Expect it to be uneven rather than to follow a curve, expect desire and function to move on different schedules, and get erection problems checked by a doctor rather than waiting out a countdown. There is no published timeline for any of this, so treat every confident day-by-day chart you find as folklore rather than as a prediction about your body.
First, the shape of what people describe
There isn't a study that tracked this, so what follows is the honest, uncertain version rather than a finding.
Some people report that sex with a partner becomes better fairly quickly, mostly because they're present for it. Some report a flat stretch first, where desire drops off entirely and nothing much happens for a while. Some notice no change at all in their body and a large change in their head. All three are common enough that none of them tells you anything is wrong.
What does seem consistent is that the mental side and the physical side don't move together. You can want somebody and have a body that hasn't caught up, or the reverse, and the mismatch alarms people far more than it needs to.
Be sceptical of the timeline content. There is no retrievable research establishing a stage-by-stage recovery of sexual function after stopping. The confident charts are forum conventions written in the voice of medicine.
Erections, and the honest position
You'll meet the phrase "porn-induced erectile dysfunction" a lot, presented as established. It isn't. No retrievable evidence establishes it as a distinct diagnosable condition with its own mechanism and its own recovery time, which is a different statement from saying nothing is happening to you.
What is documented is much more boring and much more useful. The NHS position on occasional difficulty is that it ["is usually caused by stress, tiredness or drinking too much alcohol, and it's nothing to worry about."](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/erection-problems-erectile-dysfunction/) And where it happens often, the NHS lists causes including high blood pressure or high cholesterol, diabetes, depression or anxiety, and hormone problems.
Read that list again, because it's the reason this page won't let you wait it out. Several of those are serious conditions that erection problems can be the first visible sign of. Deciding in advance that porn is the explanation means not finding out about the other ones.
When this is a doctor's appointment
The NHS guidance is short and clear: [see a GP or go to a sexual health clinic if erection problems keep happening](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/erection-problems-erectile-dysfunction/), because recurring difficulty can be a sign of a health condition that can be treated.
Some practical notes for that appointment.
- **You don't have to lead with porn.** Say erections have been unreliable for a few months. That gets you the checks that matter. If you want to mention the rest, do, and a decent GP won't blink.
- **Sexual health clinics are an option too**, and often faster to access than a GP appointment.
- **Bring the whole picture.** Sleep, alcohol, stress, mood, any medication you take. Antidepressants and blood pressure medication both commonly affect this, and it's a fixable conversation rather than a permanent state.
- **Mood counts.** Depression and anxiety are on the NHS list. If the last year has been grim, that's medically relevant rather than an excuse.
Going to a doctor is not an admission that the porn wasn't a factor. It's how you rule out the things that matter more.
Desire that doesn't return on schedule
The stretch that frightens people most is the flat one. No urges, no interest, nothing, sometimes for weeks. It's widely described online as a stage with a name and a duration, and there's no research to support the timing anybody gives you.
What's worth knowing is that low desire has plenty of ordinary explanations that all get overlooked when someone has decided this is a porn-recovery phenomenon. Bad sleep. Grief. A new job. Alcohol. Antidepressants. The specific exhaustion of small children. If a flat period runs for more than a few weeks and comes with low mood, that's a GP conversation, not a stage to be endured.
And if you're monitoring yourself several times a day for signs of returning function, that's its own problem. Performance anxiety produces exactly the outcome it fears, and vigilance is the fuel. The most useful advice here is genuinely to stop checking.
The comparison that follows you into the bedroom
This one is quieter and it's often the real work.
Years of a certain kind of viewing can leave a person with a set of expectations that nothing involving two actual bodies is going to meet: about how quickly things happen, how they look, how loud anyone is, how long anything lasts. Nobody chooses those expectations and most people don't notice they've absorbed them until they're in the room.
What helps, in rough order of usefulness. Slow the whole thing down and stop treating an outcome as the objective. Talk while it's happening, which sounds unbearable and turns out to be the fastest correction available. Expect to be present in a way you might not have been for a while, and expect that to be a bit exposing at first.
Give it more time than you want to. The comparison fades with repetition of the real thing, and it does not fade by being argued with.
If you have a partner
Some of what's happening in bed will get read as being about them, especially if they know about the porn. Say the true thing early: this is a body catching up and it isn't about how you feel about them.
Then don't turn it into a project with milestones. Deadlines make performance anxiety worse and put your partner in the position of monitoring your progress, which is a terrible role for anybody.
If they found out recently, understand that intimacy is going to be tangled up with trust for a while, and that the trust work is the thing that unlocks it rather than the other way around. Pushing for sex as proof that things are fine is one of the most common ways this goes wrong. [Repairing trust after porn use](/guides/pornography/repairing-trust-after-porn-use) covers what actually rebuilds it, and if the conversation hasn't happened yet, [telling your partner about porn](/guides/pornography/telling-your-partner-about-porn) covers doing it once, properly.
If you're single
Two things worth naming.
First, you don't owe anyone a full history on a third date. What matters is honesty about anything that affects them: health, other people, money. The rest is yours and you can share it when you choose.
Second, masturbation is a decision you get to make rather than one this page will make for you. Fellowships disagree sharply on it. Some define abstinence to include it, some leave it entirely to the member, and the [ICD-11 is clear](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html) that distress arising only from moral disapproval of your own sexual behaviour is not the disorder. Decide it on the basis of whether it pulls you back toward the pattern you're leaving, not on the basis of what someone else's rulebook says. [SAA, SLAA or therapy](/guides/pornography/saa-slaa-or-therapy-picking-support) sets out who defines what.
What to actually expect
Six honest expectations, none of them a promise.
- Uneven, not linear. Good weeks with a flat one in the middle.
- Presence returns before performance does, for a lot of people.
- The head changes faster than the body, or the other way round, and either is fine.
- Sleep, alcohol and mood affect all of this more than the day count does.
- Anxiety about whether it's working is itself one of the causes.
- Recurring erection problems are a medical question, every time, regardless of what else is going on.
If any of this has tipped into something darker than frustration, Samaritans is on 116 123, free, any hour. In England, 111 and option 2 reaches urgent mental health support.
Common questions
**How long until my sex drive comes back after stopping porn?** Nobody can tell you and any specific number is invented. What's worth doing is ruling out the ordinary causes of low desire, which are sleep, alcohol, mood and medication, and seeing a GP if a flat period runs for more than a few weeks or comes with low mood.
**Is porn-induced erectile dysfunction real?** The term is widespread and the condition is not established in evidence we could retrieve. Erection problems are real and common, and the NHS lists causes including stress, tiredness, alcohol, blood pressure, cholesterol, diabetes, depression, anxiety and hormone problems. If it keeps happening, get it checked rather than waiting out a countdown.
**Should I avoid masturbation as well?** That's your call and the fellowships genuinely disagree about it. The useful test is whether it reliably pulls you back toward the pattern you're leaving. If it does, it belongs on your list. If it doesn't, adopting someone else's rule about it mostly imports a shame problem.
**Sex with my partner feels different and I'm worried they'll take it personally.** Say so out loud, early, in plain language. Silence gets interpreted, and it gets interpreted badly. Slowing down and talking during it does more than any technique.
**Will it ever feel normal again?** Most people describe it settling, and there's no research to give you a timescale. What consistently makes it worse is monitoring, deadlines and treating each occasion as a test. What makes it better is time, sleep, honesty with a partner, and getting the medical side ruled out so you can stop wondering.
Sources
- [NHS, erection problems](https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/erection-problems-erectile-dysfunction/). Common causes of occasional and recurring difficulty, and when to see a GP or sexual health clinic.
- [ICD-11 compulsive sexual behaviour disorder entry](https://www.findacode.com/icd-11/code-1630268048.html). Distress arising only from moral disapproval does not meet the diagnostic threshold.
- [Psychotherapy for problematic pornography use, meta-analysis, 2025](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40126561/). What treatment has been shown to improve, across 20 studies and 2,021 participants, with a high risk of bias acknowledged.
