There is a long-standing debate over whether porn is good for you or bad for you. We received two questions from straight women decidedly in the “bad for you” camp. So we “remixed” our Wise Guys’ thoughts on the topic with some of our own to come up with advice for straight women disturbed by their partners’ porn consumption:
Dear Em & Lo, I just learned my amazing college boyfriend uses porn to masturbate, at least twice a week. Understand, we’re not talking an unhealthy dependency on porn, and he remains very focused on me when we have sex. He says it’s just an old habit from high school. I consider myself very tolerant, and I am aware that most guys indulge in this kind of thing. However, I can’t understand why he needs the help of a girl he’s never met to satisfy himself. I realize there is high quality porn available that helps empower women, but that’s not the sort he described to me as his preference. I just can’t understand the appeal of what he’s watching. To a degree, I almost feel cheated on. I’m not ridiculous, and wouldn’t demand an ultimatum or anything silly like that. I just don’t understand.
Dear Em & Lo, My wonderful husband and I have a full and varied sex life, yet my husband insists on watching porn. I generally like porn for us to watch together. What he does however is watch porn during the day when I am not home. I have asked him several times to not do this and he either says he will stop or is non-committal. Now what he does is watch it anyway but deletes it from the history in the computer. My question is, am I wrong to ask this of him? Do I need to just get over this issue even though it really bothers me?
Dear Porn Patrol,
Let’s take your relationship with shoes or women’s magazines or whatever guilty pleasure you enjoy: imagine if your partner said he was viscerally opposed to it, thinks it is a horrible industry that exploits people and perpetuates sexism and misogyny, and suggested that it might be a deal breaker. Or imagine if he asked you to give up masturbation*, because he should be enough for you. You’d be bummed, because you know those things don’t impact the love you have for your partner. You might, out of generosity and kindness, give them up, but then you’d probably become bitter and resentful for being forced to change. The same could go for him and you might find he ends up on somewhere such as hdsexvideo or similar websites a little more frequently than twice or so a week.
We understand how porn makes you feel uncomfortable and unloved and disrespected — we’ve been there — but really, from your partner’s perspective, it has nothing to do with you; you’re not in any competition with it; it’s a normal and almost unavoidable part of being a sexual being in this Internet age (and we’re not just talking men; plenty of women enjoy porn regularly, too). Honestly, you’ll have a hard time finding a man who doesn’t like porn; it’s hard enough to find one who doesn’t like sports!
This is not to say that all porn is harmless. Some studies (cited here) found that men’s porn use was associated with lower quality sex and lower levels of intimacy in their relationships. We think that the prevalence of porn can be blamed for a lot of the misconceptions young people (and plenty of adults) have today about pleasure and safety and what constitutes sex and what works for women’s bodies and what it means to treat people with decency and respect. Which is why it’s so important not only for decent, realistic sex education to be readily and widely available, but for people — especially women — to support the production of quality, feminist porn (like Erika Lust’s films), because porn ain’t going away.
Of course, you can’t dictate people’s sexual fantasies or tell them what they can and can’t watch, like some uptight Big Brother. Well, you can try if, you’re their partner, but it probably won’t go over so well. Which is why it’s better to tell them how you feel. Compromises can be made on both sides so everyone’s more at ease.
Maybe you try to find something that turns you on, that you find acceptable so you can see where he’s coming from, as it were. Maybe so you could even enjoy it together! At least two studies (cited here) showed that women’s use of porn correlated with higher quality sex lives.
And you can certainly encourage him to stay away from the more disturbing stuff, like, say, Brazilian fart porn — there is plenty of good, old-fashioned, healthy and responsible boot-knocking going on out there by consenting adults who aren’t on drugs. But if he’s compulsively watching porn instead of having sex with you, or his porn consumption is disrupting his work or school or social outings or daily living, then you’re in your rights to strongly recommend he seek professional help.
Assuming it’s not an actual problem for him, and you can’t find a way to get into it yourself, but you’re not willing to walk away from the relationship, then ask him to keep a private thing (and if he’s doing this already, consider it him being polite!). Don’t talk about it, definitely don’t watch it, don’t snoop for signs of it. In this case, ignorance can be bliss.
Em & Lo
*Masturbation is something you should continue to do whether you’re in a relationship or not, married or not — it’s good for you to have some quality alone time!
To start off, i have many problems with porn. Some were mentioned above already, but I’d like to put in my own two or three cents. The fact that many people are exposed to pornography below the legal age of 18, sometimes as young as 12 or younger, is not helping the view and objectification of sex that kids already witness all around them in the world. The maturity of the content they see is loose all around them and there are no restraints on it, especially when it is clear that many parents are not putting in their words about safe sex etc. This is when most men, like in the story above, I feel get into the habit of turning to porn, when they are bored or just need to get off, and form these habits that aren’t healthy to carry into a relationship. I don’t feel like just because something has been started as a habit years before you meet someone is a reason to continue doing it, or hide it. I’ve had very serious conversations with my boyfriend about why I am against the use of porn in lieu of human contact or communication, and the content that is out there, the people involved etc, but still he continued to use it behind my back knowing that it was very disrespectful to me and what I heartily believe in. What also tied into this is that he mentioned that he still acts like he is single.. which was very clear in other parts of our relationship. I have yet to find any article mentioning a woman in a relationship that has her views about porn being clearly disrespected by a significant other. Many that I have seen present the point that the female masturbates, etc, which i do not do. I’ve never been comfortable with the topic of porn, and I find that I come to the conversation educated and not naive about it, and ive even taken a course in the biological matters of sex, relating to psychology as well, but it is still hard for me to determine why someone would disrespect their significant other in that way. I’m still trying to deal with this situation clearly, and I would enjoy respectful input.
I’m sorry, Billyboy. I hope things get better for you.
Hugs,
M
Thanks, Madamoiselle, for your thoughts and concerns. I’d rather not go into particulars, but I will say I’ve considered and am aware of many of the issues you brought up. We’ve even talked about many of them, and it’s certainly a complex matter. The frustration, for me, stems from the fact that she doesn’t do anything to remedy the situation. We just keep rehashing the same conversations, with no effort on her part to change things. I am optimistic, however, and would say the there is always hope. We still have a connection, it’s just the intimacy that needs to be addressed.
Billyboy, do you mind my asking? Do you and your wife have a young baby or child? This is common to reduce a woman’s interest in sex for a year or so, it makes sense, as the baby needs her and having an other one (which is what usually drives a woman’s sex drive, the conscious or unconscious desire to have a child) would be detrimental to the baby. That doesn’t mean she should have NO sex drive, just that it might be muted for a year or so.
Or, is she experiencing perimenopause? Some of us have an increase in sex drive in our 40s, as the eggs start to degrade and our bodies make less estrogen and the balance of testosterone is shifted upwards. But many women have a decrease in sex drive, along with not being able to lubricate or even orgasm. She needs to see her OBGYN as there are treatments to try to restore the sex drive.
One more thing that can kill a woman’s sex drive is anger. Is she upset about something? A death in the family? Losing a friend? Something she THINKS you did? Or something you DID do and don’t realize she is upset, or she refuses to tell you. NOT telling your man when you are upset is immature, but so many women take the “You should know.” stand, and it wrecks the relationship.
What occurred before her losing her sex drive? Something traumatic? Or just the daily grind? Both are solvable, but if she and you don’t want to get some professional help, it is sad.
Oh, one more thought. MANY of us lose our sex drives (some of us nearly completely) when we are on certain types of hormonal birth control. Depo Provera is the main culprit, but in some women even the regular Pill can be blamed.
I know you and she have “talked it to death” but maybe there is still some hope.
Good luck.
Wow, someone clearly has issues. WTF2 wrote: “Seriously what is wrong with you people? Porn is wrong. YES I SAID IT. The reason that there are men who get bored with their wife is because of porn. The reason men look at other women with lust and cheat is because they have been hammered by the porn industry to believe women are sexual objects and not people.”
Okay . . . so why do women get bored with their husbands? In my case, I can tell you, it’s not because she’s watching porn. My wife has zero libido anymore and I’ve tried anything & everything and have talked it to death with her. I’d never cheat, so without porn, I’d probably just go flat out insane.
I would also have to point out that men, and women, for that matter, have cheated on their spouses long before porn became so widely available and accessible. And before you make the argument, I seriously doubt that it has increased because of porn.
To counter your thought, I have to wonder how many men cheat because their wives have lost interest in either them and/or sex?
I just wanted to add a few things. 1) There is a difference between being ADDICTED to porn (meaning not being able to feel desire or perform without porn as a stimulus) and simply occasionally watching and enjoying it. (and the word “Occasionally” is very flexible. For some people it means once or twice a week, for others once or twice a month or less.) FOOD can be addictive. Terribly addictive (yes, I KNOW the argument, “you can’t live without food, but you can live without porn.” Of course, but you CAN live without Twinkies and potato chips and pop.) MOST can people eat, they enjoy it, but it doesn’t consume their lives, their every waking thought or cause damage. They can limit or eliminate “bad” food choices, in favor of good, or save the less wise food choices to special occasions. That doesn’t mean FOOD is “bad” simply the way people choose it and use it can be.
Most people who do enjoy some porn are NOT “addicted” but simply choose to watch it on occasion. Think of it as Twinkies, occasionally it’s fun, four times a day may be a problem. Eating NOTHING BUT Twinkies is really a problem. But judging one who occasionally indulges in Twinkies because “I’d never do that. It’s disgusting.” is a tad intolerant.
2) Most “men” who watch porn are not “bored with their wives and will eventually cheat on them.” (BOY, would I be in trouble….but several decades into this relationship, he isn’t bored, neither am I, and neither of us have cheated……and we both watch some porn, both together (the most fun) and sometimes alone.)
This also implies that only “men” watch the stuff. There is a LOT of porn and erotica out there made for and by women, in many media forms. I am thinking of everything from Erika Jong to Anias Nin to Tristin Taromino, to Allison Tyler to Velvet Blue etc. The stuff I currently like is…..spicier than the stuff my husband chooses for himself, so it’s not just men who “objectify.”
I went through a very painful ordeal, about erotic and porn in the form of “2nd Wave Feminism” brought on misunderstanding about porn for many years. I thought it was “evil” and cruel, and caused harm in it’s pure form alone, while my fantasies were FAR beyond most of the stuff I usually had seen in most porn or erotica….a disconnect occurred. I tried to, really, alter my fantasy life, with disastrous result,(I started to not really enjoy sex) then settled on “what I like is MY business” while still “hating” porn, when really I didn’t understand it.
When I realized that my “hatred” was artificial, and for all intents and purposes it was media and “quasi Oprah-like” driven, I relented, accepted my over the top sex drive for what it was, and the Man and I settled into a happily flowing sex life, which contains some porn, but doesn’t require it. I found I actually do enjoy a good deal of it, (lesbian porn and gay porn do little for me, but I don’t abhor these, they are just….there, at least the lesbian variety, can’t seem to get away from that.) I enjoy written erotica, my Man doesn’t seem to get into it, with the exception of the occasional story in a magazine or something I point out to him.
3) MOST of the acts seen in erotic videos were NOT “made up” by the movie makers. People were already DOING this stuff. It still amazes me, when the Man and I watch a video, and often I will say, “Hey, we do that!” (why it amazes me, I don’t know, a lot of sex is instinct, but it still surprises me when I see something I somehow think we “made up” ourselves. Nope, if we are doing it, chances are other people are as well. And chances are good SOMEONE is making a film of people doing it.) In fact, I think we can credit pornography for the increase or at least acceptance of oral and anal sex, acceptance of the female orgasm, however it occurs, and varied sexual positions in recent decades. People WERE doing these things, but a lot of them thought “something was wrong” with them (see the original Kinsey Reports for details) In some ways erotica made certain consensual sex acts “acceptable” to the masses, (even if the masses were doing them, but thinking “something is wrong.” and feeling unnecessarily guilty.)
In some cases seeing others do things validates “This is OK.” (I am not talking about non-consensual violent stuff, I am, as usual talking about CONSENSUAL acts. “OK” ends where Consent ends.)
There IS a downside. Yes, the women often all do look like clones of each other, there is SOME objectification (but, do the Bottoms watching some gay porn object to THEIR “objectification?” My guess is “no.”) I HATE the ubiquiousness of the Brazillain Wax, and so MANY siliconed breasts, but it IS fantasy, and any adult watching porn should understand this. (Which is why erotica and pornography are simply NOT for children….need I say this?)
My Man and I have found a happy medium in what is now referred to as “Vintage Erotica.” Mostly stuff from the 70s, 80s and early 90s. (Oh that Johnny Holmes. And I recently did a 2 week internet search to find some Vintage Seka for a gift for My Man.) In this stuff there is some pubic hair, the women are varied in looks, size and color, the men are varied (and usually, in straight porn, straight looking) there is little silicone (“Squishy, bouncy real boobies!” The Man cried!) and we can forgive the unfortunate hair styles, for the stuff we seem to like.
OK, my two cents. (Well, more like a buck seventy five…) I am NOT telling anyone to watch anything which makes them uncomfortable, or to think a 10 hour a day porn habit is healthy, but accepting that different people DO have different desires and addendums to their sex lives is certainly something to stress and understand.
Also, two people in a couple may NOT like the same things. I have heard tell that “men are visual” (Really? Then why does he hardly notice if I color or cut my hair?) So, most likely more men watch porn. But, my Man can accept my shopping trips, without having to be present or even “like” the idea, and I can accept his ADDICTION to the Bears and the Sox, to the exclusion of everything else, as well as accept being a “March Madness Widow” so others can accept a few oddities (from their POV) from their significant others. If it doesn’t interfere with the ability to sleep, eat, feel pleasure or socialize or work it is NOT “an addiction” so I think some tolerance is necessary here.
🙂
My boyfriend and I both like porn, but he has his that he likes to watch and I have mine. I understand that watching what I like turns me on for a number of reasons, and that what your after..that turn on. But I don’t get dissappointed because I haven’t had what it is I’m watching. Thats where my boyfriend has pissed me off while watching his porm with me. His porn being the two girls with one guy or a swinger setting. He will get kinda angry at times saying things like “see,..why can’t you do that?” or “See,..you’re too uptight. Why don’t you like other girls?” Like he’s mad at me because I haven’t made his porn reality for him. Naturally, I get pissed. I don’t have a problem with other girls but I don’t want to be with them sexually and I have no intentions of sharing my boyfriend. Its fantasy, not real everyday life.
Dawn, of course porn is not completely harmless–neither is alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, or even chocolate. Porn addiction is very real and very debilitating, but so is sex addiction. Yet most of us believe that alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, chocolate, and sex are not inherently evil. These things can all be enjoyed, by many of us, in moderation. My ex and I both watched porn, yet we never cheated on each other, had any desire to cheat on each other, or allowed porn to interfere with our physical relationship. Just because something CAN be overused in a very harmful way does not mean that the thing itself ought never to be used by anyone. I would never, for example, refrain from having sex with my significant other for fear a sex addiction would be sparked, though of course that would be a possibility; instead I would try to enjoy it in moderation.
To Siri: It sounds like you and your boyfriend have a great handle on things, but in case it’s any more help, I want to point out that I was in a similar situation to you, with one difference. I was deeply in love with my boyfriend, but I wanted to wait for sex because it was so important to me. He had waited also, and we both had minimal experience in that area (that is, none except kissing). I never ended up getting around to having sex with him (we broke up last year), but I did watch porn. Somehow, I found sex to be something very sacred that I was just working up to toward what turned out to be the end of our relationship, and yet, yes, I had watched lots of couples have sex and gotten off on it. I understand where you see the incongruity, but as someone who has lived it, I find my attitude toward my own interaction with sex and my attitude toward the porn I watch to be pretty disconnected.
As another illustration of that … sometimes the things I watch are things I would be EXTREMELY turned off by in real life. Because porn is already once removed from reality, the extra oomph of a really kinky aspect provides the necessary firepower sometimes. That doesn’t mean that I would ever desire that kinky aspect to enter into my own sex life. Don’t assume that your boyfriends are looking for exactly what they see in porn … really. It’s not the same experience.
Well let me just say one thing about porn and men anyone who thinks its harmless is wrong. I live with a man who I thought was the most wonderful man I ever met until porn starting consuming his life and now we don’t even have a life thanks to porn because he became addictided. It consumes all of his time and its causing major problems with his job his life in general and I can’t live with it anymore so if you think it harmless your dead wrong, try reading up on sex addiction and porn addiction you’ll be suprised what its all about not a pretty picture it can happen to anyone
To WTF2: While I respect your opinion, I cannot agree with it. Not just men cheat, for one. And I do not believe it is porn that causes PEOPLE to cheat. As human beings we have sexual attractions to many people. Just because a man watches porn does not mean that they only consider women to sexual objects. My bf terats me like a queen, yet he watches porn.
Yes, everyone has a right to like or dislike porn, but we must show respect for other’s opinons, remember WTF2 Treat others the way you want to be treated.
nothing wrong at all….
I have an interesting solution, intrinsically to my person, to this issue: I have a foot fetish, so for me pornography is simply images or videos of girls’ feet. That’s all I need to jerk off.
Ironically I also happen to be somewhat of a prude myself when it comes to sex, not porn — mostly due to the brainwashing of my parents, something that I’m now trying to overcome, and the fact that I couldn’t imagine myself having sex with someone I wasn’t emotionally, physically, spiritually and socially attracted to more than anyone in the world. But with my porn, there’s no objectification of women — I find absolutely no sexual stimulation in watching a mediocre-looking girl and some random man having sex and I think that it’s useless. Also, since I’ve spent the majority of my life single, I’ve gotten used to wanking to these pictures alone.
When I’m with a girl, though, I don’t actually *need* sex. I don’t know if it’s a low level of testosterone, or the fact that my foot fetish is so deeply ingrained in me: but the things that girls “stereotypically” do or say to make guys aroused have absolutely no effect on me. For me, sex is just something that I do with a girl I love to get her off by employing every single method at my disposal to show her my affection. After an extended foreplay session, I’ll kiss and softly lick her feet to get myself hard, then I’ll enter her and continue essentially giving her my body so that she can masturbate with it, and if I need to stay hard I’ll put her feet in my face, and after I make her come a few times and she’s in that post-coital euphoria, I’ll cool her down by then doing my thing with her feet. She is usually totally fine with it and lovingly obliges me.
That’s it. Of course there are some times when I’m walking down the street or sitting somewhere and I suddenly get the urge to just thrust into someone, and I definitely do enjoy sex with my girlfriend, since I think the little noises she makes are cute and I get to have fun experimenting with getting her off in creative and different ways. But for the most part, sex proper is something that’s mostly for her benefit and for the emotional connection as far as I’m concerned.
Seriously what is wrong with you people? Porn is wrong. YES I SAID IT. The reason that there are men who get bored with their wife is because of porn. The reason men look at other women with lust and cheat is because they have been hammered by the porn industry to believe women are sexual objects and not people.
You have a right to dislike it and every woman who feels it is wrong is RIGHT. There are men who don’t engage in this you just have to find them. It seems harmless but it isn’t Don’t listen to this woman she has no idea what she is talking about. Porn Is selfish and sick perverted habit.
Interesting comments. For me not even 10,000 porno pages compares to two minutes of my lovers touch. But there are always low periods of sexual activity with my partner and I need masturbation. Unlike my lover, porno gets old. It makes me think of how we relate to the hero or heroine in a movie — frequently quite differently than our outlook on how we live our own lives — but we usually wouldn’t act out our lives like James Bond for example.
So there is a difference in watching porno. My partner would never want to get kinky. But I can safely fantasize about it when watching porno. I think the differences is that I don’t love and deeply care for the woman in porn. So I can have desire for kinky there in my vicarious voyeurism, but have no desire for it with my lover because I know it repulses her.
correction:
i meant if no (he didn’t want me to do that stuff), then why was he watching it?