In Part 1 of this article, we covered one of the main reasons why nudity and sex in mainstream media can be so dangerous for people overcoming porn addiction.
Here is a second major reason:
Mainstream Adult Content Can Be a Gateway
Even if mainstream media doesn’t trigger a porn relapse in the moment, it can still lead to porn use over time.
The idea here is that small, gradual changes don’t feel like a big deal, and so they can keep slipping under the radar until they’ve added up to one huge slide.
Starts off innocent . . .
Maybe you decide that there’s no harm in regularly watching TV shows with a lot of nudity and sex in them (not mentioning any names haha).
In fact, maybe you specifically watch those kinds of sex scenes instead of using harder porn because you see it as the lesser of two evils.
The thing is, if you regularly expose yourself to stimulation like that, you start to view this behaviour as normal for you. You also give your brain no chance to rest and recover.
. . . then shit gets real!
If you’ve used porn heavily before, it can be easy to get bored with the nudity and sex in TV shows and to start seeking out more stimulating material.
And because you’ve already been checking out nudity and sex on TV, it doesn’t feel like such a big jump to start viewing sex scenes that are just a bit more explicit.
Since you’re not deviating too far from normal, you don’t question it.
Yet from there, it doesn’t take much for the cycle to continue over and over, each time escalating you away from mainstream media and into more and more stimulating material.
You’ve seen this before
The above is basically the same process that people go through when they escalate from vanilla porn to progressively more varied and hardcore genres.
The only difference here is that you’re starting further up the stream with TV shows that you thought were harmless. But if you don’t stop escalating, eventually you can end back up using XXX porn all over again.
Just like the “soft” gateway drugs that can ultimately lead to cocaine or heroin use, nudity and sex in mainstream media can be a gateway that ultimately leads to hardcore porn use over time.
Basically, it provides a subtle avenue for porn use to gradually slip back into your life without setting off any alarms.
The Takeaway
As innocent as it may seem at first, nudity and sex scenes in mainstream media can create a dangerous slippery slope, especially if porn addiction is still a recent issue for you.
And once you start slipping, it’s easy to keep slipping further.
Maybe (if you’re well and truly on top of porn addiction now) you can handle some exposure with no temptation or escalation. But maybe you can’t.
And considering the potential costs of slipping, it’s not worth the risk just for some cheap and unsatisfying titillation.
So: if you don’t want your exposure to mainstream nudity and sex to end badly, don’t even start it in the first place.
My advice is to avoid artificial arousal of any kind as much as possible, and keep focussing on more fulfilling activities in life (genuine intimacy and sex with a real partner perhaps? ;) instead.
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