Pornography can be addictive, and many people develop strong compulsive urges to view it. When a pornography addiction takes hold, it can overwhelm someone’s life and even ruin relationships, careers, and families.
However, research tells us that most people who view porn are not addicted to it, and most have not yet developed compulsive patterns around pornography. Instead, many people who want to kick a porn habit fall into two other categories of porn users.
Problematic users
Problematic users are those who do not quite have the pattern of use or distress that would qualify them for addiction, but porn use still happens regularly enough to cause destruction in their life. They may experience personal distress or emotional difficulties struggling with their porn use.
Their porn use may be frequent enough to be causing relationship difficulties in marriage or other long-term relationships. Many people in this category still seek professional mental health resources to deal with the distress from this type of porn use.
Habitual users
Habitual users are those who have what we might consider a “bad habit” with porn. They view porn infrequently enough to not cause major disruptions or distress in their life. Still, they find themselves coming back to porn time and time again. These are the porn users who may use porn a few times a month or even a few times a year. Often they tell themselves that they will stop, but inevitably find themselves having another “slip up” with porn at some point in the future.
We created this guide for those stuck in the frustrating cycle of habitual porn use. You may wish to completely rid your life of porn, but have found over the years that eventually you keep coming back to it. If you are religious or have strong moral feelings about porn, this type of pattern may be particularly distressing to you. It may feel like it is hopeless or impossible to completely shake porn. But there is hope, and we created this five-step process to help you kick a porn habit.
Before we move on, let’s reinforce the importance of removing porn from your life as a habitual user.
Contrary to what some people believe, porn is not technically addictive in the same way that drugs and alcohol are. Drugs and alcohol create addiction through the introduction of chemicals into the body. This is called substance addiction.
Pornography creates addiction through a repeated behavior that stimulates the brain to create a rush of naturally occurring chemicals. Some people develop addictions around these types of behaviors. As a result, they feel anxious if they can’t engage in the behavior and become preoccupied by thoughts of the behavior.
Research suggests that about 10% of porn users struggle with compulsive porn use. A compulsion with porn starts out with the behavior (looking at porn) which gives an immediate reward (i.e., relieving tension). This turns into a preoccupation with the source of that reward. Increased use can then lead to a habit of using it.
Like addictions, there are studies showing that changes can happen in the brain with excessive porn use. These changes make it especially hard to quit once you’ve gotten into the habit of turning to porn in times of distress.
Even habitual (not addictive) porn use can cause a lot of problems for people, as you may have discovered. Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t be reading this! Problematic porn use can lead to disappointment in sex that does not follow porn-like scripts, especially for men. Porn sets people up to think that sex should be a certain way, often involving aggressive or unusual activities with multiple partners.
This can make a monogamous relationship and “normal” sex seem pale in comparison to the lies you see in porn. Further, disappointment can arise when porn-like sex does not lead to pleasure. Remember, porn uses actors and does not accurately represent what many people find pleasurable.
Pornography can also lead to a normalization of violence against women. This includes increased violence in intimate relationships, and increased acceptance of rape.
Last (but certainly not least), porn can lead to depression, lower relationship satisfaction and stability. Porn use also increases the likelihood of divorce in married couples. For these reasons, it’s clearly important to address habitual porn use and remove the damage it can cause in your personal life and relationships.
5 steps to kick a porn habit
If you find yourself struggling to shake an inconsistent but habitual porn habit, try taking these five steps:
1. Identify the sources of porn in your life.
In today’s world, porn is just about everywhere. Porn can be accessed from our phones, computers, tables, gaming consoles and many other devices. While less common today, printed pornography is still easily accessible. The first step in overcoming your porn habit is to identify where you are likely to access porn.
Do an inventory and think about the last few times you viewed porn. Were you looking on a phone, tablet, or a computer? Where were you physically? In your office? Bedroom? In your car in the driveway? Sitting in a corner at a café? Make a roadmap of what your porn use typically looks like by writing down all of your most commonly used devices, sources, and locations of using porn.
2. Identify your triggers.
Think about situations that usually trigger your porn use. Try to make a complete list, as it’s important to understand your triggers well. To figure out your triggers, think of the last few times you looked at porn. Where were you and what were you doing at the time you wanted to look at porn? Were you at work, the gym, school, or at home?
What were you thinking about or feeling at the time? Had you just gotten in a fight with your spouse? Were you bored? Were you overwhelmed with stress at the end of a long day?
If you are having a hard time identifying your triggers, some common porn triggers might spark your memory. This could include stress from work, marriage, or any other relationships. Struggles with an ongoing anxiety disorder or even sudden reminders of past hurts that are unhealed may be your triggers. Uncomfortable emotions such as feelings of loneliness, rejection, lack of self-control also may trigger porn use.
Most people who develop bad habits around sexual and/or porn behavior are trying to avoid and distract themselves from difficult emotions.
3. Create specific boundaries to kick a porn habit.
Now that you have your sources, locations, and triggers, it’s time to think of the boundaries you need to create to kick a porn habit. The truth is, the moment you want to look at porn, your willpower is already a little weakened by whatever trigger or other stressor ignited the urge. Having clear boundaries ahead of time can counteract your weakened ability to make healthy decisions in the moment.
Boundaries can be physical, mental, or emotional. Most people will need to have a combination of all of them to address each porn trigger at the source.
1. Physical boundaries to help kick a porn habit
Examples of physical boundaries against porn are:
- no phones or tablets in the bedroom
- no porn-related internet searches while at work/in the car/in the bedroom/in the living room
- no movies, TV shows, video games, or music that includes potentially triggering sexual content
- no devices after a certain time of night
- no going into adult book stores (and so forth)
Based on your most commonly used porn sources, locations, and triggers, get thinking about any physical boundaries you will need to be successful. Create a set of rules and follow them!
2. Mental boundaries that help kick a porn habit
A mental boundary is a limit, or a support you create for yourself at the cognitive level. For example, when you are tempted to look at porn, how might you mentally catch and redirect yourself?
In that moment just before using porn, what can you tell yourself to set up a boundary with porn? Maybe you need to repeat or read a mantra, poem, hymn, or song that helps you remember why you are trying to curb your porn use.
You could also tell yourself ahead of time that you will read this list whenever you catch yourself wanting to look at porn. Or you could plan to look at a picture of your spouse to remind yourself of your commitment to them.
Another example of a mental boundary could be a daily reminder or mantra that you set to go off on your phone at regular intervals or when you know you are in a potentially triggering situation so that it helps support you throughout your day. What mental boundaries do you need throughout your day, or when you catch yourself wanting to look at porn?
3. Emotional boundaries: dealing with triggers to kick a porn habit
Plan ahead to set yourself up to avoid emotional triggers. If a major trigger of yours is stress or overwhelming emotions, then maybe you can change a routine. Make it hard to access porn after stressors that lead to porn for you.
For example, after a conflict with your spouse or dealing with a difficult customer at work, if you usually seek out alone time with your phone, make it a rule that you will leave all devices behind before your alone time. Or, go for a walk instead of locking yourself in a room or bathroom. If you often get home stressed after work, is there a routine you can change that will help you avoid porn?
What if a major trigger for you is boredom? Create boundary options. Try connecting with someone, reading a book, or another series of activities before turning to porn.
4. Practice your personalized plan.
Practice makes perfect and the same is true of your new plan to remove porn from your life. Now that you know your porn sources, locations, triggers, and have set up your needed boundaries, it is time to set up a regular daily routine to put it all into practice.
The first thing you need to do is to make a commitment to upholding your new boundaries. If you have set up quite a few boundaries, don’t overwhelm yourself by trying to make multiple big changes to your life all at once. Instead, take it slow.
Commit to one or two at a time. Once you’ve been successful with a few boundaries for long enough to feel a sense of accomplishment, add another boundary. Keep doing this until you are successful with them all. This way you can slowly build up strong habits and feel good about yourself along the way.
While you’re doing this, make sure to keep encouraging yourself along the way. Remind yourself of why you started this process, too. The more internally motivated you can be when trying to adopt a new habit, the easier it will become. So, keep that inner compass pointed towards your end goal of living free of porn!
5. Enable accountability for support to kick a porn habit.
If there is one thing we know, it’s that accountability is critical to a successful recovery from porn. Even if you’ve only struggled with porn for a short time, or only had a few slip ups in your life, it is vital that you share your temptations with another person and set up accountability with them.
Accountability can be as simple as a weekly or monthly check-in with a spouse or close friend. You could also utilize our accountability software as an important tool in increasing accountability. Accountability software sends a weekly report to your accountability partner, alerting them to any pornographic sites you visited on any of your devices. This creates openness in a trusted relationship with your accountability partner, helping you to talk about what prompted each slip-up. Then make adjustments to your boundaries or commitments as needed.
To really maximize your success, make sure that you are accountable to a supportive person on a regular basis. You need someone who can both hold you to your commitments and give you a pat on the back when you’re doing great.
5 mistakes to avoid while trying to kick a porn habit
As you move forward and implement these five steps, here are some common mistakes that many people make as they try to kick a porn habit. These mistakes make the process feel hopeless and frustrating. You may have even found yourself in this headspace in the past. Avoiding these pitfalls is just as important as doing the things already mentioned.
1. Negative self-talk
The first and most important part of this process is to try to avoid criticizing yourself. Changing habits is very hard, especially if they’re tied to difficult emotions (as porn is for many people). If you are hard on yourself for having problems with porn or for messing up your commitment, this can sabotage your success. Negative self talk lowers your self-esteem and confidence in your ability to follow through.
If you find that you keep falling off the wagon, have some compassion for yourself. This is tough! There’s a reason so many people develop problems with porn. You are not alone. Try to learn from what happened. See if you need to make any adjustments to your boundaries.
If you find that you keep slipping up, take a step back and reassess some important things. Are your expectations too high? Do you expect yourself to make too many changes too fast? Are you trying to do this without enough support and/or accountability?
Remember that you are a human being, not a machine. We need compassion and support when changing cemented habits.
2. Half-way efforts on your phone
Some people might convince themselves that they are setting good boundaries if they do minimal things like getting a filter that’s weak enough to find loopholes, or simply deleting certain apps or accounts. Steps like these are positive but are just the beginning. They are not long-term solutions to the core reasons you look at porn and probably won’t lead to meaningful changes.
You’ll know if you have made a half effort if you’re still using porn, but just in slightly different ways. If you can undo your boundaries in less than ten seconds, you may need stronger boundaries. Get real with yourself, and go through the steps above one more time!
3. Trying to “talk” yourself out of using porn
Remember that it is really difficult to change a habit. It’s even more challenging if your porn use is habitual over time. No amount of convincing yourself to stop looking at porn will transform ingrained habits. Shaming yourself, getting down on yourself, or telling yourself that you will wake up and suddenly stop will not work long-term.
It will take a combination of all the steps mentioned above to defeat porn: setting up boundaries and accountability, identifying temptations and triggers, and practicing kindness to yourself. Taking repeated actions over time will change your porn habit, not trying to talk yourself out of using it.
4. Not replacing porn with something better
A common mistake people make on recovery journeys is to go cold turkey from an unhealthy habit without actively replacing it with healthier outlets, or trying to do it without help. The reality is, you use porn to escape—from your emotions, from discomfort, from something in your life that you don’t like.
If you just remove it without finding healthier ways to work through emotions, comfort yourself, and change or enrich your life, it’s like pulling a rug out from under yourself. You could slip and fall!
If the majority of your porn use is an escape from difficult emotions, and if you have no idea what to do with them, we highly recommend getting help from a licensed mental health counselor or trusted mentor. They will help you learn to get to the core of those issues alongside your commitment to new boundaries around porn.
Now if it’s mostly boredom or unhappiness with your life that drives your porn use, take action steps! Get involved in something new, so you have something to look forward to! For a successful recovery from any addiction, people need multiple healthy outlets and coping skills for it to stick.
5. Doing nothing to kick a porn habit
Lastly, avoid telling yourself that it’s ok to do nothing. This goes along with trying to convince yourself to quit. You might tell yourself that the problem might “take care of itself.” Or, you feel that you’re too old, too far gone. You might say that there’s no point in changing because you’re already married. You and your spouse are set in your routines.
But you’re here because porn has been causing problems for you. You deserve to resolve this issue. You deserve to be free of the damage porn is doing to your self-esteem, your wellness, or your happiness. You’ll never know how much richer your life can be until you experience a porn-free life!
Porn has painful consequences, even at a habitual use level. But if you follow these steps, we believe that you can get your life back without regularly escaping to porn. Believe in yourself – because we believe in you!
