Husband obsessed with watching porn (on his own) - am I being unreasonable?

[Tiredoutmum]

Hi mums (and dads)

This is an awkward thing to talk to my close friends about, since they all know my husband really well, so I'm hoping some of you out there can help me get my head straight on this.

My husband enjoys watching porn - some hard core I understand - but nothing too deviant (no animals, young girls etc). He does this on the internet, upstairs in our loft room (which he uses as a study), and usually when I've gone to bed or I'm out for the evening.

We have discussed this before because I've been a bit uncomfortable about it, and he says it's just because my libido can't keep up with his, and since he's not the type to go and have an affair or find a prostitute, this is his way of 'scratching the itch'. He's tried to explain that for men, the sexual need is a very physical one and you have to kind of let it out otherwise you get really pent up and frustrated. And because he's not particularly imaginative, he needs some visual stimulation to assist him with this.

I find this uncomfortable, it seems really odd that he's upstairs watching women whilst his family are asleep downstairs. He says I'm being a prude and that some wives would want to go and join in.

Last time we had this discussion, we agreed that it was because I wasn't putting out enough that he required this outlet, and it turned out he felt that if we had sex regularly once a week as a minimum, he wouldn't need to find other ways of relieving his frustration. So the agreement a few weeks ago was that he'd stop watching the porn sites and I would increase my efforts in the bedroom. I feel I've kept my side of the bargain (other than the last couple of weeks when either the children or I have been ill).

Today I went to find something on the computer and discovered he's been back on all the sites again and watching it on several evenings (I ended up going through his browsing history) without saying anything to me.

I have confronted him this morning and am upset and angry - largely because he lied to me, and we had a deal - and partly because I am now worried that he has a proper addiction and I don't know where to go from here.

Am I being a prude? Is this normal (he says what he's doing is entirely normal)? Should I be grateful he is doing this within the family house rather than going out and shagging other women? I'm concerned that if I give him an ultimatum, I'll either push it underground and he'll just lie, or I'll make him so sexually frustrated he'll go and snog (or worse) someone else. Ironically, all this is doing is turning me off and making me not want to have sex with him at all.

Please send ANY opinions you have - male or female - good or bad.

Thank you x

I am "long term married" and neither myself nor my H would consider the "pull my nightie down when you're finished" type of encounter to belong anywhere other than back in the 1950's...

These days, women are active participants in their sex lives, not objects to have sex on

interesting that HH professed to not speaking for his DW, but then went ahead in great detail to describe their bedroom activities

Is the optional orgasm for both parties?

I think poor hh made the common male mistake of thinking he knows about female sexuality from books/internet. The problem with this is everyone feels differently and so there is actually no "norm".
I can onbly speak for myself when i say i wouldnt really contemplate doing anything i didnt feel like doing and would never ask dh to "help himself" I actually dont think he would want to have sex with me unless i was willing or enjoying myself. Yes ive also read that women can have sex with out an orgasm and of course that is true but its when men assume this too literally that its a shame for their partners.
I dont think a man would have sex with out reaching a climax so it should be assumed that neither would a woman.
hh nevr assume you know anything about women.Not on mumsnet for sure

To get back to the OP: I fully sympathise with you because I found myself in a similar situation and didn't feel I could talk to anyone about it. Thank God for Mumsnet! You're not a prude if you don't feel aroused by porn and don't want to join in with him. You are not at all unusual if you feel angry and hurt by what he's been doing. And I'm not surprised that all this discovery is turning you off, after all it can be extremely unerotic to think of your lover sitting up in the attic all alone wanking to the flickering screen instead of wanting to be with you. (Especially in times as you explained when you or the children were ill.)

Through the anger and hurt, try thinking about what are your own personal views on the porn content. The books someone suggested earlier are really helpful. There's a website called antipornmen.org. Do you and your DH share the same values on this? Personally I hate the sexism, exploitation and commercialisation of sex and therefore respected my DH less because he didn't seem aware of all of this. He was only thinking of his own titillation and not the wider effect of the porn industry on society.

There's been a lot of chat about differing libidos in this thread. What I came to realise was that my DH and I didn't so much have lower or higher libidos than each other. Instead, we were expecting different things. He was hoping for more sex, more often, because it was always fulfilling. I was hoping for more fulfilling sex that lasted longer (once aroused I could go on all night!) but I didn't mind how often it was, as long as it was equally enjoyable. He'd been unaware of how often he'd fallen fast asleep snoring beside me while I was still unfulfilled :(

Talking all this over really helped us to understand one another better. Best of luck with your relationship.

YANBU

sorry
this isn't IABU

Basically, it's normal for a woman to feel uncomfortable with porn, or with her husband watching it. I mean, the entire industry is based on the degradation of women FFS, and the porn industry takes advantage of the fact that women are economically vulnerable, due to being women, making porn a reasonable economic option. So if you're watching porn, you're watching prostitutes, basically. Pornstitution. And then there's a high possibility you're actually watching rape... because porn directors expect prior consent, a contract to be filled out...
... but as we all as women here know, sometimes when you're having sex, it just doesn't feel right, and sometimes it just isn't enjoyable. Those times, we, the unpaid women, get to say "stop, I've had enough." If you're being paid, if you're being shot in a porn movie, you can't basically. Or you lose your money and your time. That is coerced consent, or rape.

I dont think a man would have sex with out reaching a climax

Sorry beg to differ. Certainly in my experience it's not uncommon. If you ( i.e. men ) can hold off the orgasm it prolongs the whole act as one can sustain an erection much longer rather than having an orgasm and suddenly feeling a very strong urge to sleep straight away.

nevr assume you know anything about men :o

mr gin-but you would i presume eventually climax? If not,good for you but im sure you wouldnt like it if your partner said just sort me out and get off! haha

ledkr, TMI wasrningnot necessarily no. There have been times when after doing three rounds or so I've actually been quite happy to call it a night without ejaculating because I was knackered. It does of course cause 'ball ache' but there you go. Would probably deal with that on my own the next day.

I think there is an ego aspect to it, a little voice saying 'hey man you gave xxx three orgasms last night, you bad boy you' . And I wouldn't say it was a every day thing, but it does happen.

My bro told me once that as his and his wife's sexy times had become mundane they both start making love even when they don't feel like it, but during the act they get more into it. So they both may not feel like it, so instead of doing nothing they go through the motions to jump start the passion.

seems to work for them.

Yeah my DP occasionally doesn't orgasm. In fact some of the best sex we've had is when we've both given up on 'getting there' and just have a load of free-form fun instead. Sex can be very satisfying even without an orgasm.

I don't think this is the same thing at all as the vast numbers of women who settle for chronically unsatisfying sex because their partners are only concerned with their own pleasure.

I agree. I think there a likely a lot of blokes who think sex is 30 seconds to their own orgasm and subsequent snoring.

Yes, MrG, we are talking about quite different things here

a 5 min roll on/roll off and don't give a shit if your female partner gets any pleasure out of it in fact she doesn't even have any expectation of enjoying it is not at all like you described

I know AF I was just responding to ledkr's point about men not being able to have have sex without orgasm.... apologies for the thread drift.

hello there by the way, ole Ginster

hello AF :)

There's a bit of radishing going on if you're at a loose end.

same time, same place ?

< laughs > indeed

< puts ear to ground for the distant sounds of ears pricking up and jaws dropping to the floor >

AF - I am "long term married" and neither myself nor my H would consider the "pull my nightie down when you're finished" type of encounter to belong anywhere other than back in the 1950's...

Which is fine for you and great if you're both happy. But doesn't give you the right to judge the sex lives of others just because they're different from yours.

I think there's a complex web of misunderstanding going on here. Let's take it as read that until quite recently, historically, there was little awareness that women had any kind of equal right to sexual satisfaction and in many (most?) cases they simply "served" the sexual satisfaction of men.

Skip forward to now, where most people no longer look at things that way, and most couples entering into relationships view the sexual side of things in a much more mutual way. That's all great.

However, the fact of a sex life as a whole being mutually satisfying, doesn't necessarily mean that every individual sexual act, much less every moment within each such act must be mutually satisfying. Often, for some people, the mutuality can be more sequential than simultaneous. I make you happy; then you make me happy - whether "then" means in five minutes or two weeks.

There's then a real difficulty talking about such things because some people are - naturally enough - still highly sensitized to the idea of women being treated as sexual servants, and look at individual acts of the woman satisfying her man without getting anything particular out of it for herself, as evidence of such a servile relationship and therefore wrong. This isn't really justified though; you can't say that any more than you can say a man is servile when he gives his wife an orgasm by going down on her. Or, for that matter, any more than you can say it about any of the millions of other things that people in relationships do "for" each other, without getting anything particular out of it for themselves, at the time.

Relationships are often about give and take - one after the other, not a constant stream of mutual satisfaction. I do understand (I think) why some women are keen to jump on any suspicion of sexism in relationships and of women being unfairly treated. But if just isn't fair to do that on the basis of specific events within those relationships, without considering the whole. It's perfectly possible and normal for a person (of either sex) to satisfy their partner sexually without being satisfied themselves on that occasion, and be quite happy with that within the context of the relationship as a whole.

Then there's the whole issue of what happens when one partner has a much higher libido than the other. One partner will then by definition be forgoing what they want in order to satisfy the other. Either the low libido partner will have some quick boring sex for the sake of the high, or the higher will go without sex for the sake of the lower. And since every couple is different, everybody has to negotiate how this works, and who does what how often, based on what feels right for their relationship.

If your way of doing this involves not having any quick boring sex, and it creates a situation both you and your partner are happy with, then that's great and I'm happy for you. But you can't just assume, or judge, that it should play out the same way for everybody else. There are plenty of women for whom the idea of occasional quick boring sex just doesn't faze them at all, and they happily get on with a relaitonship of which that is ONE SMALL PART, because that's how they and their partners have chosen to play it. It doesn't mean they're all meek little 1950s housewives.

I think HH was judged by an overzealous application of a general principle to a specific situation, in which we have no reason to assume it's applicable.