Not many people talk about this.

(Why I stopped watching digital pornography)

This post feels like a slight departure from what I usually write about on Live Deliberately. It’s an expansion of an article I wrote for the excellent Moi Magazine. I’ve decided to share it here as well, in the hope it reaches a wider audience, because it’s a theme that very few people I know ever talk about openly. But in a world of ever-growing distractions that I think take us away from how we might truly want to live, I thought it important to share (not without a fair amount of vulnerability from me!). A grab of the article is below, the full piece is below that:

I stopped watching digital pornography three years ago.

In my late thirties.

I suspect my sexual journey to that point was like that of most men of my generation. As a teenager, the most erotic things in my house were the bra section of the Target catalogue, a few bikini photos in the surfing magazines I’d save up to buy, or the one naughty VCR in our family collection; a scratchy recording of the steamy thriller Body Heat with clear instructions in capital letters, ‘AO – DO NOT WATCH!’. The first and only Playboy I saw in my childhood was one my brother and I found down in a creek, stuffed into a mildewy suitcase.

Leaving home at 17 opened up a whole new world for a good boy from the suburbs. At my first job, shift workers would watch porno videos in the break room, and magazines were traded like finished newspapers. People talked openly about their favourite pornstars. My home was near Sydney’s Kings Cross and its many strip joints, and on international work trips, there were regular group outings to those spots where the best strippers and prostitutes could be found.

But then, around the start of the 2010s, something else arrived.

Something no one really spoke about.

No, this was a private thing.

Digital pornography.

By which, in the interests of being specific, I mean websites such as pornhub, RedTube and xvideos. Websites where anyone with access to the internet can scroll through a seemingly endless supply of pornographic videos. Websites that, up to this point in the history of technology (an industry I’ve worked in), I would suggest, might represent one of the most addictive, brain-warping creations humanity has ever seen. Why do I think that?

Well, I’ll speak to my experience.

While I’m happily married and have been exclusively committed to one person for more than two decades, I can still admit that diversity interests me. Walking along the beach as a teenager, I’d see girls and women in bikinis and be amazed by so many of them. As a backpacker, I saw beautiful women all over the world. So when I opened up a pornographic website in my early twenties, I was stunned that there would be 30 beautiful women on the screen. I could click any video and imagine myself having sex with any one of them, and then with one scroll, there were 30 more. Below them, another 30 more! It was completely, overwhelmingly, and incredibly indulgent. And it was also free.

I found that over time, my brain struggled to tell the difference between a digital experience on a website and a real-life sexual encounter. Scrolling through websites like this is what I imagine walking through a nightclub might feel like if that nightclub were engineered to present bodies as endlessly willing, interchangeable, and on demand. I could step into that club, select my perfect sexual encounter from a smorgasbord of opportunities, and then an hour later, walk back in and see that the buffet has been refreshed with a whole new room of women. In fact, if I just swiped my index finger up, the crowd could change every five seconds. I’ll admit, this began to feel more fun and easier than most real-world sexual experiences.

But three years ago, on a beach holiday, my wife and I were chatting. It was late in the afternoon, we were salty, sun-drenched, and a few drinks in. I brought up something that felt hard to raise, and that I’d kept quiet for years - that our sexual appetites were misaligned. Or to be clear, I usually wanted sex more often than she did.

The conversation felt important.

Mature.

Emotionally intelligent.

I learned from her (it only took me almost two decades) that while she could feel incredibly aroused at some moments of the month, it was the complete opposite at others. Often, for her, it was more of a timing thing than a lack of desire for me as a lover that I should take offence to. Enjoying all the honesty, and with some Dutch courage from the drinks, I told her that I watched digital pornography. When she asked how often I went to these sites, I said sometimes every day, more when I was away on a work trip. I told her, defensively, that probably every guy she knew had been to these sites too, and that those who said they didn’t were probably lying. She is an open-minded, well-travelled and very intelligent person, but she was shocked - we’d been together for 15 years by then (so I’d kept it a pretty good secret). As the conversation progressed, I started to wonder how good this habit was for me.

For us.

I bought a book on my Kindle that afternoon - ‘Your Brain on Porn: Internet Pornography and the Emerging Science of Addiction’ by Gary Wilson. I finished it later that night, and while I didn’t fully seize on every sentence, I was moved enough to believe that my ten-year-long habit of visiting free pornographic websites was probably more of an addiction than I would have first admitted. Another very strong feeling that emerged was an overwhelming feeling that I’d been tricked.

Manipulated.

I began to see how persuasive design, convenience, and my own willingness to avoid real-world experiences had quietly shaped my behaviour over time.

My generation.

Me.

It was an intellectual decision, taken with the same spirit that many people have when they think of companies like Facebook or Instagram stealing their time. The ick felt stronger when I learned that 95% of the world’s most-watched pornographic websites, the ones I visited, were owned by the same company. I imagined teams of engineers thinking about how they could keep me hooked.

I like to think I’m clever. I have a bunch of degrees from some fancy universities, and I’ve succeeded in business. But when I started to learn more about all this, I felt silly.

So I wondered if I could experiment with not looking at these sites for a bit.

I wondered how long I would last.

It’s coming up on four years now, and I’ve never gone back to them.

I’ve never had to use a website blocker or go to rehab. The thought of typing RedTube into my laptop or phone feels empty. Like overindulging a half dozen donuts from a gas station, something that hints at immediate satisfaction but leaves very little behind. We have children of our own, and while my wife and I aren’t yet sure how we’ll support them through their teenage years and their encounters with addictive platforms – sexual or otherwise – it’s something we are already thinking about. With AI, VR, and whatever comes next, we’re not hopeful these platforms will become any less addictive.

I’ve brought this up with my mates, not to preach, but to share my own journey. One said that if he admitted to his wife that he watched online pornography, she would divorce him. Another changed the subject very quickly. I’ve never written about this publicly until now, and maybe my doing so will ruffle some feathers or even anger some people. I’ve realised that this is my own experience, and my own boundary. I don’t mean to come across as anti-porn and don’t feel like I am on any sort of crusade. I also know that there are some people who are working to create ethical pornography - I wish them all the best. But for me, since making the personal decision to no longer visit the digital pornography websites that I’ve spoken about, I know that intimacy with my wife is better than it’s been in years. My own body works better, too, which is a thrill.

As humans, we all have needs and desires for sexual expression, and there are so many brilliant, healthy ways we can embrace this. I still have room in my life for eroticism, fantasy and beauty. A burlesque show in Paris with my wife. Erotic photography by a skilled artist. A sexy European film on Mubi.

There just isn’t room for RedTube anymore.

Aaron Tait is a writer and the author of the memoir Far Horizons - A journey from war to peace. This article first ran in a shorter form in Moi Magazine Issue 4.