I hope I’m posting this in the right forum. How would you feel if you found your husband looking at pics of naked women on line and he was trying to hide it from you?
Why would he hide it from me? I don’t care if he looks at pictures of naked women. I don’t care if he goes to strip clubs either. As long as his behavior (whether its nekkid women or too much online gaming) doesn’t interfere with his daily life and is legal - and he presents a good front for the kids (i.e. I wouldn’t want stacks of Hustler where the 12 year old boy could find them), I don’t care.
I guess whether it bothers you or not comes down to how healthy your self-esteem is does it not?
I’d be irritated that he wasn’t sharing.
Really - why should I care if he’s looking at naked women online?
Also perhaps a better understanding of male vs. female sexuality, visual stimulation and the role of sex in your relationship, and its use.
It would depend on why he was trying to hide it from me. (Note: the hiding it would be the threatening part to me, not the porn part.)
If he was trying to hide it from me because he assumed I’d be upset about it and was trying to spare me stress, I’d thank him, reassure him that it doesn’t bother me, and ask him not to do my thinking for me again.
If he was trying to hide it from me because he was ashamed of it, I’d be more worried, because that wouldn’t mesh well with my feelings about normal human sexuality. I couldn’t be married to a man who had hangs ups about simple nudity (I’m assuming these pictures don’t include illegal things like nude children.) We’d have a long talk about shame and sexuality and how I need those not to be connected in my life.
If he wasn’t actually trying to hide it and I was snooping around and found his porn stash, I’d apologize profusely, mean it, and never ever do it again.
If he wasn’t actually trying to hide it and I wasn’t snooping, but maybe clicked on the wrong folder on his laptop while trying to check my email, I’d close it and never mention it directly. I’d also, at a later date, ask him if he wanted to watch some porn, or let him know of a nice nude website* I’d* found, just to kick off the conversation so he knew I think wanting to see naked people is a normal part of human sexuality.
But, in reality, all of these scenarios are ones we discussed very early in our relationship. It was pretty important to both of us that we are on the same page as far as our views on porn and sexuality go. I wouldn’t be with him otherwise. So I’d never be surprised (maybe startled, but not surprised) to see him with porn, nor would he actively try to hide it from me.
Exactly. If your self-esteem is intact and healthy, there’s nothing in porn that can threaten your relationship or take him away from you.
I am assuming that it’s not at the level of an addiction or paraphilia, of course, where he’s masturbating to porn instead of being intimate with you. If that’s the case, then of course there’s an issue, and it’s entirely unrelated to your self-esteem.
I guess I’m just one of the unenlightened ones, but it would make me sad. I don’t have ironclad self esteem to begin with.
I wouldn’t be angry and I would probably never say anything about it.
It depends on the larger context. If the porn had become a substitute for physical and emotional intimacy, I would be very unhappy. If porn viewing made him feel unsatisfied and disconnected with our sex life, I would also be unhappy. Honestly, in any scenario I wouldn’t be thrilled because I have problems with the exploitative nature of much of the porn industry and frankly I find porn kinda tacky (so to speak). And this all assumes legal stuff- no kiddie porn or such.
But overall, I would want to make sure that porn viewing wasn’t acting as a replacement for something he feels is missing, but a fantasy added on to our real life. I wouldn’t be thrilled, but it wouldn’t crush me either.
Good point, Ivory Tower. Context is pretty much everything in this situation.
If you two have a healthy, active sex life, what’s the big deal? Men are turned on by womens’ bodies. Period. Just because you got married doesn’t mean that God reached into your husband’s brain and flipped a little switch that said “only turned on by wife”. Now, if he appeared to be making overatures to another woman, then I would have a conversation with him.
I’d raise an eyebrow at him, he’d blush, and then we’d both pretend it hadn’t happened.
We have a don’t-ask-don’t-tell agreement wrt porn. He knows I’m not interested in sharing it with him, and am not real crazy about him looking at it, but that I won’t insist he not do so. In return, he does me the favor of keeping it discreet and not leaving anything where it’s too easy to find.
It works for us.
My husband has made no secret of his porn interests from when we first started dating, and mostly it’s a matter of looking at pictures of adult women, most of 'em clearly over 30 and with big hooters. It’s what he likes to look at.
Hiding? Again, context. I have a hard time imagining him hiding that. I’m not particularly interested in it myself, he knows that, but it’s not a secret. In fact, for awhile he frequented a website that came out with new material every Thursday, so he had some time reserved to look at the new stuff. Some of it was actually pretty tasteful, and the video jokes were even funny.
I’ve just never been threatened by porn I guess.
The only time I’d worry is if it was something illegal, or if it was part of an affair, but I’ve never had reason to doubt his fidelity.
Agreeing with those who have husbands who don’t actively hide porn; both of us look at porn, though we’re discreet, meaning we don’t surf porn around anyone else, porn folders are hidden, and generally we don’t leave the laptops unattended with porn open on them, etc.
If your husband is rejecting you sexually whether or not he is looking at porn, that needs to be addressed.
I guess. Mine’s fine and I don’t care. Are you saying yours in damaged and you do?
Amazed. He can’t figure out how to use the microwave and we’ve had one since 1979. If I found out he could even turn on a computer I’d be stupefied. It would be like that Reagan skit on SNL where he was bumbling in public but sharp-witted in private.
Wait a minute: Does he know any of the women who are nekkid?
But the microwave doesn’t have a porn setting.
There was this time my husband went to a strip club for a bachelor party (pretty much the only time he goes, along with ITD, he thinks its kind of tacky). He knew THREE dancers and the St. Paul cop who stopped in during the evening a few times (the police DO keep an eye on strip clubs…)
While there is exploitation in that industry, I’ve learned via a long lecture from a stripper not to be patronizing and ASSUME that any INDIVIDUAL is being exploited. (nothin’ quite like getting a lecture on women’s rights from a stripper) Many are exploiting…
That’s harsh. Porn can bother someone without them having a self esteem problem. Personally, I don’t care if my husband looks at porn, but if I did have a problem with it, I wouldn’t want my feelings dismissed as 'I guess you have a self-esteem problem".
A lot of it would depend on the culture someone was raised in: I was raised in a geek-heavy, post-internet world, so every man I knew talked pretty openly about his porn stashes. Jokes about typing one-handed and such were normal. My grandmother didn’t grow up in that world: men didn’t talk about sex in front of women. Women didn’t know porn even existed, or if it did, it was something dirty losers collected. Sex and lust both had all kinds of religious connotations. They were supposed to be holy (and she had 12 kids because she took this seriously) My grandmother would have objected to my grandfather keeping porn, and it would have had nothing to do with her self-esteem. It would have had everything to do with what arousal and sex meant to both of them.
I do think that in this day and age most men were absolutely raised on porn and arousal doesn’t have those connotations. It isn’t something we hold sacred. And I think that’s fine–but I don’t know that it’s better, or a requirement, or that people with different attitudes should be told that the problem is all theirs.
All men look at porn.
Let me repeat this, because it’s important. ALL men look at porn.
Now that I’ve said this, some guy is going to come in here and say that he never looks at porn. He’s lying. All men look at porn.
Your job, if you want to be with a man, is to learn to deal with it. Porn has nothing to do with you being inadequate or ugly. You will get laid as much as you want. The only cause for concern is if he’d rather look at porn and rub one out than have sex with you. If that’s the case, dump him. Otherwise, deal with it, because porn is something that comes standard with all models of male, and it has ever since Grok drew pictures of boobies on the cave walls.