Can Emotional Withdrawal Lead To Porn Addiction?
March 23, 2021 / Michael Wayne Regier Ph.D. / MichaelRegier.com / Relational Excellence Articles
Have you just learned that your husband spends more time with porn than he does with you? Are your reaches for your guy’s affection met with distance? Does he withdraw and shut down with you while giving pornography his utmost attention? Can emotional withdrawal lead to porn addiction?
That’s a really great question. In my years of clinical experience working with couples, I believe that the link is clear. And yes, emotional withdrawal can lead to porn addiction. Let’s unpack some of the science about emotional withdrawal and porn addiction.
Romeo, oh Romeo, where art thou?
Most men enter relationships with wine and roses. They can be sensitive and poetic. And create great dates with thought and passion. They tune into the nuances of their lover’s needs and wants. And they are natural protectors and providers.
And most women are overcome by men who do all of the above. They feel safe and seen. This opens in them their ability to trust. It allows them to lower their defenses. They express their appreciation, admiration and affection for the man that treats them like they are the center of his universe.
This dance of male initiation and female responsiveness is as ancient as the human species. It is what inspires poets to pen romantic lyrics to sing the praises of how the amazing dance of love feels. Deep in the human psyche is an awareness of the power of this chemical formula that drives desire to peak potential.
Your early love story.
These primitive expressions of desire create emotional connections. When men are available, responsive, and engaged with their partner, deep emotional bonds are formed that sustain a life-long secure loving relationship.
Does this ring true of your early relationship? Do you remember how you opened your heart and welcomed him in? Was he the one you believed would actually be different than the others before him? Unlike those who simply wanted you for sex or (fill in the blank)? Did you trust him to be a loyal partner and a responsive co-parent? To protect you when you felt vulnerable?
There are men reading this article thinking so true. “When we first got together, I thought she was incredibly beautiful. I loved her sense of humor and sensitivity. Being with her made me feel alive and powerful. More than anything I wanted to win her heart and have her love all to myself.”
This is the early love story told by so many couples coming to me for couple therapy. They can’t make sense out of how different the relationship was when they first got together. And they can’t believe how insecure they feel now. Or why they find themselves fighting about who burned the toast.
To top it off the couple’s sex life often begins to fall apart. This gives the couple one more thing to fight about. The woman feels she is no longer desirable. She feels hurt and angry. The man complains that her anger prevents him from initiating sex. He wants her to initiate like she did early in the relationship.
And then he finds another.
Then, to make matters worse the wife finds porn on her husband’s phone. The cat is out of the bag. He has been using porn and masturbation to quell his sexual urges. Then everything falls apart. The wife feels incredibly hurt and betrayed. Her shock and trauma can send the couple to the brink of relationship failure.
So what causes men to regress from being romantic Romeos? Withdrawing from the relationship and turning to porn and masturbation to meet their sexual needs?
The answer is more complex than a man simply being cruel and unfaithful. It is often surprising that his behavior has nothing to do with his losing his sexual desire for his wife.
Let’s take a look at how withdraw, masturbation and porn are symptoms of deeper problems with emotional connection and sexual addiction.
Porn is a cover for the pain of emotional disconnection.
Can emotional withdrawal actually lead to porn addiction? Let’s take a look.
Emotional connection comes naturally in a new relationship. Couples in new love benefit from the disinhibiting effects of dopamine, which is similar to being high on cocaine. Dopamine makes new lovers feel alive and want to open up their emotions.
It does not matter what age you are. Couples in their 70’s or 80’s act like teenagers in puppy love when they first get together. The effects of new love dopamine are exhilarating and cause us to be more attentive, talkative and romantic than we normally are. It is nature’s trick to get us to initially connect.
Once committed, the brain begins to turn off the overflow of dopamine and you return to your normal self. You become more self-centered, less exciting, and less driven to have sex.
Emotional connection in established relationships takes more work. You need to dig deeper and work harder to open up. Especially if your family of origin did not teach or value emotional expression or connection.
When men are not emotionally connected with women they often feel rejected and become less sexually expressive. If men stop trying to emotionally connect, their partners feel more and more hurt. Men often tell themselves the answer must be to put less demand on their partners for sex. This is not the answer. In fact it only makes matters worse. This makes women feel even more rejected. It validates their fear that they are no longer loved.
Filling the void.
When men fill the pain of feeling emotionally disconnected they get caught in a powerful trap with pornography. The dopamine rush from porn provides immediate pain relief. Like a drug, the memory of the porn rush comes back and pulls on the man to go back to the porn over and over again. Like any other addictive substance.
The more porn a man uses the more he will need to use to achieve the same level of pain relief and excitement. Porn becomes a go-to form of sexual expression, which leaves the partnership empty of intimacy.
Escaping emotional withdrawal and the porn trap.
Recovery from this trap begins with admitting that pornography and emotional withdrawal has been robbing the relationship from the intimacy it needs to survive and thrive. He must stop the porn use and become 100% honest with his partner about using porn in the future.
Most men who are addicted to porn need the help of a 12-step recovery program. Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous applies the AA approach to sexual addiction. Men learn to tell their story of addiction and become honest about their need for their recovery community and their higher power to help them. They often get a sponsor who they can call when they feel like acting out. And they learn to rely on the support of their recovery group to give them encouragement to stay on the recovery path.
Many men often benefit by working with a counselor who is a Certified Sex Addictions Therapist (CSAT). Patrick Carnes developed the CSAT model. His book Out of the Shadows explains the recovery path for sex addicts.
For men who cannot recover from sexual addiction with the resources mentioned above, inpatient treatment is often recommended. An inpatient program using the Patrick Carnes approach is the Gentle Path Program at the Meadows in Arizona, USA.
Many men who need inpatient sexual addiction treatment struggle from having been traumatized sexually, physically and emotionally while growing up. The Meadows is one program that combines sexual addictions and trauma treatment.
Find help with emotional withdrawal.
Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy (EFT), developed by Les Greenberg and Dr. Sue Johnson, has been very effective in helping men to stop emotionally withdrawing with their mate. EFT is based on decades of relationship research.
You can find an EFT therapist at the International Center for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy website (ICEEFT.com).
The goal of EFT is to help the couple escape negative cycle arguments by their taking the fuse out of their emotional triggers. By identifying the triggers and learning to be compassionate with their partner’s emotions, couples can learn to de-escalate their emotional conflicts and calmly talk through their issues.
A big part of de-escalation has to do with the male in the relationship (who 80% of the time is the one who emotionally withdraws) learning how to stop emotionally withdrawing. Emotionally withdrawing men need to learn how to face and embrace their partner’s emotional hurt. They need to learn how to stop triggering their partner and help her feel secure when she is in emotional distress.
The research shows that men need to stop withdrawing before their partner will become emotionally soft. Most men would like it the other way around. But most women burn out and lose trust of being held if they open up their deep emotions to their partners. So men need to prove they are a safe place to land by emotionally engaging with and reassuring their partners.
Hope and healing.
Bringing this home, can emotional withdrawal lead to porn addiction? Absolutely. Does your withdrawing guy’s porn use mean he’s fallen out of love with you? Or that he’s no longer excited being with you? No. The issues are deeper. And there’s not an easy, overnight fix. But with courage, desire to reconnect, the right resources and willingness to work hard and dig deep, you can get through this.
I’m Michael W. Regier, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and certified emotionally focused couples therapist and EFT supervisor, seeing clients within California via the Internet. I help couples understand the link between emotional withdrawal and porn use and help them reconnect and create emotional connections for lifetime love. My wife Paula and I co-authored the book Emotional Connection: The Story & Science of Preventing Conflict & Creating Lifetime Love and developed an online course teaching relationship foundations.
