I think, you know, along those same lines, it's not quite pornography, but I think that what women tend to gravitate more towards is the self objectification of themselves on the Internet and, you know, putting, you know, I don't know what word to use when they say it's slutty photos of themselves online. Welcome to Awake at the Wheel. In this episode, we're going to be revisiting the topic of pornography. We've discussed it in previous episodes with regard to how it applies to and impacts relationships of adolescents. We've talked about it with young adults, but we're going to revisit it because it is something that is prevalent. It's in our society, it's in our world, and it's affecting our relationships. So we need to talk about it. All right. And I think, as I said in a previous episode, experts really disagree and experts and experts disagree on, you know, why is is porn good? Is it bad? You know, why is it bad if it is? And so on. So I want to kind of touch upon those issues because as I said in the previous episode, I've watched a number of colleagues really have what I consider to be black and white debates on pornography. And I don't know how many of them are actual clinicians, okay? But I know that when I talk to clinicians, they say, you know, behind the scenes especially, they go what these supposed experts are saying does not align with what I'm seeing in my clinical practice. And the biggest one is where they say there's no problem with porn. Pornography is not addictive. All right. Sex is not addictive. You can't, you know, be addicted to masturbation, for example, like they say this and they look at the the most, let's say, specific definition of addiction and how the brain operates. You know, when you're dealing with addictive substances or behaviors and technically, they are correct that with pornography, we don't see the same types of brain activity that you do see with either substance or behavioral addictions. Well, the only official one of the DSM is gambling. So it is different in that regard. But I don't care whether you use the term addiction, whether you use the term compulsive or problematic. If someone comes into my office and they say I have an issue with porn, it's affecting myself as affect my my relationship, then it's an issue that should be dealt with and nobody should, you know, demean their experience or deny their experience. And so that's the first part. I want to say that if you want to jump in with that before I keep rambling. I just wanted to touch on I love the distinction that you made between what clinicians and researchers see, and I don't know if that has come across in in our various episodes, but I tend to focus a lot of what I say in my observations on, you know, what we're actually seeing in the clinic and what we're seeing in our clinical work. Research is great and it's wonderful and helpful and helps guide our work. But really when it comes to real day to day stuff, I think that it's so valuable for us to draw on those experiences. Exactly. And, you know, on the clinical side, the let's say the negative is that if somebody doesn't know his or her own biases, their confirmation bias, you know, whatever is going on, they can have a really skewed perspective on whatever topic it is. But on the other hand, in a clinical setting, we can have discussions, we can have revelations that you're not going to get in research some you know, some 18 year old student answering a question online or something is very different from having an in-depth discussion. And one thing I know sometimes I get some clashes with my research colleagues, but when they talk about certain phenomena like dissociation, suppression, repression, trauma, and they talk about that, the research doesn't support A, B or C, well, you're not allowed to do things in laboratories that would cause these types of phenomena like dissociation. So what do you really look at? You're looking at, you know, analogs of that of the phenomenon that's not the same thing. So sometimes that's a clash. That's where you get different views. You know, people really see it versus those, again, who are just doing research. And on the flip side, those doing research say, well, but the clinicians, they already have their beliefs of what they're seeing and they may be, you know, interpreting a certain way. They may be leading the client in a certain direction. So I just want to say these caveats notwithstanding, hey, we're going to have a discussion about all of this and we're going to bring both the research and the clinical into the discussion. So before I jump in again, before I keep rambling, I'll throw back to you. Yeah. So in our previous episode where we talked about pornography and adolescents and their exposure to it, we did talk about a number of different sex differences. Boys and girls interpret things differently. Their neurology is different. There's many similarities, but there's also many differences. Oftentimes, pornography is targeted to males. And, you know, with that comes things like themes of aggression and themes of sexual violence in pornography, which does frankly cater to their, you know, testosterone driven desires. So I don't think that that's by accident. I don't think that that's a mistake. I think that these creators are quite aware of that fact. And that's not to say that, you know, women don't consume pornography or engage in pornography, but it is typically directed at males. Right. It's for males by males. Right. And so and that's why there are there are female directors. I know some, you know, female porn directors. And, you know, there are genres that are suppose to be more either realistic or catering to different types of people and so on, body types and everything. But those are, you know, those are niche markets. They're not nearly as prevalent as everything else that you're going to see when you go to Pornhub or, you know, YouPorn or anything like that. You're going to see, you know, they comprise a tiny, tiny portion of the market, right? So so we have to understand that again, it is being done by males for the male pleasure. And even if a woman's receiving pleasure in those types of videos, it's usually performative. It's not you know, it doesn't align with how women normally experience pleasure and so on. But the women are seeing this and this becomes part of their sexual script. They, you know, whether consciously or unconsciously, they're following along with what they see. And just we talked about this in a previous episode, we should always say we're going to be talking mostly about male and female sex relations. But, you know, that's just because A, that's the majority. And B, if we if you took a break each time and said, well, male, male, female, female, then it gets a bit unwieldy. So, you know. But to that point, would you not agree that again, back to the biological differences, whether it's, you know, heterosexual or homosexual sex, men are men, and women are women. So there's going to be commonality in heterosexual and homosexual relationships with regard to, you know, appetite and arousal and consumption of porn and so on. For sure. It just it can I'm saying it because I'm going to say like a man and a woman. She. Right. But yeah, and to your point, yes, these things can apply as well to, you know, male, male or female female dynamics, especially if you have like with two men, you have a top and bottom right. You have the more masculine and feminine, dominant, submissive. So yes. And you we can see the same thing play out, whether it is male or female. It's about the the dynamic, the aggression, the submission is long. And I suppose I guess the point that I'm making there is it's so interesting that even though there are these biological differences and similarities societally, socially, psychologically, these scripts are created with regard to sex and so on. So it's really an interesting, I guess, dichotomy. We can look at it with the biology and how it interacts with the psychosocial factors, right? Sometimes they align, Oftentimes they they clash. And as we're saying in the previous episode, women for many years since the sexual revolution, and I'll say it each episode, this is not coming from some old, you know, conservative, narrow minded thinker. I was raised in a sex store that was opened by my mother. So it's a female role model and I have three daughters. So I am very open minded and very knowledgeable on these different dynamics and phenomena. So but but again, as we said last time or previous time, facts are facts. Science of science. Evolution is evolution. So all right. So when it comes to, let's say, with pornography, so the biggest discrepancy is whether between the experts and so on is a couple of them. One is, is it addictive? And two, is is it harmful? And if it is harmful, you know what makes it harmful? So let's look at the addiction part. So as I said earlier, yes, technically speaking, it doesn't show the same signs that we see with addictions. Okay. But and these the research, it's let's just say it's still still somewhat new, still a small sample size. Many times if you want to use brain study, brain imaging studies and anytime you do any brain imaging study, people have to recognize it's it's not it's as much art as it is science. I mean, I'm exaggerating. There's a lot of science to it, but it's not like we're we're picking up every tiny little, you know, thing that's going on here. We're we're seeing patterns. We're making interpretations of those patterns, and they're getting more refined as the technology gets refined. But just because a certain area of the brain lights up in these cases and not these cases, what exactly does it mean? And even if we know neurologically, here's what happens, what's happening, how is the person psychologically experiencing it? Right. So these studies are not perfect by any means. So anyone who wants to crap all over something I say, feel free. I'm not going to you know, I'll say again, this is not set in stone. Okay. So there was a a what I call him. He was an educator. He passed away a couple of years ago and I'm his first name, I believe is Gary. I'm blanking on the last name. I feel terrible. This this happens maybe it will come up afterward. And he did these videos that were put on a website that was called Reboot Nation dot org. Gabe I forget the last name, but Gabe was a young man who he found in his early twenties. He's a young, healthy man. He had a beautiful girlfriend and he found that he wasn't able to get erect. You know, he was having erectile dysfunction and he found that a lot of other young men were having the same problem again, early twenties. We had never seen this before in these numbers for humanity in the old days. And you actually alluded to this in a previous episode. In the old days, if I'm talking to us, an 18 year old or ten year old guy, what was his number one concern when it came to sex. Satisfying their urge? Okay. Sure. And yes, that's for sure. Okay. And that's his number one. That's actually true. So what was his number one? That's a anxiety or complaint about that in the process of satisfying his urge, assuming that he's able to get a partner, what was his concern? Premature ejaculation. Exactly. I mean, that was just number one. And if you look at the ads, I love some of the ads, anywhere between 25 and 75% of men. Well, okay. That's right. Sure. Okay. What are the actual rates? It's hard to know how you define it and so on. But the point was, yes, premature ejaculation. Now, so many young men can't even finish. Right. Whether because of of their having been habituated to porn. And again, whether it's neurological or psychological doesn't matter. They're having the same issue. So they're not able to finish or they can't get hard or they can't stay hard or they can't stay as hard as they would like or their partner would like. Right. These are the kind of problems we're seeing. The premature ejaculation still exists, but it's not. I've seen far more cases of these other issues that were never the case with young, healthy men. Right. So, you know, and people can talk about antidepressants and other, you know, neurotrophic medications are you know, they're that's exacerbating the problem. Right. Healthy diet. But they're not causing it. Yeah, not necessarily. Cause, I mean, for some people it could cause it like, you know, you know, or some antidepressants can SSRI can either kill the sex drive or you still the sex drive, but you're not able to finish it. So these things are true and more and more people are having it. But when I talk to the men who are having these problems, not all of these men are on, you know, SSRIs. So it's that unhealthy diet. We know it can be causes problems as well, more ease of cocaine and so on. Can it can cause problems or MDMA. So all of these are factors that could do it. But again, I try to rule all these out with a lot of these men. They find out that's not the cause. For many of them. It really comes down to an unhealthy relationship with pornography. Okay. So so again, not being able to finish, not getting results and so on. In any event, Gabe Deem was his last name on Reboot Nation dot org, he had some videos by Gary Wilson Wilson's last name that talked about the effects of pornography on the brain. Now, these were some old videos. They were done. They looked like they looked cheap. He sounded even cheaper. Like it really sounded not very credible and it didn't look very good. But he cited research that was credible and he made a couple of mistakes with some of his terminology. And this is back in the days where not many people knew that dopamine is not about pleasure. It's about reward. It's the reward system, not pleasure. So he made some mistakes in that regard. And there's allegations that he held himself out to be, you know, have higher credentials than you really had. I haven't seen evidence for that here. Not good evidence for that. All right. So there are people who criticize him in his work. He did pass away a couple of years ago. Okay. But I've seen a lot of his work and I saw the videos. I played them to my students and I thought they were really powerful. Some of them, like, were really effective in showing theoretically at least, and it seems like the science behind it, what happens to the brain when young and it's mostly males, when young virgin males are exposed to pornography excessively. So it's not the exposure per se. It's not just like one or two times seeing it. It's seeing it over and over and over again. And what he showed, I don't want to give the whole talk, but he pretty much argued and again, there is some research that supports this. Some people criticize the research and a neurological research. It's or you know, or brain imaging studies. We have to take with a bit of a grain of salt. Right. But we need much, much more replication. But the idea was that these young, virginal males and he uses analogs with rats or with mice. Okay. So he shows the same thing with mice that if they you know, I'm going to do the mouse one just because it's so compelling, it's just amazing. Okay. So I'm going to ask you, Malini, what do you think what one thing in the in the environment will scare mice more than anything else in the world or what sense gets triggered that would make a mouse skull? Holy mackerel. I got to get out of here. I would say their sense of smell. Very good. And what smell? And it's not , no it’s not cats, okay? It's not any of those predators. What? There's one smell that makes the most go. That's it. I'm out of here. I know you're Fire. Fire. Not bad. Okay? It's death. The smell of death. Okay. Smell of death. Another mouse is dead. It's another mouse, right? Which makes sense, right? If a moth isn't triggered by that, it goes. Okay, Well, this is a pretty fun place. Even though smells like death, they're going to get killed, probably. So, right. But they're so adverse to the smell of death of their own death. So researchers formulated a synthetic version of this called cadaverine, and they basically sprayed it on on female mice in estrus and heat. Okay. And they placed the virginal males with them. Now, if it wasn't a virgin, it was a different effect. So with virgins and if I getting the studies wrong and then Gary Wilson didn't do the study, he just talked about, I think it was Jim Pfaus who did the studies. I don't want to make to give credit to the wrong person. My preacher was researcher Jim Pfaus, P-F-A-U-S. So what they said was, and again, if I get any of this wrong, I apologize. But they put the virginal male with the female who's in heat. And even though she smells of death, she's in heat. He still is mating with her. Okay. So he'll mate he'll mate, he'll mate. So he's becoming conditioned. He's able to overcome millions of years of evolution to have sex. If he's a virgin. Now, here's here's the amazing two things. If they then put later on after he's become conditioned to associate smell of death with sex and pleasure, if they put a regular female in heat and the one smelling like death, you know, in heat, it's a 5050. Right. You would think that normally I say, well, I don't know. I've got a choice. I'm going for, you know, the non death smelling person, right. No, he's. Their brains have made that connection. He makes that connection. And even crazier is then they take the cadaverine and they sprayed it on like little wood logs and the mouse is just a log. But because he's made the connection, he's not humping the log, but he's curling with a do like he's is getting close to. He's getting intimate with this little wood. You know, this wood basically. So that's how powerful hundreds or millions of years of evolution can be wiped out with conditioning. So what he's arguing is that if young men are being conditioned, they're virginal males. And it's not like the old days where most almost every male or female before they've actually had sexual intercourse have had exposure to, you know, magazines, videos, whatever. But never in the history of humanity have we had so much repetitive exposure. That's what he's saying. And it's novel. That's the big thing. If I'm watching the same porn a thousand times, watch it rewind, watch it rewind in the old days, VHS, this and so on, over and over and over the same one, because I have no variety. I only have five different tapes, right? I kind of become habituated to it. My sex, you know, my sexual response gets lower each time. It's not the same. Novelty gets us going. So what he's arguing is that when you have young virginal males, you know, having excessive, repetetive and novel, so it's they're always there. The dopamine is always surging. Remember, it's not the pleasure, the dominance of reward go. It's orient and reward and chase after more of it. So we're saying that the novelty of porn and the ability to just, you know, watch 10 seconds, go to another one. Go to another one, like. Right. He's just saying that it's really it's having an impact on the brain. It's not just Gary Wilson. A lot of people are saying this right. Is having an impact on the brain that we've never seen in history. And so I'm not a neurologist, not neuropsychologist. You know, I don't know how credible these are, but I've seen a number of research make the same claims. And it's so fascinating because, again, you know, just just in reading the literature that we know that with males, whether it's mice or otherwise, that the parts of the brain that are engaged during arousal and sex are, you know, the more primitive parts of the brain, the back of the brain, for example, and the amygdala and so on. Whereas with women typically what is engaged more frequently is the prefrontal cortex. So it's really, really interesting to hear this description of the mice and the fact that they, you know, they're not using they're their thinky-thinky parts of the brain. They're strictly looking at instinct in and getting that satisfaction. And having that satisfaction again associated with something that would never be the case again and rewire them. And they say neurons fire together, wire together. So that's how the conditioning happens, right? So for them, you know, for the the male humans, right, watching the porn, what they're being conditioned to is two dimensional porn. Right. And repetitive on the screen, whether it's the laptop or their phone. They're watching and watching. And so that's why, you know, you said in a previous episode that a lot more young men today say, you know what, I'd just rather masturbate, you know, than have intercourse, because that's what they become conditioned to. And that's where they derive more pleasure. They know exactly what they like, and they do it so often. Once again, in the past, you know, guys would masturbate. Sure. But again, it wasn't this exposure to all this different material. It was, you know, whether it's reading something or seeing a few pictures, whatever, it's very different than when it's, you know, to them, it's it's what it is now. And who knows what's going to happen with AI or sex dolls and everything like that or sorry, in VR. In VR as well. It's taking it to a different level. And, you know, again, who knows how much the brain is being changed. But one, some studies have shown and again, small sample sizes is preliminary, but that they argued, they showed that when they looked at people who is never no porn viewers and non porn viewers, you can't find non porn viewers. Studies can't be done. They just everyone's seen some porn, basically. So what they find is when they look at degrees of porn watching. So guys who watch this say a moderate level versus excessive level, whatever number or metric they're using, they've shown that, again, preliminary studies that with the with the higher use men, they have less gray matter in their brain. Now, is it that dumber people who are watching porn and I can't remember I know that they tried to rule this out with, you know, structural equations, equation modeling and so on. The researchers say it's not that dumber Guys are watching porn, right? It's just that watching porn excessively somehow. Maybe maybe is having some impact on the gray matter is not making people, you know, incapable of functioning. But it is having some impact. Now, I'm going to ask your question. The other one and I say this with a smile because it has so many people. Another finding that they see is that the the excessive those are the decreases in gray matter. It's also correlated with, let's say, superior hand-eye coordination. Okay. So guys are watching a lot of porn. They have less gray matter, but B, they also have better hand-eye coordination. So I'm going to ask you, what how do you interpret that? Well, they're oh, gosh, you make me say this out loud. Funny things. Whatever you say is the wrong answer. So I'm going to let you know. Okay. You let me put my foot in my mouth and then tell me I'm wrong. I would presume that it has to do with the fact that they the hand-eye coordination between masturbating and watching the pornography. There's there's a connection being made in the brain with that. Right. And that's what most people think when they when they hear that connection. Okay. Yeah. Navigating being able to use one hand to masturbate the other to navigate through the different screens, everything like that. Right. Another one to be on the phone, another a foot to hold the door, whatever the case is, you would think that. But this is where cause correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation. Right? So the theory is that who do you think if someone's watching a lot of porn, a young man watching a lot of porn, where is he? And what is he also doing? The kind of young man watching a lot of porn? Oh, he's probably at home in his room or in the basement, also playing video games. So that might be a correlation, right? Yeah. So, yeah, yeah, that's the hand-eye coordination part. So anyways, a little surprising twist there. So. Right. So in any event, yes. But I want to actually pause you there because I think that that is a large part of the problem at large is, you know, this, this and again, we're tying this back to what we've spoken about with young men in the past and in previous episodes. But there's such a huge propensity and proportion of young males now who are that is their activity of choice. You know, hang out in the basement, watch porn, play video games, don't interact with the real world. This is this is a real problem. There's problems, you know, of course, that are going to take place in their brain and in their development, but also in their ability to socialize with real women and socialize with the world at large. It's killing their motivation. It's killing their drive to, again, be something, be somewhere, do something right. And the be one of the big parts of killing. It is if they're on, you know, on headphones, talking to other people. On discord or whatever else they're they're being surrounded by a bunch of other men or young boys who are doing the same thing. So that's the norm. So they're all kind of dragging themselves down and. Right. And they're and they're hearing all these guys say, yeah, look, 99% of the women go for 1% of the guys. What chance do we have? And yeah, well, what chance do you have if you're sitting at home not working on yourself, gaining weight, playing video games, not learning how to engage with women, not learning how to inoculate yourself against the the humiliation of being rejected, turn down whatever. Right. Like it is, it's getting harder and harder. So their progress is being delayed and we as we know, though, the longer you wait to do something, the harder it gets to finally do it. It's better to humiliate yourself and fail when you're younger than older. And I think in part it's by some being promoted as like the new norm and it's not something negative. I read the other day that John Mayer, the singer, reported to Rolling Stone magazine, that he's like, I can't remember the word they use, but like they're the new New Age masturbator, meaning that he this famous person. So you would assume that he'd be able to, you know, have a lineup of women coming after him. I don't know. But he stated that he would rather be at home and masturbate to porn, then go date real women. So I don't know if young people listen to his music, but here is this celebrity that is promoting this very thing as like, hey, it's a cool thing to do, right? And how sad because I'm going to use Charlie Sheen as the counter to John Mayer and I pardon language. This is something he said that was it's it's a bit sexist. Maybe some will find that. But years ago when, you know, Charlie Sheen was on top of his game and they knew that he would go to. I think, Heidi, I don't get it wrong, Heidi, they she she had a she she basically ran an escort service now, Heidi, something. And so people are saying, Charlie Sheen, you're good looking, you're famous, you're rich. Why would you pay prostitutes for sex? And he says, I don't pay the women for sex. I pay them to leave. Okay. So all right. So very different attitude today where it's John Mayer who could have anybody going, Oh, you know, I'd rather just. Right. So and again, the whole thing about wait, delaying. Here's a whole thing, a couple of things with going back to pornography and the male female differences. I've had so many young men who, you know, they're in their early twenties or late teens and they're like, by the time, you know, they're still virgins. So the older they get, it's more embarrassing for them. And they're terrified that, of course, the woman that they're going to find is going to have had far more experience than them. So they're intimidated as hell. In the old days, it's just like, okay, maybe it's an embarrassing experience, maybe it's not pleasurable for her. Whatever. But today, the reality is they risk being shamed because that's one of the differences. Now, women young, not everybody, but far more young women have no problem going online and totally humiliating somebody. Now, if someone does something really wrong and you're trying to get justice or vengeance, fine. But if this is someone who just happened to be hapless, who didn't do a great job, he wasn't a jerk or anything like that, and you're going to shame him or humiliate him. And it happens enough times that the men are terrified it could happen to them right again. The longer they wait, they know they're falling down, down, down the ladder. It's much harder for them to climb up that ladder and say, you know, I'm going to take a chance and, you know, try to get in the game. So it's getting harder and harder. And by the way, one of the changes you asked me about, changes maybe this episode or another one over the years, one of the changes in the old days, all the research showed this. Every single study showed men are going to inflate the numbers. On average, most men will and most women will deflate the numbers, whether it's how many people you've had or how many, how early you've had sex or what you call sex. All right. Like men are more likely to say it's smaller numbers, but they're far more likely to say that kissing is sex. Okay. I think it depends on how the question is worded, but they're more likely than women. Well, one of the changes is now that not only are women not necessarily hiding their count, but some of them are inflating like men. Right. They want to have a higher kill count. So that's one of those changes. And that's not evolutionary. That's totally social. Yeah. And I think, you know, along those same lines, it's not quite pornography, but I think that what women tend to gravitate more towards is the self objectification of themselves on the Internet and, you know, putting, you know, I don't know what word to use when they say it's slutty photos of themselves online. And we spoke about this when we were discussing adolescence and sex. And I think this is true of young women as well. I wonder, you know, this let me backtrack. I would say that over the years, as has happened, this has been promoted and this has been encouraged. But I think that it is counter to what is innately true of women. I think that it's this this propagation of freedom and sexual freedom and being empowered under the guise of they're doing this for men, they're doing this for men's pleasure. It's not actually for them. Right. And I forgot the guy's name now, and it's one name I don't need to know. The guy who started Girls Gone Wild, they just hang out. We won't get into him. But so many young women thought and I say, it's my class again. One of these chains I saw happening in front my own eyes. It's like they think that it's sexually empowering to lift up a t shirt to show their breasts and what do they get in exchange? They get sometimes a t shirt that says Girls Gone Wild and the guy makes millions of dollars off of your body. Well, that's really empowering to. Know what is you really get is. Exploitative. But again, the narrative was, no, no, you're empowering. And when and I said this in a previous episode, the one before that, which is when young people are exposed to things at an age that they're not ready to process it, they can't do it. Whatever you do, it's so much easier to sell them a lie. And so many young people are being sold this lie that is empowering and so on it. No, it's not. It's exploitative. Or at the very least it's not satisfying. And you know, we've talked about this, about how people are suppressing their needs, their desires, their, you know, their own wants, because, well, for whatever reason, like whether they don't want to be seen as a prude or they, you know, they don't want to upset the other person or they, you know, whatever the case may be. Right. That's not empowering. So now back to the porn. Ready now. Here we go. Okay. So and so this is something okay. This is something that research has pretty consistently shown. I like I think it's one of those findings where it's quite clear, okay, when they look at people who do where, they do suggest that there is some correlation between watching porn and sexual problems. Okay. There are two factors that seem to kind of mediate this relationship, which or moderate media and moderate it, which is basically okay. So it's not necessarily that porn itself causes the problem. It's porn interacting with something. There's another factor there that leads to the problem. So there's two answers to this. What do you think is the number one thing when we look at men in particular, men, women as well as men, what is that factor that if they don't have this, then porn is not necessarily a problem. It's a sentiment, a feeling. I was going to say something along the lines of self-esteem or feeling, you know, like they are sexually competent. Okay, I that's not I says probably correlated to some degree I'm sure. I'm sure it is. It's almost like a self it's like a feedback loop. Right? But the sentiment is shame. Okay. So if someone has a shameful relationship with porn, if they think it's wrong or something like that, they're the ones who are more likely. And again, as always, we're not saying it's every single person, but, you know, the research shows that that's a common trend. So the ones who have some shame around pornography, around sex and so on, and what factor do you think, if I know something about you, I can predict very well that you would have an unhealthy or shameful relationship with pornography and sex or masturbation. I would say it comes from childhood in the way that sex was approached in the house. Okay. And what factor is common among. It's a never it's recently shrinking. But what is the factor in the household that would like to say, oh, I know that there's something about you, so therefore you probably have a bad, unhealthy relationship with sex is promoted in your household, not mine. I don't know. I'm a heathen. That's religion. I gotcha. Yep. Like, what's your. What'd you have? No, it's okay. So again, the research is there. Correct? That people and more, they're more likely to be religious. But again, with my clients, my patients, many of them are not religious. It's not about the religion. Do they have, you know, an unhealthy, shame based relationship with sex and porn or whatever? Yes, but not everybody. Okay. But that's what they point to in saying it's all about the shame. So we need to make them feel not shame and so on. But if again, if we're looking at porn and the messages it conveys to people where again, a woman is being subjugated or being dominated, humiliated or whatever, how do you not somehow, consciously or unconsciously connect that to shame? Right. Yeah. And if I can add something about religion, because I don't want anyone jumping all over you about that one, I think what you mean here is it's not about religion in and of itself or the teachings in and of themselves, but it's the rigidity that comes along with being in a religious household and, you know, the rules surrounding. And the fact that you don't talk about these things in many cases, it's just just the the the sex talk is simply don't do it right like that. But and it's again, it's not all religious household, but it's more the more extreme ones, the more, you know, conservative, rigid ones. So, yes, thank you for clarifying that. Yeah. Because it's not religion per se. Right. But once again, I don't care if it's religion or not. I have many patients who come in and yes, they do feel shame. And now the shame is, you know, it's also society based it's culture not about porn per se, but about just themselves. You know, many young men and we've talked about this in previous podcasts, they feel worthless, demonized, useless. Okay. They know once again that they if if they're on that 1%, a lot of women are going to look down on them. So I forget some of there's a video going around not that long ago where they asked women, what do you want in a man? And they gave like, you know, like a certain height, salary range. I think I forget what it was as well, like maybe body type and everything. They said all these things. And the guy said, well, they do the math. You're statistically speaking, you're looking for like like one or some part of a percent of the population or something like that. Right Yeah. So when young men hear this, it again is disempowering, is demotivating. It makes them feel I don't have a chance. So sure, if I can convince myself that just watching porn and you know, and masturbating and it's much easier. I don't spend a lot of money. I don't have to go on hundred dates with a chance of maybe one of those women going home with me and stuff like that. It's easy way to talk yourself out of getting into the dating world. And we've talked a bit about the dating world, that it's a nightmare out there. It is a mess and nothing worth saying should be misconstrued as as, you know, minimizing what people are going through or denigrating them. Anyway, this all being done said empathetically. But what I'll say is, you know, what a shame that that doesn't motivate men to do better and be better. And, you know, not everyone's going to meet this unrealistic expectation, but I would hope that for some it's like, well, I better get my shit together and, you know, be an attractive mate. But instead we're seeing this motivation and all of the things that we've been talking about today. I read a few weeks ago about this person, this woman who went on a date with a man and she didn't know what to do because they had a great time. He seemed like a great person, but he was unshowered and smelled, ungroomed on a first date. And this is one of many examples, I'm sure I'm sort of veering from the topic, but since we're talking about it, it's it's really interesting. So, as you know, my family and I, we have a lot of, you know, discussions about all kinds of things in society. We talk about sexuality, we talk about it all. So I asked my son, I said, well, you know, being a 12 year old boy, what do you think about this? Why why are people showing up to dates like this and they don't care and they're unmotivated? I'm curious about what your thoughts are on his take. His take was we're in a world where everybody is a special snowflake and they're told that you don't have to be better. You are perfect just the way you are. So these boys grow up into men and think that that's still true. You know, that's first of all, for a 12 year old boy. That's a great insight. I think there's a lot of merit to it. I really do. I think the other part, though, is also it's self handicapping, right? If I don't really try that hard, then, hey, if it doesn't go well, I can say, well, you know, if I tried harder, I don't know who this person was. She doesn't deserve the best of me. But if I know that if I really dressed up in everything, then. But on a first date, why am I going to waste all my time and everything so they can lie to themselves as well? I'm also a couple of things. One, I'll tell you right now, back in some, you know, in older player days, there are books on, you know, of being a player. They were saying that that's actually if you do show up this way, you're signaling, saying, I don't give a heck I don't care about societal rules and everything. I'm a rebel. I'm, you know, and so I think that message got perverted and twisted where a person just kind of smells and doesn't realize that it's actually repulsive. It's not going to attract a person right. So some of the messaging and that happens all the time, and especially when you have people like Andrew Tate and we've talked about him before, MGTOW- men going their own way. You know, people are hearing this message. They're not they don't have enough savvy or wherewithal to be able to hear what's really being said and to distill the good information from the crap and say, oh, this could really help. They're just getting a stew of misinformation with information and they're just, you know, they're manifesting it poorly and ineffectively. So, you know, I think. It's crazy to draw that back to porn. And their brains are literally changing from the excessive consumption of this stuff, right? So I feel bad for young men, frankly, because, you know, look at what a mess it is out there. Yeah, it is. And again, for young women as well, it's right. It's a nightmare for everybody. And it's funny because what I ask I've heard so many men and women each say that the other sex has is so much easier in the dating world. Okay, well, someone's wrong here. So. Or we say, Yeah, it's a nightmare for everybody. So porn, What do we do about this? I don't even know where to go with this. As far as what my take is, I would say that one of the biggest things that people can do is be mindful of their consumption with the knowledge that, you know, excessive consumption of anything, but, you know, within the context of relationships and sex and, you know, future relationship goals too much is, you know, it's really going to do a number on you. So be very mindful of your consumption. Also, you know, be mindful of the fact that what you're seeing, these are actors. This is not realistic. This is not real life. So, you know, be aware of that as well. Okay. And the part about not real life, actually, I'm going to take a next step in the old days. Okay. So if I can just add a couple more layers in the old days, one guys knew on average, women either didn't watch porn or were less likely to watch porn, or if they did, they wouldn't admit it. So, all right. So they didn't feel that they were being compared to unrealistic ideals. The women were the women knew that they can't live up to these ideals, but the men didn't have that anxiety. And so now not only do they know that women have watched a lot of porn, so they see a lot of performance, body sizes, shapes, girth and so on, you know, so so a couple of things. One, now, over the years, you asked me about changes over the years. Well, one of the changes is that males are about as anxious and neurotic and scared about sex as women are. Congratulations. We've hit equity or parity. Okay. Okay. In the old days, every study showed that women were far more fearful, anxious, neurotic, etc. No males are just as much so. And one of the reasons is because they feel the competition second. If it was just an actor, it was all just, you know, professional porn stars. Then they could easily say, look, these are experts, right? You don't expect me to drive like a stunt driver. Do, All right, They're professionals. But because so much of the porn online is amateurs, you know, self-made porn and so on, then it's like, oh, my gosh, I'm being compared to real people. These guys who have this body and body types and can last forever or do all these things. So it causes so much anxiety. And we know that anxiety is the number one inhibitor of good performance or of any performance, Right. Or pleasure. So these are some huge changes that have happened over the years that you're sorry. Okay. And and now more than ever before and I don't know if I said this before, but it's going to quickly just kind of weave this in. Okay. So more than ever before, are women or young girls, women likely to basically say to a guy their displeasure. We talked in a previous podcast that women are less likely to say so so I'm not saying that all women are doing it, but previously I had not heard so many men telling me that they had either a like a friends with benefit or an actual girlfriend or a long term partner who had told them, If you don't satisfy me again, like basically he wasn't able to perform either couldn't finish or, you know, couldn't get hard, couldn't stay hard or stay as hard as he or she wanted, She would she would basically give an ultimatum. Next time this happens, we're done. I've so many young men over the last ten years say that. And I say to them, I sort of had them bring the partner in. I talk to them, I go, you know what you're doing, You're causing anxiety and anxiety and, you know, you're basically guaranteeing that he's not going to be able to perform. And so. You're perpetuating the problem. In the problem. Exactly. Yeah. And so so, you know, there's I say there's other ways to please. You can there's oral sex, all these other stuff. And so again, I work with many, many individuals and couples trying to help them to deal with these problems. And you need healthy communication. You need you need alternative means of satisfaction and each of you has to know that if it doesn't go the way you're hoping or expecting this time, there's other ways to please each other. And if you're okay with that and there's no either overt or underlying tension, hostility, resentment or anything like that, or threats or anything like that, then next time or the time after that or the time after that, you'll get back on course and everything will be fine. Unfortunately, in so many relationships today, that's not happening. There is a tension, the threat, etc. And now, more than ever before, the guy knows why, especially if they're not exclusive. Well, she's going to find somebody else who can satisfy her. And so I'm just there's such a harshness and I've had women, female students and patients say that's just empowerment. I said, no, it's not. Empowerment is you get what you want. And if you're shaming this guy, belittling him, threatening him, and he can't perform well, you're not getting what you want unless what you want is to, you know, humiliate this guy or to get rid of him or to break his soul. I said, if that's what you're trying to do, Kudos. You did great job. And I think this all ties back to what we've spoken about before as far as, you know, the improper messages about sex to young people having these casual hookups and having these casual relationships and not actually, you know, dating and getting to know each other, I feel in large part contributes to that type of attitude because there isn't that same level of commitment to one's partner because they never learn how to do that. Exactly. And I'll tell you right now, this was a number of years ago someone wrote about this. It was actually I mean, I had seen the same thing and I know others have written, but there was an article I want to say 2018, the maybe November in the Atlantic, something about like why why young people are having less sex or why millennials are having less sex, something like that. And and again, I've I've been teaching about this for eight years before that seen it happen where the sad thing when you talk about that there are so many young women who would say so we're putting all the poor men here. Now how about for women where they say that that they were hoping that somehow by having sex with this guy, even though it's only sex, they're not having a relationship, it's just a hookup and they've entered into this agreement. It's just a hook up or it's just friends with benefits. You don't get to have “feels” which back to sex differences. Males, we know for a fact biologically, neurologically, that far it's far easier for them to have meaningless sex than it is for females. We know that for a fact. Not everybody, but on average it’s easier for males. So when you have friends with benefits where there's not supposed to be any feelings, someone's going to catch feels okay, and in most cases it's going to be the woman. That's just how you're wired, right? So these poor women, they think, Well, I know I'm going to have sex with them. He's going to come over these drunk asses downtown. I happen to be nearby and he's going to pay for Uber back home or something. So know they have sex at 3 a.m. drunk and sloppy sex. He goes to bed. Passes out, anyway, so these young women are saying that they're hoping that somehow that this sex that they're having with this guy will somehow show him some insight into who they are as a human being and that he's going to fall in love with them as like, no. So many women see that somehow I'm going to seduce him or whatever. No, you're just another body that he's having sex with. That's it. And, you know, and so and to think that that's how somehow is going to make him like you more know, it just means that he's got an easy, easy availability, easy access. That's it. Why would he have any deeper feelings for you if. But it's so crazy because and I I'm trying to think of the best way to articulate this, but it comes down to nobody knows how to communicate about their sexual needs in any type of relationship, whether it's a hookup, whether it's a long term relationship, whatever the case may be. Sex has. It's so weird because sex is so taboo, yet so ubiquitous, ubiquitous in our culture. It's very bizarre. And it turns into this cognitive distortion of people think that the other should be able to read their mind, like in this example that you're giving, right? Yeah, that's that'll be a topic or a theme that cuts across a number of our episodes, this mind reading or these assumptions that we're all seeing the same thing or that they're playing by the same playbook? No, there is no playbook or actually there's a billion playbooks out there and everyone's got their own right. And again, it's people say that relationships need more communication is not more communication. There's better communication. Better. Yes, better quality communication. So I guess I'll add that to my list of what can we do about it, Talk about sex, talk about it more effectively and more clearly. So, listeners, we want to hear your questions. We want to know what you think about this conversation. What are your questions about porn? What do you think about porn? Do you think it's helpful? Do you think it's harmful? Send us your questions. Comment on this video. We'd love to hear what you think. And on that note, until next time, keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.