Your Heart On Porn: How Pornography Affects Your Heart

Warning: This post is about how pornography affects your heart. But it isn’t your usual self-help article about how to cure porn addiction. Rather, it is a personal, open sharing about my own struggle with porn and ways in which I have learned to accept, live with, and transcend it since I made a decision to live a heart-centered life. 

I love porn. There, I said it. The problem is, it’s an unrequited kind of love. Porn does not love me back. It won’t bring me coffee in bed, keep me warm at night, and take care of me when I’m sick. It entertains me and distracts me, but it doesn’t make my heart sing. And what I most long for is to sing and dance to the rhythm of my heart.”

– Gabriel Gonsalves

One of the first things I tell every new client at the beginning of our coaching partnership is that I am only an expert at one and only thing: being Gabriel.

I know what works and what doesn’t work for me, what lights me up, and what turns me off. I have over 40 years of uninterrupted experience at being me. Similarly, you, my reader, are only a true expert at being you. So, I’m not going to tell you what to do, or what to believe. Instead, I will just share my own experience and learnings along this journey of self-discovery, as it relates to my struggle with porn and my decision to live a heart centered life.

I love porn. There, I said it. The first porn I ever watched was an old Playgirl Magazine my mom had hidden in the last drawer of her vanity closet when I was seven. I don’t think I ever told her about it. Surely it is a topic of conversation reserved for someday when I join her in ‘heaven’. In the heaven I plan to go to when I die, my mom and I can talk about porn without any feelings of guilt.

From the wrinkled Playgirl Magazine, y went on to Easy Rider Magazines, graduating to movies on Betamax and VHS tapes, to CD’s to DVD’s to the easily accessible internet downloads our kids are growing up with today. I’ve watched it all, gay, straight, bi, trans, bondage, interracial, leather, the now titanic list goes on and on. I even watched porn involving our four-legged friends. Growing up in a very conservative, Catholic home, where no one ever talked about sex, my thirst for learning and experience drove me to do many things, in many different ways, with many different people, in many different places, and many different times. Curiosity for that which we all do, but no one is talking about has been one of the driving forces of my life.

Why did I love porn? For many years, porn was there for me whenever I ‘needed’ it. It comforted me when my mom was sick with cancer, after every break-up, or when I felt the loneliest and most inadequate in my life. It was there as a teacher, a form of inspiration that temporarily calmed my thirst for intimacy, connection, and joy. As much as I loved porn, the problem was that it was an unrequited kind of love. Porn did not love me back. It was always very short-lived. I felt tired and drained afterward. Sooner or later feelings of guilt, frustration, and shame would inevitably rise to the surface again. And a feeling of emptiness would find its way back into my stomach and chest as I had to confront what my heart already knew, but my mind denied: porn is not real. It is a highly stimulating mental illusion that momentarily imprisons your heart.

How Pornography Affects your Heart?

There’s a lot of scientific research on the effect that porn has on the human brain, and how the visual overstimulation of the lower brain leads to a change not only in brain chemistry but also in the actual neurological patterning of the brain. In essence, porn changes your brain. But what about the heart? What effect does porn have on the heart?

My own observation and experience led me to believe that porn numbs my heart. What I’ve observed is that my own limited, and somewhat primitive mind cannot tell the difference between what is real or not. So, when I see a highly desirable and attractive body on my computer screen my brain thinks it’s time to preserve my species and make babies, and therefore sends all the necessary neurological signals to the heart, adrenal glands, reproductive glands, and before I know a large volumes of blood is now rushing all the way down to where it just feels so good. But the problem is, as I said earlier, it is not real.

While my primitive brain wants to mate and find pleasure, my hearts wants to connect. But the fact remains that there isn’t a real person right there with me to connect with, be intimate, touch, smell, feel, and therefore, an imbalance of some form is now created. When I do it over and over again until a new habit is formed then my body has to adapt to all this hyper-stimulation I’m giving it. How? By becoming numb. In essence, this is what happens to our brains when it is overexposed to the visual stimulus of attractive and sexy mates that porn provides. And the same happens in our hearts as the brain, through the vagus nerve, begins to send neurological signals prompting the heart to ‘stop feeling’ and start numbing down. Add to this all those feelings of frustration, disconnection, and loneliness and you now have a fully closed heart, or what the Institute of HeartMath would call an incoherent heart with incoherent heart rhythm waves that can be clearly observed in a monitor.

Our hearts crave human connection. Mine always has. After moving through one of the most sexually promiscuous periods of my life while living in LA, I can now conclude that I was confusing being ‘horny’ with being’ lonely’. What I most longed and craved for during those lonely years of my life was connecting with another human being at a much deeper and intimate level. Porn could provide hours and hours of distraction and excitement, but as the character, Emma tells Dexter in the movie ‘One Day’ when talking about meaningless sex, it “won’t take care of you when you’re old.”  For me, porn, no matter how gonzo it can get, won’t bring me coffee in bed, keep me warm at night, and take care of me when I’m sick.

The Heart Centered Solution

As a Heart Intelligence Coach and Seminar Leader, my main intention is to help people discover, open, and live from their hearts. I call this living a heart centered or heart intelligent life. For me, a heart intelligent life is one where I live each day deliberately from the depth of my own heart. To me, this means living from the awareness of what is real and true for me at any given moment while being present to my own feelings and to what my heart longing for while taking inspired action in the direction of my dreams. Simply, a heart intelligent life is one where I get to love myself fully and completely even though my limited mind and senses crave the instant satisfaction that porn can offer me.

Since I began my own journey of embodying and living a heart intelligent life, I’ve experienced levels of intimacy and connection with friends, clients, workshop participants and even strangers in the street that surpass any experience I ever had. In fact, for the past two years, I’ve lived a celibate life, choosing not to engage in sexual activity with another person other than me, of course. Yet, much to my surprise, I’ve never felt so connected to others, alive, real, present in the unfolding of my own life. The Heart Intelligence practices I began to practice each day, taught me how to embrace and transcend my own feelings of loneliness, disconnection, and pain. And most importantly, they made me aware of many of the behavior and habits I engaged in to disconnect from my own disconnect.

Some Useful Tips

If you’re anything like me and can relate to what I’m sharing in this article, here are some tips or ideas that I’ve found very helpful along my struggle with porn. Perhaps they might help you too, not just with porn, but also with anything you might be engaging in that is keeping your heart numb (for example Facebook, Twitter, Video Games, Fantasizing, Junk-food, etc.) Because I know that our human hearts are beating before, during, and after watching porn – even when we promised ourselves, our partners, and even God that we would not do it again – my tips are broken down depending on where you are…

1) Before Watching Porn

Apply “The Golden Rule of Triggers”: whatever you feel compelled to do, don’t. Whenever you feel compelled to watch porn, instead take a deep breath into your heart to a count of 4, out to a count of 4. Feel your feet to ground yourself, feel your heart pounding, and just touch your heart. Do this for at least one minute. This will decrease your physiological arousal and return you to a relaxed state. Then you can ask yourself any one – or all  – of these questions:

• What is my heart longing for right now?
• Am I horny or am I lonely?
• What am I avoiding or not wanting to deal with?
• What would be the most loving thing I could do for myself right now?

Be sure to really listen to the answers that come from your heart, and not the ones from your primitive brain that all it wants is to spread your seed all over the world via your computer’s screen!

2) While Watching Porn

Watch porn consciously.  Start by becoming aware of your breath, and the beating of your heart. Observe your thoughts, your physical sensations, and the feelings that are arising in you moment by moment. If you’re going to watch porn, you may as well do so while you’re fully awake. Connect with that part of you that is aware that you are aware. Witness the whole experience of watching porn as if there was a camera in the room capturing every detail of the experience. Find appreciation for the actors who are performing so that you could experience your own physical pleasure. Bless them. Recognize that they too are humans just like you who have a longing to feel connected to others, and to love and feel loved. The worst thing that could happen is that you’ll be a little turned off. The best thing that could happen, is you could ask yourself the four questions in Tip #1.

3) After Watching Porn

Be Grateful for the Experience. Take a moment to appreciate and thank your body for its ability to feel pleasure and joy. Notice what thoughts or feelings begin to arise within you after all the excitement is gone. Are you feeling guilty? Shame? Frustrated? Calm? Chilled? Notice it all. Repeat affirmations such as, ‘I love and accept my sexuality’ and ‘Even though I’m feeling guilty for watching porn, I choose to love myself anyway.’ It will probably feel weird at first but do it anyway.  If you notice any feelings of guilt and shame, forgive yourself. One way you can do this is by standing in front of the mirror and saying to yourself, “I forgive myself for judging myself for watching porn. I honor, I appreciate, and I commit to myself that…. (make a commitment or agreement with yourself to do what you really want instead – perhaps follow the Golden Rule of Triggers in Tip #1?)

The Ultimate Truth about Porn

To me, porn is just porn. I’d be a hypocrite and out of integrity if I claimed that porn is bad, evil, or even a sin. I believe porn has a place in our society, and that in many cases can bring a tremendous amount of healing, especially in a society where sexuality has been demonized and repressed. God knows that if it wasn’t for porn, I probably would have engaged in very unhealthy behavior that could have been very destructive to my health. My experiences with porn gave me the opportunity to connect with, embrace, and love those aspects of myself I grew up feeling so ashamed of.

The problem is when I use porn as a substitute for real life. When I numb myself, my own mind and brain with it, and stop living a creative, connected, and meaningful live. When I use it to disconnect from my own disconnect and from others and to escape the crude and raw aspects of life that seem unbearable at times. When I use it to find comfort or relief in the dark of the night, while my heart craves for a love an intimacy that no porn, or Facebook, Twitter, or virtual reality game can ever provide.

Ultimately, there is no substitute for real connection and intimacy between two human beings. There is no substitute for the experience of seeing and being seen, touching and being touched, feeling and being felt, and ultimately letting another person in so they can see those vulnerable and imperfect parts of me. There’s no substitute for being in the presence of another human being who loves me unconditionally and deeply understands and knows that he or she is a mirror to me, and that when it comes to our human hearts, the connection we all long for is one and the same, like the red blood that runs through our veins.

What I most long for in life is to sing and dance to the rhythm of my own heart. And the ultimate truth, after a long experiential journey walking with porn by my side, is that porn does not make my heart sing. Only real human connection, presence and touch can do that.

What about you? What is your ultimate truth? What is your heart longing for my friend?

Photo by Carsten