Dear Dategirl,
Am I the only person in the world who doesn’t allow my husband to watch porn? I know this makes me sound like a prude (I’m not!), but the idea of my husband getting off on something—someone—who isn’t me sounds like cheating.
I’m not jealous to a crazy extent, because he has female friends and I don’t have a problem with that. He tells me he doesn’t watch porn, but the other day I borrowed his computer to Google something and I flipped up the screen, and you can guess what I saw. What if one of our kids saw that? How can I make him stop?
—Not Havin’ It
I think your biggest problem is that you use the word allow when talking about your husband. I can see not allowing your 5-year-old to play with automatic weaponry or forbidding your 12-year-old to get a tramp stamp, but your husband? He’s an adult, and therefore allowed to do whatever the fuck he wants.
The old trope is that there are two types of men: those who look at porn and those who lie. Your hubs is obviously the second type, and while screeching at him might teach him to be more secretive, it’s not going to stop him. In fact, if he’s like most guys, the more you tell him not to, the more he’s going to want to.
Even if you sequestered him away from the Internet, the DVD player, and any other living being with breasts, you can’t police whom he fantasizes about when he beats off. Guys will rub one out into a dirty sock fantasizing about the grouchy postal clerk or their third-grade art teacher. They’ll sneak into the men’s room with a copy of Maxim—even Cosmo in a pinch—and wank it right there during a “coffee break.” That’s not cheating on you, anymore than your wet-on for Robert Pattinson is cuckolding him.
The fact is (and guys, I say this coming from a place of love), men are kind of gross. Their inherent pigginess is one of those things you’ve got to learn either to embrace or ignore. As long as he’s not going outside the relationship to get laid, why sweat it?
Instead of laying down the law to your husband, why don’t you talk with him about it? Tell him exactly why you’re so freaked out by his porn habit. Ask him to clear his history so the kids don’t find it. You do know that men realize that most mortal women don’t look like porn stars, don’t you? How many perfectly hairless (from the crown down) women do you know who weigh 90 pounds yet still balance E-cups on their rib cage? Your husband is horny, not stupid.
But mostly, quit treating your man like one of your kids. How’s he supposed to think of you as a sex object if you act like his mommy? (Unless he’s really twisted.) After all, how would you feel if he told you that you weren’t allowed to watch True Blood or wear a certain item of clothing? Chances are you’d either laugh in his face or tell him to piss off.
Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you don’t both deserve a little privacy. So what if he wants to have a one-fisted imaginary tryst with Kim Kardashian? That’s a far cry from a real-life fling with Sue from accounting.
