Despite the countless studies claiming that porn is bad for your brain and your relationships, there are just as many studies saying that porn does not cause irrevocable harm to the brain or your sex life. In fact, it’s probably good for you.

As for the old chestnut that too much porn viewing can lead to addiction The consensus is still pretty split on that one, but some sex researchers believe it’s important to differentiate between an addiction and a compulsion, in the same vein as compulsive nail-biting.

People who say pornography is an addiction, they tend to come from the addiction community and not always the field of mental health or sexuality.

They tend to say ‘This is dangerous, porn is fraught with danger. You better watch out, it’s a slippery slope.’ It was sort of the same as people in the drug addiction community saying if you smoke pot, you better watch out or you’ll be doing heroin.

Porn isn’t a replacement for the real thing, but research has shown that having a healthy masturbation schedule actually makes us better sex partners.

While being good for your physical and mental health it’s a way to continue making sure that your own sexual needs are being met outside of the bedroom, which is likely why it’s so common, even for those in relationships.

Surveys show that anywhere from 70 to 95 percent of adult men and women get it on alone, and, yes, that includes people involved in monogamous relationships.

According to Kinsey research, 40 percent of men and 30 percent of women in relationships masturbate. A survey of Playboy readers found 72 percent of married men masturbate, and a similar Redbook survey found 68 percent of married women do it too.

Watching porn in a relationship isn’t cheating, just like watching it when you’re single doesn’t make you immoral or perpetuate our singledom.

It’s a necessary part of self-love. Besides, if you’re worried that porn might be ruining your sexcapades or your relationships, perhaps they weren’t that good to begin with.

Exploring your sexuality is how you find out what you like. There’s a reason that the first step in every queer man’s coming out process is looking at pornography.

Unless you’re exposed to sexual practices outside of what you’ve been told is acceptable, it’s hard to become comfortable with your own desires or normalize them in your brain.

Just as sex Ed is how we find out about the mechanics of sex — what goes where — pornography is how many of us begin to figure out how that relates to our sexualities. Pornography isn’t an ideal replacement for sex education but it’s an excellent education as to what’s out there for you to explore.

This isn’t just true for gay men. Porn allows all users a safe space to work out proclivities they might be uncomfortable elsewhere, like sleep porn or rape porn.

There’s not always an opportunity in daily life for a primer on the wide world of tentacle erotica, and finding these resources for ourselves is how many of us become exposed to them.

How else would people in the BDSM and leather communities have figured out that’s what they were into without some hot muscle bear action to help show them the way?

For those who find themselves entrenched in a niche community, porn can be a way to continue to explore your sexual horizons and reeducate your desires.
Porn is by no means an instructional manual for how to have sex. It’s a fantasy, and sometimes it’s a very silly one.
No one (or at least very few people) enjoys having sex the way people have sex in porn. No one (or at least very few people) is turned on by spitting into a butt, or gagging on a penis, or washing their face with baby batter, or any of the other porn tropes that lead radical fems and anti-porn activists to conclude that porn is dangerous and destructive to women.

But just because these things are kinda gross and unseemly to you doesn’t mean that no one likes them, and just because there are a few things you’ve seen in porn that you wouldn’t do in your own sex life doesn’t mean there’s nothing you can learn from watching porn.

Regardless of whether you think you’re the Yitzhak Pearlman of having sex, you probably aren’t; you’re probably just OK at it.

And just as aspiring concert violinists learn how to better their craft by watching a virtuoso play, your own sexual repertoire could similarly benefit from watching an adult performer whose skills you respect and admire.
Porn doesn’t just give you the skills to learn how to better please your partner. It also can help give you skills for how to better please yourself.

If you masturbate semi-regularly, chances are you know enough about yourself and your own body and what it likes to be able to ask for it in bed, which will ultimately lead to a much more satisfying sex life, whether alone or with a partner.

Practice makes perfect, people. So go find your porn of choice and enjoy.