Support Groups for Compulsive Porn Use (Matt Sinkovitz)

Last session with Matt Sinkovitz, we talked about his story and I gave some examples from literature about my position around pornography abstinence. Since I did my degree in molecular genetics and not sex research, I first looked up journal impact factors which is how you can tell how important a given scientific publication is. The average journal is below 1, a good journal is anything over 3 but it depends on the discipline, how popular it is, how many journals there are, etcetera. And the gold standard for excellence is anything over 10. As a brief recap, I cited the Archive of Sexual Behaviour (JIF 3.458) where Zimmer and Imhoff in 2020 wrote this article, Abstinence from Masturbation and Hypersexuality. It states a “lack of evidence for negative health effects of masturbation” stemming from “perceived problems with pornography” and “from a psychological and behavioural addiction” where addiction is in quotation marks. It stresses that “higher abstinence motivation was related to a higher perceived impact of masturbation, conservatism, and religiosity, and to lower trust in science.” I also looked up relationship quality and pornography use. Here’s what I found. According to the paper “Is the Link Between Pornography Use and Relational Happiness Really More About Masturbation? Results From Two National Surveys” https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224499.2018.1556772 (2019) They say quote “Numerous studies have observed a persistent and most often negative association between pornography use and romantic relationship quality.” It goes on to say quote “Controls are included for sex frequency and satisfaction, depressive symptoms, and other relevant correlates. Results from both the 2012 New Family Structures Study (NFSS; N = 1,977) and the 2014 Relationships in America survey (RIA; Ng = 10,106) show that masturbation is negatively associated with relational happiness for men and women, while pornography use is either unassociated or becomes unassociated with relational happiness once masturbation is included. Indeed, evidence points to a slight positive association between pornography use and relational happiness once masturbation and gender differences are accounted for…” Further, pornography use definitely doesn’t seem to be a problem in women according to “Effects of Pornography Use and Demographic Parameters on Sexual Response during Masturbation and Partnered Sex in Women” published in the International Journal of Environment Research and Public Health (impact factor 3.39) https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/9/3130 So just because someone has a psychological compulsion to drink water or to exercise too much doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do those things. In fact people have literally died drinking too much water - something called water intoxication. Tragic link in the show notes. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/drank-too-much-water-woman-dies/article1069137/ However if you were a person who had a compulsion to drink water, you’d probably want a support group for that, and that’s what Matt Sinkovitz does - not water intoxication but pornography compulsion and pornography abstinence. Quick sidebar again: I didn’t want to throw him off as this was the second session that we recorded during our first ever chat. As a result, I didn’t correct him when he used he/him pronouns for me and it was weird but not bad. He was great afterwards when I mentioned it to him, and for the record he seems super nice. In fact I left in the conversation at the end of the episode because it felt wholesome and I thought you’d appreciate it.