What Constitutes A Porn "Addiction"?

On the documentary True Life: I’m Addicted to Porn, Adam, a father of four, is separated from his wife over his porn “addiction.” She will not reconcile until he stops watching porn, and stops masturbating.

Adam is a 28-year-old devout Christian who married his high school sweetheart. He’s been forced to move into a shitty bachelor pad when he could not comply with his wife’s demand that he stop, not only masturbating to porn, but masturbating altogether, which is something that Adam does on a daily basis. They continue to refer to his quest to rid himself of masturbation as “getting sober.”

My question is, how does she know when he’s masturbating, and why is masturbation a deal breaker?

The couple is in counseling and Adam has called on the XXX Church, a Christian anti-pornography group that utilizes a “hip” aesthetic to convince people that not liking porn is “cool.”

Craig, the founder of XXX Church, came over Adam’s house and his first order of business was to change the password on Adam’s porn sites so that he couldn’t access them. Ironically—or perhaps just weirdly—Adam’s password was “ilovedenise.” Denise is his wife. In the end, he checked himself into a sexual addiction recovery center as a way to patch things up with his wife.

The fact that the couples’ religion played such a heavy role in what they view as a problem makes me suspicious of whether or not Adam is truly addicted to porn, or if he and his wife have been conditioned to think that his natural impulses to jerk off are evil and wrong.

However, one of the other subjects of the show, Brandon, seems to have a full-fledged addiction to porn, which is indicated by his “Born for Porn” T-shirt.”

He’s 26, unemployed, and lives with his grandma. He watches porn 5 – 10 hours a day, visits an adult video shop called Spanky’s on a “daily basis,” and admits that porn keeps him detached from women, because it allows him to enjoy women without having to deal with their real-life drama.

The third person featured on the show was 22-year-old Michele.

Her porn name is Jayden James, which is sort of disturbing because that’s Britney Spears’ second son’s name. Michele/Jayden’s biggest concern is that she doesn’t think she makes her parents proud, but doesn’t want to give up what she loves most, which is getting paid for sex.

Like Adam, her situation didn’t exactly seem like an addiction, but instead an inner struggle between doing what she likes, and doing what her family members would like. Ultimately, she came to the conclusion that “my decisions are my decisions and I’m happy with myself.”

Bonus Clip!
You have to see how stereotypically sleazy, yet completely unenthusiastic this porn director is.