Porn to Run

Q 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?

A 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. So what do
you do now? You should begin to explore and cultivate 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.

Q I have been in a stable poly relationship for 20 years. A good
friend of mine knows this but rejects poly as a lifestyle choice for
himself. He is in a “monogamous” relationship now. But he is willing to
cheat on his girlfriend—with me if I wanted, but I’m not keen. My
question is this: Why would someone pick cheating when they know about
open or poly relationships? I don’t understand. I don’t see the logic
in it. &mdsh;Honest Open Poly Eros

A Isn’t it obvious? Your friend wants to have sex with other people,
HOPE, but he doesn’t want his girlfriend having sex with other people.
What I don’t understand is why an honest poly can be friendly with a
dishonest cheater. That’s like an out gay person being friends with a
tormented closet case—where’s the logic in that?

And this has nothing to do with your question, HOPE, but I’ve got a
little space to kill: The Bell Shoals Baptist Church in Brandon,
Florida, made the news last week when its pastor replaced the
megachurch’s 10 Pepsi vending machines with 10 Coke machines. The
pastor felt that Pepsi was far too supportive of—can you
guess?—“the gay lifestyle.”

What I found most remarkable about this story wasn’t the
stupidity—more on that in a moment—but the fact that a single
church in Florida has 10 soda-pop vending machines. Ten! You would
think the good Christians at Bell Shoals could make it through an hour
or two on a Sunday without a cold can of corn syrup.

And psst…Bell Shoals? Coke supports gay rights, too. Your best
gay-hatin’ soda-pop option may be ZamZam Cola. Made in Iran, ZamZam
Cola is the most popular soft drink in Saudi Arabia, and I’m guessing
the good folks at ZamZam don’t like the gays any more than you do. But
if the “soft drink of the Hajj” doesn’t appeal to you, Bell Shoals, how
about asking your parishioners to go without soda pop for an hour a
week?

Q I’ve been in a relationship with my boyfriend for the last five
years, and we moved in together this past year. Our sex life is not too
active and it’s an issue we’ve discussed numerous times. This has
caused my self-esteem to plummet. And this aspect of our problem has
made me very resentful: We’re very into D/S play and discovered our
kinky interests early on. In fact, any time I bend him over and spank
him or add a bit of bondage, our sex life picks right up again. I
resent the fact that this is the only way I can get him interested. Is
it possible that he’s only interested in kinky sex? —He Only
Likes It Kinky

A You have leverage here, HOLIK, use it.

The next time you wanna get fucked good and vanilla, HOLIK, whisper
in the boyfriend’s ear that you are so gonna tie him up and beat his
ass…tomorrow night. Then tell him if he wants that—and tell him
that you know he wants it because he’s a dirty little pervert—he’s
going to have to fuck you right now, and fuck you hard, and fuck you
the way you wanna be fucked. Then once he’s fucking you, HOLIK, whisper
something vaguely threatening in his ear once in a while—he won’t
have any trouble staying hard.

This article appears in Sep 17-23, 2009.