Husband and p0rn?

[CuriousOhCurious]

So bear with me on this one as I know we all have different views on the subject.

personally me and my husband agreed for our relationship it was better porn wasn’t involved!

we all have different views on p0rn and how it effect relationships I know some it can strengthen and others it breaks. My husband chose porn over me a long time ago and it shot my confidence and trust but we agreed after that it would no longer be part of our relationship and he was happy to leave it in the past. Over and over again we’ve had issues over it and again and again we said no more and we agree. Whenever he was found out he would lie and lie and lie until he would finally admit it.
I had just started to trust him again after the previous time, it just started to not be a constant worry in my head, then last night I found a lot of videos on Facebook, half naked women, women with their coochies basically on show or their boobs, I’m shot I don’t know what to do. We’ve been together 8 years but only married for 1, I said I would only marry him if there were no more lies and I believed him. We have two kids together, I don’t know how much more I can take. I don’t want to leave him as I love him so fucking much but I can’t keep being lied to, I don’t know what to do. He’s a brilliant dad, we have a whole life together but I’m not sure what to do! He’s the only person I’ve ever been with relationship and sexually wise. Please just someone give me some advice on what to do. I’m only young mid twenties, I don’t want to waste my life on someone who isn’t going to change but I don’t want to just give up everything I have known since 16. Please be kind as I’m falling apart, my mental health is fucked, I just don’t know what is best and I’m scared tbh.

@samanthablues its got nothing to do with infantilisation of women’s decisions. Your words suggest that women can’t make decisions and own them. Of course they can and do. What they can’t know is how they will feel about those decisions in the future. We are all subject to that inability to predict the future and potential commensurate regret.

An industry or company that adversely affects people’s mental health in the way Only Fans does should be regulated in the way that cigarettes and alcohol are.

I can’t find any stats on Only Fans because it’s such a new industry, but here’s a report from Ireland showing 90% of women want to leave prostitution but can’t and don’t have the support.

www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-30978567.html

You’re trying to excuse prostitution on the basis that we all have free will. Yes we do. However people make bad decisions all the time, like taking drugs, choosing a life of crime, becoming an alcoholic etc. And then we may have a sense of regret if we make that choice.

We then try to move away from that lifestyle because it’s hurting us.

To suggest online sex work doesn’t affect your mental and potentially physical health is a joke.

In the moment these women will talk about being “empowered” because when we make poor decisions we want to justify them and feel like we had agency over them at the time.

But selling sex?

No young girl hopes in life she’ll be a prostitute. You insult us all with your attempt to validate these choices that female prostitutes make so you don’t need to feel guilty for choosing to consume their services.

The jokes on you though. No one buying sex of any kind could possibly know true happiness. You’d have more respect than to buy a body for a few moments I’d titillation. No one with an ounce of self respect would do that.

Bit shortsighted on the Onlyfans. Firstly there's no need to be nude. Some Olympians are on there, and their content isnt pornographic. No different to the old American Sports Illustrated publications. Secondly, a significant percentage of creators (poss 30%) are men, appealing to both women and gay men.

Yeah, nice little rant. I have been following this thread throughout and been supportive of the OP in other posts.

I don't know why you people feel the need to preach about porn (to the point of picking random unrelated posts to make your point) when her DH isn't even watching porn, he's looking at scantily clad women on Facebook.

@Blackthorne You insult us

I believe you're the one who's insulting grown up adult women who take choices you wouldn't by infantilising them and publicly stating that "you know better", just like the patriarchy has done with women for decades. That moral high horse of yours is indeed a high one.

@samanthablues if not being an alcoholic, not getting into a life of crime and not selling my body for sex is “knowing better” then yes I’ll be happy on that high horse and not come down. Looks like 90% of Irish prostitutes agree with me and in the absence of other data, I’ll take 90% of women’s views backed up by research over one person on MN trying to justify prostitution as empowering female choice. What fresh hell is that?

@LaraThot none of those segments you mention relate to what I wrote about as you are surely aware? Manufacturers of alcohol sell to lots of people who don’t become alcoholics but that doesn’t mean to say there doesn’t need to be regulations about what they sell who they sell to and government guidelines about how much we should drink per week. Because of the impact on the future lives of people who work selling sex online OF needs to be regulated far more to protect these people who are still young and vulnerable at 18 and even older. Anyone selling sex online should have some sort of protection.

He is. He swears he will stop and doesn't. That's what addicts do. They lie and lie and lie because they don't want to give up the highs they get.
He is not going to change without some kind of therapeutic intervention, and even then it's iffy.

That is a type of softcore porn. I can almost guarantee you he is using hardcore stuff as well. He's just more careful about hiding it. He'll be using the private setting on his browser so she can't find the searches he is doing.

you seem to know this guy pretty well to make such a statement, he’s obvs telling the wife he’s not going to look at porn just to keep her happy and not because he agrees with her. You can like cheese cake and not be addicted to it.

Again: you seem to be close friends with this man to make such sweeping statements.

He's not giving it up but he does need to be honest about that and let you know - that way you can decide if it's something you can live with or not.

He should not be lying about it and actively doing it behind your back knowing your feelings about it but similarly it's not really fair of you to say "I don't like it therefore you can't do it". You need to be able to find a middle ground, however that looks, that appeases both of you.

In my humble opinion, when we get to the point of controlling tik Tok and Facebook videos, it's becoming unhealthy. You can't ban all imagery of other women who he might find sexually attractive.

It's not reasonable to expect that anyone just thinks of fresh air when they masturbate.

And sometimes, you have to ask yourself if this (random Facebook videos) are actually worth the paranoia and self esteem issues they're causing you.

And yes, there's no evidence he's actually watched porn. It's so difficult to have trust when he's lying - I've been there. But being overbearing also reinforces the need to lie and it makes you feel like you need to be checking. Again - been there.

Put it way better than I ever could. 👏🏼

It’s so very very sad.

Men will pay the ultimate price eventually as there are less and less kids to pass on their genes. Women will keep saying no and porn has accelerated that decline even faster. We are in decline as a species. Certainly the western world. Porn is not progress. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Not all inventions are for good. Some are very very destructive. More and more people can’t be bothered to try. Men have porn and half-arsed relationships. Single women have friends who can give just as much love and support as a relationship with a man. Let the game play out.

Most studies suggest that the number of men who watch porn (as a spectrum, either infrequently or regularly) is in the region of 90%. I asked my friends (after a similar chat I read on here) how common they thought watching porn was amongst men, and each of my friends said they all do (no one considered 90% accurate, they all thought higher!).
I think monitoring, and banning, your partner's internet and app use (because you've snooped and found evidence of porn/nudity) is completely unacceptable, it's control by any logic.
You have two choices @CuriousOhCurious, accept and respect his private viewing choices or leave him.

If you are right that most men watch porn, then we are saying that most men do not care about the women involved, or the exploitation, or the trafficking, or the degradation - what a very sad situation.

That's right, they don't. They have no empathy for these women.
They see them as objects.That is one of the reasons I have completely given up on men.

I think it's a bit more nuanced than that. I don't imagine they 'care' any more than they do an actor in any 'production'. Admittedly I don't know enough about the porn industry to comment on the prevalence of exploitation.

We are just holes on legs to them.

Then you should educate yourself before making comments because it’s shows you’re not well informed enough to offer anything other than to show the fact you know nothing. It’s this very passive approach to the subject and a defence of “I didn’t know the average age of death for a female porn star was 36” once you discover that fact, that means you add nothing to the debate, only you prove that there is little awareness of the physical and mental health consequences for the people, particularly women who are involved in making porn. The number of suicides and overdoses is far far higher than for any other category of work for women or men for that matter. It’s the most high risk job any woman could do.

Porn is fantasy for those consuming it, a dopamine rush. Of course to consider the suffering of those involved in getting them off would be a turn off. So it’s very convenient to focus on pleasure and fantasy, not on suffering and early death of those involved.

You can view many of the dead here 💔 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IwIvoK5jN9g I imagine it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Women always under-report where errant sex practices occur such as rape.

I think this shows how commoditised sex affects women and this is what men want to normalise in relationships with their wives and girlfriends?

Very convenient to disregard the truth of what it’s doing to all of us.

I imagine @samanthablues wont be watching that video because that poster believes that sex work is empowering for women and we shouldn’t be discouraging women from this profession which might actually kill them in their 30s. Because that would be infantilising them. Yeah right.

No doubt there is suffering in the industry.
It'd be nigh on impossible however to educate oneself to any certainty on the industry as a whole when you allow for a myriad of reason, complexity thereof and of course bias (and I rather suspect, given your haughty response, that you'd be unwilling to allow for said myriad).

Your facts are wrong.

The study was based on 120 deceased porn actors, male and female and found the average age at death was 36 years. It does not take into account the many thousands that are still alive and those that are still in the industry. 75% of these deaths were male with the most common cause being AIDS, with the majority of the AIDS related deaths being between 1990 - 1995.

Back to the main point in question... OP, have the responses you've received helped your decision in any way? Do you feel any clearer about how to move forward?

@Blackthorne I imagine @samanthablues wont be watching that video because that poster believes that sex work is empowering for women and we shouldn’t be discouraging women from this profession which might actually kill them in their 30s. Because that would be infantilising them. Yeah right.

You're making stuff up, I never said I find sex work empowering (but then I don't find waitressing or cleaning houses empowering either). As for those strange statistics you came with regarding sex workers dying in their 30's (?) women are in waaaay more danger getting married or in a relationship, fact is 78 (53%) women killed by men in 2021 were killed by a current or former intimate partner. So being the "good girl" and doing the conventional "thing" will get you killed much faster than becoming an escort or an only fans girl.

By some of the comments, maybe becoming a porn star or sharing myself naked online is an option 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

SORRY. I’m so done with it all my sarcasm has peaked…