I have a different take on it - I think it is a kind of cheating but I think it is cheating yourself in a significant way. This is what I mean.
The most powerful value of sex in a committed relationship is the profound physical intimacy that goes far beyond the physical. But pornography has a way of short circuiting that intimacy and creates a physical act that has nothing to do with all the other really powerful stuff.
The physical drive is so powerful that once the other stuff has been short circuited it is very difficult to reroute it - not unlike the process the brain goes through when a person partakes of opiates.
That to me is the great "cheat" of pornography. It gets the physical sexual response but it alleviates all the other and then the addictive quality of it drives from that physical rush - divorced from the depths of true intimacy.
What a loss.
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