As a follow-up to my last piece on why orgasms and masturbation are good for you, Please Nut in November, this blog addresses how masturbation can play a negative role in the lives of people who are controlled BY their urge to come rather than the other way around. One of my key tenets for a happy sex life is developing the sexual intelligence and sexual maturity (something I wrote about in Sex and the Self) to make good choices in all aspects of sex. Learning how to recognize the signs of excessive masturbation can prevent an otherwise healthy habit from turning into a negative drain on your life.
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Masturbation is Good. Emotional Problems are Bad
Masturbation is a healthy activity. But when anxieties and emotional problems strike, everything can go wrong.
We can become undersexed or oversexed. We can lose sexual desire and we can get so horny we’ll hump trees. We can get depressed or we can get high from sex too. The heavier the emotional baggage, the more likely it is to emerge during sex. That’s because you are at your most primal and emotionally naked, so many otherwise hidden parts of yourself may suddenly surface. And, because sex is all about brain chemicals and sex chemicals, if your brain chemistry is off, it can change everything about your sex function, along with your perception of how it feels.
So while the physical act of masturbation is healthy and good for people, it can cause problems for people who are emotionally unstable or in a fragile place.
The Sex Addiction Movement Is An Anti-Sex Movement
In America today, masturbation and sexual dysfunction are being conflated, in no small part due to several cultural trends. One of the most dishonest manipulators of today’s perception of masturbation is the sex addiction movement, which has attempted to revise science to fulfill an anti-sex agenda. By its very existence, it challenges and erodes evidence-based treatment of sex problems. The concept of sex addiction nonetheless floods contemporary culture and receives undeserved respect in public life. It has contributed to the public belief that masturbation is more dangerous than intercourse, a patently absurd notion. Lies about nonconformist sex have helped foster a growing anti-sex coalition that cumulatively proposes anti-sex legislation, demonizes porn and sex work, and claims masturbation causes sex addictions.
Millions of people now believe that masturbation and porn are sins whose cures require a lifetime of repentance.
… perceptions of sexual “addictions” may have more to do with people’s religious or cultural beliefs than of actual scientific data. The concept of sex addiction “emerged in the 1980s as a socially conservative response to cultural anxieties,” the authors wrote, “and has gained acceptance through its reliance on medicalization and popular culture visibility.”
There’s more money to be made by making people feel like crap and promising them redemption than by making people understand that they can make better choices by losing their shame and loving themselves.
Sex addiction has been repeatedly rejected as a legitimate diagnosis by the American Psychiatric Association and by sex-positive doctors, scientists and sex therapists the world over. This article, “Why I Am No Longer A Sex-Addiction Therapist,” is an insider’s view of the many problems with their treatment plans. My tip is to beware of people who discourage you from harmless masturbation. A competent sex therapist doesn’t judge people by the number of times they have orgasms, whether partnered or solo. We certainly don’t consider it a disorder or “problem” if you are highly sexual, kinky, poly or enjoy looking at porn.
Every male client who came to me complaining of being a sex addict turned out not to be. Oh, yes, they had problems. Some of them were gripped with shame that extended far back before they ever encountered Internet porn, as early as their childhood or early teens. Some were traumatized in youth by a negative sex experience. Some were accused by wives and partners of being sex addicts. A few had partners who considered masturbation a form of cheating. Young men, 30 and under, were especially prone to believing they were sex addicts if they masturbated every day. After all, that’s what the sex addiction movement teaches: that masturbation is the gateway to sex addiction. It preys on vulnerable, insecure men and confirms their worst fears about themselves.
Ironically, of the scores of men I’ve treated who said they were masturbating too much, only about a quarter of them were, indeed, masturbating excessively. The others were just masturbating more than they believed they should. They had no idea that it was perfectly fine if a highly sexed adult, regardless of gender, liked to jerk off 3 or more times a day.
So my clinical experience supports what other scientists have said: for most people, the problem with masturbation is learned shame about the act.
Is it the Porn or is it the Shame?
Would a sex addiction movement even exist if shame wasn’t so easy to sell to Americans? I recently visited an anti-masturbation site that looked so professional, so authoritative, and was filled with so many outright lies about sexual health that I left impressed that the secret Evangelical cash-cow behind it was so compulsively dedicated to the cause of keeping men’s hands off their own penises. Wow. Talk about people who really need sex therapy!
The Men’s Movement has also done its share to disinform millions of men. Its rhetoric re-enforces male sexual entitlement (i.e., that men have the right to demand and get sex from any woman of their choice) and foments violence against women (inciting men to believe women deserve to be raped). Meanwhile, it promotes abstaining as an antidote to porn addiction. They are wrong on every point.
Science on the subject amply shows that disempowered men are likely to consider themselves sex/porn addicts because of pre-existing anxieties about masturbation.
Numerous research studies in the past year from authors such as Joshua Grubbs of Case Western and Alexander Stulhofer of Croatia, have consistently confirmed the role of morality and religiosity in the backgrounds of those who identify as sex or porn addicts. Further, those researchers have empirically demonstrated in multiple, replicated studies, that the identity of sex/porn addict is not predicted by sexual frequency. In other words, both of these researchers have demonstrated that sex/porn addicts are not, in fact, watching more porn or having more sex than anyone else – they just feel worse and more conflicted about the sex they are having. – David Ley, We Must Rely on Good Science in Porn Debate
In simple English, evidence shows that shame is worse for you than porn and that sexual shame makes men believe they are bad people.
A case study I used in Sex and the Self illustrates another angle on this problem.
Bob and Renee F. had been happily married for several years but Bob called me, fearful that his interest in porn was tearing them apart. He defined porn as intrinsically bad and a type of cheating. He hated himself for sneaking onto X-rated sites, a teenage habit he thought would end when he got married. But the fact was the sites revved him up and made sex with his wife even hotter. Now things were falling apart because of his disgusting habit. When she peeked over his shoulder one night and joked about an image on the screen, he slammed his laptop shut and went ballistic. His over-reaction upset his wife: the more upset she got, the more distraught and guilty he felt.
He blamed the porn; I blamed his belief that porn was bad and that he had defined himself and his needs into a very cruel corner. Every time he gave in to what was, fundamentally, a harmless and normal urge, he loathed himself all the more. The worse he felt about himself the more he escaped into porn. To break that vicious cycle, he needed to examine his own attitudes towards sex. Was it realistic to expect a sexually healthy, virile man to never look at or think about another woman? — Sex and the Self
When Is Masturbation Dangerous?
Masturbation is dangerous when you can’t control the urge to masturbate or you have self-destructive patterns.
The physical act of masturbation is normal, healthy, and clean. But if you feel abnormal or unclean, or if you feel you have lost self-control, then your masturbation may be harming your mental health, especially if your negativity becomes a stick you beat yourself with.
There is no real number of times that make masturbation “unsafe.” There is no universal norm. This, in my opinion, is because there is so much variety, no one quite understands it yet. Well, I understand it and explain it one word: diversity. Masturbatory experiences are as varied as the people who have them. Sure, it may look the same from the outside — but what’s going on in the person’s mind transforms even basic wanks into unique experiences.
While there is no scientific evidence that frequent masturbation is bad, there is strong medical evidence that orgasms about 3 times a week maintain sexual fitness and prevent a range of diseases. So that’s what I generally recommend to keep clients sexually fit, even though I also support those who do it more and those who do it less.
People with naturally high hormone levels, high-stress levels, or who are naturally hedonistic, are likely to need more frequent sexual relief than others. Though the sex addiction movement views such people as addicts, the evidence shows they’re just highly sexed. Highly sexed people may be blessed with higher hormone levels than other people or, who knows, perhaps a genetic marker for hotness! Their normal is not up for judgment (though many prudish helping professions still do judge women harshly for a strong sex drive).
Below are four different types of masturbation problems people have seen me for. I’m adding case studies from my practice for illustration (all names have been changed).
LEARN TO RECOGNIZE PROBLEMATIC MASTURBATION
1.Unwanted and Disrupted Masturbation
Unbeknownst in the general literature, some people have had traumatic experiences around masturbation. The most common one, by far, is a relative walking in on a teen in the act. Most people seem able to move on after that cringing awkwardness. But some of us cannot and may develop shame complexes or such deep-seated anxiety about getting caught in the act that masturbation itself feels dangerous and dirty. Once we develop secretive, even paranoic, habits around masturbation, it changes us (more on that further along).
Types of unwanted masturbation include traumatic crimes, such as being pushed into it by a neighbor, trusted authority, or relative. I’ve had several clients who were, for example, masturbated by or shown how to masturbate by older men who claimed they were just teaching them the facts of life.
More common types of unwanted masturbation include peer pressure (whether in high school or college), the pressure to masturbate in a group setting (such as getting talked into a Bukake experience or a circle jerk), and pressure from a partner to masturbate with them or in front of them.
Suzy’s husband insisted that she play without herself while he watched. It didn’t turn her on. It made her feel objectified. It went against her beliefs. She was angry at him and ashamed of herself for agreeing to it. She felt abused and betrayed. She was angry at masturbation and porn on the Internet, which is where she assumed he got the idea.
Suzy certainly needed to work on her own inhibitions but the damage her partner did to her self-esteem was real and raw. He knew her limits and overstepped them by pressuring her to engage in a sex act she didn’t want. It left her feeling miserable, which is the exact opposite of what intimacy should create in a couple.
I encouraged Suzy and encourage all my clients to avoid any sexual situations — marital or not — that leave them feeling demeaned, misunderstood or uncomfortably vulnerable. Masturbation is best when you feel good getting juiced up, enjoy your orgasm, and are still smiling about the positive body-vibes during the afterglow. If you don’t feel good in these stages — arousal, climax, afterglow — you have the right to say no. If your partner refuses to listen to you and will not respect your boundaries, your partner poses a danger to your mental health. Get help or get out.
2.Masturbation Resulting in Physical Self-Harm
There are people who masturbate dangerously. I am not just talking about fetishists who do edgy play solo. I mean there are people who masturbate to a point where they physically harm themselves. Fortunately, most people who harm themselves during sex acts do so out of naivete, bad luck or clumsiness, as well-documented in Sex Sent Me to the ER. Simple abrasions and minor accidents can happen during masturbation too.
Bob masturbated 3-4 times a day. His penis felt raw, and there were abrasions on it. He felt like a pariah. He didn’t want anyone else to see or touch his penis. He blamed himself for being a sex addict who had destroyed his hopes of a normal life.
The problem was that the skin on a penis shaft is thin and sensitive and can easily dry out. Bob was a big guy with big, bear-like paws, and I noticed when I shook his hand that his palm was calloused and rough from his job in construction. When I asked if he used lube, he said never. It hadn’t occurred to him that he was abrading his penis with every stroke. I proposed a cheap and effective remedy: LUBE. I recommended fractionated coconut oil, available at any pharmacy and good for solo sex. The anti-bacterial properties would promote healing. Once the abrasions were gone, he was to use the oil as a lube, spreading it generously before stroking and reapplying as needed.
And…that was the whole fix. Boom. Cured. Bob just didn’t know his penis skin was much more sensitive than the skin on his hands and needed a little extra love to stay healthy. He resumed his vigorous habits in no time.
Related yet very different are people who commit deliberate self-harm. In extreme cases, people may use a sharp object to stab or cut themselves or insert unsafe objects into a lower body cavity — or, in some cases, insert their genitals into unsafe objects. Another group are people whose shame over sex drive them to punish their genitals. When deliberate self-harm to genitals becomes a pattern, it can turn into a compulsion, and that can result in medical emergencies. Repeated injury to the penis is a risk factor for penis cancer.
It’s also psychologically dangerous because repeat self-harm makes people associate sex with pain and suffering rather than joy and ecstasy. People can inadvertently train themselves to fear sex if they repeat the pattern.
Keera felt she needed to masturbate, but she could never climax. Instead, she would compulsively masturbate for hour after hour until her genitals hurt so much, she couldn’t stand it anymore. The more she did it, the less she wanted to do it, but then she’d get so hyper she felt she had to do it in order to get relief from the urge. Meanwhile, she dreaded and avoided any intimacy with others because she felt like her sex organs were “broken,” to use her word for it.
Keera’s problems were rooted in her mental health issues. She had been diagnosed as bipolar and had a complicated relationship with medications. She was most likely to masturbate compulsively during a manic phase. In sex therapy, she learned to develop strategies to manage the compulsion and to set safe boundaries for herself.
It’s important to find out if you’re hurting yourself because you enjoy a little pain with your sexual pleasure (as many people do) — or if you’re actually harming your body or mind because you have unresolved emotional problems or a mental health issue that should be treated. Either way, if you’ve weaponized your masturbation to a point where it makes you physically hurt or mentally unhappy, please get help before you seriously harm yourself.
3.Masturbation That Harms Others
Exhibitionists, flashers, and heavy breathers. These are all people who force others into an unwanted sexual engagement with them. There is nothing harmless — as many perpetrators claim — about forcing other people to look at their genitals, watch them touch themselves, or hear them slobbering into a phone.
It may be extreme immaturity (think teenage mentality) but more often, these behaviors are linked to a wide range of psychological disorders, from sociopaths who think they can get away with anything and don’t understand how much they frighten or disgust other (Louis CK comes to mind) to people with untreated personality disorders, compulsive disorders, anti-social disorders and so on. In some cases, getting a negative reaction and seeing or hearing people freak out is part of the thrill for the perpetrator. They want to violate your consent. I think that’s why so many of us are startled, if not repulsed, by flashers: it isn’t the penis per se, it’s someone violating our consent.
4. When Masturbation Becomes Excessive in Daily Life
You don’t need to have trauma, inhibitions, a bad childhood or a mental health challenge to become obsessed with, or compulsive about, masturbation. Most of the people who have worked with me were typical, hard-working, middle-class people who trapped themselves by nurturing unhealthy masturbation habits in adulthood.
Habits you develop as an adult can be very effectively reversed with treatment. Sadly, most adults don’t seek help until after their reckless behavior has screwed up their lives. It’s a lot harder to rebuild a life than it is to take action when you recognize signs of excess. Here are three hard lines between healthy masturbation and excessive masturbation.
When It Hurts Your Primary Relationship
Every relationship is different but one truism applies to all: if you sacrifice family time or ignore your responsibilities as a partner or parent in order to sequester yourself and masturbate, something’s wrong.
Jordan was a very straight, conservative guy. He did youth counseling at his church, had four kids, worked in a conservative industry by day and routinely locked himself in his office at night, telling his wife and kids not to interrupt him. Sometimes he begged off social occasions and kids’ sports games, apologizing that he had to catch up on paperwork. The truth was he spent most of his private hours surfing porn. He said it was stressful to deal with his wife’s complaints at the end of a long day and he was too tired to play with the kids. He needed time for himself, he said. But the more he isolated himself to look at porn, the more uncomfortable he felt around his family and the less time he spent with them.
Warren’s moral compass had drowned in a sea of sexual fluids. The consequences of his withdrawal from family life was predictable: his wife got into his computer and found his porn stash. When she confronted him, he confessed all. When she realized how much time he had devoted to porn instead of family, she was furious and quickly filed for divorce. Now he was in my office, trying to figure out how it all went so terribly wrong.
This is the prime example of how shame-based behavior implodes the lives of straight, married men who you’d think were invulnerable. Warren was sneaking off to hide behind locked doors to masturbate and lying to his wife the way he once lied to his parents about his teenage masturbation. The more he used masturbation to avoid his duties to his wife and kids, the more he rationalized it to himself.
It wasn’t the existence of the Internet, of porn, or of attractive naked people that ruined his marriage. He fell into porn as an escape from stress and then trapped himself into a vicious circle. If Warren had been able to communicate openly with his wife or set reasonable boundaries around his masturbation so it didn’t interfere with his responsibilities as a husband and dad, he would probably still be enjoying the rewards of family life.
When It Hurts Your Economic Stability
If you are choosing to masturbate instead of going to work or prioritize masturbation over your monthly bills, you could be depressed, compulsive, or just not thinking rationally about the future. While occasional indulgences are harmless, if they become a pattern, they can become a behavior trap.
Nothing jeopardizes human wellness like poverty and homelessness. If you are failing at work (or school) because of masturbation, if you are taking days off from real-world responsibilities to masturbate, it means you are masturbating excessively.
Remember, it’s not the number of times you do it, it’s about balancing it with your obligations as an adult.
When it Stunts Your Social Life
In addition to balancing your solo pleasure with your family life and economics, single men are especially prone to trap themselves in excessive masturbatory habits out of social phobias. Sometimes, they start out using porn to compensate for not having a social life but, like gaming and dating apps and everything else Internet, it’s easy to get so caught up in online life that porn becomes the reason they stay home.
This means they lose crucial opportunities to socialize. They don’t learn how to adjust to social situations and may miss out on building the social and interpersonal skills other people their age have. Being able to socially engage, feeling comfortable about meeting new people, and learning how to interact successfully in public settings cannot be learned in isolation. It requires practice. What’s disheartening is that we don’t really have any positive ways to convince sexual introverts to leave their homes and try to engage more with people.
I suggest raw honesty with yourself. If you would rather stay home and masturbate than attend any kind of social event or party, it’s time to challenge yourself to go out and make friends. Even if your masturbation isn’t excessive, if it is more important to you than making new friends or relaxing with old ones, it’s still playing a negative role in your life that could ultimately result in greater loneliness. Go out and meet people. Go out and get used to new social situations. You can teach yourself a new way to live. I’ve helped many isolated young men break out of this trap.
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If you’ve been gotten that message that masturbation is normal, healthy and just plain dandy as long as you maintain a solid, functional life, then I’ve done my job here. You are not an addict because you enjoy stroking, looking at porn, or fantasizing about kinky, LGBTQ or radical, sex.
Keep it safe, keep it consensual, and treasure the gift built into your biology — the innate capacity to know physical ecstasy.
Read more of Gloria’s evidence-based theories. Buy a book.
