EP 584: Is Porn The Problem? Ditch Fake Super Stimuli For Renewed Erotic Energy

Today, Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee are joined by Dr. Vagdevi Meunier, a licensed psychologist who specializes in sexual wellness and relationships. Many of Dr. Vagedevi's patients who complain of sexual dysfunction or difficulty achieving arousal ask her, "Could porn be the problem?" If you're concerned about porn addiction or the ill effects of too much porn, there are simple (and fun) steps couples can take to recharge their erotic energy. Learn more about the dangers of the visual super stimuli found so often in commercial porn, and why watching porn together can make a world of difference for your relationship!

To learn more about Dr. Vagdevi and her colleagues at The Center For Relationships, please visit her website or call (512) 465-2926.

Voted top Men's Health Podcast, Sex Therapy Podcast, and Prostate Cancer Podcast by FeedSpot

Dr. Mistry is a board-certified urologist and has been treating patients in the Austin and Greater Williamson County area since he started his private practice in 2007.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:09

Welcome back to the Armor Men's Health Hour with Dr. Mistry and Donna Lee.

Dr. Mistry: 0:16

Welcome back to the Armor Men's Health Hour. I'm Dr. Mistry, your host, here with my co-host Donna Lee.

Donna Lee: 0:21

Good afternoon. Happy Sunday, everybody!

Dr. Mistry: 0:23

Happy Sunday Donna, you wanna tell people how to get ahold of us?

Donna Lee: 0:26

You can certainly reach out to us by phone or email. Our phone number is(512) 238-0762. You can call us during the week or you can send an email to armormenshealth@gmail.com. That's armormenshealth@gmail.com. We've gotten some amazing emails. Every week, we get amazing emails, Dr. Mistry.

Dr. Mistry: 0:42

And we love those emails, so keep'em coming. Today I have a wonderful guest, guest that's been a partner of ours in our practice for many years. This is Dr. Vagdevi Meunier.

Donna Lee: 0:51

Woohoo!

Dr. Mistry: 0:52

Woohoo!

Dr. Vagdevi: 0:53

Woohoo.

Dr. Mistry: 0:53

Thanks for coming today, Dr. Vagdevi. She's a, a licensed psychologist, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, kind of our in-house queen of sex therapy. She has been the mentor of virtually all the sex therapy students that we get through our office. And so thanks a lot for joining us today.

Dr. Vagdevi: 1:11

You're welcome. Thank you for inviting me.

Dr. Mistry: 1:13

You know, as I've done practice and treated men with erectile dysfunction and couples with different problems and infertility issues and cancer, it amazes me that there's not a psychologist in every urologist's office.

Dr. Vagdevi: 1:25

Thank you. I agree.

Dr. Mistry: 1:27

Because it, it there's so much mental in what we deal with every single day, but more than that, there's some high level and confusing psychology issues that affect patients, right?

Dr. Vagdevi: 1:37

Absolutely. I tell a lot of my couples, you know, the biggest problem with sex is between your ears and not between your legs.

Dr. Mistry: 1:43

That's right. And it, it, and, and that, that psychological kind of obstacles that people go through affects their decisions when it comes to cancer treatments, when it comes to whether or not to go through surgery for something, whether to start a medication, but for certainly it comes with the, the, the sex stuff. Right?

Dr. Vagdevi: 1:58

Exactly. Yeah.

Dr. Mistry: 1:59

And, and patients and couples have problems within their relationship all the time. And they go to a therapist, for example. And I, I gave a talk to the family therapist about five years ago. And I, I, I had them raise their hand if they deal with sexual issues and only 10% did.

Dr. Vagdevi: 2:15

I know.

Dr. Mistry: 2:16

Is that what you find too, amongst most kind of like just kind of couples therapists?

Dr. Vagdevi: 2:19

Absolutely. I think therapists are afraid to ask about sex, just like general medical professionals are also afraid to ask about sex. Right? So somebody goes in for depression or anxiety, they see their GP, and the GP never says to them,"Tell me about your sex life." Right? They just ask them about their mood and give them some medication and send them on their way, but sex is such a huge part of what makes us feel good.

Dr. Mistry: 2:42

For sure.

Dr. Vagdevi: 2:43

And so if we're not having good healthy sex in our lives, it's gonna affect everything else.

Dr. Mistry: 2:48

For sure.

Dr. Vagdevi: 2:48

You're gonna feel so bummed out, you know?

Dr. Mistry: 2:50

Absolutely. I mean, it's, it's ironic that so many men seek coupling behavior for sex and then...

Dr. Vagdevi: 2:55

Exactly.

Dr. Mistry: 2:56

...and then, then when they have problems with it, they don't really find somebody. And there's some interesting research on that. So patients don't bring it up with their doctors either. And the number one reason is they're afraid it's gonna embarrass the doctor.

Dr. Vagdevi: 3:08

Oh, wow.

Dr. Mistry: 3:08

They're not embarrassed. They're afraid it's gonna embarrass you as their physician. So when I give talks to medical students, I always bring that up. Make yourself, you know, very open to being asked these questions, and don't be afraid if you don't know the answer.

Dr. Vagdevi: 3:21

Right. That's right. That's right. I used to teach sex therapy at St. Edwards university. That was one of the classes I taught. And we would spend the first three weeks getting everybody comfortable just saying all the words. You...

Dr. Mistry: 3:30

The words.

Dr. Vagdevi: 3:30

You don't want to be saying to a patient, right?"How, how are you doing with your erections?"

Dr. Mistry: 3:36

Yeah. That's right. That's right. You know, and, and, and when, and when you're asking like an infertility couple about whether they're in the vagina, I mean, these aren't like terms that they, that they're aware of.

Dr. Vagdevi: 3:47

I know.

Dr. Mistry: 3:47

And so we try to use colloquial terms that kind of, that they understand. What I'd like to start talking about today, first is about, about couples, you know?

Dr. Vagdevi: 3:56

Okay.

Dr. Mistry: 3:56

You know, when couples have trouble and they're arguing, or they're having some, some issue and they, and you don't talk about the sex stuff, I feel like that's a big pink elephant in the room that's that's just been completely ignored. Right?

Dr. Vagdevi: 4:07

That's right. Exactly.

Dr. Mistry: 4:08

And so when, when I'm what counseling couples that are having trouble, but let's say you have a couple that hasn't been having sex for a while. Breast cancer patients is a, is a great example. You know? As she's going through therapy or going through reconstruction, often time, intimacy is gone. And so the sexual habit is lost.

Dr. Vagdevi: 4:24

That's right.

Dr. Mistry: 4:24

So I'd love for you to talk about sexual habits and, and what are some ways that we can break or expand upon sexual habits and, and what are some good ways to not get into negative sexual habits?

Dr. Vagdevi: 4:33

Yeah. That's a great question. You know, I could talk for an hour on this, so I'm gonna try to be brief. Basically, the problem is that when we meet somebody and we fall in love with them and we have sex, in the very beginning, we're really open to having all kinds of different kinds of sex. We're very adventurous. We, you know,"I love you. You're so cute. And whatever you wanna do, I'll do." Right? And then...

Dr. Mistry: 4:52

Wait, wait, wait. Where's that one?

Dr. Vagdevi: 4:54

That's in the beginning.

Dr. Mistry: 4:55

Oh, wait. Okay.

Donna Lee: 4:56

The first two, three months.

Dr. Mistry: 4:57

Oh man.

Dr. Vagdevi: 4:57

Oh no, two weeks.

Dr. Mistry: 4:58

I missed, I missed on that one.

Dr. Vagdevi: 5:01

Right? And so both partners are really willing to be adventurous and creative. And then they get together, and you start to have sex with the same person 150 times. What do you do? Each of you begin to have a list of things that are okay to do. And what both people are doing is trying to manage their anxiety, their stress, how willing they are to do this, that, the other thing. So over time, they both begin to shorten that list. They cross things off that list."Well, I can't have blow jobs anymore. So I'm just not even gonna ask about that. And certainly can't do anal. You know? Nobody's gonna...my wife is not gonna let me do that." Or,"My husband isn't gonna wanna do that." Whatever. So they crossed things off their list. Now, five years later, you're having sex with the same person. Now it's a thousand times that you've had sex. Hopefully.

Dr. Mistry: 5:48

Hopefully.

Dr. Vagdevi: 5:48

And your list has gotten so short that there's only three or four things you do. So what happens with that is it's impossible to have healthy, creative, exhilarating sex if there's a rhythm and a pattern and a script.

Dr. Mistry: 6:04

Anything's gonna be boring.

Dr. Vagdevi: 6:05

Anything is gonna be boring.

Dr. Mistry: 6:06

That's right.

Dr. Vagdevi: 6:07

So what they've done is they've highlighted or, or worked towards anxiety management, trying to reduce anxiety and stress and reduce the list in order to achieve that. And then they begin to have erectile problems, arousal problems, orgasmic problems.

Dr. Mistry: 6:23

And now they're embarrassed...

Dr. Vagdevi: 6:24

And they're embarrassed, but they're beginning to look at the plumbing. They're saying,"What's wrong with your plumbing, that you can't have an orgasm?" It's not the plumbing. It's the fact that your orgasmic threshold may have gone up because there's only three things you're doing.

Dr. Mistry: 6:36

Right. And that's...

Dr. Vagdevi: 6:37

Right?

Dr. Mistry: 6:37

This is so, so, so in that comes some of the advice of like,"Well, maybe you just need a new girlfriend," right? Or a new boyfriend, which is what this idea that you just need something else...

Dr. Vagdevi: 6:45

Exactly.

Dr. Mistry: 6:45

...to get you excited again.

Dr. Vagdevi: 6:47

And I think there is a lot of misinformation about,"Oh, because sex is boring, you should liven it up with a brand new person." Instead of thinking,"Maybe what we're trying to do in bed is what is not working." And we can liven it up by simply increasing that list, going from anxiety reduction to anxiety tolerance. When you begin to say,"Okay, I've had sex with you 250 times and it's gotten very boring, so we're gonna try something new." It's gonna create a little anxiety, but along with anxiety comes adrenaline. So the thrill of doing something new, pushing the boundaries, really experimenting, is going to bring back a little erotic energy into the relationship.

Dr. Mistry: 7:28

I love it. And you know, really just even just a, a small conversation between a couple, it doesn't have to be a deep one about how,"Man, you don't excite me in bed anymore." I think that, you know, really approaching it by,"You know, let's try something new." I love giving couples homework assignments.

Dr. Vagdevi: 7:43

Good.

Dr. Mistry: 7:43

You know, I, I love that. I love this idea, especially when a couple hasn't had sex for a long time due to some medical reason or something like that, I love trying to introduce small little activities that they do. And I think that having a sex therapist, you know, may, may, may help some couples do that. Right?

Dr. Vagdevi: 7:57

Exactly. And a lot of them are really afraid to look for a sex therapist or go find a sex therapist. They're afraid of being belitled or mocked, or they're afraid of, sometimes they're afraid that they're gonna talk to a sex therapist and a sex therapist is gonna want them to do really weird, kinky things in bed. And the fact is most...

Dr. Mistry: 8:13

Wait, wait, wait, then that's not gonna happen? Get outta here.

Dr. Vagdevi: 8:16

Depends on the kinda sex therapist. There are weird, kinky kinds of things you can do in bed.

Dr. Mistry: 8:21

We will put them on our Facebook page.

Dr. Vagdevi: 8:24

But you know, most couples out there are trying to do something that's more traditional, more vanilla. And I say, you can have awesome vanilla sex if you know how to bring that erotic energy back in. And let me tell you, can I say one thing to men out there?

Dr. Mistry: 8:38

Yeah.

Dr. Vagdevi: 8:39

Men have to learn how to transfer their arousal patterning from visual stimuli to tactile stimuli. So what they do early, and this is not their fault. Our society teaches men how to get a hard on from looking at something. So if you look hot, I'm gonna get an erection. The problem is I'm not gonna look hot as your wife for a hundred years, right? I'm, I'm gonna lose it after...

Dr. Mistry: 9:02

What am I learning today?...Honey, you look wonderful.

Dr. Vagdevi: 9:06

Thank you.

Dr. Mistry: 9:07

And you will for...I'm talking to my wife!

Dr. Vagdevi: 9:10

So at some point, both of us, and it's not just me, it's not just the wife. It's also the husband. We don't look so hot. If we had a mirror on the top of the ceiling and we were watching ourselves having sex...

Dr. Mistry: 9:20

You've been to my bedroom.

Donna Lee: 9:21

As long as I'm flat, we're good.

Dr. Vagdevi: 9:23

So what do we have to do? We have to go from learning how to get aroused from looking at things--this is why they, you start using porn--to really learning how to get aroused from feeling things.

Dr. Mistry: 9:34

One of the things that confounds me when I'm get, when I get asked is about pornography and porn addiction. I'll give you a classic patient.

Dr. Vagdevi: 9:43

Okay.

Dr. Mistry: 9:43

A classic patient will be a guy who comes in, he'll come in for some other problem--testicular pain or erectile dysfunction or something. You know, you can kind of tell that he's something on his mind. Usually the story's gonna be that he has trouble either getting an erection or achieving orgasm with his partner. And he's wondering if maybe his use of pornography is getting into it. And he wants to know if he's addicted to porn. And I, I almost always tell him first that if you have to ask, you probably are. So, you know, not to get too much into the scientific weeds about it, but maybe you could give us some, some of your background or, or thoughts on when is it enough? Why does it kind of impact a man's sexuality? You know, maybe even some advice on how people kind of work themselves out of it?

Dr. Vagdevi: 10:24

So is porn addiction real? Yes. But you know what? You can get addicted to just about anything. You wanna go gaze at grass growing? You can get addicted to that. And what addiction is, is...

Dr. Mistry: 10:35

Not quite as much fun though.

Dr. Vagdevi: 10:36

Not quite as much fun. True. Well, you know, it depends on you.

Dr. Mistry: 10:39

And there's not that many varieties of grass.

Donna Lee: 10:41

Depends on how much like grass.

Dr. Vagdevi: 10:43

Well, you know, lots of different kinds of grass that are quite fun.

Dr. Mistry: 10:46

Alright.

Dr. Vagdevi: 10:48

The idea is that any addiction is a feelings management technology. Trying to have sex with your partner, doesn't work out, doesn't go so well. Maybe you don't get an erection. Maybe you don't have an orgasm. You get bummed out, and you say to yourself,"Oh, I'm not getting good sex. So let me go watch this porn video and then I'll have a better erection and I'll have better orgasm." And the first 5, 10, 15 times that'll be true. Right? But then what'll happen is you begin to turn to the porn more and more and more and less to your partner. You begin to see the porn as an easy solution. Having sex becomes like an itch that you just itch or that you're relieving yourself, right? You're like,"Oh, I feel some desire. Oh, I'm gonna go to the porn." The problem is the porn industry has made billions on this, and they can provide you with a huge variety...

Dr. Mistry: 11:40

Huge variety.

Dr. Vagdevi: 11:41

Huge variety.

Dr. Mistry: 11:42

Allegedly.

Dr. Vagdevi: 11:43

Allegedly. You wouldn't know anything about that, right, Dr. Mistry? Yeah. They're gonna provide you with brand new stuff all the time. And so the variety, the stimulus value of porn is infinite, but what happens then is you begin to develop your arousal patterning around, first, visual stimuli. So you're really reinforcing getting aroused based on what you're looking at. Because porn is a two dimensional view of two people, two people that are not you, having sex. And so you're not actually feeling the feelings they're having. Most of the time, if it's commercial porn, they're not really having any feelings. They're faking it. And so you're really getting aroused...

Donna Lee: 12:28

What?

Dr. Mistry: 12:28

I don't think so. That, that's...

Donna Lee: 12:31

It's so authentic.

Dr. Mistry: 12:32

That, that pizza delivery guy, I think he was into it.

Donna Lee: 12:35

With his pepperoni.

Dr. Vagdevi: 12:36

It wasn't the pizza delivery guy. It was the housewife who was faking it.

Dr. Mistry: 12:40

Oh my goodness.

Dr. Vagdevi: 12:41

See, and he didn't know.

Dr. Mistry: 12:41

I forgot...

Dr. Vagdevi: 12:42

It's a little harder for him to fake it. Right? Because he actually has to show up on TV with all his equipment.

Dr. Mistry: 12:48

I also think that, you know, it, it creates this expectation that you get it whenever you want it.

Dr. Vagdevi: 12:53

That's right. It's available 24/7.

Dr. Mistry: 12:55

In some ways you're by yourself. So you don't have to like, think about the feelings of another person or, you know, all the stuff that we put into like the coupling in the relationship. And I'm actually worried that younger kids today with the wide availability of pornography, the rampant use of it, is gonna take away from some of that social patterning and conditioning of how to like, have somebody get attracted to you and...

Dr. Vagdevi: 13:17

Right. It also takes away from what sex is supposed to be about, which is bringing yourself to an intimate experience with another human being. So sex isn't about what happens between the erection and the orgasm. Sex is all of the things that happen before, during, and after that experience. But porn just makes it about arousal to orgasm.

Dr. Mistry: 13:40

And it's easy. And I think that a lot of couples get affected by it. So if, if somebody thinks or if a couple feels that that may be kind of an issue, is there a way to get out of that patterning?

Dr. Vagdevi: 13:50

Yes. The first thing to do is to tell your partner about it, and tell them that you're doing this, because the moment you let the secret out, it begins to lose its stimulus value. Right?

Dr. Mistry: 14:00

That's right.

Dr. Vagdevi: 14:01

The other is, if you're watching porn, watch it with your partner, because what'll happen is if the two of you begin to choose porn, that both of you are aroused to, you're going to choose very different kind of porn.

Dr. Mistry: 14:13

Which is really a lesson for a lot of women out there. Right? Which is this idea that...

Donna Lee: 14:16

The man's cheating by watching.

Dr. Mistry: 14:17

...being, being completely against it isn't going to help anything.

Dr. Vagdevi: 14:21

No, it just drives him underground. Yeah. He's gonna do it more and more out of sight. Right? And the other thing is that for women get out of the moral attitude about it. Right?

Dr. Mistry: 14:32

It's happening.

Dr. Vagdevi: 14:32

Yes.

Dr. Mistry: 14:33

Yeah. You can't. I mean...

Dr. Vagdevi: 14:34

And, and you know, there's no moral judgment here. Let's get out of the moral judgment, because what that does is it puts one partner kind of in a superior position relative to the other person. Now I don't do any porn, but you do good for you, but that's not helping.

Dr. Mistry: 14:47

That's right. There's not, that's not helping you as a couple.

Dr. Vagdevi: 14:49

That's right.

Dr. Mistry: 14:49

It's not gonna help, you know, him. And I, and I think that, that when people get very, very much kind of used to visual, like, like direct and, uh, you know, very dramatic...

Dr. Vagdevi: 14:59

A super stimulus.

Dr. Mistry: 15:00

Super stimulus, that smaller stimulus, it becomes harder, really.

Dr. Vagdevi: 15:04

Absolutely.

Dr. Mistry: 15:05

Or, you know, not harder in fact, you know?

Dr. Vagdevi: 15:07

So there's actually some research. Can I talk about this? The effect that people get from intense pleasure they get really can be from what's called a supernormal stimulus. This was research done by Deirdre Barrett and Niko Tinbergen, a Nobel Prize winning ethologist, describe the supernormal stimulus is a stimulus that evokes a much larger response than one that has evolutionary significance.

Dr. Mistry: 15:33

Right. And you can totally see how people can get addicted to that. What a great conversation, Dr. Vagdevi, thank you so much for joining us. We're gonna have your information for your clinic on our Facebook page and really look forward to making you a regular part of our show. So thank you so much.

Dr. Vagdevi: 15:46

I'd love that. Thank you.

Donna Lee: 15:47

Thanks for coming in. And we used a bunch of Sunday words today. Didn't we?

Dr. Mistry: 15:50

Oh, boy. Donna. All right. So, why don't you tell people how to get ahold of us? We'll take your comments, of course. You know, positive and negative, if necessary, I guess. But you know, this show was really trying to get at difficult to talk about topics. And I think that we tried to approach broach, uh, some of those today. So, uh, thank you for joining us.

Speaker 1: 16:07

The Armor Men's Health Hour is brought to you by Urology Specialists of Austin. For questions, or to schedule an appointment, please call 512-238-0762 or online at armormenshealth.com.