PORN AGAIN
[TheStranger.com - Sep.17/09]
MY BOYFRIEND and I have been living together for a year. He knows I am an insecure person when it comes to my body. I'm not overweight, I've been told my whole life how good-looking I am, and my boyfriend tells me he loves my body. We have an active sex life. Here is my problem: I get upset when he looks at porn. I never had a problem with porn until my previous boyfriend (he preferred porn to sex). I wish I could get over this. My boyfriend knows I would love to share pornography together, but he just does it in private.
I suppose I got upset initially because my boyfriend told me on several occasions that he didn't need to look at porn while he was in a relationship, and I believed him. I later saw on our computer that this wasn't true, and he kept denying it until we had an argument. It bothers me that he felt like he had to lie about it.
Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated to help me get over this.
Feeling Fucking Frustrated
P.S. When I'm alone and I look at the porn my boyfriend watches on the computer, it does turn me on a little and I masturbate thinking about him getting off to it. But I feel bad after I'm done. WTF?
THE USUAL porn de la concorde—the only porn compromise that works—goes like this: He pretends not to look at porn, out of consideration for your feelings, and you pretend to believe him, out of consideration for his. And I would stick that advice on a pike and parade it under your window if it weren't for that amazing little postscript: You're turned on when you check out the porn your boyfriend's been watching, and—this is a very important detail—you masturbate not so much to the porn itself but to the idea that this porn is getting your boyfriend off when you're not around.
WTF? This the fuck: Your erotic imagination has been hard at work, FFF, breaking down your sexual fears and insecurities—about your looks, about porn, about your douchebag ex-boyfriend—and reconstructing them as a fetish. Congratulations, FFF, you've got a kink. It's not an uncommon response: Sometimes our subconscious mind takes the lemons of our sexual insecurities and turns them into delicious bonerade. So what do you do now? You should begin to explore and cultivate—slowly, carefully, thoughtfully—your subconscious mind's efforts to eroticize your boyfriend's porn habits and your own insecurities. Here's how:
He may never want to look at porn with you—he's obviously self-conscious about it, which is why he lied (maybe he had a bad experience with an ex who freaked out about his porn-viewing habits that left him feeling insecure?)—but you've already proven that you two don't have to watch porn together for both of you to get something out of it. He should continue to get off watching porn alone but then intentionally leave the clips for you, perhaps in a dedicated folder. You should look at those clips—alone—and get off watching the porn he watched and tormenting yourself—carefully—with mental images of him getting off to this stuff. Delete the clips you've looked at so that he knows you're getting off, too, and knows to refill your clips folder.
You can turn this problem that you're having with your boyfriend—he's looking at porn, you're masturbating about it—into a game you're playing with your boyfriend. That will give your insecurities an erotic payoff—and that payoff could alleviate or eliminate those bad feelings.
