Porn addiction can be defined as a behavioral addiction that is characterized by an ever-growing compulsion or need to view pornographic content. A large percentage of people who are addicted to porn tend to experience difficulties in personal relationships. This occurs because porn addicts isolate themselves from friends, family, and coworkers to continue the behaviors that fuel the addiction. People suffering with a porn addiction tend to ignore, replace or neglect significant relationships because of their obsession with pornography, just as a drug addict would replace these things with his or her drug of choice. If left untreated, porn addiction can results in negative effects, which may include: broken or troubled intimate relationships, feeling of shame and/or guilt, problems with work or school and/or job loss, financial troubles, legal problems, and divorce.

5 Ways Porn Will Hurt Your Relationship

• Porn invites comparison
• Porn encourages lies
• Porn lowers self- worth
• Porn robs of intimacy
• Porn is adultery

Addiction to porn has led to:

• 40% of “sex addicts” lose their spouses.
• 58% suffer considerable financial losses.
• 1/3 lose their jobs.
• Pornography use increases the marital infidelity by 300%.
• 56% of divorce cases involved one person having an obsessive interest in pornographic websites.
• Severe clinical depression was reported twice as frequently among internet pornography users compared to non-users.

Signs of Porn Addiction

• Unable to stop using porn or the behaviors associated with porn, despite attempts to do so.
• Become angry, hostile or irritable if asked to stop using porn.
• Keep all or part of porn use a secret from loved ones.
• Feeling as though you live a double life because of porn use,
• Continue to view porn despite negative consequences, such as broken relationships or job loss.
• Lost track of large chunks of time because you’ve been absorbed in porn use.

Additional Porn Addiction Statistics:

• 12% of websites on the internet are pornographic.
• 40 million Americans are regular visitors to porn sites.
• 1 in 3 porn viewers are women.
• 70% of men aged 18-24 visit porn sites in a typical month.
• 25% of all search engine requests are pornography related. That’s 68 million a day.
• 20% of men admit to watching porn online at work.
• 70% of the pornographic internet traffic occurs during the 9-5 workday.
• The average age of initial pornography exposure is just 11.
• About 200,000 Americans are “porn addicts,” defined as spending 11 hours or more per week online looking at porn.