I had a good friend about 13 years ago who was like the OP’s girlfriend. Couldn’t handle her boyfriend looking at porn, watching movies with nudity, album covers with nudity. She went as far as to destroy posessions of his that had nude females on them. (I am thinking of Mother’s Milk cd from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but there were other things.) She had self esteem issues, and high anxiety about her own body image. She convinced herself that his looking at nudity would cause him to leave her. Ironically she cheated on the one boyfriend, latched on to a second, with whom she continued these demands. Problem was, he was in nursing school (as were we)and she became hysterical one day when she found out he had to catheterize a woman. OMG labia!
It was a mess. She was difficult to remain friends with, because her reactions were so beyond normal. After graduation we drifted apart. Last I heard she is married and doing well, but I always wonder what leash her husband is on.
I don’t really like porn, but I am not visual in the slightest. Instead I have a good imagination. Many people of both sexes do like Porn. I told my boyfriend he has to keep it away from our kid, and only on his laptop, but other than that, if it doesn’t interfere with OUR life, its not really any of my business. He doesn’t care about my elaborate daydreams staring Gordon Ramsey, so why should I care about his interests?
I would be very cautious about continuing a relationship with a girl who brings up the subject repeatedly and lies awake at night obsessing about her boyfriends viewing of naked bodies. That way madness lies. I say it won’t work, and you will be miserable. Both of you.
I don’t think she is really talking about coercion, although in some instances I’m sure that’s true. I think she means that if someone is sexually abused as a child/teen they’ve been sexualized early and this affects their view of sex and sexuality. Someone doing the solo masturbation film might very well have been abused and thinks of self=sex since so much of their self identity at an early age was based on sexuality. That’s why a lot of strippers are a product of sexual abuse. Abused at a young age —> “I guess sex is what I’m good for” —> “Sex is what I’m good for, may as well get paid”
I don’t expect people to not be turned on by porn because of it and I’m not anti-porn. I personally don’t see much use in it as it does nothing for me. I find actual porn more humorous than enticing.
It sounds to me like you two are just incompatible. It happens. I’m very clear that a man who needs porn is not for me. It’s not that I feel threatened, it’s that the industry is so rife with pain and exploitation, I really can’t be with someone who supports it. I findit a bit frightening that so many men can just look at these pictures or movies and not care whether the person in them has been treated badly.
I’m also well aware that this cuts out a huge percentage of the datable population. In fact, I think most of the guys I’ve dated have chosen just to lie to me about it - also a deal breaker.
I’d still rather be alone than be with someone who is buying that crap, or who can hard-heartedly watch and enjoy it with no concern for the participants.
I do remember a poll on a different message board where women were asked if they’d ever consider doing a porno, and a surprising number said they would. And most said that they were never abused. But I’m not sure how well that meshes with the reality of the industry.
As for what I will and will not watch, I trust my gut.
Sure, I don’t do my job out of the joy of doing my job. I put up with crap at work because I need the money.
But no one is deriving vicarious satisfaction from watching me work. No one’s in the recliner with a tub of Vaseline watching me pick apart the flaws in someone’s planning. (And if you are… for God’s sake, get help.)
Doing things we don’t enjoy in order to gain the ability to do things we enjoy (or to provide things we need) is part of the human condition. Achieving vicarious joy from watching someone else do that is not, or it shouldn’t be.
There are real biological differences between the sexes; there’s no evidence that liking porn is one of them.
That book is crap; they start with real research finings but oversimplify, over-interpret, misquote and just plain misuse them in the service of pseudoscientific, borderline-sexist nonsense. All of Allan Pease’s books have this problem; avoid him.
The problem with Dan Savage’s advice is the same problem with his advice to cheat and hide it rather than leaing a relationship–nobody has the right to unilaterally decide what’s best for another competent adult. Not nobody, not nohow, not no time.
It doesn’t matter if you think someone’s dealbreakers are stupid and wrong. It doesn’t matter if you think that person would be happier staying in a relationship that is maintain through false pretenses than they would be knowing the truth. You don’t get to make that kind of decision for someone else, any more than they get to make it for you.
I’m pretty sure that’s why it’s called “advice” rather than “a binding legal instrument”.
Count me in with the camp who says… if she’s hot, sexually adventurous, and generous, WTF are you complaining that you can’t openly have her AND your pile ‘o’ porn at the same time? Follow Dan Savage’s advice. Relationships are full of unimportant annoying habits and preferences that thrive perfectly well in secrecy. There’s no reason an unimportant thing like porn can’t be one of those.
I think you misunderstood CrazyCatLady. It’s not that Dan Savage doesn’t have the right to tell this couple what to do, it’s that the OP doesn’t have the ethical or moral right to decide, on behalf of his girlfriend, that a relationship with a large lie at the center of it is better than an honest one or no relationship at all. He shouldn’t make that decision for her.
Again, Savage’s advice was for a *mutual *pretense. If your girlfriend sees you with porn and says, “Ew, gross. I’m not into that, so I’m just going to pretend I didn’t see it and you put it away before I come over, okay?” and the boyfriend says, “Ok,” the Savage Rule applies. If the boyfriend says, “Look, I really like porn and I’m not giving it up, but I’ll put it away before you come over and it’ll be my private thing, okay?” and she says, “Ok,” the Savage Rule applies.
If girlfriend is spending sleepless nights worrying about it, brings it up in conversation and never actually agrees to pretend she doesn’t know, it’s not the same thing at all to pretend for her.
No, it really isn’t. Those two things are about as different as two completely different things can be.
Also, while i don’t claim to have an encyclopedic knowledge of Savage Love columns, i was under the impression that Savage generally recommends being upfront and leaving a relationship, rather than cheating.
For example, here he responds to two letters from people who don’t get any sex at home, and who are thinking of cheating or leaving their spouses. And the advice he gives is this:
So, he doesn’t tell either of them to run around behind the back of their spouse. He recommends that the first one leave, and that the second one make clear to her husband that if she can’t get sex from him, she’ll get it outside the marriage.
I do recall him recommending cheating on a couple of occasions, but i think those were specific instances where one person in a relationship had lied or broken a promise in the first place, like in this case. I’m not sure i completely agree with him about what the husband should do in that situation, but i know that the woman in that story was extremely dishonest with her partner.
Mutual pretense is exactly what Savage was talking about, as an alternative to lying (or being unhappy). He even describes an elaborate pretense in which one partner puts porn in a dedicated folder specifically for the other to look at–but they both pretend nothing is happening with porn. Everybody knows, nobody talks.
You’re right, the OP did offer actual lying (“tell her I give it up, but don’t”–deception, not pretense) as an alternative, at least for purposes of discussion. Cosmic Relief seemed to endorse that choice, depicting it as Savage’s advice, but it wasn’t.
I think lying to a partner about anything, but especially about something which has already been noted as an item of concern, is far too likely to bite the liar in the ass and leave him with less than he started with (no girlfriend, and maybe a computer out the window as well).
I think there’s a difference between lying and everyone just sort of tacitly agreeing to ignore something.
OP, while I’m not going to suggest you make the perfect the enemy of the good, this doesn’t sound like your girlfriend is super healthy in her sexuality. That could end up with some pretty big repercussions at some point.
Porn can be healthy or unhealthy. A blanket ban is probably not healthy in most cases, and taking it extremely personally is an even bigger sign there may be something really unfortunate lurking around the corner.
The problem is that “makes a lot of sense” is not a good standard, especially for a lay person with no background with which to judge his claims; Pease’s stuff only “makes perfect sense” because it fits in with existing stereotypes. So much of that book is such utter bullshit that I don’t recommend anyone read it at all, except for bio types looking for something to snark or be outraged at. For a more scientifically sound exploration of sex differences, try Lise Eliot’s Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow Into Troublesome Gaps – And What We Can Do About It. It focuses more on educational policy, but it has a decent amount of background on the biology and is quite well regarded by scientists (unlike Pease).
Covertly peeking at porn is not a large lie. It is extremely unlikely to affect anything ever. Ideally, neither friends, family, nor lovers should ever have to be anything except completely 100% honest and open with each other… but in reality it is naive to expect that every niggling little conflict will be dragged out into the daylight to be thrashed out and negotiated.
This is why I only go to my local strip club, which (and this is the honest truth) has girls that I will subsequently see walking on campus carrying, say, graduate-level physics texts. I’m a lot happier with consuming naked female entertainment when I have a better-than-average chance that it’s paying for someone’s advanced degrees.
Serious answer to the OP: I agree with the idea that you/we need to know more about her specific objections. Equally, I think, if her specific objections can’t be addressed by anything less than “no porn”, dumping her or acquiescing to her are both preferable to lying, but I’d personally pick the first one because I don’t anticipate it getting better.
Again, I don’t think the OP gets to decide that for her. If it’s something she’s literally losing sleep over, it sounds like quite a large thing to her.
But you do think that she ‘gets to’ control the OP’s personal and private habits, though, and force the issue at the expense of the entire relationship. Okey dokey.
No, not at all. What on earth have I said that makes you think that? I think they each make that decision for themselves. If they’re not both on board with a DADT approach, then they should part ways.