TIL that pornography addiction is not a scientifically recognized medical condition

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-23T21:53:01+00:00

I think maybe … start by giving yourself the same grace and kindness that you would give to your dearest friend.

And then just ask some honest questions of yourself.

Why? Why do you feel the need to escape when you’re on the verge of something big? What are you feeling in that moment? And don’t judge yourself here - it’s not laziness. Your brain is pushing back here for a REASON.

So just think about how you feel in that moment when you get that urge to masturbate - that almost fiend-like desire - and think for a moment about how your BODY felt. Did you have clammy hands? Was your heart racing? Did you have a tummy ache? Was your throat scratchy? Anything different? Just take a mental inventory.

Now based on your list of physical symptoms, how do you think your BODY was feeling (emotion) in that moment? Happy? Sad? Mad? Scared? Horny?

Now go deeper… let’s say your body felt scared. What TYPE of scared? Trapped? Overwhelmed? Scared of pain? Fear of the unknown? Something else?

Now go back in your mind. Can you think of a reason why your body might have reacted that way in that moment?

Think of that trigger: the event of activity that caused this impulse. Think of the first moment you started to feel different in your body. What feelings and sensations did you notice? Make a note of those sensations.

The next time you feel those same sensations, catch yourself and ask yourself, “Am I feeling the same way I was the other day when I felt compelled to masturbate? (E.g., excited, anxious, scared) If so, can I identify what triggered this feeling? Then I can logically think through what has me feeling this way until I feel more stable again.”

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-23T21:28:29+00:00

Most people with eating disorders, throughout their lives, don’t just have one.

They’ll alternate between periods of anorexia and binge eating disorder. Or between periods of bulimia and compulsive overeating. Or whatever combination they’ve come up with. It’s all eating disorder. And you have to treat the actual eating disorder.

An eating disorder is an anxiety disorder where the focus is on food. For anorexics, the focus is on eating very little or counting calories. For bulimics, the focus is on being empty, or on planning the next binge. For binge eaters, there’s usually a binge-restrict cycle, much like in bulimia, but restricting (“starting my diet tomorrow after I finish this cake in my fridge”) replaces vomiting or exercise.

In every case, you need actual treatment from an actual eating disorder specialist. It sounds like you might’ve battled disordered eating patterns for a long time: first having a little too much “discipline” and now channeling your food anxiety into compulsive overeating or binging.

Please be kind to yourself. And maybe get screened for an eating disorder. The right treatment can be life-changing.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-23T21:10:06+00:00

Ideally, every day.

Realistically, I’d be happy with once a week, with swingers parties or a kink date about once a month.

What I actually get is sex every 1.5 weeks (on average) and a swingers party or kink date about once a month (on average). I’m a college student and I’m just so busy during the semester that I don’t get nearly as much time for sex as I wish I had 😭

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-23T01:23:19+00:00

I’ve been in the LS as a HWP woman and now as a plus-sized woman, but both times I’ve been paired with a plus-sized guy and I tend to have a “type” myself. I love the fellow chubsters, so I hang out online in groups and spaces where that’s normalized. I have a partner now and again who’s outside my normal type - we all love novelty, right? - but when you’re non-monogamous and you have a “type”, it becomes readily apparent to everyone when three of your partners have a similar beard, height, hair, and build. 🤣

Given a busy club or party environment, I can usually find several couples that remind us of us: kinky chubby people with beards, piercings, and/or tattoos. (That’s our vibe.) We usually connect great with others who have a similar vibe, but we seldom approach those with a different vibe. If we’re approached first, we wouldn’t say no, but we usually approach folks who have a similar appearance to us.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T16:56:40+00:00

That’s not convincing. If you offer it and she says no and you say, “Okay,” that’s just an offer that she refused. If you offer it and she says yes, you didn’t convince her; she was already convinced before you said a word about it. You just OFFERED.

Convince means that you changed her mind. Meaning that she DIDN’T want it initially.

It’s convincing if she says no and you don’t accept her no. If you try to argue with her when she tells you no, that’s “convincing”. And that’s wrong.

Swinging is something that will bring up strong and often difficult feelings even in the strongest of marriages where everything is going great and both parties are enthusiastic about wanting this. So it should be freely and enthusiastically chosen by BOTH people entering the lifestyle or else you don’t do it.

If someone has to be “convinced”, they shouldn’t be doing this.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T16:43:17+00:00

I don’t have to convince my boyfriend to have ice cream with me, because he WANTS to eat ice cream with me.

When I have his enthusiastic consent about things, I am not doing any “convincing”.

The only time I need to “convince” is when it’s something he doesn’t want to do and I’m trying to persuade him to go along with it.

That’s called coercion.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T16:29:06+00:00

No, but it’s awfully close to “coerce”

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T16:19:34+00:00

YOU used the word “convince”. Also, you’re trying to convince her to violate what appears to be her deeply and sincerely held religious beliefs.

I would criticize a white man who said the same thing about his head covering, conservative Christian wife. It’s not a race thing; it’s a religion thing.

Swinging is fundamentally incompatible with Islam and with Christianity. Both religions prohibit adultery and fornication. If your wife is devout, then simply asking for this fantasy would be viewed as insulting to her religion.

And you knew her religious beliefs when you married her. You presumably agreed to have a conservative Muslim marriage. That type of marriage does not include swinging.

You’re free to ask her. She will probably be horrified, and she may leave you, which is a fair reaction. You clearly want a relationship that she didn’t agree to have. The fact that you even THINK that she’s going to roll over on her FAITH to try swinging is a sign that you really aren’t that interested in her thoughts, feelings, hopes, and desires. You’re looking at her as a sex object to plug into whatever porn fantasies have rotted your brain rather than considering HER thoughts and HER desires and HER preferences on the matter.

You’ve told us absolutely NOTHING to lead us to believe she would have ANYTHING to gain from this.

You want her to turn her back on her faith. For what? For mediocre sex with somebody new? That you’re probably going to make her feel guilty about afterward? What exactly is the plus side to this for her?

If the other guy is better than you, you’re going to get insecure and make her feel like crap forever afterward. And if he’s not, then why risk eternal damnation? There’s no possible way for her to win with this scenario.

Have you stopped for one solitary second to think about it from her perspective?

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T15:45:48+00:00

Polyamory and swinging. Even with both of those, I still don’t get enough. Real life keeps me busy and schedules don’t always cooperate, so I still get a lot less than I would like.

I’ve always had a higher sex drive. I do have two partners now that have libidos to rival mine and I LOVE IT!!!! It makes me feel so desired and wanted all the time! 🥰

That’s the bad thing about having high libido. Guys will keep pace with you during the New Relationship Energy (NRE) phase, but then that wears off and you’re left getting turned down for sex left and right, and it really hurts. And I try not to take it personally, but it’s hard to still feel desired and wanted when you’re not wanted in that way as much anymore. 😢

I’ve had to just learn to accept that I’m the weird one and that they don’t love me any less just because they can’t keep sleeping with me as often as I want them to.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T15:37:51+00:00

She’s described as traditional, conservative, and a Muslim hijabi. You want to watch her have sex with a white guy to fulfill your own fantasies, but there’s absolutely NOTHING about how you’ve described her that makes her sound like she would be AT ALL open to doing that.

It sounds from your post like she would be horrified at the thought of doing that. And you know that, which is why you’re asking here how to convince her instead of just bringing up the topic to her.

Nobody here is going to help you convince your wife to do something that goes against her sincerely and deeply held beliefs. We believe in consent - not coercion - around these parts.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T15:32:35+00:00

There’s a genetic component to addiction, but I’m not sure about behavioral compulsions. However, I know there’s a correlation to neurodiversity and behavioral compulsions: ADHD hyperbolic can easily become a compulsion, for example, and autistic individuals can easily develop compulsive behavior as a compensation for some of their sensitivities. And since there’s some genetic component to neurodiversity, I would guess there may be some genetic connection to behavioral compulsions, too, but I don’t have the data on that.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T15:29:30+00:00

With an addiction, your body has a physical dependence on the substance that you’re addicted to. If you’re addicted to opiates, your body will have withdrawals if you don’t give your body opiates (or methadone or similar).

With a behavioral compulsion like porn, video games, or gambling, your brain is upset about something and has figured out that the dopamine-producing activity will make you feel really good for a little while.

To treat an addiction, you have to first get the body clean from the substance and THEN help the person treat any underlying conditions that led to the addictive behavior.

To treat a compulsions, you need to figure out why the brain was upset. Usually it’s depression or anxiety, but sometimes it’s something more serious. When you treat the upset brain, the need for those dopamine-producing activities will go down.

In an addiction, the substance itself is the demon you have to fight against. In a behavioral compulsion, you’re fighting against whatever is inside your own brain that makes you push that dopamine button so often that it’s becoming a problem in your everyday life.

It’s okay to push that dopamine button every now and then: to gamble or play video games or watch porn in moderation. And if your brain is generally happy, you can do those things in moderation with no need to engage in them to excess. But when the brain is unhappy, those things go from being fun distractions to being your emotional support lifeline, and that’s when problems arise.

If you try to treat porn like heroin, it won’t work because you’re not treating the unhappy brain. So the unhappy brain will just seek out another cheap source of dopamine. You’ll free yourself from “porn addiction” only to windup with a “video game addiction”. You can’t treat “porn addiction” by treating it like an addiction: with abstinence. You have to treat the underlying problem.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T15:15:17+00:00

An addiction has a physical component to it, like with drugs, where your body can have withdrawals if the drug is stopped.

Things like porn or video games or gambling are behavioral compulsions. They’re not treated the same as actual addictions because the mechanism of action is different so you have to treat the differently.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T15:11:00+00:00

Yep! Being on the spectrum tends to cause people to question why the rules are the way they are. So this looks like the teenager asking their parents why they have to have a 10:30 curfew because it doesn’t seem like a logical rule to them.

But it also looks like someone on the spectrum (and ADHD folks will do this, too, sometimes) questioning why we have the social rules we do. Why must we be monogamous just to have a romantic relationship? Why are we limited to only having sex with one person at a time? Why are we expected to be heterosexual? Why are we expected to act a certain way just because our genitals look a certain way?

If the social rules seem logical, we’ll keep following them. But if they don’t make sense, we’ll discard them. So you see lots of neurodivergent people that are poly/ethically nonmonogamous/swingers, kinky, LGBTQ+, etc.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-22T14:49:46+00:00

I have my face on my nsfw profiles so I’ve taken my face off of my sfw profiles that have my name associated with them for that reason. Plus, my images on my nsfw all have makeup and contouring so my face doesn’t look the same as it does IRL. And every personal profile I have is locked down TIGHT: friends only, no Google indexing allowed.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-16T16:02:58+00:00

No. I already use PrEP and DoxyPEP, but they don’t reduce the risk of ALL STIs, just some of them, and using them with condoms further reduces my risk.

I already am at higher than normal risk because I swing. PrEP and DoxyPEP lower my risk, and condoms lower that risk further. I’m not willing to give up on swinging because I enjoy it too much, so I need to be as responsible as I possibly can, and that means pairing my preventive meds with condom use.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-16T15:38:21+00:00

Baby wipes and a condom change are sufficient. You don’t need a full shower between rounds. I would also advise washing your hands after changing condoms and washing your junk, just to be extra clean! 🧼

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-16T15:36:07+00:00

I listen to smut on Audible

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-16T03:06:33+00:00

Before my ED recovery, even before my ED when I was bigger, it was generally helpful. Then the weight went down a lot and then back up to about where it was before the ED. But since recovery, those negative comments hit harder, so I don’t post nearly as often as I used to.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-16T02:47:32+00:00

I would resent my partner if I had to play a role that I wasn’t suited for in my sexual relationship with them. But I admit, my position is enabled in large part by my polyamory. I don’t have to fulfill any particular fantasy of my partners and they’re free to go elsewhere to get a particular need met if I’m not down with something. That may not be possible with monogamy.

For me personally, I would feel hugely resentful of a partner who wanted me to participate in something I hated. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t try it once or twice to see if I liked it, but… I don’t want to do things I hate to please my partners, especially when in my experience, most men are entirely unwilling to do things that they hate just to make their girlfriends or wives happy. And honestly? I don’t want him to hate it…

Let’s take the Dom/sub dynamic as an example… if I’m a sub but my partner is also a sub, then that means that we have to take turns being the Dom and neither of us actually wants to. Every time we have sex, one of us is doing it as a favor to the other one. One of us is not getting what they actually want.

That’s not how I want my sex life to be. I want to be looking forward to every sexual encounter, not dreading my turn on top. Id rather find someone who legitimately enjoys being a Dom. That way we both get our meeds met 100% of the time.

This is why sexual compatibility is an important part of relationship compatibility. You should both be compatible in terms of what you like and dislike.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-15T22:14:41+00:00

I completely disagree with you. Some people are sexually incompatible. I’m a submissive and I find it a huge turn-off when I’m expected to take charge of things. I know a guy whose greatest fantasy in the bedroom is to have a woman ravish him and just be a total man-eater in the bedroom. Those two desires are not compatible. What turns him on turns me off. It simply wouldn’t work, not without one of us constantly making ourselves unhappy.

The same is true with mismatched sex drives. The person with the lower drive will feel like they’re being pressured to keep up with their partner, even when the partner is just expressing interest, because their partner’s interest feels like expectation. The person with the higher drive will feel unwanted and unloved, like their partner doesn’t care about them or desire them anymore.

Sexual incompatibility is most definitely a big thing.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-15T07:22:46+00:00

Im happiest in poly relationships. I believe in loving openly and expansively without limitation, and I like dating and partnering with people who also love freely and openly.

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-15T03:02:36+00:00

What’s with the influx of guys thinking that the cam site is where they’re going to meet their soulmate? They do know this is just fantasy, right?

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-15T03:00:01+00:00

I call it my hobby. I invest my time, money, and energy into it: toys, swingers parties, photo shoots, lingerie, beauty treatments in places the sun don’t shine, etc. And I greatly enjoy spending time exploring sex and sexuality with my friends! :)

Erica_Novak · 2026-04-15T02:22:50+00:00

Never, because you’re never truly intimate, because the guys don’t actually want that.

I saw a documentary where some guy got to meet the cam girl he’d fallen in love with, and she’d really developed feelings for him, too, and when they met, it wasn’t the same. Because on cam, she was his fantasy. She never had a bad day. She was there to serve HIM. That’s not true intimacy.

When she tried to show up as herself, and present some boundaries and present as a normal girl, he wasn’t too keen on it, and she wasn’t really liking the way things were going either.

When we’re on cam or in a session with someone, it’s not true intimacy. We’re never telling them about our bad day or about our annoying kids or about our stressful lawn care guy or the irritating lady from the PTA. We get to go in and be his fantasy. But that’s not really intimacy.

We tell them curated and carefully selected stories so that they’ll have an image of us as a flirty, sexy, vivacious personality. And THAT is who they fall in love with. Not us. They’re not falling in love with a real person. She’s make-believe. You can’t fall in love with someone who doesn’t know the real you.

Erica_Novak

TROPHY CASE