Jess lanai

No.

I could end this post with that one gorgeous word. But instead I’m going to keep going because there are some very interesting mechanics to why I no longer regret porn.

‘Memory and intuition and chance associations will always generate a certain percentage of what any writer writes. The remainder is generated by reason.’

A quote from William Zinsser’s ‘Writing to learn’

There are certain things I don’t know until I write about them. And write about them with the intention of letting someone else read it.

The person reading is extremely important to process. They make me look at things from different angles. Because I can’t just ramble everything out.

It has to actually make sense. Another living breathing creature that exists in its own universe has to understand what I’m saying. So it has to have some logic and some fact.

They don’t have to agree or like what I’m saying, but they have to understand it and it has to add something.

By adding something I mean it has to at the very least keep someone’s attention. It has to be interesting enough or important enough or useful enough that someone will take the time to read it.

Otherwise it is useless and insane nonsense.

I did spend a few years regretting porn.

The mechanics behind that are simple. I’d built a life where people didn’t know I’d done porn and if they found out I might not be accepted.

New lives will make you regret old lives.

But regret is more complex than just the anxiety and shame around being accepted.

Like, if it would be guaranteed that no one would ever find out I did porn, would have no regret?

At the time I’d still have regret. Because what was causing the regret was not the fact that I did porn. It was what I didn’t get to do because I did porn.

Regret comes from avoidance.

When I talk about porn everything falls to a percentage. Because people are different. They have very nuanced and complex reasons they do things and the results of the things they do are just as nuanced and complex.

But fact still is, a large percentage of people that do porn did it to cheat.

To get what they wanted or needed more quickly and more easily.

Get a lot of money really fast.

Or, in my case, get a lot of sex really fast.

That’s the main thing porn has cost me.

It stunted my ability to form romantic bonds.

How did it do that?

Because it gave me a way to have sex without the trouble of trying to date. Or even trying to meet people in the wild for casual hookups.

And yes. I am a very sexual person. Especially at that age when was still trying to figure out sex. I was pretty obsessed with it.

If I hadn’t done porn I’d have desperately gone out and had a lot of casual relationships with a lot of men.

In a way porn spared me that because I see a lot of girls that are a lot like me going through that.

In some ways it looks a lot harder and a lot more damaging. Because porn guys are so sweet. Respect and manners and chivalry are maintained. There’s an understanding and a mutual respect.

And the current dating culture is brutality.

Men and women are very rude to each other and take a lot out on each other. It’d be very difficult to develop any kind of confidence or experiment or even communicate.

It’s like, dark souls level hard out there for young people right now.

I missed out though too.

I missed out on crushes. On sexual tension.

On the messiness of being young and dumb and awkwardly tripping through relationships and learning along the way.

I’m extremely naive for my age in certain ways.

I’m sure this has its charm to a degree.

But dating these days is harder. It requires more action on the woman’s part than it ever has.

So my shy naivety is a disadvantage.

I stopped regretting porn when I got over myself.

If I wanted to simplify it all into one sentence. Porn was a way to avoid the hard work and still get my needs met.

But I never really avoided the hard work.

I just put it into debt and let it acquire interest.

And by the time I quit I had such a huge deficit in the way I operated that it made very basic things very hard for me.

Once I got rid of that debt by facing all those hard things and dealing with them life got pretty easy and now I don’t have any regret.

I’m even grateful to porn.

I did the Mektoub film because of having done porn. And that was a very rare and magical experience that I wouldn’t trade.

Not to mention all the things that came from me having done the Mektoub film and the friends I made because of doing the film.

There was a man I met because of porn and it was an incredible experience even though it didn’t work out long term.

Porn did shape certain aspects of my personality that might have remained dormant if I never did it.

And it did ignite a lot of shame.

There’s nothing wrong with shame. Shame is an emotion that can give so much information and unlock so many avenues of our personalities.

Going through some bouts of shame and regret are helpful and healthy.