Women Can Tell If You Watch Too Much Porn—and it’s Destroying Your Dating Life (with Frank Rich)

Porn's not going to judge you.

Like, there's not a woman on the porn screen that is going to judge you for being less than you know you're capable of.

But the woman at the Starbucks will.

She's going to judge you and compare you to every other guy that's approached her that day.

Welcome back to the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.

I'm your host, dating coach, Connell Barrett.

I'm the real life hitch.

If Hitch was a skinny ginger, ginger, and I would never slap Chris Rock.

That's my vow to you.

And today on this podcast, we have a really special episode.

Usually I talk about dating, but I want to talk about a very important topic that affects millions of men and can absolutely impact your dating life.

And it's something that rarely gets talked about, at least not talked about honestly and with vulnerability, which is porn addiction.

And I have the perfect guest today to help us unpack this topic.

Frank Rich is my guest today.

He's a former bodybuilder.

He's an entrepreneur.

And he's the host of the Super Human Life Podcast, a top-ranked show that helps men level up in areas like faith, fitness, family, freedom, finances.

And he's been nice enough to have me on his podcast.

I had a great time.

He's also the founder of a really great community.

that's committed to men helping men quit porn and rebuild their lives.

And this community, you can find this at school.com forward slash reboot your life.

And that's s-k-o-o-l.com slash reboot your life.

Frank brings a lot of wisdom and hard-earned experience to this area.

So if you've ever struggled with porn addiction or if you know somebody who has, you're going to want to hear this episode.

Frank Rich, thank you so much for being on the How to Get a Girlfriend podcast.

Kano, my honor to be here, brother.

And one quick, just maybe asterisk to a way that you ended it there.

Even if you're the guy hearing this right now and you haven't left yet,

if you're not struggling, but maybe you're just just unsure of the topic,

curious as to maybe how we're going to speak about it today, stick around because I can almost guarantee there's going to be something that maybe will challenge you here a little bit, depending on whatever your relationship with pornography.

So, I would say this is not just for the guy that is already aware that he's struggling.

This is for the guy out there that I believe follows you, that is looking to become the absolute best version of himself.

So, stick with us, everybody, today, and hopefully, we can challenge maybe some of your paradigms around

this drug that we are beginning to really understand for what it is.

Fantastic.

I know about a little bit about drugs.

I had a drinking problem.

I've never had a porn addiction.

So this is a, I'm a schoolboy learning from you today.

I'm really excited to have you teach all of us, starting with me, about this issue.

Could you just, if you would, just define porn addiction?

What's the difference between porn addiction and just a guy who likes to go on you porn?

Great, great, great place to start, right?

And I think answering this question, I think, needs to begin with like not separating those two.

I think the person that ends up in addiction was the guy that enjoyed it.

That's why it became the addiction.

It's not like the people that are struggling with the addiction never enjoyed going to these websites.

They probably enjoyed it more than the version that you were trying to describe there.

And that's what's led them into what could be maybe clinically defined as addiction.

And that's where I try to come at it from, is what's the clinical definition, right?

Like you talk about drug addiction, alcohol addiction, you know, these are substance type addictions.

You also have behavioral type of addictions, shopping, gambling, video games, binging Netflix, watching pornography, behavioral type, right?

Very similar in the way that neurochemically your brain is going to respond to it.

But I had the honor of interviewing Dr.

Anna Lemke, who is Stanford's head of addiction.

She wrote the book Dopamine.

Detox would would probably be one of the top three experts in the world on dopamine addictions, which the category would then lead to sex pornography.

I posed the question to her because I'm not a classically trained expert.

I don't hold a PhD.

I don't hold a doctorate.

All of my experience, I would say, would be anecdotal experience, but then working in the real world with men.

But I want to lean into the experts that actually study this to get some of my information.

According to Dr.

Lemke, addiction is defined as the continued or repeated use of substance or behavior despite negative consequences to self and/or others, right?

And then you can go on to like there's these four phases, desensitization, how it kind of leads to more hyper-isque type of material, but the continued or repeated use of the behavior despite negative consequences.

So we can unpack, we can spend the next three hours unpacking negative consequences, but I think it's important to understand that, like you said said at the beginning of the question, what's the difference between the guy that's addicted and the guy that just enjoys it?

All the people that were addicted enjoyed it in the beginning.

Now we need to be able to unpack a little bit.

Well, what are these negative consequences?

Is it going to lead to hypersexualization, brain dysfunction, brain fog, low productivity, lack of motivation, erectile dysfunction, disconnected from the present moment?

Is the negative consequences just the fact that your wife doesn't like it?

I know we're speaking to single men out here, but maybe the woman that you're dating doesn't want to sit across the table from a guy at night that spends his alone time watching videos on the internet.

That could be then defined as a negative consequence.

It's negatively impacting your ability to go out and find an attractive mate.

Now, if you can't stop doing that, when you are willingly trying to quit, now you can say, hey, there's probably something addictive or compulsive about this behavior.

And what I try to do is just talk to this from a place of rational perspective.

Let's leave the guilt.

Let's leave the shame.

Let's leave the moral conversation to the side.

It's not a good or bad, right?

And I think that's where at the beginning I was like, let's try to change the paradigm around this conversation today.

But that's what I would say is like, if there's something that you are trying to stop doing, because you can see it's impacting your life in any capacity.

If instead of going out on a Friday night to talk to women at the bar, you're staying at home, like, and you can't stop doing that, brother.

There's a problem there.

And I think that's got to be the real way that we begin to really look at this, right?

It's not a judgment of good or bad, but if you're not at where you want to be in life right now, which the men that are listening to this podcast probably aren't, and this is having any level of impact, now it could be, like I said, your guilt and shame around how you approach women.

Even the thoughts that you have when you see a beautiful woman are going to be filtered through the lens of pornography.

Now, if those thoughts lead you to the point where you don't enjoy what's happening upstairs, negative consequences once again.

So I'll pause there because I threw a ton and just see where you want to go.

No, so much resonated.

I imagine some men might be just dabbling in porn participation.

And something I learned from my drinking issues was that there was a time when I was just having a few drinks every couple nights a week.

And it was almost like the metaphor I learned was it was almost like there's this thing called a pitcher plant.

A pitcher plant is a plant, it's kind of like a Venus flytrap, and a fly will come drink the nectar.

And what happens is it stays, it keeps drinking and drinking, and it gets sucked further down the pitcher plant into the depths of the plant that then eats it.

And so you can begin a habit like porn participation, or in my case, having a few whiskeys a week.

And at first, you're just drinking a little bit of nectar, but you're actually on a sliding, slippery slope down to something that can become much darker and is to your point um something that you can't stop and so that just really resonated with me when you when you said hey some people are just on porn no big deal right they might think but it also could be that they're on a path towards something that could become much more destructive right absolutely and you know i i i think when it comes to to pornography uh conno you're early 40s correct no early 50s Early 50s.

Okay, wow.

So you're, okay, so you're a little bit

older than I am, right?

I'm 41, you know, so my introduction to porn came very young, but it came to a magazine.

It wasn't until I was in my mid-20s, really, that I had access to this bandwidth that we have available today.

So, you know, I think understanding the drug of pornography is a thing that we are now only beginning to really have a grasp and understanding on.

I've had a few people refer to it as like pornography or even social media or scrolling is like the modern day smoking, right?

You know, it's an interesting statistic.

In 1980, I think more than half of U.S.

adults were regular smokers.

Yeah.

Meaning that they just casually smoked.

I mean, you and I grew up where there were smoking sections in restaurants.

My dad was basically Don Draper, always smoking.

They smoked on an airplane, right?

Like we would, we would find that so like foolish today to even think that there was a time where we were smoking inside of restaurants.

But sometimes it takes science time to catch up with society.

You know, you go back into the 40s, there were marketed cigarettes for pregnant women.

You know, the Camel cigarette was like the doctor's preferred cigarette for a pregnant woman.

You know, you go back even further in time, like Coca-Cola was laced with cocaine.

Cough drops had small bouts of cocaine in the late 1890s.

These are sometimes marketing material I use like in presentations.

So it's just we have to understand what is actually like at hand today and what are we discussing when we say people are just casually watching porn.

They're not just casually watching porn.

There's a drug that hijacks your rewards brain, that hijacks your rewards center in your brain, literally in your pocket that you know is there all the time, that subconsciously is there, that does ease your nervous system, that does allow you to lose yourself in the present moment.

So yeah, probably

some guys are just casually watching it, but I don't think that's

the majority of them.

I think with social media, with

everything that we have available online and just the infinite amount of high-stimulating material on the web today that probably a large majority of your audience

has had access to since they were a very young boy.

So brain development through the ages of teenage and to adolescence and then early years, all of this is kind of getting wired.

So it's deeper, but yeah, it probably normally starts casually.

But I think understanding these mechanisms of like the actual drug that is sitting in our pocket is the more important discussion.

Wow.

Yeah.

You're bringing me back to some memories I had from my 20s and 30s when I was really struggling with dating.

And there were plenty of nights when I said, you know what?

Tonight's a night.

I'm going to go out and finally do this thing that I've been so afraid of.

I'm going to go talk to women.

I'm going to go approach women.

I'm going to try to be that guy.

And then I grab my computer and I hop on Uporn or some site.

that gives me that quick, that quick stimulation.

And then, of course, once you've masturbated, you have no desire.

At least I didn't have any desire to go out on the town.

My sexual desire was briefly satiated.

And I just stayed home and watched a movie and just stayed in stasis.

So just a small little window into how one small microwave that being, that you can use porn as a substitute for something that's much more fulfilling, which is going out into the world and actually experiencing dating.

Yeah, I would say not only can you use it as a substitute, I would say probably in almost every single case that porn is consumed, it is being used as a substitute.

We were not created.

We didn't evolve

chemically, biologically, physiologically.

There's nothing in our body that needs pornography.

So like we don't ever go there for a need.

So it's always a substitute for something else.

It's an escape.

Like in your case, substitute for maybe the fear of approaching the woman, right?

It can can ease some of that anxiety.

Oftentimes, it's substitute for the difficult conversation with your wife.

If you're speaking to married men, I think a lot of this audience, it's going to be the substitute of that approach anxiety that we have, right?

Like, because here's the reality is like porn's not going to judge you.

Like, there's not a woman on the porn screen that is going to judge you for being less than you know you're capable of.

But the woman at the Starbucks will.

She's going to judge you and compare you to every other guy that's approached her that day.

When you're sitting behind the screen alone there's judgment free so we can avoid a lot of this fear anxiety and get that quick high get that dopamine release that we need um but then also feel like we have an actual sexual release absent of all the important stuff that actually leads to the sexual release it's like all the moments that lead up to that the conversation getting to know the woman the connection with a soul like on the intimate level that's the more important part but our brains instantly go to like i need a sexual release So we hijack all of that.

And then this just becomes kind of a safety net coping mechanism for us that is always readily there.

And like I said, it's not going to judge you for being less than you know you're capable of.

And I think that's the challenge that I bring like to the space is just like you talk about dating from the growth-centric lens.

I talk about this recovery or freedom transformation from the growth-centric perspective.

Like if you're struggling with porn, I see it as a lack.

Like you're lacking something, whether it's a belief system,

a mindset, actual real-time tools of like how to regulate your nervous system.

Because like, like, like I said, there's nothing natural about porn.

It's like

we will live without it, but guys believe that it's like a part of their needs.

So they negotiate with themselves to continue to go back.

We've been conditioned or conditioned ourselves or society has helped us condition ourselves to.

It's definitely been a two-way condition.

Yeah.

It's been two parties playing in that conditioning side.

One of the things I love about your podcast, the Super Human Life podcast, is I just, I think, all right, I'm going to listen to five minutes and then I'll do other things and I get sucked in.

You did a great episode recently with a guest who talked about testicular cancer and he was so vulnerable and open.

And you did an episode, episode 228 from late in 2023, where you talked about

porn addiction and in a real personal vulnerable way.

And you also talked about sort of a roadmap.

And so what I'd like to do is play a little audio clip from that episode of the Superhuman Life podcast.

And then we'll come back and we'll talk about it.

And I'll ask you a quick question.

Here we go.

So maybe when we were a young man, maybe when we were a young boy, teenager, we first got introduced to pornography.

And now here we are 15, 20 years later.

We're in our mid to late 20s.

We're in our early 30s.

Maybe we've even been in our 40s.

And we've been struggling with trying to break free from this addiction for a decade.

plus yet every time we say we're going to quit somewhere in the future we return back to that same behavior.

So now when we think about living without pornography, we can't even envision ourselves not having it a part of our life.

This was definitely the case for me in my mid-30s before getting on the other side of this addiction.

Okay, so wow, a lot to unpack there.

If you would, can you talk a little bit about your journey here?

when you began to have a problem, when you realized you had a problem.

Tell us a little bit about your story and see how much that resonates with guys who might be going through the same thing yeah absolutely Connell and I appreciate you you bringing that episode back

you know I've shared that

belief about recovery and a part of my story so many times but

it took me back to a place man you know I mentioned it at the beginning

very young introduction to pornography six right you know nothing I think unique there kind of in my generation you know but I grew up as a kid where it was the age where you had to like hijack the magazine.

So, you know, we'd like have fun, you take it out to the woods, you leave it with a buddy, oh, did you get this?

So it was like, it wasn't a real issue, you know, like I would even say like my generation, like there was an initiation that a young man went through,

good or bad.

but but it was a part of like who we were for me it became a major issue in my early 20s i was working in the wireless industry very early adopter to the blackberry devices and for the young audience out there blackberry was like the iphone before the iphone uh the blackberry Pearl, though, was the specific one that I remember getting access to because it was the first BlackBerry that had full digital color on the screen.

Prior to this, it was like this black and white, almost palm pilot text.

But now we had full streaming internet with full color.

Now I was a regional sales manager across all of Southwest Florida.

So I spent a lot of time on the road and in and out of large shopping malls.

Like that was my day-to-day.

Like I'd visit three or four locations over the course of an eight to 10 hour day.

But there was a lot of drive time and there was a lot of time where I was just kind of alone.

Now I had access to this thing that would basically get me connected to any site.

So I could tell you in my early 20s, would I have said I was an addict?

No, but I knew that there was something

unique and different in my relationship with porn because I used it.

The way that people use smoking.

Like I would take a break from work and go into a large department store, a Macy's, a Nordstrom that had these private restrooms and sit there for 15 to 20 minutes just to decompress, to de-stress by watching porn in the public restroom.

This is early 2000s.

I can remember the guilt and shame of like, you know, somebody would open up my laptop in my 20s and it would be like on the porn.

So I was like oh my God, you know, it's like, and they would joke and stuff.

And if it's your buddies, it's like, it's no big deal.

But it's like, then you get into relationships.

Now you're hiding things.

Now you're deleting everything that on your history just to make sure that you've covered all your tracks.

And then you find out that you're dating a girl that's like a tech wizard and knows how to find the stuff that you've deleted even after you deleted it.

So you're getting called out on these things, right?

Did that happen to you?

100%.

100%.

It wasn't even porn.

I was going to bodybuilding sites.

Like

I was a fitness guy.

I grew up idolizing the Corey Iversons and these beautiful women.

It was like, so I've always been attracted to more athletic, you know, I've dated female, you know, bodybuilder, not bodybuilder, but like the figure fitness competitors, like not the massive ones that got like traps and mustaches, but like the woman that's taking care of her physique.

I've always been attracted to beautiful, athletic type of women so I was just looking at stuff like on the bodybuilding internet forums that my girlfriend like viewed as like cheating on her because like I'm supposed to be loving you and here I am browsing you know hundreds of different women I would delete it and then yeah she'd be able to find it I still don't to this day don't know how like I'm I'm an infant when it comes to tech like all the things on our business are ran like through my team so yeah i got caught in my early like my mid-20s doing doing that so i i knew that there was a problem.

I just, I didn't, I didn't care.

And that was a reality for me at the time.

I was young.

I was successful.

I had a relationship, right?

I didn't realize like the guilt and shame I was carrying into it.

And some of the sexual function issues like didn't come until I was like in my 30s.

So it wasn't impacting me.

Like it, you know, I was succeeding.

I was competing in bodybuilding.

I was like, oh, there's no big problems here.

Yeah.

Did I have some depression?

Like, did I have some shame?

Like, was there always kind of internal internal struggles sure but how i justify that connell is like through my upbringing so you know i don't i don't want to talk negatively about my family but i saw men in my family's lives struggle with addiction alcohol drugs like i was i i witnessed suicide very young with men so it was like i had this identity that rich, like the last name rich, if you were a man, you were going to struggle.

Like, that's what I saw is I saw hardworking blue-collar men struggle drink alcohol do drugs on the weekend make it to the monday of you know the best thing about the week is a friday afternoon just like all this negativity stuff like not what i buy into the worldview today it's not the self-development it's like just accepting it victim kind of mentality so that was my conditioning as a young man so when i got into my 20s and like i was succeeding financially i'm like I've conquered life, right?

It's like, yeah, I got some issues where I'm looking at a little bit of porn, but I'm high on testosterone.

I'm fit.

I just have a high sex drive, right?

So there was another justification:

oh, I need porn because I just have a high sex drive.

It's a normal thing.

Society will condition that to you.

Heck, it's healthy in that mindset, right?

Yeah.

Then in my 30s, my early 30s, as a healthy man, as somebody that was working in the fitness industry, as somebody that was competing in bodybuilding and hormones were very well taken care of, I started to have performance sexual issues in the bedroom.

Like I started to have the inability to actually get an erection in real life moments.

I was so conditioned to all this hardcore stuff that now we're talking like the 2000s, teens, the 13s, 14s, 15s, like the P-Hub is what it is today.

All the sites, like, because prior to that, it's like the access just wasn't there.

But when this stuff became readily available, now you start to go down these dark rabbit holes, right?

It's like desensitization, as you probably experience in drinking or in drugs.

It's like you need more hardcore stuff to get you to the same level.

That's one of the cues of addiction is desensitization.

So I would start to explore nothing like wicked where I would end up in jail, right?

But you go to some areas where like it's just a little uncomfortable to even think about now.

It's like me thinking that that was me.

It's kind of like pits in my stomach doesn't feel too good.

But it caused issues sexually in the bedroom.

So that was some of the kind of the wake-up calls.

Then I stumbled across the book, Your Brain on Porn, probably 2016, 2017 by Gary Wilson, which really opened up my eyes because for the longest time con I was like I just thought it was this weirdo I thought there's something wrong with me yeah you know what like as long as like it doesn't lead into other things like I'll just have to manage this like hopefully I can find a woman that you know will like be okay with it I won't share a lot with her but I'll also try to find girls like how much can I like throw at her right like hey let's watch this together let's so you know trying to kind of see where you know where I could kind of push some boundaries but reading that book and then watching one of his TED talks really opened up my eyes because I saw what was happening like neurochemically in the brain.

And I saw how it was hijacking.

And I was able to connect some of the dots.

Like, okay, some of my internal struggles, like some of my anxiety, some of the guilt, shame, all this is kind of driven because I'm kind of hiding some things.

Like that was a big moment for me.

It's like.

Talking 2016, 2017, 2018, now, like, I'm running an online fitness business.

Like, I'm becoming well-known in certain entrepreneurship circles.

It's like people that like mean mean significance, like in the world, like know who I am.

I'm trying to kind of climb up those ranks.

If they knew who I was, like in the private room, like would they actually

respect me?

I was at a conference in San Diego, Connell.

This one I don't think I've ever shared publicly.

I was with a very successful entrepreneur, somebody that's got like Netflix, Amazon type deals right now.

Very young at the time, but close friend.

We were sharing a room.

Like this is the early days for us in entrepreneurship.

We're like, hey, we're going to go to this event.

Like, we don't have money.

So like let's bunk up in a room.

He was there with his girlfriend and I was in the same room as well.

Got up early.

I'm on the West Coast.

We got a couple hours before the event starts because I'm an East Coast guy.

I'm like, I need to watch some porn.

Like that was the feeling I had, but I'm in this room with my friends.

So I get up first thing in the morning, walk downstairs into the lobby within the rest, like into the like the lobby restroom where I know it's going to be private.

It took me back to like those old, you know, department stores days.

Do my little number.

but then we're in one of those hotels where you need the card to get into the elevator.

Okay.

So now I can't get past the first floor.

Oh, no.

And I'm like, what do I do now?

I don't have an ID.

I'm like, I can't just go to the front desk and tell them like they wouldn't give me, like, I had no verification of who I was.

And I had to call my buddy.

Like, obviously, I was able to piece a story together.

Yeah, I just stepped outside, you know, to catch some sun first thing in the morning.

I didn't bring my card, but it was like an awakening moment.

Like, really, like, this is where you're at, Frank.

Like, you're in your early 30s.

You snuck out of a hotel room to go watch some porn in a five-star hotel.

Now you can't get on the elevator because you were so consumed with getting out of the room first that you didn't bring any type of identification.

It was just a wake-up, like, wake up after wake-up.

Like,

James Clear says it in the book, Atomic Habits.

What you do when you're by yourself is really who you are.

And hearing that today, like, yeah, it resonates a lot.

Reading it back then and having that wake-up call, like, shook me from the inside.

It's like, okay, like these these words authenticity, integrity, vulnerability, all this fancy stuff that gets thrown around on the internet, like this is the core meaning of it.

If the person that you're presenting to the world is not who you are when you're by yourself, there's a disconnect.

That is not authentic.

It doesn't have to be what some people make it out.

It's, is there an alignment with who I tell the audience I am today and what I do when I'm alone?

Like, is that in alignment?

And for me, it wasn't.

And I had to figure out why that was.

And that sent me down this path of like reading every book, finally realizing that I had a secret that I was living with.

And until I shared it with somebody else, I was never going to be able to get free.

And, you know, I think me, God presented an opportunity for me in February of 2019 to do that.

I was after a gym session with a group of friends sitting in a car with a buddy of mine, Zach.

I've talked about Zach a lot.

former Marine, alpha dude, Jack.

We're just having a casual conversation about life updates.

It's been a few weeks since I've seen him.

What's going on with you?

How's the business?

How's the relationship?

What's new in training?

Those are the topics that we were discussing.

And he goes, Frank,

I've been doing this Wim Hoff breathing stuff.

He's like, do you know who Wim Hoff is?

And I was like, I love Wim stuff.

Like Wim Hoff, the ice guy, cold plunge.

Like he said all these Guinness World records on like holding his breath underwater.

He's like, yeah, I'm doing this four-second box breathing.

He's like, it's amazing.

He's like, you know what it's allowing me to do?

He's like, it's allowing me to control my sexual energy.

He's like, and I stopped looking at porn.

And I was like, I was like, where did, like, where did that come up?

You know, because I'm doing all the research.

I'm watching the YouTubes.

I'm reading Gary's book.

So like, I'm trying to figure out porn in my life.

Like the relationship is an addiction.

How do I get out of this?

And here comes the last person in the world that I would ever think was going to tell me that he was struggling and getting control of it.

And I was like, I don't know why you felt compelled to tell me that, Zach, but it's like, dude, I've been struggling with this and I'm trying to figure it out.

And I just blurted it like everything, 20 years, this, that, da, da, all the story I told you.

I was like, that felt really good.

Like just sharing it.

Like it felt like this weight had been kind of lifted off of me.

And I'm like, you know what, Zach?

I'm like, today's a day.

Like, I'm done.

Like, I've been trying to figure this out.

Like, I feel like I can control this.

Like, I'm so committed.

I'm going to go home and tell Stephanie.

Stephanie was my girlfriend at the time.

Can you hold me accountable?

Can I check in with you?

Kind of the next, I mean, series of days and weeks and months like changed my life.

I never looked back.

I've been free since that day, February 14th, 2019.

It led me down this path of like wanting to share it even more.

Like I love the way that it felt when I told Zach.

So like I started to call all my buddies.

I'm like, hey, man, like,

guess what?

I was addicted to porn.

I'm like, but I'm not anymore.

Feels amazing.

And they're like, oh, I was too.

And it was like, for me, it was this thing that held power and control over me for so long, that guided my actions, that shackled some of my behaviors, that really impacted my identity.

Now no longer had control.

I'm like, scream it from the mountaintop because there's no judgment.

Like, there's nothing at all.

Like, I didn't know any better.

Like, you know, whatever.

And it just felt great.

And that led me to start the podcast.

And the podcast was like a microphone and me.

telling that story and asking other people to say hey what have you struggled with how did you get through it then six months go by and guys are like, Frank, we're struggling.

Can you help us?

And now we're five years into this community and 1,500 transformations and speaking and books and podcasts.

And I don't even remember the original question, but that's the journey.

I've got 19 questions.

Let me just go with the first one off the top of my head.

Something I've learned with the men I help is it helps to quit a bad habit.

In the case of what I do, it's like, oh, the bad habit is avoidance.

It's procrastination.

It's not taking action.

We have to understand consequences.

And I got to say, hey, think of all the women you've not dated because you don't approach.

Or think of all of the opportunities, the love, the connection, the other people who have dated the woman you should be with, but you never even talk to her.

So I help guys get clear on consequences.

And that helps them have a big breakthrough where they have that,

Tony Robbins calls it, they hit threshold.

You say, I'm done.

I am done with this, whatever the this is.

And in the world of porn addiction, what are some of the consequences that whether it's your own story or other men you know about where they say, you know what, I am done with feeling shame.

I am done with not being able to get it up for my girlfriend.

I am done with

getting locked out of the hotel room.

What are some of the consequences that a man listening to this who might be struggling with this might need to check in with and say, whoa, that's happening to me.

I'm done with this.

Yeah, the first one that's coming to mind, I'll share, and I'll give a couple different examples because the first one is from a married man.

And I find the case, and this is not to demotivate or uninspire any single guys out there that you can't,

but I've seen in at least our work, case study anecdotally-wise, that like guys that have families and maybe even businesses and things that are at risk, like they feel those consequences, like, I think, greater, right?

So I had a story here with a local sheriff reached out to me, married his high school sweetheart.

They were in their late 30s, maybe early 40s.

They had two kids, both in high school, like stud athletes, both of their kids, like big, big things coming in the future.

But this is his high school sweetheart.

He came home from work one day and she had two different apartment lease papers and she put them on the desk in front of him.

He said, if you don't change, me and the kids are going.

And you want to talk about a real consequence.

You want to talk about something that shakes a guy's nervous system.

have your entire world in front of you telling you that if you don't change who you are, they're going to leave.

Uh, David went on to be, you know, one of our top transformations.

We shot like a little mini documentary with him that's on our YouTube channel.

Um, but the fear of losing things is obviously going to be the biggest consequence, you know, whether it's the family or if you're not married and it's it's it's it's your girlfriend, you know, like are you keeping things from her because you're worried with how she's going to react.

There's a wake-up, right?

Because you can only keep things under the surface so long.

Like you can only keep a lie, a lie in a relationship for so long before the truth is going to come to the surface.

So maybe don't wait to get to that point.

Begin to ask your questions.

Like, if I'm not sharing this in a relationship, why?

Is it because I'm worried about the reaction?

That should be a wake-up call.

Like, even saying that kind of like shakes me.

It's like, huh, okay, like, for real.

Like, if you're not sharing it because you're worried about the judgment, there's, there's a massive wake-up call.

you know i would say to the guys that are maybe unsure of right ask yourself like

you got to do an audit like what is the series of events that that lead up to it there's going to be emotional cues and triggers it's not going to be reactionary to something you saw in the world you didn't see a beautiful woman at the coffee shop and then later think about her and then go watch porn because you saw her.

You probably felt disconnected from a moment in time.

And to escape that, you were able to recall the memory of her and then say, okay, now I can use this as the motivation I need to go find the porn.

So ask the guys, what are the things that you're using porn in your life to escape from?

And then paint that picture out into the future.

If I don't change this, we have an assignment in our program where we help guys cast a vision for life without porn.

Okay, so a lot of these guys have struggled with it five, 10, 15 years.

We talked about that in the clip that you you shared So for them They don't see life reality without having this behavior in it So the first thing is we need to know what we're running to So what is that life five years into the future?

How do you grow physically?

How do you grow emotionally?

What does that dream relationship look like?

What does that new career?

What does that business that you're launching look like like and then paint the picture in like a visualization practice so you can feel it taste it and then say okay who do I need to become but in the same time of doing that we say okay, if things don't change, you can think about the last five, 10 years of porn, how it's escalated, how it's gotten worse and more hardcore, how it went from once a month to once every two hours.

Where does that play out?

So it's kind of we project the bad reality into the future here as well.

So now you're tapping into two motivators like inside of the human being, right?

The pursuit of reward, the pursuit of pleasure, right?

But also the avoidance of pain.

Because this here, like the version where you don't change should feel like absolute hell.

And some people need some coaching in doing that because it's like, I'm good, like

I had a six-figure, you know, plus-year salary for over a decade.

Like I was doing well financially.

I was competing in bodybuilding.

Like I had cars.

I had, you know, it was like doing okay.

So it was like, I couldn't actually see like how it was impacting me, but I could ask deeper questions and take myself through that series of analysis to get to the core truth of like, you're just not who you actually say you are.

And if that plays out forever, like you're going to lose everything because everything I had built was built upon this fabrication of like who I was telling the world that I really was.

So for me, I had to get real with myself of like, if you don't change, everything that you think you've built will crumble underneath you.

Yeah.

And that and that's hard.

You know, I think

Tony Robbins says, paraphrasing, the strongest force in human psychology, arguably the strongest force, is the desire to be consistent with the identity you've created for yourself.

And if your identity is, I'm healthy, I'm fit, I'm a man who's all about being my best self, and you need to

medicate yourself with porn or medicate yourself with alcohol or medicate yourself with drugs, understanding that that.

dissonance between the identity that you want to be and the identity that you're actually living can be

very painful.

But we can turn that pain into something positive, which is, hey, this changes now.

Yeah.

You talk about the five Fs, right?

Faith, fitness, finance, family, freedom.

Do I have those right?

That is correct.

I love that.

What I'm hearing you say is, and we're going to talk about the rewards in 30 seconds, but it sounds like, oh boy, if you have porn addiction, then it can cost you freedom.

Right?

It can hurt,

you could lose your girlfriend, your wife, your family, potentially.

i don't know about financial but it can certainly make you feel at least mentally not fit so it sounds like porn addiction can also can really hit us where it hurts in these important key areas of life that bring fulfillment these five f's

i certainly i certainly think so you know i think it's this this hijacker of uh some of these intrinsic motivational cues that that we all have like the pursuit to go and want to do and accomplish things.

You know, can it impact you financially?

Absolutely.

Like, if you're avoiding,

let's say, you're somebody you're doing, like, even if you're doing well, you know, you're, you're, you're, you're working in finance, you got a, you got a tech job, you're working as an executive, but it's like you did that because that's the path that you were told to go on, right?

And you've conquered and you've climbed up the corporate ladder, and you got a comfortable salary, and you got cars, and you're going on vacations, and family is well taken care of.

Kids are in private school.

You'd be like, I'm watching porn three nights a week.

Like, it hasn't impacted me financially.

But I would ask you, is like,

why?

Why are you escaping that life that the guy that is 10 years behind you would dream to have and you're escaping it?

It's, it's an emotional escape.

So there's something that is missing inside of you.

Maybe it's because you followed the path that you were told to go on and you never pursued your passion.

But the fact that you're

okay with this life and your other box are being checked because now you have these coping mechanisms, you don't have that drive inside of you to go step out into your fear and like launch that book, become the dating coach, become the guru.

It's like, if the guy is at the top of the corporate ladder, but is still drinking the alcohol, is he a financially successful guy?

On paper, yeah, but is that all that matters?

So I would say if you're escaping certain things, even with financial success, then it's 100% having an impact on your financial life.

It's just layers deeper that you need to be able to ask

important questions.

Is it having an impact on your family?

For sure.

100% for sure.

And I would challenge anybody that is actively consuming pornography right now to go 30 days without it and then tell me how different you feel when you're with people, all people, not even your intimate

partner.

How are you with just your buddies?

Like you're going to be more present and engaged in the moment.

Same thing with social media.

Like this, this applies to tech and the internet.

Like all of this has just hijacked our ability to actually be present in these real life situations.

Wherever you live, go out on the town tonight and sit in a public place and just people watch.

The average person today lives life through a screen.

Either when they're sitting with somebody, they're both looking at their screen or they're engaged in an event and they're watching it through the screen because they're trying to record it because they think it's more important to share it with everybody else versus actually be present in it.

When you begin to not be controlled by devices and scrolling, like life feels like life again and you shared that great analogy at the beginning it's very similar to like the frog in boiling water right it's like you put a frog into room temperature water slowly heat it up it will burn itself to the death because it doesn't feel it i think we're at the point in 2025 we've all been slowly boiling in this water of social media and pornography that we don't even actually know what real connection in real life feels like anymore.

So certainly have an impact on your family and on your relationships.

Your freedom, freedom is defined as like, are you living life on your terms?

Well, if I got to escape every night or three nights a week to go lose myself, to drown the emotions, to get connected because I'm not connected with my wife, you're not living as a free man.

If there's something in your life that you're doing and you're not having a conversation about it, that thing's got power over you.

So if there's a secret, when you watch the naughty little videos, you're not a free man.

Right.

Sorry.

Well, the fitness, health fitness, right?

Obviously, mental fitness, emotional fitness, all that's going to be negatively impacted.

Yeah, there's going to be jacked dudes.

Like I was jack shredded to the bone, like washing porn every single day.

So like you can get past some of these things, but I wasn't mentally fit.

I definitely wasn't emotionally fit in my 30s.

So yeah, those are where the five S kind of come into play is like, if we can build ourselves up in these areas, much like the development approach that you take in the dating space, like we need to like kind of conquer like life and make sure we have like, A, an active vision of what that should look like.

What's our fitness relationship in the future?

What's our financial relationship?

And then how does our character of the man that we are play into that?

And how does having porn anywhere in our life restrict us from living that out to its fullest?

Well, in that episode I mentioned, 228, you talk about the five-step roadmap for building a life after porn, for changing your future, changing an outcome.

And what would be, take us through, whether you want to take us through those five steps quickly or maybe there's not time, you You just want to talk about the most important first step to take.

What is that first of the five-step roadmap to have a, to build a new and improved life after porn?

Yeah,

trying to recall specifically, I'm pretty sure I know the training that we were using there.

And it's what's outlined in the beginnings parts of our program.

So we take guys through this envisioning process that I touched on a little bit.

Oh, right.

Seeing the future, getting excited about the five-year vision, like get excited about the man that you can become.

The first step in doing that, part of that five steps that I taught there was fast from food.

So early on, we want you to go on a two-day fast that leads you into this kind of vision casting assignment.

So the vision casting assignment is four steps.

The fifth step is the one that precedes that.

And it's fasting from food for two days.

I could walk you through the reasons as to

why.

It starts with just beginning to develop some self-control.

You know, a pornography issue to one layer is lack of control.

Like something triggers you emotionally, physiologically, and you have the inability to control yourself and regulate yourself in that moment.

So you act out with pornography.

So there's now, self-control isn't the only thing that you need, but you need an element of self-control.

And fasting from food is a great practice in doing that.

You know, I've interviewed a couple psychologists, one particular wrote the book, Never Binge Again.

Dr.

Glenn Livingston, a million plus copies sold on Amazon.

Incredible book.

He works with people in the world of binge eating,

what would be described as food addiction.

So he's a clinical psychologist there and then has spent the last 20 years working with thousands of patients and clients.

We've had some very fascinating conversations about the parallels between

food binging and porn consumption.

Neurochemically, a lot of the same neural pathways are lighted up when you overindulge in food and when you watch pornography.

So these mechanisms and behaviors, I think, are very aligned uh in how they kind of hijack what would say the human being um so fasting from food doesn't solve the porn addiction uh but it begins to allow you to tap into kind of that innate awareness like hey i'm feeling triggered to go eat a cookie right now why is that i don't need a cookie like it's not gonna it's not gonna end my life i don't have the cookie but there's something pulling me there.

If we can tap into that, like later on down our road of recovery or of freedom, like you're going to have some some cravings like something's going to tap into you and say hey remember that porn stuff that you used to enjoy doing like bring that back because we kind of miss it but that'll that'll happen kind of internally but if you can identify some of these things then you begin to have the control over them so step one in that five steps to fast from food for two days Shifts your brain into a ketogenic state.

So you're like a little bit more line focused wise.

Now you're operating out of ketones instead of glucose.

I think it enhances some of your other senses as well.

So it's like you're more spatially in in tune which i think helps in the visualization process because i really want you to feel like that clarity of like what is this life without it like the closer we can get to envisioning ourselves and this takes time and practice like to really begin to visualize yourself there but fast from food step two five years out in the future okay if from today towards five years down i live porn-free how does my life improve in my faith how do i grow spiritually how do i grow in fitness what does my relationships look like?

How does my finances improve?

What hobbies do I take on?

What fears do I step into?

Who must I become?

So it's not like you write this goal sheet.

It's you set the target and then say, okay, who must I become to have that?

Because if I if I was the person that could have that, I'd already have that.

So you try to create this gap between the version that you are and the version that you're trying to become.

So we go five years, then we scale it back to one year.

So it's like it brings it a little bit closer to home.

Then we want it to come even closer and actually set some real tangible goals over the next 90 days.

So in the active recovery process, right, you know, they'll teach like you got to replace a habit, you got to find new endeavors, you got to find new hobbies.

We want to tap into neuroplasticity.

So we want to build kind of a structured plan over the next 90 days of what will recovery look like for you.

If you're watching it five hours a week, it's a lot of time.

How are we filling that time?

If we're using it as an emotional coping mechanism, well, how do we better cope cope with those emotions?

If we're using it for connection and intimacy, okay, let's make a plan to get the connection and intimacy that we need.

So it's like in that fourth step, we're putting like the game plan in play for those next 90 days.

And then step five is taking that five-year that we talked about earlier and then kind of casting it out into hell.

So you have the five-year vision, the one-year plan, the 90-day step-by-step blueprint, and then the vision of like, if we don't commit to this and actually follow through on what we say, how does our life crumble underneath us?

What are some potential benefits for

the typical guy listening to this?

He's single, he's dating or trying to, maybe he's not dating, but he wants to, and he watches too much porn.

And whether or not he's addicted or he just has a spends a little too much time on

P-Hub, as you call it, what are some takeaways and benefits that he may see improve in his dating life, his sexual desire, his results?

How can this improve a single man's life?

Yeah, because he's, well, for one, he's probably using it,

as we've mentioned multiple times, as the escape mechanism from actually doing the necessary work to grow into the man that he needs to be to successfully date.

So at the macro level, right?

Like, I'm not going to say it's going to solve your dating issues, but it's going to play a big role in helping you understand that you can't continue to avoid these things, whatever it is that you're avoiding.

And the only path to growth and real fulfillment is life is by doing the hard things.

So that's macro, right?

On the micro level, I would say the woman that you're trying to have a conversation with at dinner knows what you're doing.

Whether or not you bring it up, there's an energy that's projected.

Trust me, I've spoken with enough women that are actually in the dating scene to know this, right?

Like they reach out to me and they're like, Frank, I went on a date last night and like I knew within five minutes a guy was addicted to porn.

Like please continue to save these men.

So the women know, right?

What are the tells that they pick up on?

It's it's some of it's innate, right?

So some of it's like I wouldn't be able to understand because I'm not a woman.

I don't have a female body.

So I don't get the same cues from men

that a small, you know, feminine woman would.

But there's going to be probably some verbal cues, you know, language that the guy uses.

I would say even in kind of the dating pursuit, it's like, you know, how quickly are you kind of moving to over sexualizing?

Was it not even done in the right context?

You know, stuff that you probably need to teach, like women are going to kind of pick up on these things.

But then I would also say like avoidance of certain things.

Like, is he really timid?

Because he's like there's too much fear and anxiety because he's just not sexually comfortable.

So a lot.

I would much rather you interview a woman though, because I'm only passing it through.

But trust me when I tell you, like, I have friends that are women that are in their early to mid-30s that are in the active dating scene in Tampa.

And they're like, Frank, like figure out a way to fix every guy in Tampa.

Because, like, our stuff is like helping guys all over the world.

It's like, I can't help, you know, 100,000 guys here in Tampa.

I wish I could, but maybe we'll plant an office somewhere in downtown.

I don't know.

But trust me, they know.

So, the woman that you're sitting across from is going to feel more safe and comfortable in around you.

And I've seen this even in dating

in my life, right?

I have an amazing woman in my life.

We've been together for a little over a year.

We started dating after I was four plus years free of porn.

The dynamics and the confidence that I'm able to step into and create a real strong masculine frame now in that relationship far transcends anything I would be able to do when I was stuck.

So I can feel it.

And I know the dynamics there are completely different.

I would say your interest in people though is what's really going to change.

Like if you're watching porn three, four nights a week, you're looking at the world, you're looking at dating, you're looking at every interaction with a woman through that lens of pornography.

Does that feel good in the moment?

Sure, absolutely.

But it's, it's so like primal.

It's like once that's gone and you're looking at that woman as like, that's a human being.

Like she's got interests.

She's got values.

She's got things that she can share in the world.

Look at how she laughs.

Look at the smile.

Like.

It's going to change the dynamic of how you interact with people to a level that I can't even articulate.

You have to go through it to truly experience it.

And for me, that's what fired me up back in 2019 to share this because it wasn't, it didn't make me more financially successful.

It has now.

It didn't make me fitter.

I actually lost 50 pounds of muscle in the first year for like a personal commitment.

What it changed, though, is it changed how I saw people.

Porn makes you objectify and use people.

It's a selfish behavior that you look at a screen and consume other people for your own personal gratification.

Now that creates a lens at which you see the world through.

So if I train myself who you are, what you do when you're by yourself is really who you are.

So a couple nights a week, I'm using people to pleasure myself.

That means every interaction I'm going through, I'm looking at that as an opportunity.

I don't consciously think any of this, right?

But my lens of seeing people is through objectification, not appreciation.

How can I serve?

How can I help?

How can I learn about that human being and not just use her body body to make myself feel good?

So I think it will change the lens and perspective that men see life, relationships, and interactions, in communication.

And if any guy is listening and willing to take a challenge, if you're watching porn actively in the dating, go the next 30 to 60 days without it.

Report back to Connell.

Report back to myself.

how those day-to-day interactions with women have changed.

And I'd love to bring you on the show.

We'll do an episode on the rebuild man about this, if guys are open to it.

Well, my best guess about the two extreme consequences to avoid and that beautiful sweet spot in the middle is that if you're a man who spends all this time on porn, to your point, you could become a user.

You could become a taker.

You could become somebody who objectifies women.

That's toxic and disgusting.

And then the other extreme might be, well, a lot of men, I'm sure, if not a majority, most, if not all, large majority, majority, I imagine, are masturbating while watching porn, of course.

And that robs you of sexual desire.

And some of my best nights back when I was working on my approaching and dating life back in the day was, as they would say on Seinfeld, I was the master of my domain.

And I had a healthy amount of like, ooh, look at her.

Yeah, she's for me.

I'm going to go talk to her.

And the right amount of sexual energy, which porn slash masturbation would rob you of, I would think,

that having that right amount of sexual magnetism made me walk right over to her.

Not because I was using her.

It was more like, hey, I'm a horny, young, healthy man.

Let's go see what's up.

And if you are too addicted to porn, you lose that or you become the opposite.

You become either a toxic guy or you become a timid, sexless guy, or at least no desire for women.

And those are both bad outcomes.

The sweet spot seems to be right in the middle, as you've been describing, that new man, the

improved man, the rebuilt man.

Yes.

The rebuilt man, man.

Dude, you, yeah, man, you spoke to something there that's so powerful.

So you're, you're obviously you're, you're a student of books, and I'm sure you've read Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.

You know, I read that book

a dozen times, you know, until I actually read it and like understood some of these principles that he was talking about in the 20s, you know.

And I think the 33 things that will destroy success, like number five or six is lack of control and mastery over your sexual energy.

Like our sexual energy is the most powerful force known to man.

Think about it.

It is half of the equation that makes a human being.

Like if you don't control that, like

in my opinion, and I'm sure you'd agree with this, like you are missing out on like truly mastering and controlling like what this life can really be.

So for the guy that's like just committed to like massive success in this growth development, like listening to Tony Robbins, reading the books, like on this growth of like becoming the man that like I am here to be like fullest potential,

missing this part of that equation is such an important part.

Like it's not missing it is like not the important part, but like mastering the sexual energy, the sexual domain, and transmuting it into the dating approach, transmuting it into the passion, transmuting it into becoming whatever it is you want to be.

It's such an important part.

Last, two final questions.

I'll let you go, bro.

This has been so fantastic.

So eye-opening.

Such a great change of face for this podcast.

So thank you in advance.

Two quick things.

Do you have any people who've taken the school to reboot your life?

I know you have plenty of success stories, but any transformational stories that come to your mind where you're thinking, oh man, I got to tell the listeners here about Michael.

You could change his name if you want to.

Somebody you just saw a complete change.

What does this amazing outcome look like

through the lens of maybe one of your favorite success stories?

Yeah, man.

We have a whole series on YouTube, I think 17 or 18.

We call it the I Am Rebuild series.

So there'll be something that resonates with every guy out there from the married guy that saved relationships to Chiago.

Chiago was early on when I first started working back in

2020, 2021, Chiago, T-H-I-A-G-O,

Luce Varga,

guy from Canada.

And he's okay with me sharing his name because he's done some marketing and stuff for us.

But he was,

at the time, was in med school, was engaged, living separate from his fiancé at the time.

This was during the COVID lockdown.

And he was planning this wedding and like trying to, you know, figure out med school and like graduate.

And

one of our steps within our program is like the service-based

project.

You know, it's like go out there and kind of serve the community.

He's like, Frank, the whole world's shut down.

He's like, he's living in Canada during the COVID.

He's like, I can't go anywhere.

But

he had a network of students within his med school.

and he was like a wizard with operations and systems and time management because he's like, he's doing all his med school stuff.

He's doing all the recovery work.

He's planning his wife, planning his wedding.

He's traveling the other weekend, like four hours to spend time with her.

He's like, he conquered time management.

He's like, Frank, he's like, I can't really serve like in a community center because nothing is open.

He's like, can I open up Zoom sessions,

a total of two hours, so four Zoom sessions for 30 minutes and help these students manage their time better?

I was like, dude, that's an amazing idea.

So he scheduled scheduled all this stuff out, like took action on it.

This was done in week seven of our program.

At the time, our program was 16 weeks long.

By the end of the 16 weeks, he had taken those four sessions, ciphered them down to like time management principles, created a course that he then went on and sold to other university students that then became profitable, paid back 10X what he invested into the coaching program, still went on to

complete med school, got a job, married his fiancé at the time, streamed it on the internet.

Now he's running an online coaching business, hosting a podcast, a doctor, married to his dream girl, living the best life.

So it's like he talked about faith, fitness, got in shape, finances, excelled financially, built a second stream of income, family, married his girl, and created an amazing life of freedom.

So that's one of my always best ones to share.

But we got so many of them.

I mean, it's been marriages restored, engagements.

I love getting guys.

There's like, I finally had the courage to ask the question, you know, right?

Or finally step out and like approach the girl

at the bagel shop.

It's like the confidence, right?

So it's exponential, man.

I'm just grateful for you for today.

And, you know, if the guys want to check out many of those series, go to YouTube, Coach Frank Rich, and there's an entire playlist called I Am Rebuilds.

Fantastic.

How else can men reach out to you, whether to listen to you or reach out to you or work with you in any way, shape, or form?

Where should people go to learn more about you, Frank?

Yeah, well, check out the podcast, The Superhuman Life.

We've had two recent episodes with Connell specifically, guys.

What?

What?

I didn't know that.

Great place to start there.

You can find that on any of the platforms.

I'm easy to find anywhere

on the algorithms.

Coach Frank Rich,

Instagram.

YouTube,

all that stuff.

And check out the school, guys.

You know, you mentioned at the beginning, s-k-o-ol.com forward slash readwito life.

There's a free reek trial.

But yeah, plug in, drop me a message on IG is probably the best way to personally message me.

So Coach Frank Rich, drop me a message.

Hey, I heard you on Connell's show.

And I'm happy to have a conversation with you guys.

And for you listening to this, if anything here hit a nerve with you and you felt some twinge of recognition and maybe a twinge of pain, a twinge of, oh man, that sounds like me.

Maybe this is taking a toll.

Maybe this is getting too much.

I know it's uncomfortable, but

feeling a little bit of pain or maybe even a lot of pain

is something you can transform.

I went through this myself 20 plus years ago.

I essentially had a dependency addiction to sex workers because I wasn't having any dating success.

So I got a little too into sex workers, which took a financial and a huge toll on my identity.

Two years ago, I looked in the mirror, figuratively, literally, naked, and I said, I got to quit drinking.

Having erectile dysfunction.

I have this beautiful, gorgeous girlfriend.

I was having some trouble in bed for the first time ever.

And I said, I don't want to lose her.

So I got to make a change.

So if anything Frank and I talked about today feels uncomfortable, that's a good thing because you can make a change to become a better, even better version of yourself.

So thank you, Frank, for coming and having a very, no pun intended, a very frank talk about a very important topic.

You're the best.

Dude, I appreciate you, man.

And thank you for listening.

Thank you for spending an hour with Frank and myself.

There's only a million podcasts out there.

And you spent a whole hour with us.

That means a lot to me.

Thank you so much.

And don't forget, your dream girlfriend, She's out there and she's going to love you, but she's going to have to meet the real, best, authentic you.

And don't forget that.

So be your best, real self.

And Carpe Datum sees the date.

Until next time.