The Jiminy Cricket Dilemma of Compulsive Sexual Behaviors
Many people feel distress about their porn use, but the reasons aren’t clear.
Posted December 17, 2025 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma
Let’s take the example of three friends, Taylor, Sam, and Charlie. Taylor is a college student who feels more and more that he watches too much pornography and that it really bothers him, especially because he has been getting worse and worse grades. He started watching pornography in his early teens, but his habits have drastically changed over the past year. Night after night, he spends several hours scrolling through porn websites and binge-watching multiple videos without a break. Each morning, when he wakes up tired and groggy, he promises himself that tonight will be different: He’ll watch only one video and then go to bed. However, when night comes, and he opens the first video, he cannot stop and immediately jumps from one video to another. And then the promise to change this pattern returns the next morning.
His friend, Sam, feels similarly concerned and stressed about his own porn use, but his story is a little different. Sam is also a college student, and his porn-watching habits have changed in the past few months as well. He comes from a conservative and religious family with strong values around sexuality , including the belief that watching porn is immoral and a sin. Sam had a long-term girlfriend until about six months ago, and since their breakup, he has begun watching porn more frequently. Now, he watches it several times a week. During and especially after these sessions, he feels guilty and ashamed. He is highly distressed about porn use, and his watching habits have started to interfere with his daily life. In the past, he believed he could stop whenever he wanted. Over time, however, this belief has weakened. Despite repeatedly telling himself he will quit, he continues to return to pornography.
Charlie’s experience is somewhat similar to Sam’s, but her moral disapproval of porn comes from a very different source. She did not have a strict, religious upbringing; instead, her parents encouraged her to explore the world without constraints and decide based on her experiences. In college, Charlie got interested in the feminist movement, joined reading circles, and activist groups. She also started volunteering at a hotline for sex workers, where she was confronted with a diverse set of stories about exploitation, abuse, and mistreatment. As a result, Charlie soon developed strong opinions about the porn industry and could not look at porn without the hot, suffocating feeling of shame bubbling up in her. Despite that, she does watch porn from time to time.
Both Sam and Charlie have their own Jiminy Cricket sitting on their shoulders, emulating conscience , whispering the direction of their moral compass into their ears, resulting in conflicts and moral dilemmas every time either one of them watches porn. Even though they both strongly disapprove of porn use, the reasons behind it come from entirely different sources. Taylor, on the other hand, has no Jiminy Cricket in his life—or, at least, not about porn use.
As we have mentioned in a previous blog post , compulsive sexual behavior disorder should not be diagnosed if someone’s sexuality-related distress derives entirely from the moral disapproval of sexual acts, fantasies , and urges (World Health Organization, 2022). But how can moral values relate to compulsive sexual behavior (CSB), and why is it important to consider them in the diagnostic process?
The examples above show that sexual behaviors, such as pornography use, can cause distress even when someone is fully able to control their use and experiences no negative consequences in major life areas like education , work, or relationships. This is where we can turn to the moral incongruence model of pornography use to explain these situations (Grubbs, Perry, and colleagues, 2019; Grubbs and Perry, 2019; Grubbs and Floyd, 2025). This integrative, research-supported framework proposes that two pathways (or their combination) may lead individuals to experience pornography-use-related problems.
This model suggests that a minority of individuals may experience distress due to compulsive, dysregulated, or excessive use, such as Taylor (that is, problematic pornography use, pathway 1). Individuals may lose control over their pornography use, finding it difficult to stop or reduce their consumption. This impaired control may lead to binge use, psychological distress, and significant adverse consequences (L. Chen, Jiang, Luo, and colleagues, 2022; Ince and colleagues, 2023; Wordecha and colleagues, 2018).
Others, like Charlie, may report problems due to their pornography use conflicting with their moral or sexual values and may experience self-perceived problematic use (for example, pornography problems due to moral incongruence, pathway 2). The latest iterations of the model and related research findings suggest that pornography problems due to moral incongruence may be best conceptualized by the interaction of pornography use frequency and moral disapproval of pornography use (Grubbs and colleagues, 2022; Grubbs, Lee, and colleagues, 2020; Su and colleagues, 2023). Those individuals whose behavior (that is, pornography use frequency) and moral values (moral disapproval of pornography) are in greater conflict (greater moral incongruence) may report higher levels of self-perceived problems with pornography.
But what about those who experience both loss of control (problematic pornography use) and moral disapproval (pornography problems due to moral incongruence) at the same time? Is that even possible? The brief answer is yes, just think about Sam’s example. Some people may indeed experience both loss of control and strong moral opposition to pornography use (Bőthe et al., 2025; Kraus and Sweeney, 2019), and they might be even more stressed both because they cannot control or can only poorly control their use and because the behavior violates their moral values (Bőthe and colleagues, 2025).
For this reason, it is essential to assess both CSB symptoms and sexual or moral values when someone feels distressed about their pornography use or sexual behaviors and seeks help (Briken and colleagues, 2024; Kraus and Sweeney, 2019). Returning to our examples, Taylor, Sam, and Charlie all feel concerned about their pornography use. Taylor’s case seems the most clear-cut. He would meet the diagnostic criteria for compulsive sexual behavior disorder because he experiences loss of control and negative consequences in relation to his sexual behaviors. In the case of Sam, we can see that he experiences both dysregulated, out-of-control behavior and moral incongruence in relation to porn use. He should also be diagnosed with compulsive sexual behavior disorder, because only part of his distress stems from moral values; the other part clearly arises from impaired control and the consequences of excessive use. What about Charlie? Her concerns derive entirely from the conflict between her values and her habits, without any control issues, and her porn use doesn’t cause any problems in her life either. So she shouldn’t be diagnosed with compulsive sexual behavior disorder. However, it does not mean that Charlie’s struggle is not real or important. Therefore, all three of them should be provided with appropriate and tailored support and help (Antons and colleagues, 2022; Borgogna and colleagues, 2022; López-Pinar and colleagues, 2025). In a future post, we will discuss potential evidence-based interventions and treatment options for these issues.
Antons, S., Engel, J., Briken, P., Krüger, T. H., Brand, M., & Stark, R. (2022). Treatments and interventions for compulsive sexual behavior disorder with a focus on problematic pornography use: A preregistered systematic review. Journal of Behavioral Addictions, 11(3), 643-666.
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Beata Bőthe, Ph.D., is an assistant professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Montréal in Canada, and Mónika Koós, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Forensic Psychiatry and Sex Research in Essen, Germany.
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