Are You A Porn Widow?

You like him, he likes you. So why can’t he rise to the occasion? Joe Madden investigates how porn is robbing an entire generation of a ‘normal’ sex life.

- Joe Madden

I’ve known Alec* for more than a decade. He’s in his early thirties, good-looking and a successful writer. He’s also funny, popular and charmingly gutter-brained. But for a while there, unbeknown to me, he was struggling with a uniquely 21st-century problem.

During an extended period of bachelordom, Alec fell into some bad habits in the crotch department. With little else to fill the quiet midweek nights, he’d fire up porn sites and tug himself insensible – again and again. And again. “I’d still have been wanking a lot if it wasn’t for porn,” he admits, “but porn tipped me over into wanking like a subhuman.”

Time-consuming as they were, Alec’s chimp-like masturbation habits didn’t seem anything to fret about – until he finally got himself a girlfriend. And that’s where it gets complicated, because there, faced with a real living, breathing body, he failed to get an erection – again and again. “Thankfully, she was extremely patient and understanding,” he winces, “because it took a properly long time to fix.” (Spoiler alert: the two are now engaged.)

Alec’s story is by no means unusual. Porn-induced erectile dysfunction (PIED) among young men is the hot topic in sexual health right now. It’s highly likely you know a man with PIED, and you may even be in a relationship with one: if your man is often unable to ‘keep up his end of the deal’ during adult funtime, you may well be a porn widow. In fact, the unprecedented accessibility of X-rated material is creating thousands of new porn widows every day. According to the Sexual Advice Association, a staggering 75% of British men aged 18 to 25 – the first generation to grow up with porn ‘on tap’ – have experienced erectile dysfunction issues.