The Porn Circuit | Covenant Eyes Internet Accountability and Filtering

CHapter 4: 32 flavors: Why we like sexual variety
“Show me 12 red blocks and I’ll want to see a blue one,” Weiss says.
So why isn’t one porn image enough?
As was explained in prior chapters, people learn through life experience to be sexually aroused
by body types, places, and situations, and this list of sexual interests can be very short or a mile
long.
In the past, a single image would have been enough to
arouse a man who now looks at a stream of Internet
pornography to maintain the same arousal, says
therapist Dr. Peter Kleponis, the founder of Integrity
Restored. 5 Over time this man has neurologically
attached his brain to be most aroused when viewing a
wide variety of images and acts.
“He conditions his brain to only really be sexually
aroused to this constant parade of different women, of
different sexual images,” Kleponis says.
The neuroscience behind porn
Indeed, the variety of porn on the Internet has an appeal.
But the reasons behind it are more complex than a rat’s attention to a parade of new mates.
As stated in previous chapters, because of neural plasticity our brains and our sexuality are
molded by our experiences, interactions, and other means of learning, which is why people
vary in what they say is attractive or what turns them on. Through interactions, explorations,
and even fantasy neural pathways are established that define a specific type of person or
activity as arousing.
This may help explain why men combing through Internet pornography often delay orgasm
until they find an image “worthy” of climax.
In fact, some porn addicts have no interest in variety.
“With over 25 years of working with sex addicts, there are some men — and women for that
matter — who stick to vanilla, whatever vanilla is,” Weiss says. “They are neurologically
attached to vanilla, and they never up that.” 7
This means some people who use pornography — even addicts — never sink deeper into porn
than the models of Playboy or Playgirl.
The Porn Circuit | 22
Porn and Anonymity 6
86%
86% of men are likely to click on porn
sites if no-one else will know