a boyfriend etc. It is very common that this same man will dream he is having sex with that woman, later that night. By allowing himself to believe the fantasy that this female likes him, values him and respect him, the man gets his emotional needs 'met' in a psuedo-kind of way. Since the brain cannot distinguish reality from fantasy, it believes whatever it is programmed to believe. The emotional messages calm the 'emergency' signals that are created when our emotional needs are not met and the porn addict's mind knows exactly how to recreate that fulfilling solution again. It becomes an automatic response - "see an attractive woman, create a sexual fantasy and get emotional needs met."
In reality, if the avoidant-type, emotionally injured porn addict was to think logically about his addiction, he would see how ridiculous it is for him to invest so any time, funds and energy into developing fantasies with women. He knows that he will never meet these women. He knows that if he did meet these women they would likely not be interested in him unless he agreed to pay them a lot of money. These women are in reality, prostitutes. They are not loyal, wifey-type kind of females that he creates in his fantasies. They are not - one-man-women. They have multiple, paying partners who they manipulate into thinking they are the 'only' man, or at least, the most 'special,' the 'best' etc. It is his continued belief in the fantastic lies he has created in his mind, that keeps this man stuck in the real world of his dysfunctional relationships.
Fear of Emotional Intimacy
The avoidant, porn addicted man logically needs to face his fear of emotional intimacy. He needs to acknowledge his lack of education in this vital area and learn how to do emotions. He needs to understand that when his female partner shares a need with him, he will likely interpret it as being criticism or as an attack on him. This fear can trigger his desire to experience the emotional comfort he can create in his fantasies using porn. He needs to resist the urge to escape the discomfort of his fearful emotions. In order to develop a healthy relationship, the porn addict needs to stay with the uncomfortable emotional feeling. He needs to listen to his partner's expression of her needs and truly become interested in trying to feel empathy for her situation, just as he would like her to continue showing empathy to him. This learning process involves him becoming vulnerable to others, but obviously only to those who can be trusted. He must express his own needs and feelings to his caring partner and trust that together they will work to meet each other's emotional needs.