In this short video, I explain why willpower and blocking apps so often fail with porn, and what opens up when you get curious about the job the habit is doing.
You can also send me an email
Online compulsive porn use therapy helps men who find themselves going back to porn when part of them would rather not, and who sense it is now taking sleep, closeness or self-respect. We work one to one by video, in English, in 1-hour sessions with 50 minutes of therapy, at times shown in your own time zone.
I do not lecture, label or diagnose. I help you see what the habit soothes, why it has stayed secret and what you actually need, so that you can choose your own direction. This page sits under online men’s sexuality therapy, within my online psychotherapy for men. Where alcohol, drugs, gambling or several habits are tangled together, online addiction therapy is the broader page, while this one stays with men and porn alone.
To go further, book a free 30-minute call, find a session time, read my client policy or write to me in confidence.
Online compulsive porn use therapy is for men who return to porn more than they want to, and who feel it has started to take more than it gives. Perhaps you have tried to quit several times already. You want to understand the pull and build a life that leans on it less.
Some situations are served better elsewhere. If one of these sounds more like you, the linked page will fit you better.
You can also send me an email
These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“In my experience, the men who loosen a porn habit are seldom the ones with the toughest rules. They are the ones who stop policing themselves and start asking what the habit gives them. Most often it is relief from a feeling no one else is allowed to see. Beneath the screen I hear ‘If they saw all of me, would they still respect me?’ and, just as loudly, ‘This is my business, I will handle it alone.’ Very often the same man adds ‘I want someone close, and I want a door I can lock.’ Shame keeps that door shut. Honest company is what opens it.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Julian is 46, a Dutch finance director posted to Dubai with his wife and their 2 teenage sons. The job is relentless and the evenings feel long and strangely empty. Most nights, once the family is asleep, he stays up with his laptop for an hour or more. He has installed blockers, set limits and made promises to himself. A month ago his wife saw his screen. The secrecy wounded her most, and now they hardly speak.
I would not begin with rules. I would begin with the half hour before the laptop opens, and what Julian feels as the flat goes quiet. In a first video session he would probably see that the habit arrives when he feels most alone and least seen, and that he has handled that feeling in secret since he was a boy.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have tried blockers, promises and clean starts, and still the night tends to finish in the same place.
There is no threshold you have to reach and no right moment to ask for help with this. If the habit feels as if it is running you, if you are hiding more than you want, or if it is coming between you and people you love, that is enough. You need neither a diagnosis nor a crisis. Across 22 years of practice I have met many men carrying this alone, and I can tell when a habit has turned into a pattern that deserves real attention.
Expect plain speaking from me, and no verdicts on your character. I begin by helping you see what the habit is doing for you, what keeps it going and what needs to change. The 6 questions below can help you judge whether now is the time.
If so, give that real weight. It often begins small, a few minutes to unwind, and grows into hours. You go to bed late, wake foggy and drift through meetings. Plans get cancelled, training gets skipped, and you avoid going to bed at the same time as your partner.
I would want to know when it grew, what was happening in your life then, and whether it rises with stress, loneliness or conflict. That tells us whether this is a rough patch or something with deeper roots. If your nights look like this, book a session with me.
Both make sense, because each part is looking after something. One part of you is sick of the hiding and the lost nights. Another depends on the habit as the only sure way to shut out pressure, boredom or sadness. So you delete everything in a burst of resolve, and a few days later you feel restless and hollow.
I do not treat the part that wants porn as an enemy to beat. It is trying, clumsily, to take care of you. I help you hear what each part needs, so you can meet that need in other ways and make choices that are truly yours.
For many men, that is the exact trigger. A partner turns away, a message goes unanswered, a pitch falls flat, and within the hour you are online. On a screen nobody refuses you and nobody is disappointed. The relief comes fast, and so does the emptiness after it.
Wanting to feel desired is a real and decent need, and I will not shame it. I help you catch the sting of rejection as it lands and find ways to bring that need to real people instead of to a screen.
This is one of the most painful turns in the pattern. You want intimacy with a partner, or you want to meet someone. Then a real chance appears, it feels risky, and you reach for something that asks nothing of you. Afterwards you feel further away than ever.
I help you slow this down and find the instant when the wish for closeness flips into a wish to escape. I have compassion for that move. I will also help you face its effect on the people around you, so you can stay a little longer with what is real.
Many men use the habit as a door they can quietly close. When your partner wants to talk, when the house is tense or when feelings rise, you retreat into the laptop. It feels like control. Meanwhile your family loses sight of you and has no idea where you went.
Wanting time alone is perfectly reasonable, in my view. The trouble is a hidden room that only you know exists. I help you see what the retreat protects you from, and learn to say “I need an hour to myself” out loud instead of slipping away.
Hiding part of your life for years changes how you feel about yourself. By day you may be the dependable father, colleague or partner, while privately feeling like a fraud. That split leaves you guarded, lonely and unsure what you really want. Living far from home, with fewer people who know you well, can deepen it.
I help you look at which beliefs about sex, men and needs are yours, and which you absorbed from family, culture or faith. When you duck out of sight I will say so, yet I have no rulebook or ready-made self to give you. The aim is a life in which you no longer have to be 2 different men.
If you recognise yourself here, book a free call to talk it over confidentially, or choose a session if you are ready to start.
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Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
You do not need to explain your whole story in your first message.
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Understanding the habit matters, but the work also has to change how you spend your evenings, carry stress and let people near you.
Working with me on a porn habit will help you understand what it does for you, recognise the patterns that keep it in place and make changes you notice in daily life. Insight on its own rarely shifts much. You also need new ways of meeting the needs the habit has been meeting for you.
Psychotherapy is my foundation. Since 2010 I have also been a student of men’s work, with Eli Buren, a dear friend and mentor, as a central influence, and it adds to and deepens my psychotherapy training. Robert Glover’s “No More Mr. Nice Guy” describes the man who hides his needs and flaws to stay liked, dodges conflict and carries shame underneath, and in my experience a secret porn habit is often where those hidden needs end up. David Deida’s “The Way of the Superior Man” adds the picture of a man living from his deepest purpose and fully present with the people he loves. I will be active, direct and on your side. The 6 questions below describe what we work towards.
Related reading: I know exactly why I do it. Why can’t I stop? and How did we end up with a dead bedroom?.
I help you pull apart the habit and what drives it. Porn is rarely the whole story. Beneath it there is usually something specific: stress you never set down, loneliness, swallowed anger, boredom, a relationship gone quiet, or needs you learned long ago to keep to yourself.
I tell you what I see, and I question the explanations that keep you stuck, such as “I just have no willpower”. When you are ready to look honestly, book a session with me.
You can learn to see the chain that leads there. It usually runs like this: a feeling you do not want, a story such as “I have earned this”, a familiar time and place, a first click. Once the earlier links are visible, there is room to choose.
On our calls I help you slow the chain down and understand each link, including what it shields you from. Seeing the chain is only the start. We agree concrete alternatives, and you try them between sessions until they begin to hold.
Sitting with a feeling is not gritting your teeth until it fades. It means staying present long enough to know what the feeling is and what it is asking for. Restlessness may want movement. Loneliness may want a call to a friend in another time zone. Anger may need saying.
I help you catch the urge earlier and understand what your body is really after. Then we build a short list of things that genuinely calm you. This takes practice every day, above all at the hour the habit used to claim.
Honesty begins with knowing what is yours to own, and what you feel and need. Many men either confess in a flood of guilt or deny and play it down until they are caught. Neither helps a partner trust you again.
Together we look for plain, accurate words, without theatre and without shrinking what happened. Glover’s point that hidden deals and secret lives wear trust away is useful here. I will challenge your silence, and also any wish to make your partner manage your shame. We often prepare the conversation together first.
Clearer choices come once you separate guilt, fear and other people’s verdicts from what you actually value. You may want to stop completely, cut down, or understand the habit before deciding anything. Guilt tends to push for grand promises that do not last.
I help you weigh what each option would ask of you. You will get my professional view, and I will name it when you are avoiding, but I will not decide for you or impose a moral code. A target only works if you genuinely want it, not because you feel you ought to.
Lasting change reaches well beyond your screen. You may need a different evening routine, more sleep, friends you actually talk to, exercise, honesty at home or a way of resting that does not leave you feeling worse.
We sort the changes that will make a difference from the ones that only look virtuous. Your sexuality is not the problem. The aim is a life where your desire, your relationships and your values point the same way, and where nothing important has to stay hidden.
You can also send me an email
Nothing needs confessing in advance, and no label is required. We start from how your evenings go now and what you would like them to become.
From our first call I listen, put a name to what sits at the centre and give the work a direction. You will not be asked for explicit detail, and you do not need to have quit before you come.
This is a focused form of online psychotherapy, structured individual work on the habit and what drives it. If trust in your relationship has broken and your partner is willing, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. For work that will take time, a therapy bundle gives you savings and a plan you can rely on.
I want to know why now, where the habit fits into an ordinary week, which attempts to stop have already failed and what you hope will change. I am listening for what it calms in you and when it took hold. Your whole biography is not needed, and nor is anything graphic.
As the session closes, I share my first reading and suggest a direction, and you decide whether my approach feels useful. To speak with me before committing, book a free 30-minute call.
Individual work fits when the habit lives mainly in you: in your stress, your loneliness, your history and the way you handle feelings. That is usually so, even when it affects a relationship. We can explore the relationship fully without your partner on the call.
Week by week, I give you direction and continuity, and I challenge you honestly. The bigger picture of my structured individual work is on online psychotherapy.
Couples therapy is the better choice when the relationship itself needs repair: when trust has broken, when every conversation turns into accusation and defence, or when you have both pulled back. At that point the pattern between the 2 of you matters as much as the habit.
In joint sessions I help you both understand that cycle, own your part in it and rebuild trust step by step. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing. Plenty of men work alone with me first and invite their partner in once they feel steadier.
The pace depends on how strong the pull is, what it is costing you and how much continuity you need. Habits fill gaps, and long gaps between sessions often let the old routine creep back.
I recommend starting weekly. I will tell you if we are meeting too rarely, and when the work can become less frequent. If your job involves heavy travel, a few back-to-back sessions can come first, followed by regular calls.
A bundle makes sense once you know the work will take several sessions and you want continuity, rather than a weekly decision about whether to come back. With a secret habit, the hard weeks are exactly the weeks you will want to cancel.
A bundle lowers the cost per session and gives you a structured plan that holds you to the work. I will help you judge whether one fits. See therapy discounts and bundles, or the cards below.
The work has done its job when you feel in charge of your choices, the secrecy has gone and the habit no longer decides how your evenings end. Old urges may still show up on a bad day, but you know what they mean and what to do.
I review progress openly and do not encourage dependency. Sessions can become less frequent, pause or end. If life hands you something new years from now, coming back is ordinary, not a relapse.
Wondering whether this page is the right door? Here is how it sits beside the options men with a habit like this most often look at.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online compulsive porn use therapy (this page) | You keep going back to porn when you would rather not, and the secrecy is starting to cost you. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online men’s sexuality therapy | Desire, closeness or your sense of yourself as a sexual man is the wider question. | 1-hour video sessions weekly or fortnightly |
| Online performance anxiety therapy | Fear of failing with a partner worries you more than any habit. | A focused course of 1-hour video sessions |
| Online therapy for lonely men | Underneath the habit, the real ache is having nobody to talk to. | Weekly or fortnightly video sessions |
Online compulsive porn use therapy with me is individual psychotherapy by video for men who keep returning to porn against their own wishes. It explores what the habit calms, what keeps it hidden and what you are really missing, and it does so without moral judgement or shaming.
It is part of my online men’s sexuality therapy, focused on one pattern: the habit, the secrecy and what lies beneath them.
Come when you feel you are no longer choosing it, when it costs you sleep, work or closeness, or when you are hiding more than you want to. You do not need to hit bottom first. Your own unease is reason enough.
In 22 years of practice I have learned to look at how long it has been going on, what it is standing in for and how much secrecy surrounds it. Those questions usually show me where the work should start.
No. I do not put labels on you, and I do not diagnose. The useful questions are whether you feel you are choosing, and whether this habit belongs in the life you are trying to build. When the answer is no, it is worth looking at, whatever name others give it.
In my clinical experience, labels tend to add shame without adding understanding. My focus with you would be the job the habit does and what would let you depend on it less.
No. Your goal is yours to set. One man wants to stop, another wants to use it less, and a third simply wants to understand it before choosing. I will not impose rules or a moral position.
My part is to keep you honest about whether your plan is actually working, and to say so when it keeps collapsing. If you also struggle with erections or desire with a partner, ask your doctor to check for physical causes as well.
Because the low mood and the habit feed each other. Stress or loneliness builds, the habit brings quick relief, the relief turns into self-criticism, and the self-criticism builds fresh tension that needs relieving. It is a loop, not a flaw in your character.
We trace that circle one turn at a time and look at what it keeps you from feeling. Then we work on kinder ways to handle the tension, and on treating yourself with enough respect that you no longer need to hide.
Yes. You talk from a private room of your choosing, with headphones, and nobody needs to see you walk into a practice. I ask how the habit shows up in your days, what it seems to give you, what it costs and what you have tried, plus a little about your history and relationships. By the end, you will know how I see the pattern.
You do not need to prepare a confession. Pick a first session once you feel ready, or begin with a free discovery call.
Plan for a first course of sessions over a few months, starting weekly. For many men that is long enough to see the pattern clearly and put new evening routines in place. If the habit is tied to older shame or a long stretch of loneliness, it takes longer.
After 22 years of practice, I prefer a clear first stretch that we review honestly over open-ended sessions without a plan.
Usually, start alone. You need a place to understand the habit and take responsibility for it before you can meet your partner’s questions steadily. Your partner may also want support of their own.
When you are both ready, couples work can help you rebuild trust, and it works by video wherever each of you is. If you are unsure which comes first, we can decide together on a free call.
Individual psychotherapy with me is booked as 1-hour online sessions, each with 50 minutes of therapy. You will find today’s fees, in US dollars, on my prices page.
When you know several sessions will be needed, a bundle saves you 10 per cent and sets a structured plan. Bundle options are on therapy discounts and bundles.
Book your first session online, or request a free 30-minute call if you would rather talk first. A note saying you would like help with a habit is plenty.
If the calendar has nothing that fits, or a discovery at home has made things pressing, write to me directly. I keep some space for acute situations and can usually offer a time within days. Take that one step, and we will begin from where you are.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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