I recently came home from a short meeting to find my husband in the bathroom secretly jerking off to porn while I was out. This has happened before. He says that the secret nature is not part of the desire for him. But there’s something about looking at women with perfect/fake bodies while I’m out briefly that feeds into my insecurities.
Am I being unfair in asking him to stop jerking off to porn secretly when I could walk in on him easily?
— Porn Over Reality Needles Offended Spouse
While your husband needs to be considerate of your feelings, PORNOS, you need to accept that your husband has a solo sexuality and is entitled — as we all are — to a zone of erotic autonomy. Meaning, he’s allowed to have fantasies that don’t revolve around you, just as you’re allowed to have fantasies that don’t revolve around him.
If you’re generally satisfied — if you’re satisfied enough (really, the best any of us can hope for!) — and your husband isn’t neglecting you or the kids and he’s making a good-faith effort to masturbate when you’re less likely to “catch” him (not to keep secrets, but to be considerate) — you’re going to need to shrug it off when you realize the bathroom door is locked for that reason.
My husband (straight M, 40s) and I (bi F, 30s) have been married for 10 years, together for 15 and have school-aged children. In the beginning of our relationship, I explained to him that I was bisexual and needed openness to be with other women.
For many years, he also had sex with other women without me. Over time, I began wanting to explore sex with other men, but this has been a hard “no” on his end. He says that’s not what he agreed to, which is true. It’s definitely caused some resentment on my end, and because of what I perceive to be an unfair dynamic, I closed our relationship completely a few years ago.
Our sex life has gone downhill since. How do we fix this?
— Bi Lady And Annoyingly Het Spouse
If your spouse can pursue 100% of the people they’re into, you should be able to pursue 100% of the people you’re into. Still, when your husband says, “This isn’t what I signed up for,” he’s not lying, BLAAHS, which, to your credit, you’re able to acknowledge.
You agreed to a “one-penis policy” back when you weren’t interested in other penises, BLAAHS, but that’s changed, and that change has changed your marriage. You went from an open relationship to a hostage situation… and hostage situations aren’t sexy.
Getting your marriage back to a happy, healthy and horny place is gonna involve risk. And while it’s tempting to say, “What do you have to lose?” (since your sex life is a wreck and resentment is a cancer), it’s not just your marriage that’s at stake. You have kids.
It may be in their best interest for mom and dad to suck up a few sexless-or-nearly-sexless years. (You did sign up to be parents, BLAAHS, and parenting sometimes means doing what’s best for the little shits.) If divorce (as opposed to sexlessness) is your worst-case scenario, BLAAHS, you may have to learn to live in that cage for a while.
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