Matt Sinkovitz overcame a 20+ year long compulsive relationship with porn, and helps similar men do the same through his online Facebook support community, ‘Porn to Purpose’, and the ‘90-Day Liberation Boot Camp’, as well as the ‘7-Day Porn Abstinence Challenge’.
First, Matt’s a really nice guy. I enjoyed our talks even though I’m strictly evidence based and Matt is far more experiential in how he approaches helping.
Being me, I’d like to discuss two papers on porn abstinence from the literature briefly before we get into session. Since I’m not a sex reacher by training, I first looked up which journals about sex are respected journals. Journal Impact Factors are used to rank how important journals are. Anything over 10 is the gold standard for excellence but the silver standard for what’s great varies wildly discipline by discipline based on how popular a subject is, how many journals cover that subject, and many other factors. The average is below 1. A good score is anything over 3 for most disciplines. Link to scijournal.org in the show notes
https://www.scijournal.org/articles/good-impact-factor
According to a paper published in the Archive of Sexual Behaviour (JIF 3.458) by Zimmer and Imhoff published in 2020 called Abstinence from Masturbation and Hypersexuality, there is a “lack of evidence for negative health effects of masturbation” end quote where they suggest these stem from “perceived problems with pornography” end quote as well as notion these perceived problems “[stem] from a psychological and behavioral addiction” end quote where the word addiction is used in quotation marks in the paper.
Here’s the crux: the same paper goes on to say “higher abstinence motivation was related to a higher perceived impact of masturbation, conservatism, and religiosity, and to lower trust in science.” end quote Again, that was Abstinence from Masturbation and Hypersexuality published by Zimmer and Imhoff in the Archive of Sexual Behaviour in 2020. Link to the article in the show notes.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7145784/
That basically summarises my perspective on it. Addiction in quotations where higher abstinence motivation is related to higher perceived impact of masturbation, related to conservatism, related to religiosity, and related to lower trust in science. The biggest argument they seem to struggle with is whether or not abstinence in men is healthy. This depends on a lot including the length of abstinence, and I’m not a doctor. However I did look up a paper.
In “Sexual factors and prostate cancer” by Giles et al. published in the British Journal of Urology (JIF 5.588), men under 70 at diagnosis with prostate cancer as well as aged matched control subjects who did not have prostate cancer were asked about their masturbation habits each decade of their life. “There was no association of prostate cancer with the number of sexual partners or with the maximum number of ejaculations in 24 hours. There was a negative trend (P < 0.01) for the association between risk and number of ejaculations in the third decade, independent of those in the fourth and fifth. Men who averaged five or more ejaculations weekly in their 20s had an odds ratio (95% confidence interval) of 0.66 (0.49-0.87) compared to those who ejaculated less often.” https://bjui-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1046/j.1464-410X.2003.04319.x
Those types of studies provide moderately strong evidence that if you get off at least five times a week in your 20s already, you may be the kind of person who is less likely to get prostate cancer than those who got off less than that during their 20s. It makes no claims about masturbation in one’s 30s or 40s. All it all it seems prudent to ejaculate regularly if you have a penis and are in your 20s.
For some, however, masturbating seems to cause psychological distress, compulsion, or other disturbance. Typically, I only suggest evidence-based solutions – think counselling like cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), interpersonal therapy (IPT), mindfulness, assertiveness training, etcetera.
If it’s not hurting anyone, I always lean on the side of do what’s right for you and enjoy your life. So for some folks, porn abstinence seems to be what they say worked for them. If they say the risk of prostate cancer isn’t significant compared to their risk of emotional and mental distress, that’s their call to make. If abstinence helps them deal with their underlying issues be that self esteem, depression, or others, I have to applaud them for making the effort to face it. That is not easy for anyone: either abstinence or facing one’s issues.
This episode is not saying that masturbation or pornography or abstinence are bad things for everyone. It’s a cost-benefit analysis. It’s about your risk profiles. What do you need to feel well? So it’s about those folks who believe strongly that their compulsive pornography use was damaging their lives or relationships.
Since abstinence of the compulsive activity or substance seems to work for some who fixate on a specific activity or substance, let’s talk further with Matt Sinkovitz.
Quick sidebar: since this was our first call and we were live, I didn’t correct Matt on using my correct pronouns as I didn’t want him to feel like I was vilifying him or have him be thrown off for the call or off balance. As a result, I just went with he/him pronouns for our two sessions and that was weird but not bad. When I brought it up with him after, he was really great about it. If you want to hear that conversation, it’s at the end of our second session which isn’t released as this is the first.
Again, he is a really nice person and shares with us today about his story and the men he helps here on Intimate Interactions.