Rachel Hale

can be permanently altered and that can impact things like impulse control, pleasure and motivation and can also make it so that maybe someone who starts watching one specific type of porn now needs something that's either, you know, watching porn for longer or falling into like more intense specific categories of porn to satisfy those same reasons that they initially came to watch porn.

It is.

That's what the research shows.

It's absolutely an issue with women as well.

And there is stigma there.

What we know from looking at research and also anecdotally from what I found on these forums is that more men than women struggle with corn use.

If someone starts to view something at a younger age, it can have a really deep impact on the long-term way that they perceive relationships, sexual intimacy, and their views on women.

For many young men, this is their first way that they are introduced to what sex looks like, and they're seeing a very unrealistic portrayal of that.

And that can lead to having issues with infidelity, trust, other aspects in their relationship, in part because what they expect out of sex and relationships from watching porn might not line up with what their partner is actually able to give them on a day-to-day basis.

A lot of men really thought that what they were experiencing was normal and didn't realize that they needed help until they found some of these online forums and realized it's not normal to think about sex 24-7 and to have those thoughts constantly.

Other men who did know that they had a problem

reached breaking points in their relationships, whether that was with a significant other or their families, in the way that the porn really became something that they couldn't shake.

A lot of these men said that they thought it was something they could quit cold turkey and then realized for one reason or another that they couldn't.

One of these young men, Ryan, who's now 25, on a nine-month mission trip where he did not have access to porn, went through some really significant physical challenges

symptoms that you could liken to withdrawal symptoms of sorts, including, you know, having headaches, feeling very lethargic.

And that was one way that he realized it.

Other men I spoke with talked about having porn-induced erectile dysfunction, where when they became sexually active in their 20s or at a different age, they realized that they really struggled to engage in sexual activity in real life when they didn't have that porn on the screen.

As I was researching, like you said, I came across a mix of both of these types of forums and some of them are named similarly.

So it's a hard landscape to navigate.

And it's usually one that people are only going to find if they're really looking for it for these support groups.