Of Wives, Expectations And Porn

by Calico Rudasill, Sex Commentator at  Sssh.com Porn For Women

Around my house, watching porn is not a particularly big deal. My husband and I both do it (sometimes together, sometimes not) and it’s something incorporated into our sex life, rather than a point of contention which puts pressure on our sex life.

Read on…

For this and other reasons, it’s hard for me to relate to the feelings of betrayal a lot of other women experience when they catch their husbands watching porn. I don’t doubt the sincerity of their emotions; I just have a tough time imagining myself having the same sort of reaction – especially when their emotional response is informed by a strong religious objection to porn to begin with.

Not All Your Expectations Are Reasonable

In the XXXChurch post linked above, Eddie Capparucci explains the devastation women experience when they catch their husbands watching porn in the context of four things wives apparently expect their husbands to do. The first item on the list is “Desire only her.”

Sorry folks, regardless of your gender and that of your partner, when you expect another person to desire only you, this is called being in denial.

If we’re honest with ourselves, we will recognize some of our desires are irrational, unwise and unsound. The choices we make surrounding these desires aren’t about not having them in the first place, they’re about making the ‘right’ choice regardless of our desire.

In other words, when I go to the grocery store with a nice list of fruits, veggies and other things which don’t have 800 grams of fat per serving, successfully sticking to that list doesn’t mean I don’t want a massive slice of chocolate cake, four bags of goldfish crackers and half-gallon of rocky road ice cream; it just means despite wanting those things, I somehow managed to leave the store without them.

I grew up around a brother who was quite open with his thoughts and never hesitant to dole out advice to his younger sister – whether I wanted to hear it or not (which was generally the case). One of the things he told me, back when he was in his early 20s and I was still in high school, was never to believe any man who told me “I only have eyes for you.”

“That’s just not how it works with us guys,” my brother once told me of this romantic, if unrealistic notion. “Guys who say stuff like that are just trying to get laid, because they know women go for romantic shit like that. After a certain age, we pretty much want to fuck anything that moves – and a whole lot of things that don’t, for that matter.”

At first, I thought my brother was just a pig trying to burst my bubble about someday having the sort of relationship so often idealized in fiction. You know, love at first sight, lots of swooning, holding hands in the park in our 80s, etc. etc.

Later, as I got older, it dawned on me I didn’t exactly have eyes for just one man myself, so how could I expect a man to only desire me? At the same time, I also found it relatively easy (uh…. usually) to set aside the desire or attraction I might feel toward someone other than my boyfriend in order to maintain an established relationship.

In other words, if when my husband looks at other women with desire, so long as he sticks to his ‘grocery list’ of one woman (me, obviously) with whom he actually has sex, I don’t mind if he wants to secretly indulge in laughably unrealistic fantasies of someone other than me being willing to get trapped beneath him in a sexual context.

When It Comes To ‘Safe Sex,’ Masturbation Is Pretty Low Risk

Another wifely expectation of men, according to Capparucci, is that they “be safe.” In context, he says this means a woman “can trust you with her heart and believe you are a man of integrity.”

“Now that you’ve been caught using porn, all her expectations have crashed and burned,” Capparucci writes. “You have no credibility, you’re untrustworthy, and you lack integrity.”

Wow; you lost all credibility and integrity in her eyes just by watching porn? Man, think of how pissed she’s going to get when she finds out you’ve been watching CNN behind her back, too!

Clearly, to Capparucci and the women he’s decided he speaks for, watching porn is a type of cheating on your significant other.

I tend to look at it as the opposite: For a lot of people, myself included, porn is a release of the tension which builds up from withstanding the desire to stray outside the relationship in pursuit of things like sexual variety, adventure and maybe someone just a little less sweaty.

Let’s be clear: When I watch porn alone, I’m not fantasizing about my husband – nor, for that matter, am I fantasizing about the man being depicted on my screen. I’m generally fantasizing about some stranger whose eyes locked on mine for an uncomfortable moment when I was out in public, or an idealized version of a celebrity I’ve never met (and probably would detest if I did).

I assume my husband is the same way; presumably, he fantasizes about things he knows he can’t and never will have – like Scarlett Johannson, tens of millions of dollars and the respect of his coworkers.

As for being ‘safe,’ I prefer literal safety to metaphorical safety anyway – and when it comes to safe sex, I’m fully confident my husband fucking his own hand is far safer than him using a condom while enjoying the company of a prostitute.

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